Gerry Adams's Blog, page 27

Remembering Lily Fitzsimons – a proud United Irelander

The Sinn Fein team going into City Hall. Lily Fitzsimons is flanked by Alex Maskey, Tish Holland, Sean McKight, ,  Fra McCann is hiding behind Alex; Paddy McManus, Joe O'Donnell, Sean Keenan, Mick Conlon and Joe Austin   Former west Belfast MP and Party President Gerry Adams has expressed his deep sorrow at the death of Lily Fitzsimons.He said: “I want to extend my deepest condolences and solidarity to the family of my friend and comrade Lily Fitzsimons. Like many other residents of Turf Lodge Lily was originally from North Belfast where she was born in 1937. After she married she moved to Turf Lodge.Lily’s politics were shaped by her family, her community, her class, her gender and her life experience. She was inspired by Máire Drumm and Marie Moore and the hundreds of women who daily challenged the actions of the RUC and British Army. In July 1970 she was one of thousands of women, led by Máire and Marie, who broke the British Army’s curfew of the Falls.She was a strong immensely able woman. She was a key activist in the Political Status campaign in the 1970s and during the subsequent Hunger Strikes when her son Sean was on the Blanket Protest. Lily, along with many other Turf Lodge mothers, sisters and wives took to the streets to highlight the conditions under which republican POWs were being held. She travelled widely to Britain and the USA to highlight the appalling conditions in the H-Blocks and Armagh Women’s Prison.The Relatives Action Committees took over buildings and blocked streets and when the British Army and RUC were sent in to beat them off the streets, the women faced them down. Lily said of that time: “We endured a lot of harassment and threats from the British Army and RUC during these times, but instead of intimidating us, it made us all the more determined to carry on.''In 1985 Lily was elected for the Upper Falls as a Belfast City Councillor along with Alex Maskey, Sean McKnight, Bobby Lavery, Sean Keenan, Gerard McGuigan and Tish Holland.It sparked a vicious campaign by unionist Councillors to deny Sinn Fein representatives any real say in the running of the council. Lily and her 6 comrades ran a daily gauntlet of physical and verbal threats and abuse. They were denied speaking rights in the Chamber. They were shouted down. Deodorant and other sprays were used against them.Lilly and Tish were especially targeted by some of the largely male unionist Councillors. But they never backed down. They fought their corner and represented those who elected them. Today Belfast City Hall is a different place because of the resilience of Lily, Tish and their comrades.Lily was hugely respected and loved. She stood strong in defence of her community at a time when Sinn Fein Councillors and activists and families were being attacked by unionist death squads. Three Sinn Fein Councillors and 14 party activists were killed during the time she was a Councillor. Family members were also killed when homes were attacked. Lily loved Turf Lodge and the people of west Belfast. She believed passionately in the rights of citizens and she brought that passion to all of her work.She was an unapologetic united Irelander. Awoman of compassion – who believed in equality and in citizens’ rights.Lily was also a wife, a mother, a grandmother. She was a writer who wrote insightfully of the role of women in the struggle. And she was a great singer whose party piece was Crazy by Patsy Cline. I want to extend my condolences to Sean, Bobby, Margo, Gerard and the wider family circle.

Election 2020 – a tipping point

The votes have been cast and counted. Sinn Féin has emerged as the largest party by votes in the southern state. Over half a million (535,595) citizens gave their first preference to Sinn Fein. We have 37 seats in the Dáil.It was a remarkable election and an equally remarkable result. There had been a sense in the lead into the campaign that something was stirring within the electorate. The early opinion polls and the first canvas had indicated a greater than usual frustration at the Tweedledee – Tweedledum politics of the two larger parties of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. For four years Fianna Fáil worked in partnership with Fine Gael. Propping it up in government. Empowering its disastrous policies on health and housing. Echoing its lines against a Unity Referendum as set out in the Good Friday Agreement and outdoing its vitriol against Sinn Féin. And then, as if the electorate are fools, Fianna Fáil tried to tell citizens that it was different from Fine Gael. That it was the alternative. That it could deliver change. A con job.Last week, before a vote had been cast, I wrote of the “growing frustration and anger with the empty promises of the two bigger parties … anger at the willingness of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to protect the wealthy, the banking elite and the developers… anger at children made homeless and our elderly citizens and sick relatives languishing on hospital trolleys… anger at the witholding of state pensions to workers who have earned them.”I wrote also of the “anger at the Fianna Fail Leader Micheál Martin’s shrill political paranoia and hysterical ranting against Sinn Féin ...” and his insistence that “Sinn Féin is not fit to be in government.”All of this, and much more in recent decades, has seen a gradual process of realignment of electoral politics taking place in the southern state.  This has been most evident in the diminishing vote of the two conservative parties who in the past could have expected to pick up over three quarters of the total vote. That share has been in decline for the last 30 years and this week Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael secured less than half (44%) of the total vote. In my column last week I pointed out that this process of realignment “has been slow and hesitant at times but that’s the way change happens. You work away, arguing, advocating, debating, organising and campaigning. At times with little visible results. Sometimes with setbacks or distractions. But you keep at it strategically, energetically, patiently and intelligently. You keep sowing seeds of resistance and hope and republican values. Seeds to grow alternative democratic dispensations. Egalitarian ideas. You never give up. You focus on the future. You believe. Then all of a sudden a tipping point emerges. Or a series of tipping points.  The seeds grow.  They flourish. They burst into flower. This election looks like being such an event.”And it was. And it is. I hesitated before publishing the above. What if the vote didn’t come out? What if the weather was too bad? What if …? But sometimes the pessimism of the intellect is superseded by the optimism of the will, and the certainty of instinct. So I’m delighted to say I told you so but while I expected Sinn Fein to do better than the usual naysayers and begrudgers were predicting I must admit I was pleasantly surprised by the strength of the vote. Why the increase for Sinn Fein at this time? In short, because people want change – real change. And they increasingly see Sinn Féin as the best vehicle for this.For our part Sinn Féin spent the recent months analyzing the failures of the Presidential election and our local government and European elections. We had an honest and thorough conversation which identified the flaws and the gaps and we then set about plugging them. As Mary Lou has said, we learned our lesson. We re-engaged with our base. The Ard Fheis was the first evidence of a refocused Sinn Féin. The by-elections, especially the election of Mark Ward in Dublin Mid West and the near election of Tommy Gould in Cork North Central were the first sign of recovery. John Finucane’s election was another positive, as was the end of unionism’s electoral majority and the establishment of the Northern Assembly.Our general election campaign in the South was very well run. Everyone was on message. The benefits of our outstanding Front Bench team on Finance, Health, Housing, the Environment and other issues alongside a strong team of TDs and Seanadóirí was visible everywhere. Mary Lou has played a blinder. We set the agenda.In Louth I told our activists that people, our voters, have the right to be critical of us. We need to listen to them and we need to have the confidence in ourselves to do that. If we did that I was certain that we would get Imelda Munster and Ruairí Ó Murchú elected. And we did. With style. Comhgairdeas Imelda agus Ruairí.The party also produced a manifesto for the future that is radical, costed and deliverable. A manifesto for Irish Unity, with solutions to the crises in health and housing, childcare and the environment and for rural Ireland. A manifesto which clearly captured the imagination and the hope of many.Sinn Féin’s success in 2020 has to be set in the context of the party’s strategy development over many years; the systematic building of political strength to advance our national objectives; the building of capacity and organizational structure within the party; and the recognition that republicans have to have a long headed view and that we have to be united and cohesive if we are to achieve our objectives. The outworking of our electoral progress was most obvious in the North following the hunger strike elections intervention in 1981. We now have 7 MPs, 105 Councilors, and 27 MLAs. Michelle O’Neill is the Joint First Minister. This expansion of the party was less obvious in the South. But careful strategic planning has also witnessed an upward trend in support in that part of the island. The general election results for the last twenty three years are evidence of this.·        In 1997 Sinn Fein took 2.5% or 44,901. We won 1 seat.·        In 2002 we took 6.5% or 121,020 votes. We won 5 seats.·        In 2007 we took 6.9% or 143,410 votes. We won 4 seats.·        In 2011 we took 9.9% or 220,661 votes. We won 14 seats.·        In 2016 we took 13.8% or 295,319 votes. We won 23 seats.·        In 2020 we took 24.5% or 535,595 votes. We won 37 seats.And we can win more in the future if we stay on course. Extra candidates would have left us the largest number of TDs in the Dáil. Hindsight is a great person to have at a meeting. And there you have it. Of course the most important issue is to use our political strength for the peoples’ benefit and to advance our cause.The focus now is on whether Sinn Féin can find a pathway into government. To achieve this we need a Programme fora Government for Change. It’s all about strategy. Knowing what you want to achieve. And mapping out a plan to get you there. We are currently in the national liberation phase of Ireland’s long struggle for freedom. We also have to right the economic and social inequities insofar as that can be done during the period of transition to a New Republic. Our manifesto is clear evidence that we can do both. So, we are with Connolly again - with the national and social elements of the struggle in primary focus.This election is a tipping point. Mary Lou has begun the work of speaking to other party leaders about agreeing a programme for government. The political landscape on the island of Ireland has changed.

