1969 in Dublin’s Holles Street hospital, McDonald grew up in the leafy suburb of Rathgar. The family home was at Eaton Brae, a quiet enclave off Orwell Road, and close to the impressive property that houses the Russian – formerly Soviet – Embassy. A family friend says that, despite the location, her circumstances were by no means luxurious.
In an interview for a very interesting book in 2008, about politicians whose first name is Mary, she told former MEP for Fine Gael Mary Banotti that she was originally meant to be called Avril, as she was due to arrive in April. Though christened Mary Louise, this was quickly shortened to Mary Lou: ‘When I was a child I would very rarely be called Mary Louise unless I got into trouble. When the voice was raised and I got my full title I knew that I had crossed some line.’7 The classic Ricky Nelson pop-song Hello Mary Lou (Goodbye Heart) became one of her pet hates, though her canvassers in the Dáil constituency of Dublin Central consider it an asset. She herself wrote after the 2011 general election: ‘The song filled the Cabra air and echoed throughout the north inner city. A group of women jived to it on Sheriff Street, proof-positive according to one activist that the song was a vote-getter. I sincerely doubt it.’8
Most profiles of Mary Lou describe her father Patrick McDonald as a surveyor, but when interviewed for this book, she pointed out that ‘building contractor’ was the correct description. Like so many people from the building trade, he joined Fianna Fáil. Her mother, Joan, was also a member of that party ‘for a short while’, she recalls: ‘When we were growing up, she’d be the kind of person who’d be writing letters to prisoners of conscience. She’d be into Amnesty International and she was very involved in the Burma Action Group. As much as she would have a view on domestic politics, my mother would always have had a broader political sense of things.’ The biggest role in shaping the young Mary Lou’s outlook, however, was apparently played by her maternal grandmother, Molly, whom she describes in the Banotti interview as ‘very political in her thinking, very nationalist, very old-style republican.’ Interviewed for the present book, McDonald said: ‘She died some years ago and I miss her. She was a big influence on me.’9
Despite the dreams and desires of socialists and Marxists over many generations, the historic dividing-line in the politics of the Republic of Ireland was not class, but what side your forebears had taken in the Civil War. That awful conflict erupted over the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, and ultimately gave birth to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, as well as hardening the stance of Sinn Féin on the militant fringe.A brother of Molly’s (and grand-uncle to Mary Lou), James O’Connor from Bansha, County Tipperary, took part in the War of Independence and later sided with those who opposed the Treaty and the Irish Free State that arose out of it. On 13 December 1922, as civil war raged, the young railway worker was one of a group of anti-Treaty IRA activists arrested in County Kildare, close to the Free State army camp at the Curragh. The episode is recalled in a book on how the war was fought in County Kildare. In a fascinating chapter poetically entitled, ‘Seven of Mine, said Ireland’, author James Durney tells us that two months before their arrest the Rathbride Column, as they were called, had sent a runaway engine down the main Kildare line.10
The Irish Times, on 23 December 1922, quoting an unofficial briefing by the Free State authorities, reported that the IRA members had attempted to dislocate the Great Southern and Western Railway line using two spare engines to set up an obstruction at Cherryville. This was a major security threat because, as Durney points out: ‘The Cherryville junction was vitally important as it had railway links to west and south.’ The unit was also said to have ambushed Free State troops at the Curragh Siding, on 25 November. There were accusations as well that looting was carried out on shops and other business premises in the locality, although these claims were strongly rejected by surviving relatives and supporters.
Whether as a result of surveillance or inside information, the anti-Treaty unit was traced to a dugout or tunnel underneath the stables of a farmhouse at Moore’s Bridge, about 2.5 kilometres (1.5 miles) from the Curragh camp. The intelligence officer of the group, thirty-one-year-old Thomas Behan was shot dead, during or after his arrest. While it is alleged that he was shot out of hand, the official record states that he was trying to escape from his place of detention.
