SF councillor agrees to welcome duchess
The Sinn Fein councillor at the centre of the row over the Duchess of Abercorn's cancelled visit to a Co Tyrone school has said he would now be happy for the visit to go ahead provided there was a locally reached agreement.
Mr Finbar Conway denies there was ever going to be a physical protest at the event.
In an interview with The Irish Times, he was at pains to defuse the row which 10 days ago thrust the sleepy village of Pomeroy into the media spotlight.
"If we can agree on a local level and everybody was happy enough, I would not oppose a future visit. In fact, no protest was planned at the last visit, either," he said.
The duchess was to visit St Mary's Primary School in Pomeroy last Monday to tell pupils about the Pushkin Prize, a literary award scheme for children throughout Ireland.
The prize is aimed at enabling children to "find and express their creative voice", and pupils can write in English, Irish or Russian. The duchess, a great-great-great-granddaughter of the renowned Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin, after whom the prize is named, has been promoting the scheme for almost 13 years in schools all around Ireland, including the all-Irish Meanscoil Feirste on Belfast's Falls Road.
On the eve of the visit, however, Mr Conway issued a statement saying he had been contacted by concerned parents who objected to "British royalty" visiting their children's school.
Faced with the possibility of a picket, St Mary's decided not to take any chances and called off the visit. They were not concerned about local parents, a source close to the issue says, but feared a "rent-a-mob" of republican supporters from other areas might be bussed in.
"It's that `title thing'. People in Tyrone are not familiar with duchesses [the duchess, who is not a member of the British royal family, lives in the Co Tyrone village of Newtownstewart] so if you bring in people like that ordinary folk just don't like it," Mr Conway explains.
The incident was regarded as a political embarrassment to the Sinn Fein Minister of Education, Mr Martin McGuinness, who last month faced a wave of unionist-inspired school protests at his appointment. The Minister personally contacted the school principal, Mr Michael Harvey, who says Mr McGuinness has been "very sympathetic and helpful" in trying to end the dispute.
Mr Conway insists he consulted senior Sinn Fein members before starting his campaign and denies he has had his knuckles rapped by the party leadership.
"Gerry Adams summed it up in a local paper when he said the whole thing was being overplayed. As for me, I never expected a pat on the back."
He was contacted by a "fair number" of parents, Mr Conway says, but is unable to identify them for fear of "victimisation".
Mr Harvey confirms he has yet to receive a single complaint from any parent. "I personally contacted parents who I knew would be sympathetic to Sinn Fein, and none of those had any objections to the visit. In fact, I haven't even received a complaint from Mr Conway himself yet."
Asked why he did not contact the school principal with his objections, the Sinn Fein councillor says he did not want to give the impression of "threatening" anyone.
It has been alleged that Mr Conway has shouldered the blame for the intervention of a prominent local figure, not a member of Sinn Fein, who used his influence to prevent the visit, something the Sinn Fein councillor neither confirms nor denies.
"As an elected representative it is my duty to act on the wishes of local people. I am not aware of anybody like that contacting me directly, but if somebody was unhappy they could easily have got any of the parents to contact me, I suppose," he says.
In the staunchly nationalist village, which is only a few miles from Carrickmore, the centre of the Monsignor Denis Faul controversy, people were cagey about speaking out, but many seemed annoyed by Sinn Fein's actions.
"It only takes a very small minority to spoil it for everyone else," said one woman who was picking up her two grandchildren from St Mary's. "I hope the duchess comes back for the children's sake. It would be a great encouragement for them."
"This whole thing only serves to give our town a bad name. Live and let live," a young mother added.
There are plans to reorganise the event, possibly in the shape of a joint visit by the duchess and Seamus Heaney, a patron of the Pushkin Prize, or even the Education Minister himself, although the school did not wish to comment on the issue.
The duchess, who is due to visit another Co Tyrone village this week, said she very much hoped to see the visit reorganised. "I believe the school is working on it. I have been going to schools of all shades and creeds for over 12 years and there never was a problem before. I am sure in the long run this will just be seen as a hiccup of a sort," she said.