The recent BBC interview between Sinn Féin first minister in waiting Michelle O’Neill and Mark Carruthers was personal and fascinating, albeit a bit rose-tinted.
Ms O’Neill is clearly a warm individual. She obviously enjoys life and has done an amazing job as a single parent raising her family. As a politician she appears engaging, although apart from exchanging a few pleasantries this writer has had little contact with the woman who will co-lead Stormont in the future.
Sinn Féin as an organisation is still precious (maybe suspicious) about media. With a few exceptions they prefer controlled environments to bonhomie.
In my era of politics, journalists and politicians fed off each other frequently in social settings. There was mutual respect. Now there appears to be mutual wariness.
The late Seamus Mallon used to say the best politicians were those who could be indiscreet with knowledge when dealing with journalists. He said the roles were a two-way process. And judicious leaks to the media were important.
I tend to agree.
When O’Neill told Carruthers she has been wholly supportive of the Good Friday Agreement, it’s totally believable. And she is obviously committed to ensuring devolution works, if and when the DUP comes back to the executive.
That said, when the Sinn Féin northern leader said there was no alternative to the campaign embarked on by the IRA she was wrong. Very wrong.
Sinn Féin and the IRA did not enjoy significant support throughout the Troubles in the north. The overwhelming majority of nationalists abhorred the violence, the carnage, the fear and the deaths. The war waged by the IRA was both unwarranted and unwanted.
And let’s be frank, nationalist towns like Derry, Omagh, Strabane and Newry took the economic brunt of a senseless bombing campaign and the resulting repression and retaliation by the security forces in the form of the RUC and British army.
The resilience of local businesses struggling to keep afloat in the worst of economic times cannot be underestimated when they also had to contend with the aftermath of bombs and incendiary devices left on their premises.
The civil rights campaign may have fizzled out with the emergence of the Troubles but it did so with the majority of its objectives met or being addressed.
The newly emerged SDLP offered a clear and moral alternative to the use of violence in the pursuit of political aspirations.
The belligerence of political unionism and the cackhandness of successive British governments ensured there was enough fuel for Republican militants to fire up certain sections of the nationalist youth into a downward spiral of violence and reprisals. This offered little more than the prospect of a life in prison or eternity in a grave.
As the old saying used to go, some of those older recruiters to the ranks of the IRA had “neither chick nor child” but had no difficulty luring the children of others to the ‘cause’. Sometimes with devastating consequences for the families left behind.
No-one who believes in democracy could deny the success of Sinn Féin at the polls since the Good Friday Agreement. But their recent successes have been built on a sea change in approach and direction. Some would say u-turns.
At some stage, Sinn Féin will have to admit that the armed struggle of the 1970s, 80s and 90s was simply wrong. They need to start that process of honesty with their own supporters, if they ever hope to persuade northern unionists to buy into a new Ireland.
Irish unity will be a pipe dream if reconciliation cannot be found by the two main traditions which divide the hearts and minds of people on both sides of the island but more particularly within Northern Ireland.
There can be no peace walls in a new Ireland. Likewise there can be no solid basis for a shared future without an acknowledgement of past wrongs.
