ARDFHEIS SKETCH:Despite seat losses and division over coalition option, delegates were in good form, writes GERRY MORIARTY
DURING the lunch and tea breaks at the Sinn Féin Ardfheis on Saturday, an absolutely beautiful piece of music,
Unknown Soldie
r played by violinist Nigel Kennedy, was heard throughout the conference hall at the RDS.
Soulful and mournful, it was obviously a commemorative piece for the fallen dead of the first World War and other conflicts.
It seemed rather at odds with some ardfheis complaints about the wearing of the poppy and how Irish men and women must never, and should never have joined the British army.
But maybe the sound engineer wasn’t making any particular point, maybe he just liked the piece.
Certainly though, Sinn Féin annual conferences have come a long way from the Wolfe Tones and the Men Behind the Wire.
This is a party still in transformation. Up North, as Gerry Adams told the ardfheis, Sinn Féin is in a strong position, leading a powersharing government with the DUP and looking forward to almost complete devolution by next month with the scheduled creation of a Department of Justice.
What with the lost seats and defections, it’s been trickier down South but, again, as Adams and Martin McGuinness and the other senior party figures made clear, Sinn Féin still harbours serious ambitions about being in government both in the North and the South.
Adams et al railed against Fianna Fáil and the Greens and Fine Gael of course, but equally the leadership didn’t want to close any doors to coalition. But the leadership had to work hard to persuade the conference from ruling out coalition.
Cormac Ó Dálaigh from Dublin, for instance, was firmly against coalition.
He thought that the main southern parties were as “much use as a one-legged man in an arse-kicking contest”.
Jackie Phelan from Portlaw in Waterford was of similar mind. Fianna Fáil needed “time out”, he felt. To loud cheers, he reminded delegates how Fianna Fáil in the past had “unleashed the Special Branch on Sinn Féin meetings and conferences” when they should have been “unleashing them on the bankers and developers”.
It took the likes of the heavyweights such as Martin Ferris, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin and Pearse Doherty to persuade the ardfheis to leave the coalition option open.
Delegates were in good form, but based on previous electric conferences where you might have a few IRA members in closed session telling delegates how the “war” was progressing, this was a fairly tame ardfheis.
It might be livelier next year when another bit of history is made with the ardfheis being held in Belfast.
Still, Gerry Adams and other speakers had a secret two-word weapon to excite the faithful: Maurice Quinlivan.
Just the mention of Willie O’Dea’s nemesis and the place erupted, and when he introduced himself at the podium, the RDS went bananas.
Barry McElduff didn’t quite get the same reaction when he spoke about the DUP Minister for Culture Nelson McCausland, but people got the message when he said, “He is not Nelson Mandela”.
The Tyrone Assembly member felt that, as Minister, McCausland was not sufficiently supportive of the Irish language although the DUP man is a great enthusiast for Ulster Scots.
Barry supported the notion of Ulster Scots, but did not like the idea of McCausland equating it with the Irish language in terms of funding.
He recalled meeting a couple of Ulster Scots speakers in Ballymena and asking them what was the Ulster Scots for “it’s raining heavily”. “It’s lashing,” said one. “It’s pishing,” said the other.
He also had a suggestion for the big idea competition that President Mary McAleese launched to get the country back on track: “Get rid of the Border”.