Introduction
Summary
They moved through Washington as smoothly as sharks in warm water… Whatever they were, or had been, they were politicians to their fingertips, wholly at ease in their surroundings.
Where British cultural symbols are involved in public life, equivalent Irish cultural symbols should be given equal prominence. Statues of Irish Republican icons placed at Stormont will make it more welcoming for nationalists.
From Loughgall to Stormont
On 10 May 2007, the Sinn Féin weekly newspaper An Phoblacht carried a front page photograph of a smiling Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness at the swearing-in of Northern Ireland's new devolved executive. Tucked away at the top of the same page was the strapline: ‘Huge Crowds Pay Tribute to Loughgall Martyrs’, referring to a Republican commemoration for eight IRA volunteers killed by the SAS in May 1987. The juxtaposition of the two events was commented on by supporters and critics of the Provisionals as symbolizing the distance that the Provisional movement had travelled in the last twenty years. To the Provisionals’ unrepentant Republican opponents, the new devolved executive ‘solidified English rule’ and was a betrayal of the cause for which the Loughgall volunteers had died. For Martin McGuinness, the distance between Loughgall and the assembly at Stormont was not just a question of time. Speaking at the commemoration, he argued that the journey undertaken ‘by the Republican struggle … [had opened] up … a democratic and peaceful path towards Irish unity and independence’.
It is easy to contrast the statesmanlike rhetoric of 2007 with the militant language of 1987. In 2007, the Provisionals’ ‘primary political objective is to deliver Irish reunification and a genuine process of national reconciliation on the island’: in 1987, Republicans were ‘committed to the armed struggle … [as] the only means by which the British government can be forced to break its stranglehold on political progress and peace’. Given that the initial contacts of the peace process were already underway before Loughgall, the conversion of the Provisionals from militant revolutionaries into constitutional nationalists is already passing from the realm of contemporary politics into that of history. It is an accomplished fact for a political generation whose members are too young to remember the Troubles: to them, veteran Provisionals are simply middle-aged politicians appealing for votes.
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- The New Politics of Sinn Féin , pp. 1 - 10Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2007