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Sitting talking in my living room with people who
have been brutalised or intimidated by Sinn Fein is
hardly a new experience. Since the party decided to
follow the trail blazed by Cathal Goulding and Tomas
McGiolla in the 1960s and 70s - ditching the armed
struggle and embracing parliamentarianism - the need
to administer 'peace therapy' to those who fell for
the earlier lies and are reluctant to embrace the
new ones has become more pronounced. Consequently,
increasing numbers of people have turned up at my
door determined that their story will be told and
that the Sinn Fein imposed Section 31 censorship diktat
on the republican constituency will be resisted.
With
the latest casualty of the Sinn Fein leadership's
'go-Stick' strategy sitting across the room from me,
I felt a sense of déjà vu. I had heard
it all before and the turn that events were taking
was hardly unexpected. The one difference on this
occasion was that the person at the centre of the
latest routinised act of internal Sinn Fein aggression,
Martin Cunningham, was a party member who was possessed
of the temerity to stand up to the party's power-crazed
leadership and speak publicly about his experiences.
Sinn
Fein must have felt justified in waxing cynical about
the truth status of the popular view that lightening
never strikes twice in the same spot, when back-to-back
a brace of people who have been prominent within the
party for years, repudiated the vow of silence demanded
by the leadership of those who might otherwise flag
up its abuses. John Kelly had punctured a hermetic
seal and Martin Cunningham quickly rushed the breach.
It
would be surprising if the natural instinct of the
leadership were anything other than that of despatching
an 'active service unit' to beat the vociferous critics
up. And there would have been no shortage of bull-believers
to support the action, failing to note the irony of
Freddie Scappaticci going unharmed for rupturing the
silence code in circumstances qualitatively different
from, and immeasurably more serious than anything
Cunningham or Kelly gave vent to. But Sinn Fein is
aware that its latitude - courtesy of the Nelsonian
vision of the British and Irish governments - to employ
violence against those within its constituency who
disagree with it, has been curbed, if albeit temporarily.
Even if the four men arrested after the Kelly's Cellars
incident in February were not part of anything other
than a 'barroom brawl', the embarrassing fall-out
which has left the entire leadership looking like
finalists in the Pinocchio Cup, will inject some brake
fluid into the forward momentum of the party's repressive
apparatuses.
About
six hours before I first set eyes on Councillor Martin
Cunningham, a mutual friend who seemed very concerned
for his safety had contacted me. He explained that
the knives were out for the elected representative
and asked would the Blanket be prepared to
speak with him. Given that Adam O'Toole was probably
too busy defending Freddie Scappaticci and would not
therefore have the time to publicise Cunningham in
An Phoblacht/Republican News, I decided that
whatever else I had planned would have to go to the
wall. If the Blanket were not to raise the
concerns of a victimised republican where else would?
We met at Belfast's Hilton Hotel, where I was honouring
an earlier arrangement to be interviewed by a journalist
working for one of the British dailies. It was easier
to meet at a landmark than have someone totally unfamiliar
with Belfast topography weave his way through Ballymurphy's
narrow streets. From the plush luxury of the hotel
we made the four-mile journey to my home in the austere
Springhill.
Martin
Cunningham first joined Sinn Fein in the early 1970s.
Being a member of the party then in Kilkeel must have
seemed like being a black civil rights activist at
the local Ku Klux Klan convention. It is a well-known
loyalist town and prior to Cunningham standing for
the council, the Sinn Fein vote was generally low.
Prison is usually a good barometer of the republican
content of any geographical area, except when it comes
to South Armagh where activists were always too shrewd
to be found with something incriminating in their
possession or to leave a forensic trail. Strabane
was another, only for opposite reasons. Many of us
felt that the RUC set up shop in the town's social
security office and when the masses of unemployed
youth came to sign on the dole the cops posing as
'broo' clerks threw down pre-prepared statements in
front of them. Their unfortunate signatures helped
clear the RUC unsolved cases files, and for those
that signed, being cared for by the state acquired
a new meaning. Few Kilkeel man passed through the
jail. One that did, we renamed 'Skipper' because in
our city ignorance we believed that only fishermen
lived there.
Martin
Cunningham dropped out of the party for a while in
the early 1990s due to personal factors and work commitments.
Being a strong supporter of the peace process and
committed to profiling Sinn Fein he came back in just
prior to the council elections in May 2001, which
the party wanted him to contest. His bid was successful.
'From a base vote of 450, myself and my colleagues
pushed the vote up to nearly 1300 and the party topped
the poll in the area.' Prior to his standing the party
had asked a number of other people to do so but they
refused for various reasons, mostly related to their
personal safety.
Now
the same people with the help of Mitchel McLaughlin
have set up a new cumann. And it is simply a case
that they see it as an easy ticket into the council
and have jumped on the gravy train.