Be The Change You Want To See.

The general election in the South is drawing to a close. Polling day is Saturday – the first time an election has taken place on a Saturday since the historic 1918 election which saw Sinn Féin win a landslide victory. It has been a relatively short but very intense campaign. Many in the media tried to reduce it to a beauty contest between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. RTE went so far as to exclude Mary Lou McDonald from the Leader’s Debate. Then on the eve of the debate they reneged in the face of intense public outrage and Mary Lou, as she was entitled, debated with the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael leaders. As in all of the other interviews and debates Mary Lou emerged head and shoulders above the other leaders.  Meanwhile, notwithstanding my broken foot I have hobbled my way from door to door primarily in Louth where the republican effort is to re-elect Imelda Munster and elect Ruairí Ó Murchú – our Sinn Féin team in the wee county. There have been excursions into other constituencies as well. I have met hundreds of citizens. The feedback is the same everywhere. There is a growing frustration and anger with the empty promises of the two bigger parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail. Anger at their attempt to fabricate differences between themselves despite both parties having been in government together for the last four years. Anger at the willingness of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to protect the wealthy, the banking elite and the developers. Anger at successive governments for failing to hold these elites to account. Anger because they also are the elites. Anger at children made homeless and our elderly citizens and sick relatives languishing on hospital trolleys. Anger at the witholding of state pensions to workers who have earned them. Anger at insurance companies fleecing motorists and small businesses. Anger that citizens may have to work until their late 60s just to survive. One result of this and of opinion polls that have suggested a surge in the Sinn Féin vote was a tsunami of negative campaigning against the party by elements of the media and the two larger parties. Both Micheál Martin and Leo Varadkar attacked our manifesto commitments and especially our economic programme as ‘dangerous’.  This, as Mary Lou retorted in one debate, was ironic given that a Fianna Fáil/Green Party government, in which Micheál Martin and Eamonn Ryan (the Green party leader) were Ministers, bankrupted the State, and a Fine Gael/Labour government imposed years of austerity with Fianna Fail support. There is also anger at Fianna Fail Leader Micheál Martins shrill political paranoia and hysterical ranting against Sinn Féin. There is annoyance that the North usually only gets mentioned by him and the Fine Gael Leader Leo Varadkar as part of their attacks on Sinn Féin. Those voters who are United Irelanders are very disappointed that both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail leaders have ruled out support for a referendum on Irish unity or a Citizens’ Assembly as part of a process to plan for this.So too with their insistence that Sinn Féin is not fit to be in government. That is seen correctly as a slight on Sinn Féin voters. Vintage yesterday Unionist rhetoric. Of course parties may not be able to agree a programme for government and it is difficult to see either Fianna Fail or Fine Gael supporting the type of republican programme for government proposed by Sinn Féin. That’s fair enough. But to insult a section of the electorate is unfair. Many people see that and they don’t like it. They also don’t like Fine Gaels plans to commemorate the RIC and Micheál Martin’s support for this. Patriotic citizens, regardless of their party politics, are proud of our revolutionary history. The Irish establishment is not.  Most Irish people resent and reject that slíbhín approach. So southern electoral politics are going through a considerable process of realignment. This has been slow and hesitant at times but that’s the way change happens. You work away, arguing, advocating, debating, organising and campaigning. At times with little visible results. Sometimes with setbacks or distractions. But you keep at it strategically, energetically, patiently and intelligently. You keep sowing seeds of resistance and hope and republican values. Seeds to grow alternative democratic dispensations. Egalitarian ideas. You never give up. You focus on the future. You believe. Then all of a sudden a tipping point emerges. Or a series of tipping points.  The seeds grow.  They flourish. They burst into flower. This election looks like being such an event.If this election campaign has produced one message from voters it is that people want change – real and meaningful change. And many are looking beyond the tired ideas and failed policies of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. They’ve seen it all before and now they are actively looking for a viable alternative. Sinn Féin is that alternative. Sinn Féin is offering a genuine vision for change; to fix the housing crisis, reduce the cost of childcare, and give workers and families a break. We are for a government that works for Irish unity and for the people. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have had their chance. They have failed. In the last Dáil they smothered and suffocated any prospect of real change. Fianna Fails support for Fine Gael was a brake on that. Politics was more or less confined  and reduced in that Do Nothing Dáil. But now the people will have their say on all that. Fine Gael and Fianna Fail are standing more candidates than us. We need to contest more constituencies with them. But that also will happen. It’s a long game but this cadre of republicans are long headed and in for the long run. It’s all about bringing about positive change. Planting seeds of resistance and republican values.This election could see the political landscape changing once again. It may not be as transforming as many of us want and as many citizens need, at this time. Fianna Fail could do better than the polls suggest. Some Fine Gael voters may swap to them to keep Sinn Fein out.  And both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail are each standing more than double the number of Candidates that Sinn Fein is standing. Nonetheless change is coming. If you want that change, be the change you want. Micheál Martin and Leo Varadkar do not represent change. Mary Lou and the leadership team and Sinn Féin do. So on Sunday as the votes are counted we will see if the southern electorate agree. Ádh mór to all Sinn Féin candidates and activists and their families. Àdh mór to our leadership. And a word of thanks in advance to all Sinn Féin voters. 

