Mairia and the tainted Fleadh and Feile

If you’re a supporter of the SDLP, you may be conducting a victory dance around your living room at the news that Mairia Cahill has joined the party. If you are not a supporter of the SDLP or are in fact critical of that party, you may be conducting a victory dance around your living room at the news that Ms Cahill has joined the SDLP.

Colum Eastwood, for reasons that are not totally clear, thinks it’s simply super to have Mairia on board the leaky barge SDLP.

Maybe that’s because Mairia has revealed her considered judgement that the Féile, currently sending a shudder of delight through Belfast , has ‘unresolved’ links to republicanism. She also isn’t one bit happy with the Fleadh, on the grounds that she sees it as having been ‘politicized.’

Whoa. As Karl Marx said, the problem is not to understand the world but to change it. So what can the Feile and the Fleadh do to rid themselves of this appalling stain of republicanism?

Well, I don’t know if Mairia will ever be content with any event or organisation that has even a hint of republicanism to it. But what about this:

Have a representative of the Feile and the Fleadh publicly denounce themselves for allowing the virus of republicanism to infect both groups, This would of course involve penance of some kind – maybe put the likes of Gerry Adams in the stocks just beside where the Gig Rig is in front of City Hall and have him  confess his sins, swear a holy oath that he will work with Mairia to see that any future Fleadh or Feile is in no way served by anyone with any connection to republicanism.  The good people of the SDLP, led by Mairia of course, could then fire rotten tomatos at Adams until  their arms ached.

Even as I make the suggestion, though, I’m aware that just about nothing would satisfy Mairia. Perhaps if someone like Danny Morrison was to write a sonnet in praise of Mairia, and her courage in helping stamp out both the Fleadh and the Feile.  Because of course both events would collapse if they didn’t have the many hundreds of people who make such events possible. And so many of these people have republican leanings at least.

What might just do the trick is if a statue of Mairia was to be sculpted and placed alongside Queen Victoria in front of City Hall  No promises it’d work, but desperate situations call for desperate action. A hefty statue built of the same stone and on the same scale as Queen Victoria just might soothe  Mairia’s fears. It could even satisfy her restless, ravenous ego.