Labour lining Alice Mary up for a tilt at Dáil seat

Leadership of the Labour Party has finally rediscovered where Galway is. The grassroots of the party in Galway West had been feeling a bit prickly that the upper echelons of the red rose party hadn’t been seen round these parts very often in recent times.

And so, the sight of a few head honchos leaving their ivory towers in Dublin to come west for a Labour Youth conference in the Connacht Hotel at the weekend has helped to boost morale after a poor local election in which Labour lost one of its two City Council seats.

Labour’s lone ranger in Galway, City Councillor Niall ‘this is politics’ McNelis, gave the opening address at the 25th annual Tom Johnson Summer School, which this year focused on the theme of ‘Defending Democracy’.

Among the Labour bigwigs spotted in the City of the Tribes were senators Ged Nash and Aodhán Ó Ríordáin; former minister Alex White; and of course, party leader, Brendan Howlin.

Well-known Labour MP in England, Diane Abbott, was another attraction. But was it another woman who was probably responsible for Labour coming to Galway in the first place?

Step forward Pauline O’Reilly, whose performance in the local elections, has spooked Labour to such an extent that they felt the urge to come back to Galway to protect its patch. Perhaps it’s too late.

Overtaken by the Greens on the local authority, outflanked by the Independent Connolly sisters, Catherine (TD) and Colette (Cllr) and with a smaller and less active organisation on the ground than the Social Democrats and possibly even Solidarity on the hard left, Labour is dying a slow death in Galway West, which was once a stronghold.

All is not lost, however. The sight of Alice Mary Higgins, an accomplished Independent senator in her own right and daughter of President Michael D Higgins,     who was once the party’s standard-bearer in the         constituency, taking part in the summer school, has given renewed hope to comrades.

She’ll sit this one out, obviously, as McNelis has earned a shot at the Dáil. But her addition to a panel discussion ‘Breaking the Chains of Poverty: Combatting Financial Inequality’ has fuelled speculation that Alice Mary will join the party, and try to save it from itself – and extinction – by contesting a Dáil election in Galway West.

Nurse Martina a hero who does wear cape!

There was some drama at the local ceremony for this year’s National Day of Commemoration to honour all Irish men and women who died in past wars or on service with the United Nations Peacekeeping missions . . . For More Bradley Bytes see this week's Galway City Tribune.