The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
LATE November and December is the peak book-selling time, and the author of a new major Irish political biography was in Ennis last week. Former TD Shane Ross came to town to sign copies of Mary Lou McDonald – A Republican Riddle, which grapples with an intriguing but often unasked question: how did a private school and Trinity College-educated South Dublin woman become leader of Sinn Féin of all parties? There are other questions, such as why Mary Lou wasn’t active at all in politics until her late twenties? Even when she joined a party it was Fianna Fáil; where was her commitment to republicanism? And, perhaps most worryingly in many people’s eyes, to what extent is she really the leader or are ‘shadowy figures’ in West Belfast in control of the party that won most first preference votes in the last General Election? Of particular Clare interest is the experience of Violet Anne Wynne, who Ross spoke to in …
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