Having been found guilty by a military court of possessing arms and ammunition, seven members of the group were executed on the morning of 19 December 1922. Three of them were aged between eighteen and nineteen years. Each of them was shot by firing squad, one after the other. They are said to have shaken hands with their executioners, and to have sung The Soldiers’ Song, which has a chorus that begins: ‘Soldiers are we, whose lives are pledged to Ireland.’ This was a clarion-call of the Volunteers in the General Post Office at Easter 1916, and later, in the Irish-language version Amhrán na bhFiann, became Ireland’s national anthem.
Two members of the column were spared: Pat Moore (whose brother, Bryan, was shot as commanding officer of the unit) and Jimmy White (whose brother, Stephen, was executed with the other six). Durney comments that ‘it was probably a step too far to execute two sets of brothers at the one time’. The column had been arrested at the family farmhouse of Bryan Moore and his sister, Annie, who was also taken into custody. Annie’s fiancé, Patrick Nolan, was among those executed. In a state of inconsolable grief, she was taken to the female wing of Mountjoy jail in Dublin. In a last letter to his parents, Nolan wrote: ‘Dearest Mother, there are a few pounds in my suitcase, you can have them, or anything else in the house belonging to me.’ James O’Connor wrote to his mother: ‘I am going to Eternal Glory tomorrow morning with six other true-hearted Irishmen’. It was the largest group to be executed during the Civil War, in which there were seventy-seven official executions. The seven are known as the Grey Abbey Martyrs, and their deaths are still commemorated by republicans today.
Mary Lou has rural connections, with her mother – O’Connor’s niece – coming from the Glen of Aherlow, and the family retains strong Tipperary links. These connections are important in Ireland; her father was born in Dublin, but with roots in County Mayo.11 Mary Lou’s parents separated when she was only nine years old. Such occurrences were relatively rare in the Ireland of that time, a state where divorce was banned until 1995. In the Banotti interview, she said: ‘That was a big disruption in our family life but it was something we got through.’ The children remained with their mother. All of them did well in their careers. Mary Lou told me: ‘We worked hard, that is the ethos of our house. If you wanted to get ahead, you got cracking and there was an expectation that you’d do well at school and work hard. We were just, I suppose, lucky as well.’12 There were four children in the family, two boys and two girls: ‘I’ve an older brother called Bernard, then there’s myself and the set of twins, Patrick and Joanne.’13 A scientist by profession, Joanne hasbeen associated with Éirigí [Rise Up!], a left-republican group that is critical of the Good Friday Agreement and seeks to build a mass radical movement but does not advocate a renewed campaign of violence. Mary Lou says they get on very well: ‘I only have one sister. I love my sister and we’re on great terms. She’s got two lovely children, I’ve got two children. We’re very close, we’re a very, very close family.’14 Mary Lou had just turned twelve when IRA prisoner of the British and abstentionist MP for Fermanagh-South Tyrone, Bobby Sands, died on hunger strike. She was later quoted as saying that this was a ‘road to Damascus’ moment.15 She clearly recalls the ‘sheer brutality’ of the ten hunger strikers being allowed to die: ‘And that was beamed into your front room.’16 She attended a Catholic girls school on nearby Churchtown Road: Notre Dame des Missions, founded in 1953 by the order of nuns which bears that name. In a table of private schools, published in the Irish Independent on 17 September 2014, Notre Dame was listed as charging €4,300 per annum, with day-fees at other private schools in the Dublin area generally ranging from €3,600 to €12,000-plus.17 The points she got in her Leaving Certificate at Notre Dame were insufficient for her purposes, so she repeated the exam the following year at Rathmines Senior College. She then started a four-year course in English Literature at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), no longer seen as a unionist enclave since the Catholic Church lifted its ban in 1970 on members attending the college.18 In tandem with her social background, McDonald’s schooling contributed to the self-confidence that is one of
