Shane Ross: Sinn Féin should buckle up for revelations in two new ‘insider’ books

Opinion by Shane Ross•

Next month, two women steeped in republican history will break cover. Máiría Cahill and Aoife Moore are releasing long-awaited books.

In Rough Beast: My Story and the Reality of Sinn Féin, which will be published on September 23, Cahill, a grand-niece of the most militant of IRA leaders, Joe Cahill, will tell her tale of “the reality of Sinn Fein”, including her despicable treatment by the Provisional IRA following her sexual abuse by a leading member.

Moore, the niece of Patrick Doherty, an unarmed marcher murdered by British troops on Bloody Sunday, promises to break new ground by explaining the inner workings of the IRA and Sinn Féin.

I will be reviewing Moore’s book, The Long Game: Inside Sinn Féin, which will be published on September 7, in a fortnight.

Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald, thankfully recuperating after an operation in June, will not be looking forward to reading either book. She should fasten her safety belt.

Máiría Cahill is republican royalty. A grand-niece of an IRA gun-runner, she was reared in the 1980s and 90s, deep in West Belfast’s republican heartland.

Her book will expose not only her sexual abuse by a senior republican, but also the subsequent cover-up, lies and kangaroo court she endured.

After a long, traumatic battle, she was vindicated by a report from Keir Starmer QC, the man who today looks destined to be the next British prime minister. She has received apologies for her treatment from the chief constable of the PSNI, Northern Ireland’s DPP and the Guardian newspaper.

Today, Cahill’s name still prompts vitriolic mutterings in the darker recesses of provisional republicanism.

Sinn Féin spinners fear her utterings and her articles; they ritually praise her “bravery”, but still seek to undermine her version of events with whispered words. Her book will resurrect unwelcome and unanswered questions about Sinn Féin’s attitude to women, rape, abortion, the murder of Jean McConville and kangaroo courts.

It will turn the spotlight on McDonald’s blind support for Gerry Adams’s weak defence of Sinn Féin behaviour in Cahill’s case and in other unspeakable episodes. Cahill’s authentic republican DNA ensures she has few credible opponents from within when speaking about Sinn Féin.

​Moore’s republican experience is very different. It is defined by the British army’s murder of her uncle, Patrick Doherty.

Moore, a journalist in the Republic, has already written about her uncle’s murder in bittersweet terms. In the Irish Examiner last year, she related how “this intolerable cruelty, [the murder] this horrific violence which happened 19 years before I was born, has cast a shadow over my life, moulded me in its image, and made me who I am today. It inspired me to pursue truth for a living”.

She described herself as coming from “a Bloody Sunday family”, how as a child she would march in Derry every year in memory of Bloody Sunday victims.

Refreshingly, she ended the same article with the powerful words: “I have decided not to hate, as my uncle Paddy told his children before he was taken from them, ‘Hate eats at your heart’.”

We shall see from her book whether hate eats at her heart.

The value of The Long Game: Inside Sinn Féin, will be measured by this yardstick: does she baulk at leading the readers into the darker, secret, inner workings of Sinn Féin? And does she take advantage of her republican connections to deliver real insights into the thoughts and deeds of paramilitary leaders like Martin McGuinness?

As a member of one of the Bloody Sunday families, will she unmask and share hitherto closely guarded details of the shock removal of Sinn Féin’s Martina Anderson and her family from their unhealthy domination of Sinn Féin in Derry?

​It will be important to know whether Sinn Féin allowed Moore access to its MLAs, TDs and former IRA leaders. Or were party members muzzled, as they were last year when I sought their input into my biography of McDonald?

Fortunately, in my book, many broke ranks and freely spoke off the record. Moore’s Bloody Sunday family status and republican street cred will hopefully have enabled her to gain easier access to those closely involved. Let us hope she took advantage — and that she shares it with us.

Elsewhere in the same Irish Examiner piece, she offered a hint of her own view of Sinn Féin, declaring that “far from choosing a life swallowed by the hatred of what the British government did to my uncle, my family and my city, I am probably an example of what a ‘ceasefire baby’ should be”.

Decoded, it suggests a Derry nationalist who favours the peace process, but feels free to criticise the evils of the past. We will soon know.

“Ceasefire babies” may signal the birth of a new republican agenda, a generation that pursues housing before history.

Nevertheless, that agenda would surely include denouncing Sinn Féin’s shameful treatment of Máiría Cahill, which continues to this day.

Cahill had several confrontations with McDonald, some in private. If her book reveals fresh snippets from their dialogue, it could be explosive.

Sinn Féin’s response to both books will be fascinating. Their instinct to rubbish messengers delivering unwelcome messages will not wash. Attempts to ignore either book will be seen as evasion.

Whatever the party says, both authors are entitled to write on a subject that has brought life-changing personal experiences for them.

Sinn Féin is a subject on which both have a right to be heard.