The BannIng of Mary Lou

Sunday’s Business Post and The Irish Mail on Sunday opinion polls indicate a strong element of discontent with the politics of the two main conservative parties in the South – Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. They are attracting less than 50% of the vote. Despite a succession of polls identifying the same trends – and we should always acknowledge that opinion polls don’t always get it right – RTE has chosen to exclude Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald from its leader’s debate in the last week of the general election campaign.

Instead, like Virgin media last week, RTE’s ‘head to head’ will only involve Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin – two leaders who have been partners in government for the last four years. Both parties published their election manifestos last Friday. TheJournal.ie reviewed them and concluded that “there are many ways the parties are broadly similar.” Professor Gail McElroy, from Trinity College Dublin, told TheJournal.ie that “historically there isn’t a clear difference between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, and their voters… They’re both centre-right parties and their fiscal policies are really not that far apart.”The same recent opinion polls suggest Sinn Féin is attracting significant support. Additionally, the evidence of the last four years in the Dáil demonstrates that is has been Sinn Féin’s team of TDs and Seanadóirí who have been the real and effective opposition to the Fine Gael/Fianna Fáil alliance. The decision therefore by RTE to present the formation of the next government as a straight choice between Varadkar and Martin is evidence of a blatant disregard of the Dáil realities and of its statutory obligations as the state’s public service broadcaster. RTE has a responsibility to behave in a fair, objective and impartial manner and to inform and educate citizens about the choices facing them. It clearly is not doing this in this leader’s debate.So, why this intransigent refusal to include Mary Lou McDonald in the debate? It is more than some hangover from the days of Section 31 and state control of the media news reporting. It is a mind-set – partitionism - within the political and media establishment which is rooted in our colonial history, in partition, in the counter revolution that took place after the Tan War, and in the establishment of two conservative states on the island of Ireland.It is the mind-set which was evident in the recent decision by Charlie Flanagan, the Minister for Justice, to commemorate the RIC and Dublin Metropolitan Police. Instead of being proud of our history of resistance and rebellion the political establishment is ashamed of it. This attitude is a symptom of the unfinished nature of the national struggle. It lies in our colonisation.That has shaped our character as a people. On the one hand there is the wonderfully humorous, subversive, never-give-up attitude of most Irish people who are fair and decent and are for freedom. But some, particularly those in power since partition in the Irish state, inherited the confused and conditioned traits of the colonised mind shaped by centuries of being governed by an imperial power. Liam Mellows, who participated in the 1916 Rising and was summarily executed by the Free State forces during the Civil War, put it well during the Treaty debate in 1922, when he spelled out the consequences of partition. He said: ‘Men will get into positions, men will hold power and men who get into positions and hold power will desire to remain undisturbed …’He was right. Partition saw a political establishment emerge in the South that settled for a 26 county state that stopped at Dundalk and Aughnacloy, at Belleek and Strabane and Derry. In the early days of the state Radio Athlone and then RaidióTeiifís Éireann refused to play popular republican songs, songs of the revolutionary period. Internationally renowned Irish authors were banned, including books by Liam O’Flaherty, Sean Ó Faolain, Frank O’Connor and Edna O’Brien and Brendan Behan, and many others Cllr Tom Cunningham, Mary Lou McDonald, Cllr Ruairí Ó Murchú, Imelda Munster, Mise agus Joanna Byrne Section 31, an obnoxious piece of legislative censorship, was introduced in 1971 by a Fianna Fáil Minister. It was later amended and a new order introduced by former Labour Party Minister Conor Cruise O’Brien in 1976. Under that order no interviews with anyone from Sinn Féin could be carried under any circumstances. Larry O'Toole, now a Dublin Councillor then a Trade Union official, was banned by RTÉ from speaking  about a strike in Gateaux, a cake factory in Finglas north Dublin, where he worked. Others had similar experiences, including a Sinn Féin Councillor who witnessed a fatal fire in Bundoran but could not be interviewed as an eyewitness. In March 1988 Jenny McGeever broadcast a short clip of Martin McGuinness in a report she did for ‘Morning Ireland’ on RTE’s Radio 1 about the journey home from Dublin of the remains of the three IRA Volunteers killed at Gibraltar. She was immediately sacked. Sinn Féin voters from the north were also disenfranchised by RTE. After election victories newly elected SInn Féin MPs or councillors were ignored while our defeated opponents were interviewed. The same thing happened after serious incidents, including fatalities. British Army spokespersons were often interviewed! Sinn Féin never were. On other occasions in the 1970s and 80s songs were banned, including several by Christy Moore. These included ‘90 miles from Dublin’ and ‘The Time Has Come’ which dealt with Armagh Women’s Prison and  the H-Blocks, ‘McIlhatton’ and ‘Back home in Derry’ (because they were written by Bobby Sands) and ‘They Never Came Home’ about the Stardust tragedy. I had my own run in with the RTE censors in1993 when RTE refused to carry an advert for one of my books – The Street and Other Stories. Conor Cruise O’Brien claimed in evidence to a court hearing the banning order that the book of short fictional stories were propaganda for the IRA. He claimed that the opening words would offend and corrupt the Irish public. “I have in mind,” he said, “the opening words: ‘This is Gerry Adams speaking.’ The court found against RTE. RTE appealed to the Supreme  Court. It found in favour of RTE.In more recent times in September 2017 partitionism saw RTE mutilate the map of Ireland on the Late Late Show. Everyone in the North simply vanished into the sea with a new coastline running from Louth to Donegal. The north disappeared. This same image was first used by the Irish Embassy in Washington some years earlier as the Irish government has increasingly defined ‘Ireland’ or ‘the Nation’ as 26 counties. The Late Late Show often bans viewers from the north from its competition. Gaels in the north have difficulties watching or often not being able to watch Gaelic games on the self-proclaimed national broadcaster.There is also a symbiotic relationship between some senior elements of the media and the government of the day. Journalists regularly shift from their role as journalists to work for government Ministers, departments and political parties. This inevitably shapes and fuses the politics of both. Many in the political establishment in Dublin have never fully embraced the complete meaning of the Good Friday Agreement. While this accord has benefitted all of Ireland its positive equality focussed imperatives rarely penetrate south of the border. The Dublin establishment see it essentially as being about the north. The North remains for most a place apart – it’s up there – and this is then reflected also in how the political establishment deal with Sinn Féin. This is part of the context for the exclusion of Mary Lou from the leader’s debate. It is also the mind-set which saw Fine Gael, supported by Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin, decide to commemorate paramilitary forces – the RIC and Dublin Metropolitan Police – that had violently sought to prevent the Irish people achieve freedom. The reality is that neither the Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil leaderships are about promoting Irish Unity. But they recognise in Sinn Fein a party that is committed to unity and consequently a party to be marginalised, excluded and banned. There are many decent, fair and objective broadcasters in RTE. There are many good journalists. They also need to speak out on these issues. Or does a culture and a history of censorship make that too awkward or challenging a question.

