on 12 August 2005 stated: ‘Cllr Nicky Kehoe had looked to be a shoo-in for Dublin Central following a near-miss in 2002 and a huge vote in the locals (3,609 first preference votes in Cabra-Glasnevin)... McDonald had at one stage been suggested as a candidate for Dublin West, her former base when she was a member of Fianna Fáil, but it now looks as if she will be proposed for Dublin Central.’
Sinn Féin opted to run her in that constituency and the party’s hopes were high that she would win a Dáil seat, as part of a significant increase in Sinn Féin representation at Leinster House. Niamh Connolly wrote in the Sunday Business Post: ‘There is serious tension with supporters of local election poll topper Nicky Kehoe, after McDonald was chosen to run in Dublin Central ahead of him.’53 Accompanying McDonald as she carried out an election canvass, journalist Tom Humphries observed: ‘There is a strange dissonance between the knee-jerk media response to Sinn Féin’s engagement in southern politics and the response Mary Lou gets on the doorsteps.’54 A further Phoenix profile, published on 18 May 2007, six days before the general election, said:
Can Mary Lou win a seat in the Taoiseach’s constituency?... Last October a poll commissioned by the Irish Mail on Sunday seriously unnerved Dublin Sinn Féin activists, showing her on just 6 per cent, behind the Green Party’s Patricia McKenna (7 per cent), Labour’s Joe Costello TD (11 per cent) and Fine Gael’s Cllr Paschal Donohoe (12 per cent). Other polls indicated that this was not a rogue poll and it appeared that while doughnutting with Adams at meetings in Downing Street, Stormont and elsewhere was good for the image, it was no substitute for hard graft in Ballybough and Summerhill... Since October it has been a six-and-a-half day week in Dublin Central for McDonald...
The general election took place on 24 May and, as the votes were being counted, it became clear that Sinn Féin candidates were doing quite poorly. There was a strong expectation, for example, that McDonald herself would succeed, but that was to underestimate the Taoiseach of the day and master of the electoral arts, Bertie Ahern, whose transfers in Dublin Central were critical in getting party colleague Cyprian Brady over the line, although the latter had only received 939 first preferences. McDonald got almost 1,800 fewer first preference votes than Nicky Kehoe had secured in 2002 on a slightly lower overall turnout. It was a serious blow in personal terms, and she told Banotti later: ‘When the fateful day arrives and the result is disappointing, it is gutting, it is very difficult personally.’ She went on a family holiday to Spain to get over it, but said in the same interview that, whether winning in 2004 or losing in 2007, ‘I found it an incredibly long process afterwards to try and get my head back together again’.
McDonald’s next electoral outing was in the European elections of 2009. A by-election was scheduled for the same date in Dublin Central to fill the vacancy left by the untimely death from cancer of the radical Independent TD Tony Gregory. Sinn Féin opted to run McDonald again for Europe, despite the fact that the Dublin Euroconstituency could now only elect three MEPs instead of the previous four. As its Dáil candidate the party ran Christy Burke, a long-time member of Dublin City Council and former republican prisoner.
Having won the last of four seats in the Dublin Euro-constituency in 2004, it was always going to be a challenge for her to get re-elected five years later, when the number of MEPs was reduced. McDonald did not retain her seat, and Burke likewise failed to get elected to the Dáil. But the local elections were held the same day and Burke kept his Council seat, then quit Sinn Féin three days later. In a piece on 3 December 2010, Phoenix magazine commented: ‘What galls many party members is that she could have won a Dáil seat in the last election if the right decisions were taken... McDonald failed to win a seat that Kehoe would have won in Dublin Central and Sinn Féin’s Joanna Spain lost in [Dublin] Mid-West where McDonald would also have won had she been a candidate.’
But she ran again for the Dáil in Dublin Central, in the 2011 general election. Fianna Fáil were at a low ebb, and Ahern wasn’t running this time. When the votes were counted, McDonald was the last of four TDs to be elected. Christy Burke, running as an Independent, didn’t help – he got 1,315 first preferences.55 In 2012 on the TV3 political talk show, Tonight with Vincent Browne, Deputy McDonald was chosen by a panel of assessors as ‘Opposition Politician of the Year’. Mary Lou’s career was back on track. But although the speculation continued, there was no sign of Gerry Adams moving aside for the republican from Rathgar.
3. THE ARMALITE AND THE BALLOT-BOX
THOUGH SINN FÉIN WAS founded in 1905, the party today has little enough in common with the organisation established by the journalist and propagandist for Irish nationalism, Arthur Griffith, who later headed the delegation which agreed to the Anglo -Irish Treaty of 1921.
The one major thread of continuity with the original Sinn Féin has been the policy of abstentionism from Westminster. In his book published in 1904 and entitled, The Resurrection of Hungary, Griffith argued that Irish MPs should emulate their Hungarian counterparts who had adopted ‘a manly policy of passive resistance and non-recognition of Austria’s right to rule’.1
The Hungarians had achieved political and economic autonomy under a dual monarchy, whereby they stayed at home in Budapest instead of going to Vienna. Griffith argued that the Irish could do the same by adopting a similar policy and remaining in Dublin instead of going to Westminster.
The passive resistance element of his approach did not pass on to his successors in Sinn Féin but the abstentionist policy still survives. At time of writing, Sinn Féin candidates elected as MPs do not take their seats in the House of Commons.
In view of the major changes in Sinn Féin and IRA policies and tactics over the last thirty-odd years, there has been some speculation about a change of tack in this respect as well. This arose again in advance of the British general election of 7 May 2015 and there were media suggestions that Sinn Féin could wield significant influence by setting aside its stay-at-home approach.
Writing in the Sunday Business Post, columnist Tom McGurk recalled how the unionist bloc exacted a price from Prime Minister John Major in the 1990s for keeping his Conservative Party government in power:
Were Sinn Féin to adopt a new policy of ‘qualified abstentionism’ – in other words, a tactical approach where it would only go to Westminster and vote when the party considers the matter of serious significance – what could the republican objection be?... Nor do I believe that anyone could credibly argue that such a policy of ‘qualified abstentionism’ undermines any determining principle of Irish Republicanism... The political reality in the real world, as Sinn Féin has discovered since the party abandoned abstentionism on both sides of the border, is that historic principles can become political cul de sacs.2
In a column for the Belfast-based Irish News, Tom Collins pointed out that unionists and the moderate nationalists of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) would make use of any leverage they might have if they held the balance of power at Westminster. He continued:
One party unable to trade its support – explicit or tacit – for political advantage is Sinn Féin. They have been refused entry to the Commons by the British insistence that they swear an oath to the Crown, and by their own unwillingness to see the oath for what it is – a meaningless irrelevance... It’s time Sinn Féin called Westminster’s bluff and turned up. Some left-wing MPs have slurred their words, others have crossed their fingers behind their backs, some – it is claimed – have resorted to gibberish. Gaelic is acceptable, apparently; that opens up a whole host of possibilities.3
In the same paper two weeks later, columnist Tom Kelly wrote: ‘Sinn Féin has... said it wants to see regime change at Westminster and hopes for a Labour administration. That being the case, who would be surprised that even if they fight the upcoming election on an abstentionist ticket, that they wouldn’t rack up at the Palace of Westminster to vote, if Labour needed the numbers? Some may say “never” but “never”
