“No Going Back” is to be Sinn Féin's war cry in yet another election that we are already being told is the most important in generations.
Who can blame Sinn Féin for scoring into the open goal presented to them once again by political Unionism.
The cynic in me doesn't believe that this election will be the defining moment of a generation. We have heard that far too often before. The pessimist in me is dumbfounded at how politics in the North remains so stubbornly binary, with every election still reduced to another contest between orange and green. The realist in me recognises that, whatever the outcome in May, very little is likely to change, if anything at all.
And the sceptic in me is left wondering what exactly Sinn Féin is promising we will never go back to.
Is Sinn Féin warning us about a return to unionist domination before 1972? Because that political order is well and truly buried, nowhere more visibly than in 2007, when Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness took office together as First Minister and deputy First Minister. Whatever else one thinks of the Good Friday Agreement, the sight of those two men sharing power was a fairly conclusive demonstration that the old Stormont was not coming back.
Or perhaps “No Going Back” means no return to the war.
Was it not Michelle O'Neill herself who, during the recent Drumcree debacle, questioned how the entire peace process was working? A dispute over an Orange parade was apparently sufficient to bring twenty-eight years of political progress into question.
I have no particular affection for the Good Friday Agreement or the institutions it produced, but I do distinguish between the political settlement and the peace that accompanied it. The former can and should be challenged. The latter is not something to be casually invoked whenever a political dispute becomes difficult.
There is no credible prospect of conflict returning to the north any more than there is of the old unionist hegemony re-emerging.
Yet we are apparently expected to believe that both remain sufficiently plausible to justify another election fought around the fears of the past.
Worryingly I believe that “No Going Back” is really about ensuring that a unionist never again occupies the First Minister's office. If that is the proposition, then it is an inherently sectarian one. The office has precisely the same powers regardless of who occupies it.
To suggest that a nationalist First Minister represents progress while a unionist First Minister represents regression is to judge societal advancement by the constitutional and or religious identity of the officeholder rather than anything they actually do.
What neither the DUP or Sinn Fein cannot say is “No Going Back” to child poverty, because child poverty has never gone away. It cannot say it about homelessness, unemployment, poor health outcomes or educational inequality, because these problems remain firmly embedded in the jurisdiction both have spent years administering.
For all the talk of historic progress, our most disadvantaged communities remain trapped in circumstances that would have been depressingly familiar to their parents and grandparents. The occupants of Stormont's highest offices may change, the political parties may swap places, and each may celebrate its turn at the top table. But for those living in poverty and disadvantage, precious little changes.
The reality, as I see it, is that No Going Back is little more than a scaremongering tactic, designed to divert attention from the record of a First Minister who promised to be a First Minister for all, and a party that, despite becoming the largest in the North, has failed to deliver on any of the fundamental changes it promised at the last historic, once-in-a-generation election.
Having failed to deliver the transformation it promised last time, Sinn Féin now asks the electorate to believe that everything depends on returning it to office once again. Apparently, every election is historic, every victory is a watershed and every five years we are asked to believe that the real change is just around the corner.
Perhaps it is time to judge Sinn Féin not by what it promises will happen if it loses, but by what has actually happened while it has been in government.
Big-house nationalism, as epitomised by Sinn Féin, has become remarkably comfortable in the institutions it once promised to dismantle. Somewhere between the ministerial offices, the official cars and the trappings of government, it appears to have forgotten where it came from, never mind where it was supposed to be going.
I suspect the coming months will bring the familiar distractions. The Brits will be blamed, the DUP will be blamed, and I wouldn't be surprised if the securocrats made a guest appearance. There will be plenty of talk about who is standing in the way of progress, but rather less about what Sinn Féin has actually achieved with the political power it already possesses.
For a party that once promised to change the constitutional future of Ireland, it now seems remarkably preoccupied with ensuring that nothing changes at the top of Stormont.
The old republican ambition has given way to the more immediate concern of keeping Michelle O'Neill in the First Minister's office.
And therein lies the absurdity of “No Going Back”. A unionist First Minister would not take the North back to 1972, any more than a Sinn Féin First Minister has taken us into the Republic.
