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Mick
‘Skull Cap’ Murphy, the Sinn Fein MLA in
South Down, has been deselected as a candidate to
fight next year's Stormont assembly election. In his
place a ‘friend’ and altogether more ‘respectable’
character has been selected to fight Mick’s seat.
When he is collecting Mick’s pay-packet, spending
Mick’s money, going to Mick’s functions
and making Mick’s TV appearances how much of
a ‘friend’ of Mick’s he will actually
remain is a moot point. A college lecturer, the new
South Down assembly candidate, who unlike Mick did
not graduate from the ‘University of Long Kesh',
has already demonstrated his ‘electability’
by occupying a council seat confirming that the professionalisation
of Sinn Fein is well underway. The skull cap just
does not fit the party head anymore it would seem.
And the latest tabloid rumour is that John Kelly too
may face a de-selection process.
Despite
the sense of expectation when Bentham designed the
panopticon that it would see everything (wouldn’t
the thought police just love that!) it never quite
worked out that way. This panopticon sees things only
in a certain rather than a complete way. Unlike some
in the world of politics no claim is made to penetrate
the thick political fog and extend panoptical vision
into the future to 2016 or anything so grandiose.
Nevertheless, trends are nothing if they tend not
to go in a general direction. And if the present trend
is to be followed and electability is to figure more
than prison durability then who knows what lies ahead
in an interface area like North Belfast where Sinn
Fein feel that if they can diminish the presence of
the SDLP sufficiently the seat is theirs?
The
party would dearly love to represent the constituency
at Westminster but according to some on the inside
track is unlikely to do so under present circumstances
and with its current candidate who like Mick Murphy
has the type of ‘form’ the Castle Catholics
of the Upper Antrim Road might sneer at. And despite
the claims of some Sinn Fein members that the present
candidate wants the seat so badly it hurts, burning
personal ambition does not always transmute into blazing
political ability.
Who
today remembers Words From A Cell? As widely read
now as 1990 horse racing guides the present republican
candidate’s poetry can not really mount any effective
challenge to North Belfast’s literary man of
the moment, still basking in the lavish praise from
Sinn Fein quarters for his recently published novel
on the party. And like the infernal pop up ad from
the internet comes the reality check that all of Mick
Murphy’s time spent in cells did him little good
when words from outside a cell were needed.
So
what if the leadership decides that the transition
to an advanced stage of another new phase of struggle
which has emerged from the progress made in the last
new phase of struggle towards the first juncture in
the second endgame, requires a candidate more articulate,
better looking and younger than the present incumbent
might it not opt, as is rumoured, to shunt Gerry Kelly
off into the RUC (perhaps his usage of the term ‘PSNI’
last Monday on UTV was to help soften the landing
for those still swearing it will never happen; as
was his agreeing to be photographed alongside a future
colleague from the force at Ardoyne while asking that
the same future colleague move the dogs back) and
replace him as the North Belfast candidate with Brian
Feeney? And if he resisted - what a battle of the
great pretenders that selection process would be.
With the smoke signals on the ground urging people
to ‘sicken the Prods - vote out Dodds’ ,
a Feeney victory would mean that the unionists really
would have something to worry about.
So
what if we can’t give Gerry Kelly our vote? Console
ourselves with being able to give him our name, address
and date of birth - or ‘over 21’ if applicable.
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