Republican message is heard at last

BY JIM GIBNEY

Celebrating local election success in Drogheda

As the train pulled into Connolly Station I noticed out of the corner of my eye over a bridge a short distance away two men at a lamp post taking down an election poster.

On closer inspection, I saw the two men were Gardaí. One was at the foot of a ladder supporting it and the other one was up the ladder removing a Proinsias de Rossa poster.

I also noticed that members of the general public took no notice whatsoever. Having just left the Six Counties, I thought to myself what a row there would have been had two members of the PSNI tried to remove a poster of Gerry Adams from a lamp post on a main road running through a nationalist area.

To me, this incident spoke volumes about the difference between northern and southern society and the differing levels of acceptability of the police on both sides of the border. It also spoke volumes about the distance yet to travel before the PSNI would be as acceptable to the people as the Gardaí are.

And this, of course, goes to the heart of the matter, because the popular acceptability of the police is a litmus test of how normal a society is because the police are or should be the first line of defence in a functioning and democratic society.

An occasional barometer of opinion, not as reliable as the police test, for a visitor to a big city, can be that offered up by the ubiquitous taxi driver.

On polling day I arrived in Dublin's Connolly Station at 1pm. For the next half hour on my way to Kilinarden in Tallaght to help in the election, I was in the company of a man who had, I thought, lost the plot.

On spotting the Sinn Féin badge in my lapel, he immediately exclaimed: "What the f*** are youse doing telling people to vote No in the referendum? Don't you know we are being invaded by Nigerians?"

I wasn't ready for this. I was exhausted from the northern election campaign and I couldn't get my head around a response.

Sight of my Sinn Féin badge had opened a torrent of racism. According to my taxi man, there was a 24-hour permanent team of doctors delivering 'foreign' babies in Dublin's Rotunda Hospital, costing the country millions.

The new invaders were on the dole but had BMW cars and were living in the lap of luxury. They were signing on in Dublin and crossing over to England to sign on there. Dubliners couldn't get jobs because of them and they were first in the queue for state benefits.

Did he mind Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis? I asked. No, he said, they were workers.

Fifteen minutes into our journey, I pointed out to him that I hadn't seen any Nigerians on Dublin's streets but he insisted they were everywhere and that he could see what I couldn't.

He declared his republican credentials; his family had been to prison and he was knowledgeable about the North. He had family working in England and the US but saw no contradiction between them being welcomed there and his opposition to people looking for work here.

Some time later that afternoon, it dawned on me that the issue for this man was the colour of the person's skin. And colour of a different hue, green, was to pre-occupy myself and a small group of republicans over the next lot of hours until 9pm that night at close of polls.

Election HQ was a small room in Kilinarden Community Centre. On a wall in neat little rows on sheets of paper were the names of the people who, two days later, would be recorded as being part of an unprecedented impressive national surge of support for Sinn Féin.

But for now there was at most two dozen little ticks of green. And that is the way it stubbornly stayed for quite some time — no matter how often I or Sean Crowe, TD for the area and Director of Elections, or prospective Councillor Cathal willed it otherwise as we stood forlornly looking at the sheets of names.

Door knockers from the North arrived to help, from North Antrim to be exact. MLA Philip Mc Guigan, eyes red-rimmed from election fatigue, and his two comrades were returning the favour to those from the South who had helped them last November in the Assembly election.

Flash bursts of heavy rain beating down on the centre's tin roof added foreboding to a growing sense of anxiety as the clock ticked towards six and the locals, who knew the vote, wondered why we didn't have more green ticks.

I tried to reassure them: "Those recorded as not in are probably out voting. That's the way it was yesterday in our area in Lagan Valley." I wasn't convincing myself or anyone else.

But as often happens, the magic of the electorate, hidden from us, takes over and suddenly we needed more green markers to keep the score of those who had voted Sinn Féin.

When it was time to go home, the sheets had turned from white to green.

The people had come out for Sinn Féin. I should have known better. This, after all, was the community who opened their hearts to Sinn Féin and allowed us to use their community centre to hold our Ard Fheis when we were being hounded and censored by the South's establishment.

European Union elections are like no other in Ireland. They are held on the same day or as close as doesn't matter. This has the effect of uniting the country, the people, the commentators, the voters, whether they like it or not.

By the time we arrived at the North's count on Monday at the King's Hall, the outcome was a foregone conclusion. The excellent results across the 26 Counties; the predictions from the number crunchers and political analysts, all pointed to a Sinn Féin victory. All that had to be sorted out was the scale of that victory.

When I walked into the count I was immediately hit by a number of new realities. Gone was the oppressive presence of the RUC — the PSNI were practically invisible.

On the faces of the republican advance guard of electioneers I detected no sign of concern. Instead, they displayed an air of confidence I have never before seen at a count.

Also gone was the question uppermost in people's minds at the last European count in 1999 — would John Hume outpoll Ian Paisley? There was a new question in keeping with the changes sweeping the country. Would Bairbre de Brún outpoll the DUP candidate?

The predictable outcome of the poll reduced the high human drama that always accompanies these occasions.

However, vote watching and counting in bundles of 100, then 1,000, then in shelves of 10,000, was every bit as exciting for me as ticking off the green voters in a small room over 100 miles away in Tallaght's Killinarden.

The big story of this election is Sinn Féin's dramatic breakthrough. The party is now a national force. It was a long time in coming and all the sweeter for having arrived when it did.

The result will reverberate for years to come, all the while shaping a new national political context to end partition and to create a just society especially for working-class people.

The result also sends out another message about the Ireland that we want to create. And it is an Ireland that has no place for the taxi man's outlook or for those who would stigmatise newborn children because of the colour of their skin.