Sheehan Selection

By AM Wednesday, November 17, 2010

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Pat Sheehan the former IRA prisoner and H-Block hunger striker has won the Sinn Fein nomination as the party’s replacement for Gerry Adams. Which really means he won the leadership’s approval. The vacuum he steps into was created by Adams’ announcement of his intention to ply his trade to Louth. Sheehan, who has accompanied Adams in public on some occasions including Roselawn for the cremation of the remains of the late Brendan Hughes, was always a serious contender for a MLA position. The only surprise is that he did not make it sooner, being much more talented and endowed with greater acuity than most of his party colleagues currently in Stormont.

His future as an MLA is certain to bring no radical change of direction. Strongly reformist in inclination, with little attachment to the strictures of ideology he will row the boat but not rock it. It is part of the quid pro quo: don’t speak ill of the leadership and it might promote rather than poison you. Sheehan has already made, as part of Sinn Fein’s lacklustre and unimaginative response, the obligatory leadership endorsed noises in relation to the narratives of Brendan Hughes and Richard O’Rawe.

In his defence, Pat Sheehan was articulating the need for some sort of peace strategy at a time when his less mentally agile colleagues in the H-Blocks were predicting a victory and castigating anyone with the savvy and prescience to forecast differently. On top of that he is no fool. One very likeable side of his character is that he is no bully either.

For a long time he and I were close friends, having first met during the blanket protest. He would visit me in prison after his release in 1987 and I would visit him after my own release in 1992. By that time he had found himself back on the wrong said of the wall. The friendship cooled after his release. He never rang or called to the house and that was long before the serious fall out between me and The Provisionals after they had killed Joe O’Connor. While I suspected that politics had intervened, that he had found my position awkward given the path he seemed set upon, he nevertheless was always sociable and friendly when we would bump into each other as we frequently did. He would never refrain from expressing his grave reservations about my take on events, but never sought to impose his view on me. Nor was he afraid to listen to my critique of his own perspective. Too intellectually capable to have to resort to ostracism of those who criticised whatever position he held, he brought a measure of civility and courtesy to the situation.

In the prison, well in advance of the nodding dogs, he knew the writing was on the wall for the IRA campaign and he was not behind the door in saying it. For his thought crime he was marginalised and made victim of a whispering campaign. On occasion some enterprising member of the republican jail staff would prevent me and him attending the prison’s central gym together. The gym was for the mindless pumping of iron, not the venting of sedition.

It was said by his critics he could not face the prospect of another long stretch in prison and for that reason wanted an end to the IRA’s campaign. Of course it was said by men who denounced him as wrong yet who can now be seen eagerly embracing everything they then despised. The innuendo against him was rubbish. Even before his arrest on the Grosvenor Road in April 1989 during an IRA operation against the RUC, he had expressed his views to me that the IRA would find the road increasingly difficult to travel. He didn’t say it outright but it seemed a serious compromise was what he saw on the strategic horizon. Yet he persevered with the IRA and paid the price. His views during his imprisonment were no different from those he expressed prior to coming into it. But there is always one muscle people with big muscles never seem to pump, so they couldn’t see that.

That independence of mind once displayed by Pat Sheehan cannot survive in a party like Sinn Fein where the dominant instinct is to hiss and spit at anyone not prostrating themselves at the leadership altar. Hopefully, his tolerance towards different strands of thought has not been abandoned along with his thinking autonomy.

While I can hardly say I cheered when I learned of his advance through the party, setting the politics aside, I felt a strong streak of admiration for an old friend and comrade who despite the death of his wife a few years ago, leaving him to bring up the son from their marriage, has managed to turn things around.
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