November 9, 1990: Mary Robinson is elected the first female president of Ireland

By Ruth Walker | Staff Writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the November 21, 1990 edition

Ireland in the Midst of Social Change

THIS small-town city of a million people has just been through the kind of week whose events - election aftermath, a soccer game, an extradition, and a riot - reveal how Ireland has changed, and what still needs changing.

The week began with the first froth of enthusiasm over Mary Robinson’s election to the Irish presidency still spilling over. ”Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson” headlines and signs were everywhere.

Mrs. Robinson, a liberal feminist human rights lawyer, was elected only through a quirk of the Irish voting system after the front-runner’s campaign self-destructed, but her victory was a vote for change. In this conservative society, there is a social agenda - women’s rights, divorce, access to contraception - that the principal political parties have been unwilling to bring to the table. Robinson has been a strong advocate for these causes, though her advisers knew she needed a broader appeal. It was as if she had struck a tacit bargain with the electorate: I won’t talk about these issues during the campaign, but you can vote for me knowing that I will bring them up later.

As the excitement over the presidential election subsided somewhat, attention shifted to another contest: Ireland vs. England match in the European soccer championship on Nov. 14.

Soccer has come into its own only relatively recently in Ireland. A generation ago it was seen as the sport of the English imperialists; true Irishmen played Gaelic football or hurling.

So we learn from the Gate Theatre production of ”In High Germany,” Beckett-prize-winning playwright Dermot Bolger’s meditation on soccer and Irish identity.

A young Irishman, Eoin, travels Europe, with duffel bag and his green-and-white scarf, to cheer on the Irish team. Many of the team’s supporters are already working on the Continent, having had to emigrate to find work, Eoin among them. He finds out from his German wife in Hamburg that he is to be a father, he observes that the Ireland of soccer is ”the only Ireland I can give to my son, who will bear my name in a foreign land.”

Life was soon aping art, as fans with their duffel bags and their green-and-white scarves streamed into Dublin. Jack Charlton, the (English-born) manager of the Irish team, was dampening expectations. He told one newspaper, ”I think the Irish will do well to get a draw, and to preserve their record of never having let in more than one goal on home soil.” In any case, police forces on both sides of the Irish Sea were on alert.

And as the fans were making their way to the stadium, another, darker drama was being played out: the extradition of Dessie Ellis to Britain to stand trial on explosives charges. This was the first test of a new Irish extradition law, which was passed in 1987 over objections of those here who don’t trust British justice. Mr. Ellis had gone on hunger strike to fight extradition.

But the Supreme Court rejected his appeal unanimously.

The game ended in the draw, 1-1, that Mr. Charlton had spoken of. As fans streamed back into the city center, however, storekeepers looked out warily from their doors, ready to pull the metal shutters closed at any moment. Surging north across the River Liffey, a group of fans were enthusiastic but harmless, it seemed at first. Then came roars and shouts, from different corners, and people running, and police sirens everywhere.

It was the the worst violence in Dublin in years, with a couple of dozen people injured, and a dozen arrested. But it seemed not so much Anglo-Irish rivalry as general rowdiness, made worse, to be sure, by anti-extradition protesters at the General Post Office.

It is a new Ireland. But not everyone has had the word yet.