‘People have moved on’. But can Sinn Féin really shrug off the past?
Despite its success in the Irish elections, the party is still tainted by association with crimes committed during the Troubles
O land of password, handgrip, wink and nod,
Of open minds as open as a trap,
Where tongues lie coiled, as under flames lie wicks,
Where half of us, as in a wooden horse,
Were cabin’d and confined like wily Greeks,
Besieged within the siege, whispering morse.
In the poem Whatever You Say, Say Nothing, Seamus Heaney immortalised the code of discretion, of the silences, winks and nods that defined the Troubles.
The family of Jean McConville, a Belfast mother of 10 who was abducted and murdered by the IRA in 1972, has spent almost five decades trying to crack the omertà. It is an ongoing struggle – and Sinn Féin’s triumph in Ireland’s general election last weekend suggests time is not
