In North Belfast, a man, Stephen Ogilvie, was set upon in a depraved knife attack, left fighting for his life, his body broken by brutality that should stir every heart that beats with the blood of Ireland.
Yet where was the great outpouring of communal grief from those who once walked with the people? Where stood Sinn Féin, self-proclaimed guardians of Nationalist Ireland and the leader of the Irish Opposition in the Oireachtas, in this hour of sorrow?
No vigil lit the night for the victim. No solemn gathering of the faithful bore witness to his suffering. Instead, their voices rose swift and loud, not first in mourning for the injured son of the community, but in condemnation of those who dared protest the failures that left such evil unchecked.
This is the measure of their pathos. Once, Sinn Féin moved among the Nationalist people as one with them, finger upon the pulse of every grievance, every slight, every wound inflicted by foreign misrule. They spoke the language of resistance. They embodied the unyielding spirit that refused to bend the knee to British administration or to forget the sacred claim of Ireland to her own. From the streets and the homes of the dispossessed they drew their strength, and in return they gave voice to the voiceless.
Today, that once proud Movement has been transformed. It sits in the seats of power under the British dispensation, administering the very system it once vowed to dismantle. Michelle O’Neill, First Minister in the North East of our Island, and her colleagues direct the machinery of a government whose ultimate sovereign remains Westminster. They police the peace process, uphold the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement, and most bitterly lecture their own people on “racism” while a Nationalist community reels from horror and are fearful to leave their homes.
The tragedy is not merely one of omission. It is one of betrayal. The party that once scorned collaboration now finds itself the willing partner in British rule, its ministers signing the orders, its spokesmen prioritising the sensitivities of outsiders over the security and dignity of those they were elected to defend.
They praise the courage of bystanders who intervened, and rightly so, yet shrink from rallying their own in defence of the victim’s right to live without fear in his own streets. They condemn the riots that followed, yet offer no robust vision for restoring order rooted in Irish sovereignty and communal solidarity. Their rhetoric rings hollow, swift to label protest as “thuggery,” slow to acknowledge the deeper failures of integration, policing, and governance under the present dispensation.
How far have they travelled from the Republicanism of old! The men and women of 1916, of the Tan War, did not seek comfortable places at the table of the conqueror. They sought the Irish Republic.
Sinn Féin today manages British rule to the detriment of the very Nationalist communities that lifted them up. Housing shortages, knife crime, the erosion of cultural identity, these press hardest upon the people they claim to represent, yet the response is managerial, conciliatory, distant from the living pulse.
The revolutionary fire has cooled into the ashes of British administration. They have exchanged the discomfort of principle for the warmth of office. Compatriots, true Republicanism demand more. It demands that we measure every party, every leader, by whether they advance the cause of an Ireland free from the curse of mass migration or merely accommodate themselves to Irelands latest division.
Sinn Féin’s failure to stand visibly and unequivocally with the victim in his hour of need reveals the depth of that accommodation. The people remember. They see. And in God’s good time, they will judge them at the ballot box
SF/PIRA in lefty mode
Yet where was the great outpouring of communal grief from those who once walked with the people? Where stood Sinn Féin, self-proclaimed guardians of Nationalist Ireland and the leader of the Irish Opposition in the Oireachtas, in this hour of sorrow?
No vigil lit the night for the victim. No solemn gathering of the faithful bore witness to his suffering. Instead, their voices rose swift and loud, not first in mourning for the injured son of the community, but in condemnation of those who dared protest the failures that left such evil unchecked.
This is the measure of their pathos. Once, Sinn Féin moved among the Nationalist people as one with them, finger upon the pulse of every grievance, every slight, every wound inflicted by foreign misrule. They spoke the language of resistance. They embodied the unyielding spirit that refused to bend the knee to British administration or to forget the sacred claim of Ireland to her own. From the streets and the homes of the dispossessed they drew their strength, and in return they gave voice to the voiceless.
Today, that once proud Movement has been transformed. It sits in the seats of power under the British dispensation, administering the very system it once vowed to dismantle. Michelle O’Neill, First Minister in the North East of our Island, and her colleagues direct the machinery of a government whose ultimate sovereign remains Westminster. They police the peace process, uphold the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement, and most bitterly lecture their own people on “racism” while a Nationalist community reels from horror and are fearful to leave their homes.
The tragedy is not merely one of omission. It is one of betrayal. The party that once scorned collaboration now finds itself the willing partner in British rule, its ministers signing the orders, its spokesmen prioritising the sensitivities of outsiders over the security and dignity of those they were elected to defend.
They praise the courage of bystanders who intervened, and rightly so, yet shrink from rallying their own in defence of the victim’s right to live without fear in his own streets. They condemn the riots that followed, yet offer no robust vision for restoring order rooted in Irish sovereignty and communal solidarity. Their rhetoric rings hollow, swift to label protest as “thuggery,” slow to acknowledge the deeper failures of integration, policing, and governance under the present dispensation.
How far have they travelled from the Republicanism of old! The men and women of 1916, of the Tan War, did not seek comfortable places at the table of the conqueror. They sought the Irish Republic.
Sinn Féin today manages British rule to the detriment of the very Nationalist communities that lifted them up. Housing shortages, knife crime, the erosion of cultural identity, these press hardest upon the people they claim to represent, yet the response is managerial, conciliatory, distant from the living pulse.
The revolutionary fire has cooled into the ashes of British administration. They have exchanged the discomfort of principle for the warmth of office. Compatriots, true Republicanism demand more. It demands that we measure every party, every leader, by whether they advance the cause of an Ireland free from the curse of mass migration or merely accommodate themselves to Irelands latest division.
Sinn Féin’s failure to stand visibly and unequivocally with the victim in his hour of need reveals the depth of that accommodation. The people remember. They see. And in God’s good time, they will judge them at the ballot box
SF/PIRA in lefty mode
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