Go raibh maith agat Máirtín

Recently, after almost three decades as an elected representative - first as a Councillor on Belfast City Council and then in the Assembly – Máirtín Ó Muilleoir announced his decision to step back from the Assembly and from electoral politics. Last Friday night Shinners and friends in south Belfast got together to thank Máirtín for his years of activism and I was pleased to join them.
As our first Councillor into Belfast City Council Alex Maskey told how he first met Máirtín when he was an activist during the hunger strike campaign in 1981. He also recounted several very funny stories of Máirtín’s early experience with unionist Councillors who were determined not to treat Sinn Féin Councillors with respect.  When it came my turn I acknowledged Helen, who provided much need support to Máirtín during all of the difficult days.Máirtín is now joining an illustrious band of former Sinn Féin elected representatives including Martin Ferris, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, Danny Morrison, Bairbre de Brún, myself and others who have stepped to one side to allow others to come forward.Máirtín first stood as a Council candidate in 1985. On that occasion he was unsuccessful but two years later he won a by-election and joined the growing team of Shinners in the City Hall.Máirtín recounted his experiences in the City Hall in his book “The Dome of Delight”. The Council then was a very different place. In the years following the election of Alex in 1983 and Sean McKnight in 1984 the unionist parties sought to bully and intimidate republican Councillors.Sammy Wilson described the Sinn Féin Councillors as "evil gunmen (he refused to recognise mna na héireann) who had crawled out of west Belfast" and he vowed to ostracise them. Unionists refused to talk to them, except to call them names. They refused to allow them to speak in the Council or to raise constituency issues. They tried to shout Sinn Féin Councillors down; deny them speaking rights; blew rape whistles and blew horns and sprayed deodorant on to them. They also refused to invite Sinn Fein Councillors to Civic events. That led to alternative people’s openings of civic buildings, like the Whiterock Leisure Centre.
The unionist parties went so far as to establish illegal sub-committees to carry out the work of the Council which excluded Sinn Fein members from the decision making process. They refused to allow them to sit at the table where committee members sat to carry out their business. They tried to insist that Sinn Féin Councillors sit at the back of the room when some of these committees were meeting. Fra McCann put a stop to that. No sitting at the back of the room for him. He sat at the table and no one could shift him.Sinn Féin Councillors were regular targets for unionist paramilitaries. Alex was shot. His friend Alan Lundy was shot dead in Alex’s home. Bobby Lavery’s home was attacked and his son Sean killed. The home of Jim Clinton who had been a Council candidate for Sinn Fein was attacked and his wife Theresa was killed. And there were others across the North and Eddie Fullerton in Donegal who were killed and wounded. Sheena Campbell was murdered not far from where we meet this evening.
Our offices, including the office in the City Hall, were bombed. Many Sinn Fein Councillors wore flax jackets going into and out of the one entrance into the City Hall. They varied their routes and were always mindful of the dangers they faced.
This was political environment when Máirtín and Fra were elected in November 1987 to the Council. Like the northern state that was founded in 1920 Belfast City Council was a place apart – an apartheid Council – representing an apartheid city separated into ghettoes in which nationalists and republicans were expected to meekly accept the crumbs from the table and keep quiet.
When Máirtín rose to make his first speech he opened with “Ba mhaith liom buíochas a thabhairt do na daoine a thug vote ...” That was as far as he got before Sammy Wilson jumped to his feet and demanded he be stopped. Unionists immediately raised their hands in support of a motion that he should not be heard. That’s when Máirtín began his second sentence.
There was that much noise from the unionist benches that no one could hear what he was saying but they knew it was in Irish. Sammy Wilson was apoplectic. He shouted that Irish was a ‘leprechaun language’. He called on the unionist Lord Mayor, Dixie Gilmore, to discipline Máirtín who the unionists tried to ridicule because he refused to use the English version of his name. The RUC were called. Máirtín was evicted from the chamber for what was described as disruptive behaviour.
It took years and a whole series of legal actions and injunctions in the courts but gradually undermined the unionist efforts to marginalise the Sinn Féin Councillors.Máirtín and Alex and the other Sinn Féiners stood their ground; defending republican politics and standing up for our constituents and their rights.We were determined that Belfast should be “Our City Also” and through the leadership of Alex and Sean McKnight and Lilly Fitzsimons and Tish Holland and Máirtín and many others they gradually broke down the  barriers to equal representation in the Council.We also broke the ban on nationalist marches taking place into the city centre.Máirtín was a Councillor until 1997 and then took up full time work managing the Belfast Media Group and is the publisher of the Irish Echo in New York. He came back onto the Council in 2011 and in 2013 he followed in the footsteps of Alex and Niall when he became the City’s First Citizen. He was attacked by thugs in Woodvale Park while performing his duty as Ard Mheara but undeterred he was back out in the neighbourhoods almost immediately afterward.As a business person Máirtín brought a very acute sense of the needs of business in Belfast to the Office of First Citizen and he championed equality, especially for Irish language speakers. He also actively promoted the Arts. In 2014 Máirtín was co-opted onto the Assembly and two years later he was appointed Minister for Finance. Máirtín has boundless energy – he never stops – literally. He is a human Duracell bunny – a Billy whiz. He is forever running marathons or galloping along the Lagan tow path or some other place.He has been a tireless advocate for Belfast; for the North and for Irish Unity. He has developed and strengthened links with our diaspora, especially in north America. He has been involved in countless initiatives to promote Belfast; education; the Irish language and culture and business. The Aisling Bursaries awards is just one example of this.Máirtín has been a formidable elected representative. He stands against bigotry and sectarianism and is determined to make Belfast a better place for all its citizens. I want to commend him for his leadership and his contribution to creating a new Belfast. Many thanks to Helen and Máirtín’s family for all that they have done and best wishes for all that they do in the future.

