When the leader of Sinn Féin walked through the streets of New York calling on England to “get out of Ireland”, she forgot to include an asterisk.
Mary-Lou McDonald, the Dublin leader of the party, is most definitely capable of delivering a speech in the Dáil, often calling out the blindspots of her opponents in government, whilst her own foibles more often remain in the shadows.
Her march through New York on St. Patrick’s Day 2019 was text-book marketing for fundraisers throughout the US, holding a banner that shifted the news cycle and presumably more than a few dollars towards “Friends of Sinn Féin USA Inc”, the party’s stateside fundraising arm.
LISTEN ¦ Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald criticised after posing with 'England get out of Ireland' banner at St Patrick's Day parade in New York Cityhttps://t.co/etwLkw8xdz pic.twitter.com/mrmOBacVfL
— U105 Radio (@U105radio) March 18, 2019
The same group paid for recent advertising in several major US newspapers, including the New York Times and Washington Post, calling for a referendum on Irish Unity as soon as possible.
What was lost on many Irish Americans however, swept up as many are in enthusiasm for Irish unity, was the reality of Sinn Féin’s dealings back home, where rhetoric about getting Westminster out of Irish politics is more swagger than substance.
The party that for so long refused to take seats in Westminster, that decried English interference on the island of Ireland, has since gone cap in hand to the British government begging for the legalisation of abortion in Northern Ireland.
Such is their zeal for abortion, something they won’t speak of in US circles, that Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O’Neill signed a letter urging British Prime Minister, Theresa May, to impose direct rule by legalising abortion for unborn babies in the north of Ireland.
Who would have thought that Irish “freedom fighters” would request their own country’s children be threatened before birth by a British Prime Minister?
But such are the dizzying times we live in, where denouncing English occupation is married with pleas for the killing of preborn children by that same foreign power.
Sinn Féin both pleaded for and warmly welcomed the introduction of abortion in Northern Ireland by Westminster MPs in 2019, following hot on the heels of abortion being legalised in the south the year before, another initiative endorsed by the party.
Both laws allow for the late-term abortion of unborn babies, some with disabilities, but that does not stop their spin-doctors insisting that a new, unified Ireland will be “inclusive and equal”.
The thought of a referendum on Irish unity rightly spells excitement in the hearts of Irish nationalists at home and abroad, but Sinn Féin’s duplicity in telling Irish America only what it wants to hear is stomach-churning.