The Sinn Féin office moving squad |
Now politics can come with its share of rough and tumble and is no place for the feint-hearted. So when a senior member of Sinn Féin burst in to Peadar Toibín’s Leinster Office to evict him, perhaps he ought to have taken it in the correct spirit and just fucked off, like.
That has been the suggestion from many Shinners who made light of the witty exchange, and even hinted that perhaps Peadar had forgotten to put on his Big Boy Pants. One wonders too what the “something” might have consisted of.
Such a worldly wise attitude would carry a bit more weight were it not for the fact that the Shinners are ultra sensitive about any slight, perceived or imagined, directed at themselves. They are drama queens of soap opera proportions.
And of course any light being shone on them or truth telling regarding their activities is not an attack on the party, per se. Rather it must be an attack on the “struggle”, whatever that means these days, or even the Irish people as a whole.
I once had the amusing experience of being in the company of an electoral candidate asserting her right to order a drink well after closing time on the basis that she was not a “second class citizen.” She was given the same direction as Peadar.
Sinn Féin are clearly unnerved by the prospect that Aontú will significantly dent their vote in the upcoming local elections. The week before the stormtrooper raid, Pearse Doherty had been put out to insinuate that Peadar is a racist because he had the temerity to suggest that there needed to be a debate on sustainable immigration.
Given Pearse’s emotional opposition to abortion on demand which he abandoned on the orders of the Gauleiter, we might perhaps expect to see him turn up at a KKK hootenanny soon, should votes be perceived to lie in another direction than currently. It is all in the dialectic.
It is nonsense to suggest that Peadar is a racist. His reference to immigration was simply common sense and reflective of what most sane people outside of the open borders ultra left and their race to the bottom robber baron capitalist allies actually believe.
But the ongoing focus of SF on the perceived gap left by the anaemic Labour Party and the large pool of liberal voters who can be placated by faux emotional sound bites rather than actually doing anything practical means they will persist with the current baiting of their opponents rather than engage in any meaningful grown up debate.
Sinn Féin on Dublin City Council have learnt that lesson well. Rather than address the not exactly Schrodingerian conundrum of having a large stock of boarded up local authority houses at the same time there are thousands on their waiting list, they prefer the Student Union politics of flying nice flags, bridge naming and fraternal visits to Hamas in Gaza. They have even taken part in homelessness protests against a council on which they are the biggest party.
Likewise in the part of Ireland they recently administered for Teresa May, they are trying to use opposition to welfare cuts they approved in Stormont as a means to get votes. Both they and their partners in crime (it’s only a figure of speech) in the DUP are both running an Orwellian campaign based on the need to stop the other being the biggest party in Airstrip One.
Let us hope it keeps fine for them both. They deserve one another.
So the most unprofessional actions of the Leinster House chekist should be seen not as the chap having the head staggers, but as a reflection of the real fear within SF that they are going to do badly in the local elections.
While they fobbed off the dreadful performance of ni Riadh in the presidential election as some sort of glitch, even they are not convinced.
It will be interesting to see then how well the array of Aontú and other republican candidates -some of whom were elected as SF candidates – will do. They will certainly take votes from the Shinners, but on what scale we do not yet know.
Matt Treacy’s book A Tunnel to the Moon: The End of the Irish
Republican Army is also available @ Amazon.
Matt Treacy blogs @ Brocaire Books.
Tacitus — 'If you would know who controls you see who you may not criticise.'
ReplyDelete