Mick Clifford: MacSwiney’s legacy is being stolen by Sinn Féin
![Mick Clifford: MacSwiney’s legacy is being stolen by Sinn Féin Mick Clifford: MacSwiney’s legacy is being stolen by Sinn Féin](/cms_media/module_img/7428/3714118_25_articlesmall_3._20Lord_20Mayor_20Terence_20MacSwiney_20in_20his_20robe_1_.jpg)
Terence MacSwiney doesn’t deserve to have the movement he was part of linked to one which engaged over decades in organised crime, the imposition of summary justice, the relocation of favoured paedophiles, the post-conflict bank robberies and grudge murders.
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![Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald at Ballyseedy. Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald at Ballyseedy.](https://www.irishexaminer.com/cms_media/module_img/7428/3714112_25_articleinline_Ballyseedy_20Mary_20Lou_20McDonald_201.jpg)
Last March, on the 100th anniversary of Ballyseedy, outside Tralee, where eight anti-treaty volunteers were blown up by pro-treaty forces, Sinn Féin wanted to have their leader speak at the official event. When told it was to be non-political, they held their own separate event, at which Mary Lou McDonald gave her address. As with all of this stuff engaged in by the party, the past is cast in a way that best suits the imperatives of the present.
![The funeral procession of Terence MacSwiney. Picture: Cork public Museum. The funeral procession of Terence MacSwiney. Picture: Cork public Museum.](https://www.irishexaminer.com/cms_media/module_img/4196/2098472_52_articleinline_3_1_2_.jpg)
The 1981 hunger strikes have a major resonance with the self-styled Republican moment because it sparked the beginning of Sinn Féin’s political ascendancy. Bobby Sands is the iconic figure from the event, having been elected an MP on his deathbed and being the first to die. At the forthcoming Cork event, Sinn Féin is seeking to link MacSwiney’s self-sacrifice with that of Sands, connecting the respective conflicts in which the two men were involved. Both certainly shared supreme courage and a selfless disposition, but beyond that they were drawn from different worlds and lived at different times in incomparable circumstances.
![Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald TD at the bust of Terence MacSwiney outside Cork City Hall. Sinn Féin President Mary Lou McDonald TD at the bust of Terence MacSwiney outside Cork City Hall.](https://www.irishexaminer.com/cms_media/module_img/7428/3714115_25_articleinline_Terence_20MacSwiney_20.jpeg)
At least Sands was drawn from the ranks of the Provos. MacSwiney, by contrast, was part of a national movement at the fag end of the Imperial age, fighting for a form of self-determination at a time when violence was the primary means of resolving international disputes. It undoubtedly had overwhelming popular support as expressed in the general election of 1918. That is a different planet from the Provos’ decades-long campaign to kill anybody whose death might advance the hopeless cause of a united Ireland.