Who can blame Sinn Féin for scoring into the open goal presented to them once again by political Unionism.
The cynic in me doesn't believe that this election will be the defining moment of a generation. We have heard that far too often before. The pessimist in me is dumbfounded at how politics in the North remains so stubbornly binary, with every election still reduced to another contest between orange and green. The realist in me recognises that, whatever the outcome in May, very little is likely to change, if anything at all.
And the sceptic in me is left wondering what exactly Sinn Féin is promising we will never go back to.
Is Sinn Féin warning us about a return to unionist domination before 1972? Because that political order is well and truly buried, nowhere more visibly than in 2007, when Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness took office together as First Minister and deputy First Minister. Whatever else one thinks of the Good Friday Agreement, the sight of those two men sharing power was a fairly conclusive demonstration that the old Stormont was not coming back.
Or perhaps “No Going Back” means no return to the war.
Was it not Michelle O'Neill herself who, during the recent Drumcree debacle, questioned how the entire peace process was working? A dispute over an Orange parade was apparently sufficient to bring twenty-eight years of political progress into question.
I have no particular affection for the Good Friday Agreement or the institutions it produced, but I do distinguish between the political settlement and the peace that accompanied it. The former can and should be challenged. The latter is not something to be casually invoked whenever a political dispute becomes difficult.
There is no credible prospect of conflict returning to the north any more than there is of the old unionist hegemony re-emerging.
Yet we are apparently expected to believe that both remain sufficiently plausible to justify another election fought around the fears of the past.
Worryingly I believe that “No Going Back” is really about ensuring that a unionist never again occupies the First Minister's office. If that is the proposition, then it is an inherently sectarian one. The office has precisely the same powers regardless of who occupies it.
To suggest that a nationalist First Minister represents progress while a unionist First Minister represents regression is to judge societal advancement by the constitutional and or religious identity of the officeholder rather than anything they actually do.
What neither the DUP or Sinn Fein cannot say is “No Going Back” to child poverty, because child poverty has never gone away. It cannot say it about homelessness, unemployment, poor health outcomes or educational inequality, because these problems remain firmly embedded in the jurisdiction both have spent years administering.
For all the talk of historic progress, our most disadvantaged communities remain trapped in circumstances that would have been depressingly familiar to their parents and grandparents. The occupants of Stormont's highest offices may change, the political parties may swap places, and each may celebrate its turn at the top table. But for those living in poverty and disadvantage, precious little changes.
The reality, as I see it, is that No Going Back is little more than a scaremongering tactic, designed to divert attention from the record of a First Minister who promised to be a First Minister for all, and a party that, despite becoming the largest in the North, has failed to deliver on any of the fundamental changes it promised at the last historic, once-in-a-generation election.
Having failed to deliver the transformation it promised last time, Sinn Féin now asks the electorate to believe that everything depends on returning it to office once again. Apparently, every election is historic, every victory is a watershed and every five years we are asked to believe that the real change is just around the corner.
Perhaps it is time to judge Sinn Féin not by what it promises will happen if it loses, but by what has actually happened while it has been in government.
Big-house nationalism, as epitomised by Sinn Féin, has become remarkably comfortable in the institutions it once promised to dismantle. Somewhere between the ministerial offices, the official cars and the trappings of government, it appears to have forgotten where it came from, never mind where it was supposed to be going.
I suspect the coming months will bring the familiar distractions. The Brits will be blamed, the DUP will be blamed, and I wouldn't be surprised if the securocrats made a guest appearance. There will be plenty of talk about who is standing in the way of progress, but rather less about what Sinn Féin has actually achieved with the political power it already possesses.
For a party that once promised to change the constitutional future of Ireland, it now seems remarkably preoccupied with ensuring that nothing changes at the top of Stormont.
The old republican ambition has given way to the more immediate concern of keeping Michelle O'Neill in the First Minister's office.
And therein lies the absurdity of “No Going Back”. A unionist First Minister would not take the North back to 1972, any more than a Sinn Féin First Minister has taken us into the Republic.
⏩Muiris Ó Súilleabháin was a member of the Republican Movement until he retired in 2006 after 20 years of service. Fiche bhliain ag fás.
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