INSIDE STORY: Walk the line

INSIDE STORY With memories of his election to Dáil Éireann as clear today as when celebrating with supporters outside the Cootehill count centre in 1997, Sinn Féin's CAOIMHGHÃN Ó CAOLÃIN speaks to SEAMUS ENRIGHT and reflects on a political career spanning 20 years, working for a united Ireland, and his place at the next election in 2021. 

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For me [violence] has always been a last resort. Where there ever was a prospect for addressing our objectives by other means, then that was the way we had to go,†the Cavan-Monaghan Deputy says of the choice to follow a path into politics amid one of the most difficult periods in Irish history.

The massacre on Bloody Sunday 1972 still fresh in the public consciousness, and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's hard-line rhetoric stirring resentment among disaffected young Catholics both sides of the Border, Caoimhghín tells the Celt: “Whatever choices others have made, I can only speak of my own experiences. I can tell you the political path was not easy either. The absence of voices putting forward the rationale for Irish reunification was itself deafening.â€
One of four boys growing up in the shadow of St McCarten's Cathedral in Monaghan Town, Caoimhghín admits his parents' political outlook was Fianna Fáil. But age four, he remembers witnessing the election of Eighneachán Ó hAnnluain, a relative on his mother's side, as Sinn Féin (SF) abstentionist TD in the 1957 election. This occurred after Ó hAnnluain's own brother Fergal, a volunteer in the Pearse Column of the IRA died alongside Seán South following an attack on the RUC barracks in Brookeborough.
Caoimhghín's interest was ultimately piqued after the British Government arbitrarily ended the ‘Special Category Status' afforded to Irish Republican prisoners, leading to the Blanket, No-Wash Protests, and ultimately Hunger Strikes.
Then aged in his mid-twenties, and working for Bank of Ireland starting off in Cootehill, and later posted to branches in Ballinasloe and Mullingar, Caoimhghín aligned to the local branch of Fr Piaras O Duill's National H-Block/Armagh Committee in Monaghan.
“It's fair to say Monaghan is a very politically aware place to grow up in. The Border in particular has been an ever present backdrop in the lives of everyone I knew, so you couldn't be but aware.â€
Acknowledging Thatcher's “intransigence†as serving only to escalate matters, he said: “Action and reaction are equal and opposite, that was certainly the case here. I knew others at that time who weren't necessarily politically active but that period was a changing point in their lives too.â€

Motivation

Describing the Hunger Strikes as taking an “unforgettable†toll on the lives of everybody involved, he states: “I at all times recognised the motivation and drive behind the prisoners, in terms of the stands they took, positions they found themselves in as a consequence of our national rights. They were special, and that's how I would have viewed them.â€
In 1981 Caoimhghín helmed the Anti H-Block campaign as director of elections to get Kieran 'Big Doc' Doherty elected as TD for the Cavan–Monaghan constituency. Alongside him as election agent was former Cavan County Councillor Charlie Boylan, who Caoimhghín still considers a dear friend.
Another dear friend, whom he mourned the loss off recently was former party leader in the North, the late Martin McGuinness. Part of Sinn Féin's Good Friday negotiation team alongside McGuinness in 1998, Caoimhghín said: '[Martin] was very much a constant throughout my political career. We celebrated together, commiserated together. We shared lots of very important moments from engagement with the British government to travelling to the United States, meetings at St Andrew's, at Hillsborough and other events throughout those years.
“I was greatly shocked by his passing. It happened so quickly, and we miss him greatly.'
Looking back Caoimhghín sees Doherty's election in '81, and also Bobby Sands as MP for Fermanagh-South Tyrone, as critical catalysts in forming the foundations for how the Republican struggle would manifest in years to come.
“The 9,121 people in Cavan-Monaghan who gave first preferences to Kieran in ‘81 played a part in forging the situation we see today, where Sinn Féin is seen across this island as a critical and growing force for change.â€

Elections

Emboldened by Doherty's success, Caoimhghín handed in his notice at the bank in late 1982 to join Sinn Féin. He started out working as general manager of Republican newspaper An Phoblacht, and later stood unsuccessfully in the 1984 and 1989 European Parliamentary elections. He met a similar disappointing fate in three successive General Elections between 1987 and 1992, but was voted in as a Sinn Féin representative to Monaghan County Council in 1985 along with Pat Treanor.
“It was no cake walk,†he says of a party censored by the State, while there was the added threat too from Loyalist paramilitaries intent on striking a blow against rising sympathy for the Republican popularity along the Border.â€
In the week before the UDA shot dead Caoimhghín's ‘84 EU Parliamentary election colleague Eddie Fullerton at his Buncrana home, it emerged that the Cavan-Monaghan representative had also been targeted. There would be another attempt on his life in March 1997, requiring the army to dismantle a device containing some 2.5kg of explosive that failed to fully detonate outside Caoimhghín's Monaghan Sinn Féin office.
“They intended in doing both of us. It was the weekend before Eddie was killed, that's what we were informed.
“Of course it comes to you from time to time, it does play over you, but those were dark and difficult days, there is no other way to describe them. I had a very firm understanding and vision of what I wanted to pursue and [the planned attacks] didn't dissuade me. If anything it probably steeled me to the purpose and the challenges involved.
“The furthest thing from my mind would have been revenge, that's never been apart of me or my outlook on such matters.'
It was in the 1997 election that Caoimhghín finally made his breakthrough to Leinster House, assisted by the lifting of Section 31 and an end to abstention a decade earlier. Of the 1986 internal rift within Sinn Féin over abstentionism, with Ruairí Ó Brádaigh leading 20 other delegates in walking out, Caoimhghín says: “I was party to debate at the time, and I gave my view that the only place to be was on the pitch.â€
Since walking through the gates of Leinster House on June 26, 1997, Caoimhghín says “everything has changed†for the party.
“Those first five years on my own I had one support staff member. He was with me for 17-years, there was just Mícheál MacDonncha and myself, and he is now the sitting Lord Mayor of Dublin. Change is continuing, some might think it is slow but I think it is phenomenal.'

Hard feelings

Today Sinn Féin has 23 TDs and seven Senators, a far cry from when Caoimhghín served as party leader, and spokesperson not only on health, but finance as well as a number of other briefs.
But he shrugs off any hard-feelings or impressions of unfairness at the election of party president Gerry Adams, and Caoimhghín's subsequent demotion from head of the party in the Dáil in 2011.
“I repeat what I said then and I maintain now, I have never coveted any position, electoral or otherwise. I genuinely and absolutely sincerely mean that.â€
To the prospect of a united Ireland happening in his lifetime, Caoimhghín says if reuniting Cavan as part of the constituency was possible, the greater of the two 'could still be on the cards'.
Acknowledging that now aged 64, having had two heart attacks, there is some question over whether he will stand at the next election, which could be as late as 2021 if this government survives its full term.
“Well I hope to be there God willing. As to what capacity I will play, I can't say at this time,†he says, while reiterating his long held stance on the importance of the succession of youth in politics.
“You can be absolutely certain we have choices in terms of passing on the baton into the future. There has been great effort, not only in building a team for today, but a team that will continue on into the future. I didn't want and never would want to have been a blip on the radar screen. To be there and gone is no good, we need to be part of the process always.â€
Married to school teacher Briege, the father of five - Aisling, Sinéad, Clíodhna, Deirbhile, Oran - concludes by saying it has been an “honour†to serve the people of Cavan-Monaghan as an elected representative for so long.
“I wish to record my thanks, not least to the people from Cavan because I'm Monaghan born and bred. They have supported me as one of their own and that is something I very much cherish.â€