A week after the internet was awash with condemnation of the Orange Order’s sectarian celebrations of the 12th of July, Unionists believe that they have found similarly sectarian celebrations in the form of Limerick’s post All Ireland Hurling Final party.
A video posted by Sinn Fein’s Maurice Quinlivan shows the crowd at Pairc na nGael singing ‘Sean South of Garryowen’, in honour of South, who was killed in 1956 during an IRA attack on Brookesborough RUC Barracks in South Fermanagh on New Years Eve 1956, around the beginning of the IRA Border Campaign.
The post was quickly condemned by Protestant politicians, while many on the Irish Left condemned South for being a ‘fascist’, ‘bigot’, ‘right wing’ and ‘Catholic’ as well as ‘anti Semitic’.
The bizarre thing about the video and subsequent backlash has been the fact that the video was uploaded by Maurice Quinlivan.
Quinlivan was one of the TDs who were ringleaders of a social media attack on Catholics who publicly prayed the Rosary in Limerick earlier this year.
Catholics had organised a Men’s Rosary in Limerick, moving from their usual spot to another one because of street works. Pro abortion groups then organised a rally, loosely connected to the murder of a young woman in Laois that same week. As it turned out, many of the signs at the ‘Vigil’ were actually pro abortion ones, with no connection to the tragic murder.
Many in the pro abortion group spent the entire Rosary Rally delivering horrific sectarian abuse towards the Catholics, captured in footage that would make the Orange Order wince. Labour Party Councillor Conor Sheehan claimed that the men were praying there ‘specifically to disrupt the demo on gender violence’. This quickly debunked claim was not enough to convince authorities to take action against the Councillor, despite a flurry of official complaints to the Ombudsman and to the Standards in Public Office.
Maurice Quinlivan was amongst those who joined in with the Twitter onslaught, claiming that the men had ‘raised their PA’ ‘despite being asked to move’, yet footage clearly showed the pro aborts trying to drown out the prayers, not the other way around.
In one clip, an American pro abort can be heard drowning out the prayers using a megaphone and saying ‘Catholic motherf*ckers dumb’, before descending into an incoherent ramble.
The idea that Sinn Fein can claim Sean South as one of their own is delusional.
South was a devout Catholic, a member of the Legion of Mary and Knights of Saint Columbanus. He was only in his late 20s when he was killed during a skirmish with the British Army in Fermanagh.
There is no doubt that South would disown the virulent anti Catholicism of modern Sinn Fein, with its targeting of Rosary Rallies, not clericalism, not the Vatican, but ordinary Irish men and women praying the Rosary on the streets as they once did in Cumann na mBan for Kevin Barry.
In 2017, The Belfast Telegraph asked: ‘Why no public outcry at Gerry Adams paying homage to the notorious fascist thug Sean South?’. Considering that this is the exact language that Sinn Fein themselves use towards Catholics today, what business have Sinn Fein with Sean South apart from using his memory to wind up Unionists?
Sinn Fein should find new people to sing about instead of the types of figures whom they would malign and harass if they were alive today.
Perhaps songs remembering the imposition of abortion in Northern Ireland by Westminster, Fintan Warfield’s call for pornography use to fight off Covid or Mary Lou’s promise to make the 12th a National Holiday would be more apt.