Keep your eye on the prize

The national struggle for Irish freedom and independence is centuries old.  Our story is a history of revolts, resistance and uprisings. Ireland is often described as England’s first colony. It is that denial of Irish self-determination; of national sovereignty, that is at the heart of the long continuum of struggle for freedom.Those readers old enough will remember when this part of the island was deeply militarised. When the British were in occupation of working class republican, urban and rural heartlands.During that time there was an ongoing effort by our opponents to demonise and criminalise and to treat republicans as pariahs. It was classic counter-insurgency – to physically, politically and emotionally break the connection between the freedom fighters and their support base. Most infamously this was attempted with the denial of political status which resulted in the hunger strikes in the 1980s.Sinn Féin put it up to Church hierarchies, political opponents and British and Irish politicians and governments, that there was no point in condemning and denouncing resistance. We challenged them to come up with an alternative.As a result of our strategising the Sinn Féin leadership understood that we had to build the party, prepare coherent policies and figure out how, in the midst of a conflict that was centuries old, peace could be developed. We were talking to liberal unionists; to people from the business sector, from the Churches, and within our own base. Fr. Alex Reid and Fr. Des Wilson took seriously the idea of an alternative and they supported it in their discussions with others. We also realised that it was us who had to develop the alternative. The establishments did not want change.In 1986 I met John Hume and two years later a leadership delegation met the SDLP. We exchanged papers and when the discussions ended in September 1988 we published them all. Self-determination was the big issue, among others, that we failed to agree on. In 1987 Sinn Féin produced Scenario for Peace. I was still privately talking John Hume and in 1990 a back channel was established to the British government. There followed three years of contact. We had also opened up, through Fr. Reid’s good offices, talks with Fianna Fáil.In November 1990 the British Secretary of State Peter Brooke said that Britain had no “selfish strategic or economic interest” in the North. This led some to conclude that the British were neutral. They weren’t. Because Britain said it had no self-interest, did not mean that they had no interest or that it was true.At our Ard Fheis in February 1992 we published a new policy paper, ‘Towards a Lasting Peace in Ireland’. At a time when others were focused on conflict and trying to defeat Irish Republicans, Sinn Féin’s ‘Towards a Lasting Peace’ proposed a strategy to establish a peace process. It placed sovereignty and independence at the heart of peace and identified the role of the Irish diaspora and the Irish government in making process work. This latter point was the big shift in republican thinking. We were not only arguing for self-determination but we were now saying that the Irish government had a central role to play in securing this. This focus on self-determination was a core part of Sinn Féin’s approach to negotiations which we by now had embraced as a means of struggle.Through all the twists and turns of the process we kept our eyes on the prize.In our internal discussion about creating a peace process Sinn Féin realised that most successful national liberation struggles had an international dimension. The natural dimension of international support that republicans could tap into was our diaspora and in particular the USA.These elements about an alternative to conflict and the centrality of self-determination are in the Good Friday Agreement. In 1998 British constitutional authority rested in the Government of Ireland Act 1920. We tried to get the Irish government to urge the British to change this and they wouldn’t do it. I remember Martin and I going to Blair and insisting that he scrap the Government of Ireland Act. I went to him many times until he agreed that they would get rid of it. Its replacement is the Good Friday Agreement.We had in fact established an alternative – a peaceful way to win freedom for the first time in our history. So there will be a united Ireland if that’s what the people decide or a continuation of the Union if that’s what people want. The Good Friday Agreement is also about parity of esteem, parity of opportunity, and rights.The important element of the Good Friday Agreement around self-determination is that a successful referendum on the island of Ireland by people in both states will mean that the British government will legislate for an end to the Union.So here we are 40 years on from when we were first arguing for the right to self-determination and it is at the top of the political agenda. The difference now is that more and more people are talking about Irish Unity. There is now a peaceful and democratic way to achieve it. The alternative which we started to try and develop in the 1980s and persuade others to bring forward – an alternative that we actually brought forward –is there to deployed.Unity is no longer an aspiration – it is achievable. It is a doable project. It is the prize. There for everyone on this island. All of this is part of the continuum of struggle. 

GOOD LUCK TO THE NEW POWER SHARING GOVT.

