Portraits

By AM Friday, October 18, 2024

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Anthony McIntyre ☠ Belfast City Council has agreed to remove the portrait of former mayor Niall O Donnghaile from the City Hall. 

It is not quite part of the woke fad for statue smashing and monument moving as the request came from the DUP, not known for being woketard-friendly. For the dinosaurs it is about rubbing Sinn Fein noses in the dirt of a safe space where there is no risk to the Self-Preservation Society at Stormont.

Sinn Fein seemed eager to back the DUP request in stark contrast to how it failed to back a motion in Belfast City Hall to expel the Israeli ambassador from Ireland. Michelle O'Neill:

I think it is appropriate. His behaviour was completely inappropriate so, therefore, I think that we had no issue whatsoever in backing the removal of the portrait.

A portrait of a former mayor whose inappropriate behaviour falls short of the standards required in public office, but also falls short of being a crime, is a much greater irritant to party sensibilities than an advocate for the horrendous crime of genocide.  

While 'inappropriate' can cover a wide range of activity, Niall O Donnghaile's self-condemnation would lead us to think that his inappropriateness was of such gravitas that it is legitimate to argue that he is not fit to be mayor. That hardly alters the fact that he was mayor, and the attempt to airbrush him out of the official history of Belfast City Hall has an Orwellian feel to it. 

It is difficult to be persuaded that the physical destruction or cultural obliteration of artefacts from the past in any society serves much purpose other than the present needs of the one-eyed tribe, whichever one of them happens to be in charge at any given point in time. Too much like book burning. We now live in a world where each generation can erase traces of what the last generation valued because of a mood swing in public opinion. Rather than destroy, societies can easily find ways to create. A contextual plaque placed beside the 'offending' artefact seems much more creative and explanatory than a bulldozer.

Opposing a new portrait of O Donnghaile seems reasonable, but to take a cricket bat to what went before is not cricket as the English might say. Quite a few hateful bigots have served as mayor of Belfast over the last 118 years, their portraits most likely still in place. Let the record of the council stand, warts and all, rather than mask it with a blank canvas.

The DUP is revelling in its opportunity to make Sinn Fein feel uncomfortable given that its sense of entitlement has left it feeling humiliated at being in the position where it must now kick up rather than down to land its blows on Sinn Fein. While it might feel that the rapidity with which it moved against Jeffrey Donaldson compared to a general Sinn Fein tardiness around issues of sex abuse gives it the moral high ground, in terms of mayoral malfeasance the party is not squeaky clean. Thomas Hogg, who served as DUP mayor of Antrim and Newtownabbey Council in 2014-15, was - unlike O Donnghaile - actually convicted of a sex offence against a child.

He had offered to perform a sexual act on a 15-year-old boy and asked the boy to perform a similar act.

I have no idea if the DUP put a motion before Antrim and Newtownabbey Council calling for the removal of any portraits of Hogg, but Annie McGinley wrote on Twitter that:

When I Googled "DUP request the portrait of Thomas Hogg be removed" I got absolutely no results. Instead, this came up. He was stripped of his MBE for being an actual convicted sex offender. But there was no call from the DUP to remove his portrait.

Sanitising the past record to suit present requirements is like polishing a turd. The smell remains. 

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.