‘Michelle O’Neill’s has strived to be a First Minister for all of the North “to ensure that no cohort of the population ever feel that is second class to another again.”’
By Logan Williams, Arise Festival
With the question of Irish Unity coming to the forefront this year, Arise Festival held a thought-provoking discussion with Mairead Farrell, Sinn Féin TD for Galway West and South Mayo on the future of Ireland, following the successful election of Michelle O’Neill as First Minister of the North of Ireland and Sinn Féin now sitting as the largest party in the South.
In setting out the framework for the discussion Arise Festival’s Matt Willgress explained that if British Socialists are to successfully overcome the neoliberal crisis facing the British population, we must seriously seek to learn from other progressive movements globally who are waging successful battles for a future structured to work for all. This urgent need is even more pressing given recent victories for Sinn Féin at the heart of what many historians and commentators have dubbed “the Orange State” in the North of Ireland.
Mairead began her speech by celebrating the truly significant victory for Michelle O’Neill to become the First Minister of a State which at the time of its conception was “drawn on arbitrary boundaries and gerrymandered to ensure that a Republican let alone a woman would ever be able to take up the rule of the leader of the North”.
Mairead went on to explore that the restoration of the political institutions of the North of Ireland took place against a backdrop of industrial action waged by public sector workers across the North of Ireland on the issue of pay. This wave of industrial action saw members of sixteen different unions walk out across a broad range of sectors including teachers, nurses, bus and train drivers, police staff and civil servants taking to the picket lines and streets to fight for a better deal not just for their members but for the North of Ireland as a whole.
Despite historic discrimination against those of both Republican and Catholics communities across the North of Ireland, Mairead explained that in her time as First Minister, Michelle O’Neill’s has strived to be a First Minister for all of the North “to ensure that no cohort of the population ever feel that is second class to another again”.
These campaigns have seen Michelle and other Sinn Féin representatives take part in Northern Ireland Women’s football matches and PSNI graduation ceremonies to ensure that all communities do feel represented by their political representatives. Mairead continued by offering a personal story about her father: born and raised in Belfast throughout the conflict in the North, and his generation of activists’ struggle for political representation to demonstrate how truly momentous Michelle O’Neill’s victory is in the history of Ireland and, the need for all progressives to keep up hope for a better future even in the darkest of times.
She illustrated this fact by reading an extract from a poem written by Bobby Sands MP during his time in the Long Kesh Prison on the need for hope:
‘It lights the dark of this prison cell,
It thunders forth its might,
It is ‘the undauntable thought’, my friend,
That thought that says ‘I’m right!’.
To Mairead, Sand’s word epitomises the Irish struggle for freedom from the words of the leaders of the 1916 Rising in the Proclamation to the political vision currently worked towards by the current leaders of Sinn Féin.
With a rallying call for progressives in both the North and South of Ireland to truly take up the debate of a United Ireland urgently in whatever movement they are in, Mairead argues that these debates are vital to ensure that all voices across the political, class and generational divides are heard and included within this discussion around the self determination of the Irish people. Mairead detailed how a United Ireland must be judged on its ability to fight for a society free from the divides of class, race, sexuality and religion in the spirit of the founding fathers of the Irish Republican movement.
It is clear from Mairead’s discussion that the largest progressive political movement of Ireland; Sinn Féin, deserves the solidarity of the British socialist and progressive movements at a crucial time of the struggle for Irish self-determination with them standing on the precipice of political leadership in both the North and South of Ireland. We must take up this call and work to both amplify and learn from the successes of their movement over the coming years if we are to see a similarly progressive movement come to power in our lifetimes.
- Ireland – Unity Within Touching Distance? was hosted by Arise Festival on March 19th. You can watch the full discussion here or listen on the Arise Festival podcast.
- Mairead Farrell is Sinn Fein TD for Galway West and South Mayo, you can follow her on Twitter/X, Instagram and Facebook.
- You can follow Arise Festival on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter/X; and listen to the Arise Festival podcast on Spotify. See all upcoming events from Arise here.
