When hope & history rhyme

History says, don’t hope 
On this side of the grave. 
But then, once in a lifetime 
The longed-for tidal wave 
Of justice can rise up, 
And hope and history rhyme. 

(Seamus Heaney – The Cure at Troy) 

 On 3 February 2024, Michelle O’Neill took up her place as the First Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly. She is the first Republican and only the second woman in history to hold this position. She had been First Minister Designate since May 2022, when the electorate returned 27 Sinn Fein Members of the Assembly, with DUP coming second with 25. The Alliance increased its members to 17, with 9 members from the Ulster Unionist Party and 8 members from the SDLP also being elected. But for nearly two years, the DUP has refused to take up its position as Deputy First Minister, which meant that under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement the Assembly could not sit. 

The damage this caused to the social and economic fabric of Northern Ireland was palpable with public and health services starved of funds and political direction. But the DUP ignored this reality and its effects on a significant number of its own supporters. Instead, it continued to try and play the Orange hand and refused to accept that the majority of those in Northern Ireland are no longer willing to be dictated to by religious and political ideologies that do not respect equality, diversity and a path that may lead to Irish unity. 

The majority in the Northern Ireland, and indeed in Ireland, have shown that they respect equal marriage, the rights of the LGBTQ+ community and have welcomed asylum seekers and migrants from a large range of countries. They are also no longer willing to be labelled by the British and others by their religious affiliation or slotted into one or other “warring community” with Britain playing the so-called “honest broker”. 

The withdrawal by the DUP from the Northern Ireland Assembly was one final attempt to derail the gains of the Good Friday Agreement, a settlement that they never voted for as a party. 

But, as the First Minister stated at the weekend “because of the Good Friday Agreement that old state that (we) were born into is gone. A more democratic, more equal society has been created making this a better place for everyone. 

This place we call home, this place we love, North of Ireland or Northern Ireland, where you can be British, Irish, both or none is a changing portrait.  

Yesterday has gone. My appointment reflects that change.” 

Her role as First Minister will be assisted by the fact that Sinn Fein, the official opposition in the Dail in Ireland, are now that most popular party with the electorate in the South. Its leader, Mary Lou McDonald TD’s position has also been clearly strengthened with the public with her strong position on the housing crisis in Ireland, her progressive policies on a number of other social issues and her very clear condemnation of the actions of the government of Israel in Gaza. The action being taken by the UK and others in relation to UNWRA and the punishment of the Palestinians, as a community and a people seeking self-determination, resonates widely throughout the island of Ireland. 

The fact that Michelle O’Neill is now taking up her rightful place is also a culmination of a struggle that started most recently with the Civil Rights Movement of the late 1960s, when campaigners highlighted the stark inequalities in housing, access to employment and public services and political representation. It continued throughout the next three decades when these inequalities were magnified by the presence of the British Army and its collusion with Loyalist paramilitaries. The use of rubber and plastic bullets, strip searching and shoot to kill policies, paid perjurers and Diplock Courts added to the discrimination and anger. But it also lead to the emergence of community leaders who increasingly stood for and achieved political office.  

Some of these were present as Michelle O’Neill took up her role as First Minister. Sitting watching were Gerry Adams, who was elected as President of Sinn Fein in 1983 and who survived assassination attempts and a Broadcasting Ban to become an MP elected to the Westminster parliament and a TD in the Dail. He also led Sinn Fein to become a political contender both north and south of the Irish border until his retirement in 2020. Alex Maskey was also there. The first Sinn Fein Councillor to be elected in 1982 to Belfast City Council, where he faced jeers, foot stamping and shouting by the overwhelming Unionist council, whenever he spoke as an elected representative. Especially when he had the temerity to speak in Irish. He also survived three assassination attempts by Loyalist paramilitaries and was an elected representative until this weekend, when his term as Speaker of the Assembly came to an end. Also in the front row was Martina Anderson, who spent 13 years in British jails whilst a young woman and was the focus of campaigns to stop the abusive use of strip searching against Irish women prisoners. On release, she went on to be an elected representative in the Assembly and also the European Parliament.  

The significance of such a day cannot be overestimated. This is the culmination of a struggle for parity of esteem that goes back decades, taking a radically different turn in the late 1960s when the Civil Rights movement was met with violent resistance. As a consequence of that, the long-term ambition of an agreed Ireland went in two directions. John Hume and the SDLP chose one path whilst others such as the Hunger Strikers represented another. However, with the election of Bobby Sands as MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone in 1981, the groundwork was laid for the two paths converging as one. Throughout the 1980s and particularly the 1990s, the fight for Irish unity came to be defined by the ballot box, more than anything else.

That in turn led to The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 in which Hume, Adams and Martin McGuinness played pivotal roles. So too the likes of Seamus Mallon and on the British side, Mo Mowlan, working tirelessly to push a peace deal across the line. Martin McGuinness, in particular, went on to be elected as both an MP and an MLA and to serve as Deputy First Minister in the Assembly until shortly before his untimely death. Michelle O’Neill has now assumed this role as hope and history begin to rhyme and it was fitting that he was able to gaze down on her from his portrait as she took up her position as First Minister.

Above all else, that captures a sense of how much the portrait of politics has changed upon the island of Ireland.