A chara, The frantic attempts to demonise and isolate Gerry Adams in the wake of the Manchester bombing are both disturbing and disappointing and represent a dangerous knee jerks reaction at this sensitive time.
It would be incredible to see our Government totally adopt the failed policies of exclusion and marginalisation, which for 25 years fanned the flames of conflict. This is the very strategy of John Major's government which John Bruton criticised, and which ultimately led to the breakdown of the IRA ceasefire. So, I would welcome his decision on June 18th to at least leave the door for Sinn Fein a jar. This is certainly not the time for slamming doors in people's faces as was pointed out by people such as Albert Reynolds and Mary Holland recently. Banishing Gerry Adams back to the wilderness would certainly not be a sensible decision, however morally superior or smug it might make some people feel!
I also believe it a perversion of the much lauded "democratic process" to have a political party which represents more people than the combined vote cast for the bottom five parties, locked outside the gates of the peace talks at Stormont Castle. This is especially so, when we consider that Sinn Fein and the IRA are two separate groupings (even if they do share the same ideals). Our Government recognised this when they allowed Sinn Fein to register as an open, legal and legitimate political part at Leinster House.
Sinn Fein secured 18 times more votes than the Loyalist PUP. This is a grouping inside the gates of Stormont which is linked to the UVF, who only last month disrupted Dublin Airport with bomb threats. When I see a party which represents the most dispossessed section of the populace peering through the closed gates of Stormont, I begin to wonder if things have really changed all that much since the bad old days of Stormont Rule when the demand was "One Person One Vote". One thing has changed, however, and that is the open approval of our Government to some degree for the failed politics of isolation, exclusion and marginalisation that are being followed by John Major's government. I cannot name one conflict in the world where this "cart before the horse" policy has worked. Surely inclusive negotiations bring about an end to conflict, not the other way around!
So, last week as I watched the pictures of black taxis speeding back to the ghettos of West Belfast, where Gerry Adams's party secured 22,355 votes and John Major's got the princely sum of 30, I began to ponder the wisdom of the cynic whose graffiti I once read on a wall. "If voting changed anything, they'd abolish it". - Is mise, Baile Munna, Baile Atha Cliath 11.