Michelle O’Neill’s walk into history via Stormont’s imposing staircase presented an image of ownership and intent, expressed outwardly with a warm smile and a sober, beautifully tailored business suit. She could have opted for a blast of festive colour; instead she chose navy, signifying neutrality in a region cursed with colour-coded “patriotic” flags and emblems. The formidable high heels put her eye to eye with anyone tempted to look down on her.
A working-class nationalist woman, once shamed for having a baby at 16 in a violent society riven by political and religious zealotry, was now its political leader.
The past couple of years – not coincidentally when the DUP was public enemy number one – have seen her lead a warm and easeful greeting to King Charles during his visit to Northern Ireland after his mother’s death and her unapologetic attendance at his coronation, telling the Belfast Telegraph that “obviously”, she wanted to be there, that “we live in changing times and it was the respectful thing to do, to be here for all the people at home, [to] who[m] I had said I would be a First Minister for all”.
She recently broke a taboo by swapping her Sinn Féin bodyguards for PSNI officers. For a party whose paramilitary wing was responsible for the deaths of 277 RUC officers and serious injuries to thousands, that represents a striking move for everyone involved.
If there is an afterlife, John Hume was surely observing Saturday’s speeches with a wry smile. O’Neill referred to the state as both “the North” and “Northern Ireland” and said people could be “British or Irish, or both or neither”, doing as the Belfast Agreement intended, at last knocking the sharp edges off the identity issue. “Our allegiances are equally legitimate. Let’s walk this two-way street and meet one another halfway”, she said in words that could have been Hume’s.
We could do that. When GAA pundit and barrister Joe Brolly tweeted to his 222,500 followers on Sunday afternoon that “the Irish media is reacting to yesterday’s events as though they are a defeat”, O’Neill’s words weren’t front and centre.
Can he have been referring to the Sunday papers? The front page of the Sunday Independent, Ireland’s top selling Sunday paper, was dominated by a cheerful picture of O’Neill with a hopeful headline quote – “We can build a better future” – and an Ireland Thinks poll which found that nearly 8 in 10 voters in Ireland welcomed her election. The main picture and story on the front of the Sunday Times Irish edition was also about O’Neill. On Saturday, RTÉ had covered events live, describing Stormont as “the epicentre of a political earthquake”.
But Brolly’s message was about more than Irish media failings as he perceived them. “As usual, northern nationalists are lesser”, he added. “I read all the papers this morning and it was left to the UK press to applaud this transformation”. Emma Little-Pengelly and the DUP were more gracious, he said.
It wasn’t clear what he meant by “the Irish media”, but many followers were clear about what they thought he meant. “That’s because the partitionists down there see the writing on the wall”. “West Brits is too kind a term for them”. “Free state elites are totally loosing it…”. “Some of the commentary in the south is more in tune with the TUV”. “Partitionists living in a state of denial”. “Blue shirt media in a frenzy”.
Brolly knows this island. He clearly senses a lack of enthusiasm for nationalist aspirations, despite what the polls about support for a united Ireland tell us. But if the intention of such language is to speed the slackers in the Republic towards a united Ireland, it’s hardly the most persuasive approach.
Like it or not, much of the wariness of Sinn Féin is down to its connection with the IRA’s 30-year murder campaign and whether it can be trusted in sensitive offices of state. It’s less than two years since O’Neill said there was “no alternative” to the IRA’s campaign. It means people are entitled to be wary.
Stormont since the Belfast Agreement has seen many other high days of wide smiles and optimism, but the staggering fact is that it hasn’t functioned for over 40 per cent of its existence. O’Neill was First Minister in waiting for two years because the DUP wielded its veto to shut down the institutions. The institutions had been functioning for a bare two years before that, following a three-year shutdown after a Sinn Féin walkout.
But this is different, say the optimists. Both O’Neill and Little-Pengelly, the (unelected) DUP Deputy First Minister, came of age with the Belfast Agreement. Pictured together, the two look bright-eyed and almost newly minted for this era, yet each has been embedded in the heart of the system for many years, including times of deep dysfunction. Both must take their instructions from party leaders and others who are not in Stormont.
The cynical lesson to come out of all those years of shamefully wasted time is how powersharing has disadvantaged the moderate parties to the benefit of the hardliners. Still, on Saturday, O’Neill said something that bypassed the social media warriors. We can do two things at once, she said. “We can have powersharing, we can make it stable, we can work together every day in terms of public services, and whilst we also pursue our legitimate aspirations ...”
And, she did not add, no one will be pushed before they are ready.