No Brits Out. No guns and bombs. P O'Neill couldn't have hacked the SF ardfheis, writes Gerry Moriarty
One key delegate was absent from the Sinn Féin ardfheis. We looked for him everywhere. In the main hall there was no sign of him. He didn't speak as far as we could see. No evidence of him either in the busy dining hall or in the Sinn Féin bookshop or at the top table with all the big Shinners or outside the RDS with the SF people sneaking a smoke.
P O'Neill, you'd miss him. Well, just a little. What's he doing with himself these days? Hillwalking in Donegal, maybe, or taking in the galleries in Rome, or stretched on a beach somewhere, or trying his hand at skiing. Still, you wouldn't blame him for skipping Sinn Féin's big gig.
Old P O'Neill - and he must be a great age - would have been bored rigid at the RDS this past weekend. The Lisbon Treaty? To hell with that, he'd say, what's that to do with the war, or whatever they call it now.
Or what about motion 11 from the McNulty/Magorrian cumann in east Down, that "this ardfheis pursues the policy that councils be encouraged to monitor the effects of sitka spruce plantations on water qualities in their areas".
Imagine, P O'Neill trying to get his head around that one. Or the "pagan" Italian Sinn Féin delegate who gave a speech complaining about a clampdown on Halloween bonfires. During the debate on justice and policing! Picture poor Pee, shaking his head: what was that about?
And maybe, too, it was safer to keep clear of the conference. After all, as chairman Seán McManus, introducing a Basque fraternal delegate, told the crowd, the Basque speakers in 2006 and 2007 were arrested and jailed in Spain after returning from the ardfheiseanna. Which probably explained why he didn't name this year's delegate, just referring to him as someone's uncle. "Keep your head down, uncle," O'Neill would have counselled.
Education, health, planning, rural regeneration, childcare - yes, yes, very worthwhile issues, he'd agree, but hardly subjects where you could be talking about guns and bombs and Brits Out, or the grand, dangerous plans that himself and his IRA army council buddies might be concocting.
Sure, Martin McGuinness spoke about the "most urgent" ambition of achieving a united Ireland and Gerry is working on a "roadmap to Irish unity", and there was even a large placard on the way into the conference hall about "making partition history" by 2016. Most urgent? Roadmap? Is that the best we can do, Pee would have muttered.
And had he bothered to turn up and test the mood of the conference he would have wondered too did the delegates really think in their heads and hearts that that was possible? Of course he could have had a natter over a pint with some of the pensioned-off Provos that were scattered around the hall. Yet he would have been bemused that the hardest man at the ardfheis wasn't even a republican. That was Raymond McCord, a rhinoceros-skinned loyalist who is campaigning valiantly for justice for his murdered son, Raymond jnr, killed by loyalists.
And if that meant taking his case to a Sinn Féin ardfheis then that's just what he would do. He had the savvy to wear his father Hector's Orange Order collarette to head off any unionist criticism of his action. Smart man; P O'Neill would have applauded.
And then there was Gerry Adams's presidential address dealing with the new reality of real politics. Adams stirred up the delegates and sent them home with some fire in their bellies for the challenges ahead. But can you imagine Pee trying to make sense of this from Adams, "It is a sad commentary on the state of unionism that the focus of some is to force a situation where Paisley must go." Which sounded like Adams saying, Paisley must stay.
No, P O'Neill couldn't have hacked it at all.