Miriam Lord: Change in the air on Moore Street as candidates get a frosty reception from stallholders

The atmosphere has changed.

Time was when no election campaign was complete for party leaders without a cockle-warming saunter through Moore Street to pose with the fruit and veg and enjoy some salt-of-the-earth banter with the dealers.

In his heyday, professional Dub Bertie Ahern practically lived in the place at election time.

And as its fortunes climbed, Sinn Féin couldn’t get enough of Moore Street. And Moore Street couldn’t get enough of Sinn Féin.

During the last election, the only thing a warmly welcomed Mary Lou didn’t do was put on a shawl and shout “strawbreeze!”

For she was their auld segotia.

When she paid a high-profile visit during 2020 the stallholders were positively fawning over her.

Four years on, a similar walkabout reaction seems highly unlikely.

“As long as you’re not the Shinners!” was how one local greeted campaigners from a rival outfit.

A statement we did not expect to hear three days out from the European and local elections. It wasn’t the only one.

It came as Bríd Smith and Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, People Before Profit candidates in the respective polls, were leafleting at the top of the street outside Lidl. They moved down to some of the stalls but got a mainly frosty reception.

Two Dublin men leaning against a shopfront eyed Smith, the TD for Dublin South Central and candidate for Europe and Ó Ceannabháin, the prospective councillor for Dublin’s North Inner City, with disdain.

“Go away! We’re not votin’ for anyone!” shouted one of them. “Nobody does nothin’ for us so why would we vote for anyone?”

Bríd is talking to two young men checking out the bin near the supermarket for plastic bottles and cans to add to their collection before heading inside to redeem them for a few bob.

One of them, Christopher, tells us he comes from Cabra. They’ve collected a lot of empties at this stage. “We’re cleaning up,” he says with a good-humoured wink, holding up a tattered bag.

He had a good chat with Bríd. Will he be voting for anyone?

“Oh, yeah,” he grins, a homeless fella smiling at the absurdity of the question. Of course he won’t, but it’s nice to be nice.

“She’s not Sinn Féin, is she?”

The little PBP group moves towards a stall where a woman is rearranging beef tomatoes. “I wouldn’t go near her. She’ll eat ya,” remarks an interested bystander.

Bríd buys a bag of nectarines and introduces herself. She gets a sullen response.

The photographer, a veteran of many election campaigns, is surprised by the atmosphere and tone of the encounters. The traders in Moore Street always used to be up for a photo – for marketing reasons, if nothing else. Not so much now.

There’s a steady stream of customers to the stalls and the ethic food supermarkets are also busy. A shopper wearing a health service worker’s uniform beneath her jacket becomes upset when she thinks her photo is being taken.

Phyllis O’Callaghan, a long-time trader, comes over to talk. She has time for the candidates and takes a leaflet. But then, she knows what it’s like to go canvassing.

“My son is running in the locals. Darryl – my baby, the youngest of six.”

She says he used to be a staunch member of the Labour Party, like his father before him. But he’s standing as an Independent now.

“We’re all of the Left so, only we would be further Left, more socialist,” says Bríd, finding common ground.

Darryl is a very well-known shopkeeper in the inner city and has been a community activist for many years. His mother has been out canvassing for him every weekend.

“You’re Europe, aren’t you?” she says to Bríd. “G’wan so. I’ll give you a vote.”

Then she looks at Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, her baby’s rival.

“Is he your son?”

“No!” gasps the TD.

Eoghan, a committed socialist who lives in the north inner city, recently led the protest to save the Cobblestone Pub in Smithfield. A multi-talented musician, he seems far too modest to be a politician. Bríd gets him to admit to winning Best Folk Singer and Best Original Folk Track at the recent RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards.

“I think that the system we are living under really curtails people and really crushes them and stops them from leading a full creative life as well as everything else. People should have rights at work, a secure home and education but they also have the right to music, creativity and art.”

Back at Phyllis’s stall one of her colleagues gives her take on the elections.

“I’ll be very happy once the Shinners don’t get in.”

Interesting.

“I wasn’t expecting that. They’re usually all over Mary Lou when she comes down here,” said Bríd.

The two PBP candidates agree that housing has been the biggest issue. Smith also says she will be a strong supporter of the people of Palestine and an anti-racist voice in Europe.

She has met three types out canvassing: “The people who just don’t want to know, the people who are enthusiastic to meet you at the doors and the people who are angry. There’s a lot of anger out there.”

[ Canvassing in local elections is ‘intimidating’ and ‘demoralising’, says FG migrant candidate ]

She has also noticed fewer people out campaigning. “The areas I canvass in like Crumlin, Ballyfermot, Drimnagh, Walkinstown – all big estates – we’d go around the corner and say, ah jaysus, there’s Fianna Fáil, there’s Sinn Féin, there’s Labour, whatever and we’d go the other way. It’s not happening this time. A lot of doors we knocked on, a lot of doors, they’re saying we’re the first who’ve knocked.”

This short walkabout was arranged at short notice.

While we are in Moore Street, the Sinn Féin leader was doing a canvass with a small number of journalists – all women – invited along by the press office. “It was all very positive,” one of them tells us after the event. “But of course it was, it was in Cabra, her own backyard.”

If truth be told, we were a bit put out by this, having phoned, emailed and left voice and WhatsApp messages with the press office and individual press officers on Tuesday seeking to attend a canvass with Mary Lou McDonald.

We emailed the party leader and got a standard automated reply and then spoke to a nice woman in her constituency office. “Leave it with me and I’ll get someone to call you back.”

No response from anyone.

“Sunny morning on the doors in Cabra,” tweeted Mary Lou alongside some nice photos.

“Huge momentum for change.”

Same thing in Moore Street, it seems.

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