I
sensed that perhaps affable Mitchel, the friendly
face of Sinn Fein, was not everything he portrayed
himself to be. I had long suspected it, having been
told in 2000 by one of his colleagues that he was
one of the party's strongest advocates of policing
the dissidents. I decided to press Martin on this
and put it to him that perhaps McLaughlin wanted a
party in his own image - made up of people who over
the years were prepared to take few risks for republicanism
and had made a comfortable career out of it.
He
told me he did not want to take things out of context
and would need to explain the backdrop. Having been
a tardy but successful learner over the years when
it comes to acquiring patience on these matters, I
waited while he set the scene.
Martin
Cunningham first noticed tension within the party
last year when he was democratically elected by a
convention of local constituency party members to
stand as an MLA. In the process Mick Murphy, the sitting
MLA, was deselected. 'I took no pleasure in replacing
Mick. I said that he had served the constituency to
the best of his ability, and that I felt humbled that
the party had chosen me.' He later found out that
after the election some people unhappy with the democratic
decision had been 'rushing to Belfast' in a bid to
have it overturned. However, senior party officials
in Belfast assured him that the democratic mandate
stood. 'But there were obviously forces at work -
the same forces that had got rid of Garret Faulkner
and Aiden Carlin.'
A
week before the assembly elections were announced
Cunningham was informed by the party hierarchy that
he would have to stand down. First of all he was told
that his replacement would be a female candidate -
Bairbre de Brun. It was explained to him that the
party wanted to use the Assembly election as a launching
pad from which to win the South Down Westminster seat
from its incumbent Eddie McGrady.
I
have a lot of respect and time for Bairbre de Brun
who I have found to be a very intelligent and sincere
woman. I said that while I was disappointed I would
walk the streets with Bairbre de Brun and try to
get her elected. Bairbre de Brun is a very credible
candidate.
Matters
then changed when party officials in the Newry Sinn
Fein office told him that it might not in fact be
de Brun who would be running. But when pressed they
claimed that they did not know who it might be. Cunningham
raised an objection on the grounds that he was asked
to stand down after having being democratically selected
to make way for someone whose identity was not yet
known but who most certainly had not been selected
by the local constituency. The response of the officials
was blunt. While suggesting to him that he had a choice
to remain as the democratically selected candidate,
they made it clear that the leadership was not going
to stand for three male candidates running in the
constituency. When it appeared to them that they had
yet to convince him, the time for niceties had passed.
It was made clear to him that the decision was a done
and dusted deal and that he was not to say anything
to anyone, that they would handle the press. Menacingly,
they indicated to him that his life would be made
difficult if he protested.
A
short time later in Newcastle he met a senior Sinn
Fein figure from Belfast who told him quite bluntly
that regardless of who the grassroots of the party
wanted, the leadership was determined to force him
to stand aside. The Belfast figure explained that
the leadership had its own candidate picked but were
not prepared to disclose the identity to Cunningham.
On
discovering his replacement was to be Catriona Ruane
- who claimed to have joined the party because of
its human rights record yet remains deafeningly silent
when Sinn Fein members are maiming those who oppose
their writ - he met McLaughlin, the party chair in
Newry, but says he was treated with disdain. Cunningham
pointed out to the Derry politician how he had taken
considerable risks to build the party in Kilkeel,
had been democratically selected by the local constituency
and was now being asked to stand down by a leadership
who sought to overrule the local democratic decision
and impose a candidate who had never been in the party,
nor taken any risks for it.
He
remained indifferent. He doesn't even listen and
has his diatribe planned in advance and it is the
same no matter what issue you go to him with. It
may as well have been a cardboard cut out I was
addressing. I found him patronising and obnoxious.
I felt that when he dismissed me with an arrogant
shrug of the shoulders I was expected to raise my
hand in some sort of Nazi salute and then walk away.
Martin
Cunningham claims that this points to the corrosion
of democracy within the party in South Down:
An
unknown person who does not even live in the constituency
was imposed on the people despite the misgivings
of the local cumann and many in the constituency.
Consequent to her imposition, the party has saw
fit to ignore, marginalise and, without any consultation,
decommission the local party structures, which have
worked hard for years to build the profile and status
of the party in this area. It is a violation of
democracy and I cannot sit lightly with a party
that allows a few individuals to violate party principles
and procedures. These particular individuals seem
to be well versed in the British methods of divide
and conquer.
I
felt that this was confirmation of what people such
as myself, Tommy Gorman and Brendan Hughes had been
saying for almost a decade and which the leadership
and its apologists had sought to gainsay. The pretence
that Sinn Fein was somehow a democratic party was
being hollowed out from within. It was as if I had
lived with a hump on my back and now it had disappeared,
vaporised by the simple act of fellow republicans
speaking truth to power. John Kelly and Martin Cunningham
will most certainly be bad mouthed in the time honoured
Stalinistic fashion. But their dissent cannot be easily
dismissed. And in my home that Thursday evening Martin
Cunningham had only just begun.
Next
issue: Part 2 of the interview with Martin Cunningham.
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