When we were teenagers, a dyslexic friend of mine, who was exempt from studying Irish in school, started using the slogan “tiocfaidh ár lá”. When I asked him what it meant, he said “Up the IRA.” To this day he’s still slagged off for it, though he wasn’t exactly wrong. The meaning of those four syllables, “our day will come,” is synonymous with dissident Republicanism, but also speaks to the innate hope among many for a united Ireland, not through violence, but through choice.
Last year, Mary Lou McDonald ended her first speech as the leader of Sinn Féin with an unscripted tiocfaidh ár lá. While allegations of IRA involvement plagued her predecessor, she promoted herself as part of a new generation: a Dublin woman with no involvement in the conflict. In that spirit, she is now calling for a border poll, claiming a referendum on a united Ireland is inevitable in the case of a no-deal Brexit.
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