Sinn Féin hung association out to dry

On Gaelic Games: There is an irony in the timing of Sunday's hunger strike rally at Casement Park in Belfast.

Five years ago this month the then GAA president Seán McCague announced he was embarking on the final set of consultations that would bring about the end of Rule 21, the GAA's controversial ban on members of the security forces joining the association.

That consultative process illustrated the extent to which the GAA in the North was a prisoner of its own history as well as that of the community at large.

Although several officials in the cross-border counties conceded the rule had outlived whatever limited use it had ever fulfilled, few of them felt able to acknowledge in public that the time for change had arrived. McCague's achievement was to persuade those counties to allow everyone else to express their opinions without feeling constrained by the views of the Ulster delegates.

A number of influences were at play. The GAA knew once recruitment for the new police service began it couldn't be seen to stand in the way of nationalist involvement. Secondly the association had been informed by Archbishop Brady that the Catholic Church would shortly be making clear its opposition to the ban, all of which would leave the GAA as the only major organisation in the nationalist community taking the same line as Sinn Féin on the issue.

Opposition to the reform had been confined largely to Sinn Féin influences within the association. The party's unease with the move on Rule 21 reflected its likely isolation on the policing issue. In the past republican influence on the question had been strong simply because the views of the six cross-border counties carried sufficient weight among the remaining counties to veto any progress.

There are obvious reasons Sinn Féin has found the northern GAA membership such fertile ground. GAA membership marked out individuals in Northern Ireland as targets and many were horribly murdered during the course of The Troubles, just as other members were themselves the perpetrators of murder. These experiences were generally taken as conferring on the cross-border counties a uniquely authoritative perspective on the ban and that view was accepted as the association's until the Belfast Agreement triggered the momentum towards final deletion.

I remember a delegate from Munster saying once that whereas he saw no purpose in Rule 21, the fact that - like the old Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution - the Ulster counties derived some comfort from the provision was good enough for him. McCague himself had been loyal to the Ulster view of Rule 21 until he believed retention of the provision had become untenable.

The interface between the GAA and The Troubles was always awkward - to put it euphemistically - for the association. From coping with murder to the delicate balance required in accommodating the widely diverse political opinions of its membership the GAA walked a tightrope for 30 years.

As this happened the association south of the border became more and more of a purely sporting organisation. Just as the IRA's campaign of violence effectively killed the desire for the old unquestioning ideal of 32-county reunification, so traditional nationalist rhetoric - of the type once common within the GAA - faded as a form of discourse, leaving the games as the main vehicle of cultural expression. In the North the games were the most obvious expression but the GAA in Ulster continued to stand for all the other cultural aspects of nationalism.

Into this world of conflicting interpretations came the H Block hunger strikes. One of the nuances of the controversy that arose over the use of Casement Park for Sunday's rally against the express wishes of Central Council was that the GAA of all organisations has no reason to want to remember what happened in the dreadful summer of 1981.

The association was in turmoil over the hunger strikes. There were members who wanted to distance themselves as far as possible from the violence and vehemently opposed militant republicanism and on the other hand those who left in disgust at what they saw as the failure to support the prisoners in Long Kesh.

Nearly 10 clubs were disbanded, unable or unwilling to sustain themselves in the circumstances.

Many of the prisoners were GAA members and followers of Gaelic games. One of those who died, Kevin Lynch, had captained Derry to an under-16 All-Ireland hurling title and the hurling club in Dungiven is now named after him.

All the while the GAA held firm to the view that political demonstrations would not be allowed at its venues. Gerry Fagan, then Armagh county secretary, cleared H Block protesters off the pitch at half-time saying that they had no right to use the ground for that purpose. Similar scenes happened elsewhere.

When approached for permission to allow Casement Park to be used for last Sunday's 25th anniversary rally Central Council declined. It was important that the GAA distance itself from an obviously political event but impossible that the Antrim County Board, itself split on the issue, would tell 20,000 people to go away.

It has been pointed out the 20th anniversary rally was also held in Casement Park but Central Council didn't authorise the use back then either; its permission was just never sought.

The onus was on the organisers not to put Antrim and the GAA in that position but there was slim chance of that happening. To add insult to injury, Sinn Féin's Dublin MEP Mary Lou McDonald thanked the Antrim County Board for the use of the venue.

By using Casement Park against the GAA's wishes Sinn Féin has, not for the first time, hung the association out to dry by feeding the perception that it is republicanism at play and reinforcing an already negative view of the venue, which is already remembered by many unionists as the place where the bodies of the two British soldiers murdered during the Gibraltar Three funerals were dumped.

Although there has always been an overlap, republicanism is not the dominant political allegiance of the GAA. In the past the sensitivities of republicans have been respected in stances like the maintenance of Rule 21 for longer than it served any purpose - even cosmetic.

It's a pity now with that at times terrible history mercifully receding, that the sensitivities of the GAA weren't respected in a reciprocal fashion.