New doc shines light on how Mary Robinson helped change Ireland
Former President was a trailblazer for human rights
Nell McCafferty was there to report on the fight. The Dubliners were there to sing the national anthem.
Peter O’Toole met him. John Huston met him. So did Eddie Keher and Jack Lynch and Bernadette Devlin. But not Dev.
When Muhammad Ali came to Dublin to face Al ‘Blue’ Lewis at Croke Park in 1972, everyone who was anyone was lining up to meet The Greatest.
Everyone except President Éamon de Valera.
An official memo (released years later in the State papers) from the President’s office said: “I don’t think it is appropriate for a boastful, bombastic man such as Ali to be visiting the President.”
That’s the way it was with the presidency back then. A stuffy old job, held by stuffy old men. Until Mary Robinson came along to rock the system in 1990.
Robinson was a lawyer who believed in human rights and someone who tried to modernise this country. She was also a woman.
The Ireland of the time was still deeply conservative with repressive laws and outdated attitudes — the Magdalene Laundry on Sean MacDermott Street was still open when she came to office.
As a young lawyer and senator, Robinson had worked on issues to change Ireland for the better, like contraception and legalising homosexuality.
There’s a scene in Aoife Kelleher’s excellent new documentary Mrs Robinson, produced by Cormac Hargaden and Trisha Canning, where McCafferty talks about storming the barricades while Robinson was quietly working in the background as a legal advisor to the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement.
They were two different sides to the same coin.
When Robinson set out on her election campaign for the Áras, the bookies quoted her at odds of 100-1. That was the kind of attitude she faced, but she won and it changed Ireland.
The use of Cannonball by The Breeders in the sequence covering polling day in Kelleher’s doc seems particularly apt. She blew the orthodoxy apart.
Even the most ardent Fianna Fáil member might now accept, upon mature reflection, she was the best person for the job. The right president at the right time.
Once elected, she reached out to the diaspora around the world, Irish people who were taken in by other countries, and she placed a candle in the window of Áras an Uachtaráin.
She also spoke to younger generations unlike the stuffy old men before her and Robinson’s first TV interview after being elected was on The Den with Zig and Zag.
Some of us who were avid viewers of The Den at the time are now rapidly approaching the same age Robinson was when she became President at 46 — something that barely seems conceivable.
Robinson is not without her faults and her lapses in judgement, such as cutting short her presidency and her statements regarding Dubai’s Princess Latifa, are examined in Kelleher’s documentary.
But her work in Somalia, Kosovo and Rwanda was hugely important.
As UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, she was an early critic of the abuses at Guantanamo Bay. Her subtle contributions to the Peace Process as President of Ireland were significant and should not be forgotten.
She is still speaking to younger generations now, campaigning on climate change, aware that decisions made now will impact people for decades to come. Still eligible for a second term too… but that time has passed.
Next year the country will go to the polls again to elect a new president.
Michael D Higgins navigated the decade of commemorations skilfully and sensitively and like Robinson he has used his voice to highlight injustices.
Once again we need the right president for the right time. Someone looking to the future, who understands the past — and the Constitution.
It would be interesting if someone like Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh, with her record in human rights, was approached to stand next year.
As for Ali and Dev and the Croke Park snub?
McCafferty — who died last week — wasn’t impressed by the 1972 fight, writing afterwards that it didn’t match the night she saw Spider Kelly working as a bouncer at a Derry dancehall.
But The Greatest returned to GAA HQ for the opening of the Special Olympics in 2003 and was back in Ireland in 2009 for a reception in Ennis to celebrate his Irish ancestry through his Co Clare great-grandfather Abe Grady.
If only Dev had known.
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