So – ring out the old, ring in the new. Goodbye Gerry, hello Mary-Lou. We’ve known for some time that Gerry Adams has stepped down and that Mary Lou McDonald has succeeded him as President of Sinn Féin. But it’s only when she did the leader’s address at the Sinn Féin Árd-Fheis that it came home to many of us. No more Gerry’s deep-chested commitment; make way for Mary Lou’s musical but bullet-clear tones. So how did she do?
Keeping in mind that this was TV, very well. In fact, I’m listening to RTÉ radio right now, where Brendan O’Connor is sitting in for Marian Finucane, and he’s having a terrible time with his panel:they’re being very positive about Sinn Féin. The general consensus is that Mary Lou is hugely likeable, with men and women, that she’s highly effective in the Dail, and that she’s tapping into a young vote as well as the traditional Sinn Féin vote.
The party will undoubtedly lose older people because of its unambiguous support for the repeal of the Eighth Amendment, which opens the door to legalized abortion in the south. Mary Lou didn’t mention the word ‘abortion’, but she did make it clear that The North Is Next, and was rewarded with loud applause. And if the camera is a guide, there were a good few oldies as well as row upon row of young people listening to her.
Mary Lou also pinched a line from Leo by saying that Sinn Féin supported those who got up very early in the morning and went to work, but balanced that by saying it was monstrous to have child care costs that were like having a second mortgage, where a car break-down meant a financial crisis for a family. The centre will not be overlooked in Mary Lou’s Sinn Féin.
And of course Mary Lou repeated that Sinn Féin wanted to be in government, to implement the policies it espouses. Which pretty effectively demolishes those claims that Sinn Féin takes the soft option of sitting on the sidelines criticising those in power.
If the mood in Belfast’s Waterfront Hall was anything to go by, Sinn Féin are going to make serious advances south of the border in the next election there. And while that may not be this year, it’ll almost certainly before the summer of 2019. At that election, Sinn Féin will make unnerving gains and Mary Lou will be a major reason of that advance.
One other thing: the Sinn Féin president scotched the claim that she doesn’t know Irish by using it fluently and melodically for a part of her speech. And she made clear that her link with the past is as strong as ever. “An Phoblacht abu!`’ she ended, raising a small clenched fist.
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