Feminist Fighters, cross-dressers unite for wimmin

Bradley Bytes – A sort of political column by Dara Bradley

Mná na hÉireann, or at least the mná that live in Galway, now have a new champion to look up to. It’s a grey-haired man in a suit but don’t let that deter you, ladies: He’s a champion of wimmin nonetheless.

At the most recent meeting, members of the city’s Joint Policing Committee (JPC) were elected. The ruling pact normally takes the spoils. This time, though, they were forced to share out the membership among more of the non-ruling pact people in order to ensure more women were on the JPC.

The ruling pact – FG (4), Lab (2) and right-wing independents (5) – has just one woman. Terry ‘Polltopper’ O’Flaherty was voted onto the JPC along with six men (Mike Cubbard, Donal Lyons, Declan McDonnell, Pádraig Conneely, Niall McNelis and Frank Fahy).

But the guidelines state that there needs to be 40% representation on the JPC, which has eleven councillor members.

So, unlikely as it may seem, we end up in the bizarre situation where Declan ‘Feminist Fighter’ McDonnell has become Galway’s feminist icon.

You see, the Fine Gaelers and Labour Party members of the pact couldn’t stomach nominating Shinners or Independent Catherine Connolly to become members of the JPC even though they are the only other women on the City Council.

So it fell to Declan, the trailblazing feminist, on behalf of the pact, to nominate Sinn Féin’s Anna Marley to the JPC. He seconded Marley’s nomination of her colleague, Mairéad Farrell, to the committee.

But Declan ‘the Feminist Fighter’ wasn’t done yet: He also nominated Catherine Connolly to the JPC – a woman, to put it mildly, he normally wouldn’t see eye-to-eye with.

Catherine was delighted, if a bit taken aback.

“I’m thrilled to be the token woman,” she quipped, looking more surprised than anyone else at Declan’s gender gesture.

Of course, the bonus for Declan in all of this new-found ‘let’s be nice to the women’ crusade, is that his Fianna Fáil foe, Michael John Crowe, was forced off the JPC.

MJ was not happy but magnanimously withdrew his name and allowed his party colleague, Peter Keane be the FF member on the JPC.

Not without a few sly digs, though.

“I’ve never treated a woman as a token,” Michael John harrumphed of the pact’s ‘lovely girls’ stunt.

Earlier, Cllr Pádraig Conneely joked the pact couldn’t comply with the 40% gender balance ruling “unless I put a skirt on myself”, to which MJ Crowe, snorted: “It wouldn’t be the first time”.

Conneely in a skirt . . . whatever next?

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.