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The
last time Eamonn McCann contested an election I canvassed
for him in a freezing Derry, but I was unable to cast
a vote on his behalf. I only had a ballot slip for
West Belfast where there were no socialist candidates.
That is one of the drawbacks of not being in Sinn
Fein – in the party we could vote often and in
different places. Although one-man-twenty-votes did
sit a shade awkwardly with our demand for the civil
rights we long claimed to have been denied.
This
time the order of my involvement in last November’s
Assembly election was reversed – I did not canvass
on behalf of McCann’s SEA but I gave it my vote.
McCann’s integrity is solid but I was unhappy
with the broader SEA decision to exclude the IRSP
from sharing its platform on the basis of the party
having an armed wing. The Workers Party has an armed
wing and no objections were earlier raised to its
possible involvement. Sinn Fein has an armed wing
and many in the SEA are happy to cooperate with it
on a range of issues.
Dolours
Price, a few days ago, suggested that we both repeat
our November Derry vigil outside one of Belfast’s
polling stations, handing out SEA leaflets to voters
on the way in to the booths. Although initially of
a mind to do nothing other than vote, I relented and
arranged to tie up with her this morning. But bereavement
intervened and Dolours attended the funeral of Eamonn
McCann’s former partner, the journalist Mary
Holland, leaving her unable to make it up to the city.
Still, there will be another time. Now that our dream
of a united Ireland has evaporated, it is consoling
to know that something at least remains from the hopes
we harboured during the prison years, that the endless
days banged up behind steel doors weren’t all
for nothing; that there are candidates with socialist
policies we can vote for; and we do not have to devalue
and negate the authenticity of the decades spent in
prison by voting for all the things we served every
minute of every day against.
Dolours
made her own mark yesterday in Dublin outside the
Sinn Fein press conference. Carrying a hastily put-together
placard with the words ‘Sinn Fein – Still
lying – Still beating’ scrawled across it,
she stood on the pavement attracting a considerable
amount of attention. One party apparatchik scowled
at her. The person in question, having tasted the
good life, and divested herself of all radical baggage
in order to cut the mustard with the rich and the
famous, clearly didn’t want Dolours and her republicanism
raining on her parade. Hunger strikers are to be used
not listened to. But much of the tension that characterises
relations between Sinn Fein and republicans would
dissipate were the nationalist party to refrain from
using violence and intimidation against those no longer
happy with the direction in which the leadership has
taken the republican constituency.
Today,
after leaving my daughter on the school bus, I walked
into the polling station on the Whiterock Road. Sinn
Fein members were standing outside entreating people
to vote their party. There were no scowls or hostile
grunts. One offered me a candidate list and suggested
how I should vote. He was polite and I responded in
kind. On my way to the booth I glanced at the leaflet
I had just received and was pleased to see that it
was not ‘Vote Scappaticci No 1 - The candidate
who helped deliver the peace process.’ Although,
had it been that way, I have no doubt there would
have been legions of canvassers and campaigners in
his trail informing - such a choice of word - would-be
voters that Scap was the victim of securocrats; that
even if he was passing information he was only tactically
touting for peace. A dangerous consequence of what
Peter McArthur once put down to some people having
so much respect for their superiors they have none
left for themselves.
Bairbre
de Brun was the Sinn Fein candidate. Serious, affable
and never one to pass a Palestinian fundraiser without
opening her purse, if politics were a technocratic
exercise and votes were cast for those who were industrious,
then a vote for Bairbre would be justified. But politics
is also about ethics and ideas. And while her open
stance on the Palestinian question might have tempted
me to vote for her in a European election, I can’t
delude myself that out of all the parties participating
Sinn Fein is the one most likely to renege on commitments
given. In this sense the party are Marxists of the
Groucho school – ‘those are my principles,
and if you don't like them ... well, I have others.’
When
the votes are finally counted, Bairbre de Brun should
be comfortably elected. Eamonn McCann will not secure
a seat in Europe. But a vote is only wasted if you
vote against your beliefs. Today I voted in accordance
with my own. The chord struck as the ballot slip fell
safely into the deposit box was very much in tune
with the sentiments of the H-Blocks. A vote for a
socialist candidate is a single thread in the attempt
to weave an alternative fabric to the hegemony of
establishment politics. Better to vote for the right
person than the wrong winner.
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