THERE WERE police marksmen on balconies adjacent to the Waterfront Hall and a PSNI boat patrolling up and down the river Lagan on Friday night. No sign of them on Saturday. Maybe they wore camouflage, writes GERRY MORIARTY
The so-called loyalist supergrass trial of Mark Haddock et al in the Laganside courts across from the Waterfront was postponed on Friday at the request of the PSNI to ensure loyalists and republicans didn’t get stuck into each other over matters constitutional and ideological.
Admirable forward thinking by the police but they needn’t have bothered. There was no requirement for such sensitivity over Sinn Féin’s first ardfheis north of the partitionist line.
Security wise it was a doddle. Otherwise, it was all rather tame, not at all like some of the incendiary affairs in the bad old days when P O’Neill or some of his IRA associates would address rapturous delegates in closed session.
People often wonder how Peter Robinson and Ian Paisley before him could get on so well with Martin McGuinness, and how the DUP and Sinn Féin – so deeply antipathetic in their political views – could do real business together.
Could it be their innate puritanism? Go along to an SDLP or Ulster Unionist annual conference and – let’s be careful here – you’ll often find as much debate in the bar over a Guinness or Bushmills as you’ll find on the official debating platform.
But the Waterfront was as dry as a Free Presbyterian wedding reception. “The organisers said no drink was to be served,” explained one of the Waterfront staff. It was coffee or Pepsi.
Sinn Féin has its fair share of witty speakers but humour was in short supply over the weekend: perhaps it’s that puritanical streak again. Mary Lou McDonald made an effort with her remark about Sam Maguire shortly returning to Dublin whatever about the Sinn Féin ardfheis – which could be in Killarney next year.
But it fell fairly flat, probably because Kerry TD Martin Ferris – a man who togged out for his county as well as engaging in some nautical arms importation – was not amused.
Still, the childminding centre describing itself as “Long Creche” sparked a smile or two and Tyrone Assembly member Barry McElduff was a good turn shortly before Gerry Adams gave his big speech.
The main talking points at the weekend were the “will they, won’t they run for the presidency?” and the Rev David Latimer. Boy, did the former British army chaplain and the minister of the First Derry Presbyterian Church, within Derry’s wall, make an impression.
Martin McGuinness, he told delegates, was “one of the true great leaders of modern times”. The delegates liked that. McGuinness liked it too and on Saturday he delivered a reciprocal hug-a-unionist speech.
The Sinn Féin love-in with unionism even went so far as the Derrylin/Kinawley cumann from Co Fermanagh proposing the harmonisation of all public holidays across the island. So, an Orange Order parade past the GPO next July 12th? That would be a riot.
As for the presidency Gerry Adams was in tease mode.
“In my view Sinn Féin should support the nomination of a candidate to be president of Ireland,” he said, but it would be up to the incoming ardchomhairle to decide.
A few of us were standing in the foyer of the Waterfront when the (alleged) mastermind behind the (suspected) IRA £26.5 million Northern Bank robbery walked by. “Hallos,” were exchanged.
“He’d be a good man for the presidency,” said a colleague, out of his earshot of course. “He’d sort out the banks, and maybe the economy as well.”