The
news that Rita O'Hare had been refused a visa waiver
to travel to the United States came on Thursday
in a concerned e-mail distributed by a Noraid activist.
O'Hare, once a firebrand socialist, has long since
given up on that and now cuts her cloth to fit the
conservative tastes of the US political establishment.
Whatever it was, radicalism did not figure amongst
the O'Hare attributes most winced at by the Bush
administration.
As
Sinn Fein's Washington representative O'Hare has
been a frequent visitor to the States where one
of her tasks has been to journey throughout the
country persuading Sinn Fein supporters that because
party policy looks like a duck, walks like a duck
and quacks like a duck, it is in fact something
other than a duck. She was due to travel with Martin
McGuinness who, for now, has no difficulty in meeting
US government conditions. He complained:
We
are concerned about the refusal to grant a visa
waiver to Rita O'Hare, someone who has made a huge
contribution to the peace process, who has travelled
extensively throughout the United States over many
years now, promoting the peace process, and has
built up many vitally important contacts …
it is worth noting that since January Ms O'Hare
has applied for and received two visa waivers to
visit the US in March and April.
Despite
this, McGuinness put a brave face on:
We
have been told by the State Department that this
doesn't affect their relationship with Sinn Fein,
they are citing this issue of a change of venue,
so it appears to be a minor matter … I don't
have any doubt that I will get the usually very
warm reception that I receive when I go there.
His
Noraid colleagues were not so sure, claiming that,
'we know that this was a punitive action.' If so
it is hardly blemishing what is becoming an established
pattern in the US approach to dealings with Sinn
Fein. McGuinness has been around too many corners
not to know this. It was upon him that it fell to
attempt the kiss and make up trip to the US in the
wake of the party president having been effectively
snubbed during the St Patrick's Day festivities.
Symptomatic of the sentiment coursing through the
veins of the US political class was a New York
Sun Staff Editorial:
Apart
from the ludicrously credulous William Flynn, chairman
of Mutual of America, nearly everyone has blamed
Sinn Fein/IRA for the robbery ... It is intolerable
that the commander in chief of the world's only
superpower should be humiliated in this way by a
group of two-bit provincial hoods masquerading as
freedom fighters.
Little
has emerged since that would suggest a thaw. Last
week saw Mitchell Reiss visit Ireland. While here
he made it clear that the biggest obstacle to the
successful consummation of the peace process is
the continued existence of the IRA. As the dust
kicked up by the recent local and Westminster elections
settles down and there has still been no sign of
a response from Gerry Adams to Gerry Adams, in relation
to Gerry Adams having called on Gerry Adams to embrace
purely democratic means, the denial of the visa
application may be a sign of growing impatience
on the part of the US administration. In calling
it as he did the US point man for the peace process
was leaving little room for doubt that all the smoke
and mirrors do nothing to disguise what has rapidly
become an immutable verity of Northern politics:
the April 6 statement by leader of Sinn Fein to
the leader of the IRA is little other than Gerry
Adams telling Gerry Adams that the alternative to
one group that Gerry Adams leads is another group
that Gerry Adams leads. The smoke signals - minus
the mirrors - coming out of Camp Bush is direct:
'piss or get off the pot. The US has bigger fish
than your endless Irish peace process to fry.'
Dress
it up as it may, Sinn Fein must be smarting from
the embarrassment of having its Washington rep denied
access to the country. It portends poorly for the
future. Who next will be denied the visa waiver?
The party leader himself, perhaps. It is the third
substantive US shot across the Sinn Fein bows. When
the party leadership announced in early March that
it had opted to cancel fundraising events in the
States that month, in the eyes of some observers
it only did so because it had been made clear to
it that any application to raise funds would be
turned down. Later in the month the Sinn Fein leader
Gerry Adams was given a Washington welcome worthy
of a flea in a sleeping bag.
The
Sinn Fein leadership is no longer being asked to
complete its task of killing off republicanism and
replacing it with constitutional nationalism. It
is being ordered to.
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