The first sentence from the first speaker set the theme for the day.
“Change is happening all around us,” announced Sinn Féin’s national chairman, Declan Kearney, who would be back at the podium a short while later with another meaningless wipe of the republican Flannel.
“We are the people we have been waiting for.”
Everyone in the RDS had a great welcome for themselves after Declan apprised them of their own arrival – apart from the people attending the tattoo convention in the hall next door. All they had been waiting for was a good time which they seemed to have once the doors opened.
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Back at the Sinn Féin ardfheis, delegates were in terrific form because now they finally knew where they had been all their lives (waiting for themselves). Their relaxed good spirits lasted all day and into the early evening when Mary Lou McDonald took possession of the republican Flannel, lathering them and her wider television audience in the sort of soft-soaping political fuzziness which wouldn’t be out of place at a Fianna Fáil or a Fine Gael jamboree.
The Sinn Féin leader delivered her keynote address standing on a famous landmark which is extraordinarily popular with party leaders from across the political spectrum, from “the threshold of a new era”.
They all like this spot because they can view the sunrise from it, just as Mary Lou did on Saturday evening.
Collapsing her telescope, she trumpeted: “A new dawn is breaking in Ireland.”
And just in time too for her party’s latest enterprise.
“Together, we seize the day.”
Crucially, she was also able to issue an important clarification following Declan Kearney’s earlier assertion that “change” is happening everywhere.
“This change is no longer on some distant horizon,” she revealed. “Change is now on our doorstep.” Right beside the threshold.
[ Analysis: Strength of Sinn Féin position evident in confidence of its leadersOpens in new window ]
Just in case the “Time for Change” theme went over peoples’ heads because they were getting over waiting for themselves all their lives and not knowing it, Mary Lou managed to slip the vital word into her script 18 times, by our count.
So well done to Sinead and Eoin, who work for Sinn Féin in Leinster House and were providing commentary for the party’s online broadcast of the proceedings, for getting their big prediction right. “So Mary Lou will be taking about how, North and South, how people are telling us it’s time for change,” said Eoin.
Hope and opportunity
Her message will be one of “hope and opportunity” and not a message of “what’s wrong”, said Sinead, because Mary Lou is “very much focused on those future generations”.
She was right.
A big part of the Sinn Féin leader’s keynote speech was aimed at young people. Young people who are “brimming with talent, ideas and energy” and yet will probably be the first generation worse-off than their parents. “That’s not right,” she said. Given the chance, young people “will transform Ireland”.
She was speaking directly and powerfully to a disaffected demographic, albeit one which wasn’t likely to be watching a political party conference on Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) television of a Saturday evening, with carefully honed, persuasive words to be assembled and packaged into perfect social media clips for later consumption.
Nothing new here.
Once upon a time, high-ranking politicians couldn’t open their mouths without saying “our young people are our greatest national asset”, until they sold them down the river.
Now it’s Sinn Féin’s time to butter up the youth – their greatest voting asset, according to the polls.
The other big change on the way, according to the party, is Irish unity. “We live in the end days of partition”, asserted Mary Lou, standing on the threshold of the doorstep which is itself on “the cusp of a historic opportunity”.
The Government must start planning for a united Ireland because “if the Government refuses to hear tomorrow coming, if it does not establish a Citizens’ Assembly, Sinn Féin in Government will”. In the meantime, Mary Lou is going to seize the day because not only can she see the new dawn breaking, she can hear it too.
“The days of treading water are over,” she warned the Coalition.
Maybe for Micheál and Leo and Eamon, but for Mary Lou and Sinn Féin.
This is the sweetest of times for the party – riding high in the polls and with every chance of reaching the Holy Grail of Government at the next general election. But they might need the help of a fair wind so this is not the time for making big waves.
On Saturday, the rhetoric was impressive but very deliberately fashioned not to rock the boat. It was Sinn Féin’s steady-as-she-goes ardfheis – the party is very clearly and determinedly in the days of treading water.
Sweetness and light almost everywhere. Politicians and delegates full of bonhomie. We ran into Waterford’s David Cullinane, tipped for the health portfolio should all go to plan. Also seen as something of a political hard man.
Nationalist knick-knacks
Brimming with smiles, he shook hands with us in the manner of a senior FF or FG TD, personally welcoming a member of the fourth estate to the conference as if he owned the place.
There isn’t even much fun any more in perusing the merchandise in the Sinn Féin shop at the ardfheis.
The shock value went away a long time ago with the removal of items glorifying the indiscriminate acts of violence and murders perpetrated by the IRA on innocent fellow Irishmen and women. If delegates seeking to purchase a memento of their day were successful in beating their way past the journalists photographing the nationalist knick-knacks and non-offensive clothing while scouring the stall for Provo abominations, they could have brought home a Christmas jumper emblazoned with a cheery “It’s beginning to look a lot like a United Ireland” or “Tiochfaidh ar latte” mug.
In the afternoon, former leader Gerry Adams signed copies of his latest opus. He was in huge demand for selfies and group photographs, and was more than happy to oblige.
Naturally, because it takes one to know one, he shook hands with Shane Ross aka Winston Churchtown, the notice box’s notice box.
The former minister, who has caused conniptions in Cabra and in the wider Sinn Féin with his book on Mary Lou McDonald, was walking around looking for somebody to insult him. But in this new dispensation, the militantly nice Shinners simply smiled and ignored him.
Nobody had a go at him?
“Only one person gave me abuse,” he confessed. “A woman came up to me and said: ‘You have a neck like a jockey’s b*****ks.’ That was it.”
Only the one.
Winston sounded disappointed.