Mise agus Liz and Mary Lou in Parliament Buildings
As I sat in the public gallery at Stormont  last Saturday afternoon, alongside Liz Maskey, Mary Lou McDonald and Bill Groves, I had a birds-eye view of the proceedings in the Assembly chamber below me.The first business of the assembled Members of the Legislative Assembly was to elect a Ceann Chomhairle. I knew that Sinn Féin’s Alex Maskey would get that position, and I thought how fitting it was that his wife, Liz was there. She was the first woman interned in the 1970s. An activist in her own right Liz and Alex’s home was also the target of ongoing attacks by the RUC, British Army and Unionist paramilitaries. Alex was grievously wounded in one such attack and on another occasion, in May 1993, his friend Alan Lundy was a victim of state collusion when he was shot dead in Alex’s living room by a UDA gang.When Alex was first elected in 1983 as a Belfast City Councillor the Unionists refused to talk to him and tried to deny him speaking rights. They tried to shout him down, sounded horns, blew rape whistles whenever he tried to speak. Unionist Councillors illegally created a series of sub-committee which they excluded Alex and other Sinn Féin Councillors from and refused to invite them to civic events. Sinn Féin had to go to court to end that practice. Later the Sinn Féin Office at City Hall was bombed. Alex went on to become Belfast’s first republican Lord Mayor.So here he was now poised to take up the responsibility to run the Assembly and to do so with the support of unionist MLAs. It’s a long way from the internment cages of Long Kesh which he and I and many others endured for a while. When Alex was duly elected and took the Chair, and the MLAs went through the protocol of selecting the First and Deputy First Minister I reflected back on  the first time Sinn Fein nominated Ministers. That was on 29 November 1999 when I nominated Bairbre de Brún as the Minister for Health and Social Services, and Martin McGuinness as the Minister for Education.  I remember clearly the loud gasp from the unionist benches when Martin’s nomination was made.Now another generation of republican MLAs were going to be nominated for Ministerial position with little of the drama or rancour of that first election of the power sharing government. I remember well making my way to my office in Parliament Buildings after that occasion. I was hissed at by some senior unionists. “Scum” they hissed.Now things are much more cordial and mannerly. That’s a good thing. Arlene Foster and Michelle O’Neill were duly elected to the office of First and Deputy First Minister before Alex adjourned proceedings for a short period. Across from me in the public gallery opposite, among the Irish and British civil servants, was a delegation of  activists from An Dream Dearg. They were resplendent in their red t-shirts with its familiar white circle. They correctly welcomed the legislation on the Irish Language as historic and as a staging post in their campaign. Acht na Gaeilge is indeed historic but all of us have much more to do to win support for, and increase the use of Irish so that it becomes a normal part of all our lives, including those who currently oppose it, if thats what they want. All of us should try to normalise the use of Irish and demonstrate that it really is no threat to anyone. On the contrary it enriches all of our lives.I left Stormont before it concluded its business  to do some food shopping after all the time spent in negotiations, but happy in the knowledge that Conor Murphy would soon be the Finance Minister, Deirdre Hargey the Minister for Communities and Declan Kearney a junior Minister in OFDM. A formidable Ministerial team who will be backed up by strong Sinn Féin committee chairs and John O’Dowd as Priomh Aoire an Phairtí – Party Chief Whip. All in all it was a good afternoon’s work. I wish the new Executive well.Of course, there are aspects of the New Decade New Approach document which are not part of the agreement. Sinn Féin has  not  signed up to these. They  include the British Armed Services Covenant, additional days for the flying of the Union flag and other elements produced by London and acquiesced to by Dublin. The first item on the agenda of the incoming Executive will be to introduce pay parity in the Health Service. There will be reform of the Petition of Concern, welfare mitigations are to be extended, the definition of citizenship which the Emma de Souza case has highlighted will be changed, and there will be strategies , based on objective need, to tackle poverty and sectarianism. The British government has now committed to bring forward within 100 days the legacy proposals that were agreed five years ago in the Stormont House Agreement but have been blocked ever since by that government. The agreement itself does have the potential to deliver real change and I think the Sinn Féin negotiating team did a good job, in keeping with the standards set out by our leader Martin McGuinness in his resignation letter.Of course there will be many, many challenges in the time ahead but I wholeheartedly welcome the re-establishment of the power sharing government as progress. I have long believed that there needs to be a space for the people of the North, through their political representatives, to moderate our differences. I believe that the responsibility of United Irelanders is to continue to make preparations for Irish Unity. This can be complemented if approached strategically by our involvement in the Assembly, and the all-Ireland institutions of the Good Friday Agreement.Practical all-Ireland economic measures are required as well as ongoing opposition to Brexit. The development of a Bill of Rights and an all-Ireland Charter of Rights, Civic Forums north and south, and the securing of a referendum on Irish Unity, all need to be priorities in the time ahead.  So progress can be made in advancing the national struggle peacefully and democratically alongside the battle for economic rights, equality and an end to poverty.So there you have it. By the time you get to reading this column the Taoiseach will probably have announced a date for the general election in the South. That means I will be out of a job. Any offers. Anyone? It also means I can get my hair cut – if I so decide. I won my bet with Martin Ferris to let my hair grow until the general election is called.

Government U Turn a Victory for People Power

The leaders of the 1916 Rising were identified for Court Martial and Execution by the RICLast week the Irish government announced a programme of centenary commemorations for 1920, and the events that year which saw an escalation in the fighting between republican forces and the various British armed agencies – the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP), the Black and Tans, the Auxiliaries and the British Army. Much of the programme will be centred around Cork which witnessed many of the events of that year. 1920 saw the killing of Tomás MacCurtáin and the death on hunger strike of Terence MacSwiney, both Lord Mayors of the City. Other centenary events to be commemorated include the execution of Kevin Barry, Bloody Sunday in Croke Park in November 1920, the Mutiny in India by the Connaught Rangers, and there will be some support for reconciliation projects in the North. However the decision by the government to hold a commemoration on January 17th for those who served in the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police prior to Irish independence, caused a public outcry which has forced the government to announce a deferral of the commemoration. The attempt by the government to try and separate out the role of the RIC and DMP prior to 1919, and their actions during 1919-21 Tan War, was disingenuous and fooled no one. It ignored the role of both paramilitary forces in the nineteenth and early twentieth century in defending the British colonial system in Ireland and in the violent oppression of Irish citizens. No one should be surprised by the government’s attempt to hold this commemoration. It is symptomatic of an Irish establishment which is embarrassed by the revolutionary period in Irish history. Remember the disgraceful video used by the Government the launch the centenary of 1916 events. The 1916 leaders were not even mentioned. The Government clearly planned for an anemic dishonest version of the Rising. Popular opinion ensured that this did not happen. The majority of Irish people are proud of the revolutionary period. This showed in the multitude of spontaneous local and national events organised across Ireland and abroad.  And numerous publications. So the Government and Fianna Fáil leadership were forced to shift their position. Or at least their posture. This dishonest stance was repeated by the Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan who last September attended a commemoration for RIC members killed by the IRA during the Tan War. At that time Minister Flanagan described the RIC as “doing their job. They were murdered in the line of duty. They were doing what police officers do. As they saw it they were protecting communities from harm. They were maintaining the rule of law. These are fundamental to police services everywhere.”The historical reality of course was very different. The RIC and DMP were not protecting communities from harm. They were inflicting harm. The rule of law these two paramilitary forces were maintaining and defending was one designed by a British colonial system seeking to defend British interests in Ireland, and in particular the interests of its landlord and business class.  When families were being forcibly evicted from their homes during the Great Hunger, and millions more were forced to flee to the USA, Canada, Australia in the decades afterward, it was the RIC which was the paramilitary enforcer of these British policies. The many images of families being evicted from their homes, often with battering rams, show RIC members in attendance. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries British rule was only possible because of a succession of coercion laws which the RIC and DMP enforced. In Dublin thousands were evicted from overcrowded tenements because they couldn’t afford the inflated rents. 
When the Dublin Lock-out took place in 1913 it was the Dublin Metropolitan Police and RIC that enforced the will of the bosses. Early in the strike two workers, James Nolan and John Byrne were killed by the RIC. On 31 August 1913 Dublin Castle banned a mass meeting in O’Connell Street and the DMP and RIC savagely attacked the thousands who defied the ban on Ireland’s first Bloody Sunday. Between 400 and 600 people were injured in baton charges.One consequence of this was the formation of the Irish Citizen Army to defend workers against assaults from the Dublin Metropolitan Police. 
After the Easter Rising in 1916 the RIC and DMP were to the fore in defending Britain’s Irish policies, including the use of martial law and internment when it was introduced in May 1918. They were integral to imposing Britain’s paramilitary regime in Ireland.While there may have been some among them who wished to be police officers neither organisation was a police service. No doubt there were decent officers in their ranks and their families have the right pay tribute to them. But for the state to commemorate these organisations is wrong. Along with the Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries, the Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police were part and parcel of Britain’s counter insurgency strategy in Ireland and its campaign of terror against the Irish people. They killed citizens and tortured detainees. They imposed a brutal regime of violence. As a consequence the RIC and DMP were feared and distrusted and rejected by the communities they purported to serve. They were also rejected by those elected to the Dáil in 1918. In April 10,1919 Eamon De Valera, among other speakers in Dáil Éireann, declared that the RIC were “no ordinary civil force, as police are in other countries. The RIC, unlike any police force in the world, is a military body armed with rifle and bayonet and revolver as well as baton.... they are spies in our midst.”Eoin O Neill said; “The police in Ireland are a force of traitors and the police in Ireland are a force of perjurers’The Taoiseach and Minister Flanagan’s disrespectful revisionism of the Irish people’s history of struggle for freedom does a grave disservice to those who were part of that struggle. There will be commemorations to remember important events in 1920. That is appropriate. But the Government also wanted us to commemorate the RIC whose members participated in many of those same events. The RIC took part in the attack on innocent civilians on Bloody Sunday at Croke Park. It was an RIC squad which murdered Cork Lord Mayor Tomás MacCurtain. And it should not be forgotten that it was G Division of the RIC which was responsible for identifying the leaders of the 1916 who were to be court martialed and executed. Are we now expected to be neutral about this? Or like Minister Flanagan to assert that, “They were doing what police officers do’.The Government must go beyond deferral and scrap any plan now or in the future to commemorate the role of the RIC and the DMP. The shallowness and opportunism of their position on these events has been exposed. So has the posturing of the Fianna Fáil Leader. The Government’s lack of respect for the courage and sacrifice of those who fought for Irish freedom has also been highlighted. Their U turn is a great victory for people power. The widespread popular outrage at their stupidity and shoneenism is uplifting and proof yet again that the spirit of genuine patriotism and national pride is alive and well. 

