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Gerry
McGeough makes no secret of the fact that he is an
ultra-conservative Catholic. In a recent interview
with the Irish Catholic newspaper, he voiced his abhorrence
of gay marriages and abortion and some years back
dedicated his first novel to “The Blessed Virgin
Mary”. His religious convictions are extreme,
even for “Catholic Ireland".
Gerry
is also a dyed-in-the-wool Irish republican who has
endured much hardship and pain as a result of his
political beliefs. He has been imprisoned in Germany
and the USA and lived for many years in exile from
his native County Tyrone. More recently he has suffered
once again for his identification with the republican
cause. Having gained a third level degree as a mature
student, Gerry McGeough found work teaching in a private
secondary school in Dublin. With two young children,
he badly needed the income. However, after someone
complained to his employers about McGeough’s
past affiliation with republicanism, he was forced
to resign from his position.Five years after the signing
of the Good Friday Agreement, with all it promises
of a new beginning and an equality agenda, a former
republican activist is forced out of his job because
someone did not like his politics.
Nor
indeed is Gerry McGeough’s case an isolated one.
There is a whole raft of positions North and South,
barred to former republican activists. And there is
little prospect of this changing for so long as Sinn
Fein, the party to which most of these activists once
gave their loyalty, refuses to take up their case
in any meaningful way. Contrast unionist determination
not to engage without arms decommissioning with Sinn
Fein’s pusillanimous willingness to have its
former stalwarts treated as second-class citizens
on both sides of the Border. During the upcoming review
of the GFA, will Gerry Adams and his team make restoration
of full citizenship to republican veterans a sine
qua non for participation in any further arrangement
in Stormont. They should but they won’t.
Bizarrely,
the McGeough case came to public attention in the
same week that a former RUC officer was given membership
of Sinn Fein. There is no reason, of course, why a
person should not be able to change their views and
be accepted thereafter as a sincere republican. It
would be reassuring, nevertheless, if Sinn Fein was
as determined to help its old comrades as facilitate
the new.
This
article also appears in Fourthwrite
and is carried here with permission from the author.
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