FLOORBOARDS.

Floorboards was my friend. Sorry.  Floorboards is my friend. As regular readers will know this column doesn’t believe that your friends cease to be your friends just because they die. No, they are still your friends. If a friend goes off to the USA or somewhere else that doesn’t mean they stop being a friend. No. You may not see them again but the friendship doesn’t cease. So with Floorboards. He died last month. All of a sudden. But he is still my friend.  So my solidarity and condolences to Frances and their daughters Joanne and Sarah and their spouses and children, and Joe’s surviving siblings. Frances is a great woman. Joe’s one and only love. Quiet. Warm. Calm. The centre of gravity in Floorboard’s life and the epicentre of the life of their family. I first met Floorboards in Long Kesh. His proper name is Joe Rafter. He is seven or eight years older than me. We invited him into Cage Eleven. He was in solitary in the Punishment Cells. Apparently following a disagreement with the republican regime he left the cages. But understandably he refused to relinquish his political status. So he was on protest in the Punishment Cells. Gaol is like that. So I asked if we could take him in. We could I was advised. So we did.  Jim McCann, PaddyA, Floorboards and Liam StoneUnlike a lot of the other cages, Cage Eleven was a more relaxed, less militarised regime. That suited Joe. He was a free spirit. Prepared, at a stretch, to tolerate the penal regime but not really capable of letting tedious prisoner made rules govern every element of his life and every minute of his time. Joe got bored easily. He needed to be doing things. He had great energy. He had great hands for making handicrafts. He enjoyed storytelling, craic.  Cleaky and he were great buddies. They were both from North Belfast though Joe was always more of a country man than the urban centric Cleaky. That’s probably the Ligoniel and Silverstream in him. That’s where the Rafter family moved to from Ardilea Street in the Bone and where Joe spent his formative years. He had great yarns of wild times with friends from the Traveller community. Tales of dogs and donkies. Of painting barns and taramacing drive ways and laneways. Of scrapes and escapes. Of working moves. Of nature and the outdoors. Little wonder prison life didn’t suit him. He used to make very fine covered wagons as ornaments in tribute to the travellers he worked with back in the day.  That’s how he survived Long Kesh. By futtering at this and that, like most of us. And he did his time and went back to Frances and painting barns to support his clánn. As strong as an ox, he took any work he could get as long as it was outside. He remained loyal to the republican cause through all the twists and turns of recent times. He didn’t have much time for bar room revolutionaries or splitters. Joe’s politics were solid. He drove as far as Cork to erect posters in recent elections and he was there at the convention in which selected Declan Kearney as the local Sinn Féin candidate. Joe didn’t have much time for the organised religions but his core values were about decency, compassion and fairness. He didn’t have a sectarian bone in his body and he retained his relationships with people from the Protestant tradition particularly with cronies he had from before the conflict. He had a great affection for the United Irish Society.  For Tone and Jemmy Hope. He loved to recite ‘The Man from God Knows Where’. RG, PaddyA, Wee Harry, mise, Floorboards agus TangusRecitations or ‘rec-imitations’ were Joe’s thing. ‘I’m livin’ in Drumlister’ was one of his party pieces. That and jiving. He also wrote his own verses. Some are very funny. Others are very patriotic. He also loved folklore, country ways, old stories. Black thorn sticks. Dogs. He didn’t have much Irish. I can picture him contesting that with me. His eyes full of mischief and devilment. But, ‘Is Mise Raifteirí An File’ was one of his favourite Irish poems. And he loved the poetry of the Australian writer and poet Henry Lawson. Lawson was a Bush poet renowned for his tales of down and outs and ordinary folk in the style of Robert Service. And Floorboards.Joe was a dapper dresser. Horseymen’s yellah boots. Chinos. A decent tweed cap or hat. A waist coat. He and I were to get together recently. We had talked on the phone to arrange it. I was really looking forward to a good evening’s soiree. A wee drink maybe? Lots of tall tales and good craic.  The first get together in a long time. But elections after elections, my work as a TD in Louth and other busyness, which keeps me out of Belfast most of the time, meant we put it off until after December 12 and the Westminster contest. Then I got the word. Joe had died suddenly. And so I spent more time at his wake and getting there and back, than we probably would have got if we had met up. And I regret that. The only consolation was that I and lots of Joe’s comrades got to be with Frances when she needed us and we got to meet again with her enlarged family including their wonderful grandchildren. Sarah summed up what they owed Joe and the men and women of his generation when she spoke movingly of her father, their grandfather. And Joanne recited Mo Chraoibhín Cno. Floorboards would have approved. He would also approve of Liam Stone’s words of farewell and the eloquent words of his grandson Niall and brother Terry, as well as his youngest granddaughter Jessica’s recital of ‘Is Mise Raifteirí An File’ and another of his Granddaughter’s, Edel who recited Joe’s own poem.   I will leave the last word with Floorboards himself. He would like that. Slán Joseph. See you along the road.
Passing ThroughTo friends I love and friends I knew,I write these lines and think of you.And of a time long years ago,When in the bog, trees did not grow.As we were passing through.
Yet seeds were gathered for the sowing,At a time of Roisin’s choosing.Stratified and Sanctified,Blessed by the blood of sacrifice.As we were passing through.Still some blind others will not know,From these seeds strong trees will grow.And weep for those spoke Judas prose.As we were passing through.
For absent friends in memory.To our children leave a legacy,In peace and love united be.Free from the centre to the sea,With life as long as Joshua tree,When we have passed on through.

2020 – the year ahead

When An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar finally decides in 2020, with his Fianna Fáil partner in government Micheál Martin, to call the general election my tenure as the TD for Louth will come to an end. Sin é. It will also mean for me that after 38 years I will no longer be an elected representative of the people. Sin é fosta.I was first elected by the people of west Belfast to the short lived Assembly in 1982. The following year I was elected as MP for west Belfast. With a brief break I was an MP, and an MLA in the Assembly until 2010 when I announced my intention to run for the Dáil for the constituency of Louth. It was a significant initiative by Sinn Féin. Some in the media described it as a “gamble.” Some predicted- hoped - I would fail to be elected. But with a great team of activists and the goodwill of the people of Louth I topped the poll.Just over ten years later the general election will be called and I will leave the Dáil. I will continue to be a political activist but with no responsibilities as an elected representative.So 2020 will bring big changes for me personally. 2020 should also see the publication of the Inquiry into the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI). The delay in publishing this report – long overdue – is clearly political although all involved will deny this is so. Its consequences for those under scrutiny will reinforce the lack of confidence in the political system or start the slow process of building that confidence.Consequently, as we enter the third decade of the 21st century there are many challenges and also many opportunities ahead. In the short term Sinn Féin is engaged in negotiations with the other parties and the Irish and British governments to secure an agreement to restore the power sharing institutions. The recent general election results and the demographic population changes have created a new dynamic.However sections of the media and the two governments are over stating the claim that the ‘electorate is sending the political parties back to work’ narrative. This is definitely not the case as far as Sinn Féin voters are concerned. I want the power sharing government restored and on a rights based format and I believe that this is doable. I also believe that the power sharing arrangements working properly are entirely compatible and indeed complementary to the process towards Irish re-unification. But I found during the Westminster election campaign strong resistance within very representative sections of the Sinn Féin electorate to a return to the Assembly. Yes there is also a desire to see the Assembly restored but to succeed this clearly has to be to different and reformed arrangements. The danger, as always, is that the two governments will take a minimalist approach, acquiesce to the DUP and try to pressurize Sinn Féin. That would be a mistake.The political landscape is transforming as we watch. 100 years ago in 1920 the Government of Ireland Act imposed partition. In the general election that followed in November 1922 only 2 out of 13 MPs were nationalist. Two years later in 1924 there were no nationalist MPs elected. Sixty years later the situation hadn’t improved much. In 1983 Unionism took 15 out of 17 seats. That was the consistent pattern in the gerrymandered northern state.Two weeks ago, after years of incremental change, there was a seismic shift. Parties from the broadly nationalist/republican perspective won 9 seats out of 18. The DUP - the only unionist party to win seats – took 8. The Alliance party won one seat. Unionism’s majority at Westminster is gone. In Belfast Unionism now holds – and only just holds - one of the four Belfast seats. The defeat of Nigel Dodds in North Belfast is indicative of a citizenry that wants real change and is prepared to back parties that are positive and looking to the future.More fundamentally, for the longer term constitutional arrangements on this island and within these islands, the so-called United Kingdom is increasingly confirming its status as the ‘disunited Kingdom’. The election results have confirmed that that is the political direction of travel. This is underlined by the overwhelming dominance of the English Tories in the British Parliament. In poll after poll in the last year these same English Tories put Brexit self-interest above the Union. They were prepared to abandon the North – to abandon unionists - as long as they got Brexit done. What value English loyalty to unionists?At the same time the increased vote for the SNP (Scottish National Party), as well as the loss of the DUP’s majority in the North, are evidence that Boris Johnson’s claim that he would ‘unite the country’ is so much hot air. More telling for 2020 is Nicola Sturgeon’s assertion that the SNP now has a “renewed, refreshed and strengthen” mandate for a second referendum on Scottish independence. Scottish independence will be a significant political battleground in the year ahead.Of course, Brexit hasn’t gone away. On the contrary it will continue to dominate politics and the economies of these islands in 2020. Johnson, with his 80 strong Parliamentary majority will now be able to push through his Withdrawal Agreement by January 31st. And he will lie and bluster and spoof to get his way. Remember his commitment to the DUP that there would be no border in the Irish Sea? That didn’t last long. Add to that the lies he brazenly told during the election campaign - about no checks on goods between the North and Britain.The SDLP claim that it would ‘Stop Boris and Stop Brexit’ was a good sound bite for the election but it was never real. This is the party which never turned up for work in the Executive, which failed to take responsibility for the health or education portolio. The UUP appears to be going nowhere. The much vaunted influence of the DUP is gone. The confidence and supply arrangement with the Conservative Party ended, as I predicted in tears.Sinn Fein failed to hold the Foyle seat, despite the best efforts of Elisha and her team, and our vote slipped overall but in the current political climate it was a credible performance. Sinn Féin hold seven seats and the election of John Finucane in North Belfast was for me the highlight of the election.In 2020 Brexit will continue to drive the momentum for greater change. As its adverse impact on the island of Ireland emerges ever more clearly it will be the driver for the growing debate around Irish Unity. Increasingly, people from all walks of life and all political hues in the North are accepting that a United Ireland provides the best means of keeping the island of Ireland within the EU. So 2020 will see the debate around Irish Unity intensify. The challenge will be to make it even more mainstream. To take it into communities. To engage with that section of unionism which has disconnected from political unionism. To increase pressure on the Irish government to make preparations for Unity. To examine how we can break through the sectarian wall that keeps people and communities divided.Irish unity is no longer an aspiration. It is a doable project. The re-unification of our people and our country needs to be planned. That is crucial. I believe all of this can be done. I believe 2020 will see us take more positive steps along the road to Unity.