That time the eighth amendment got repealed.

May 25 was the second anniversary of the referendum to repeal the eighth amendment in Ireland. The motley crew that came together in a bar in Strokestown in March 2018 were short on resources, money and the foggiest of notions on how to run a Yes campaign in the only constituency in Ireland that had voted No to marriage equality in 2015. But the group that would become Roscommon Together for Yes was not short on fervor and energy. We were all sore about 2015, for personal reasons and because the jokes about Roscommon backwardness and spite hadn’t been funny for a long time. This piece is no smug victory lap; rather, it’s a brief outline of my experience campaigning in Roscommon/East Galway as I remember it, the hurdles faced during the campaign, and the lessons learned from participating.

In March 2018 I came home from a holiday on Inisturk to attend a meeting in a wee bar in Strokestown. I didn’t tell anyone why I was going to Strokestown. I believed fervently in repeal and had for a long time, but it felt to me like something to be campaigned for in Dublin rather than down in Roscommon and I was hesitant about taking to local doors.

Repeal had been long enough brewing for me to know well the reaction it got locally; either a rolling of the eyes or the polite indifference of a pause before a return to the previous conversation as if nothing had been said. The negativity of perception was made crystal clear when in a discussion (argument) about the Belfast rape trial a man said to me in exasperation,

‘Jesus, okay Doireann, don’t go all repeal-the-eighth on me’.

Now, if that’s what I got in a pub in Dublin from a man my own age, what would it be like door-to-door in a rural and more conservative Roscommon? I shelved my doubts and got involved with the campaign. Many of us were nervous about how we would be received and I remember worrying at the first few houses we canvassed that we would be ran from the front doors!

The fears were not unfounded: besides Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan, not one of our locally-elected representatives supported us (most didn’t even reply to the emails), few venue were interested in hosting our meetings, we had to meet for pre-canvass chats almost in secret, and we hadn’t a hope of raising the money needed to run a proper campaign. In that context, the launch of Roscommon Together for Yes was huge for us because it was our first real confirmation that we were on the right track. It also meant that with our faces slapped across the Roscommon Herald and a report on RTE One’s Drivetime, there was no turning back.

We hadn’t known if doors would be slammed in our faces because literally nobody spoke about repeal. It was not just that nobody would engage with the subject, but nobody wanted to be seen to engage with it. I was worried that I might be embarrassing my family or that I would be resented for campaigning for repeal. The refusal of others to engage with something that was so important to me made me feel like I was doing something wrong; one evening I threw my hands up in the exasperation and declared that being in the IRA would be more acceptable than campaigning for repeal.

I cursed Roscommon for its apathy, but I would later learn that I had misread Roscommon and had done so twice.

Firstly, a wise man told me there was no point trying to get people talking about what they didn’t want to talk about, that my time would be far better spent getting those leaflets through doors.

Secondly, apathy and not wanting to talk about something are two very different things. The flipside of nobody wanting to openly discuss repeal was that nobody really gave us grief. I have often been congratulated for my ‘bravery’ in campaigning in Roscommon but campaigning in Roscommon was a doddle in comparison to Dun Laoghaire, for example, where canvassers were aggressively confronted, verbally abused and often met with vitriol and hostility. There were a couple of incidents where people were rude, but such incidents were relatively rare; most people were polite, they took the leaflet and mumbled a brief thanks. We’re just not the confrontational sort in Roscommon; we’re more into keeping the head down than raising our voices. That can be a good thing and a bad thing.

The most important lesson I learned throughout that campaign was the value of listening. If you are genuinely passionate about changing minds and not just about broadcasting your own social justice credentials, you have to listen to people’s concerns, heed them and respond to them respectfully. Shouting at people is mere indulgence for the shouter.

I’m not always successful at that whole listening craic. I forget my own advice as often as I remember it. Ranting is infinitely easier than listening, teasing out concerns and reaching consensus. It’s extra hard when it’s those we love because such controversial discussions often carry an extra layer of emotional or personal investment. On saying that, it’s no harm to recognise when you’re wasting your time either; in the time spent trying to persuade people who are never going to agree, you’d have convinced seven others who were on the fence. Nothing gets changed by belittling others or making them feel small. Incremental change is long-lasting change.

It’s still hard though and I frequently fail at it.

When the exit polls were announced on the Late Late that Friday night, I was over the moon. I was not celebrating abortion – nobody does. The result demonstrated that a majority now believed that women are the best people to make decisions for women. That vote of confidence was massive after years of being told we couldn’t be trusted with the vote, contraception, divorce, bank accounts, the ending of the marriage bar, university education, property ownership and whatever other rights women have had to fight for.

That was the lens through which I had viewed the entire campaign and because of that perspective, the most important moment for me was at the very end, at eight o’clock on the evening of the vote. A friend and I stood in Frenchpark holding our Yes posters to remind people on their way home from Dublin to vote. People beeped at us, gave us thumbs up and most ignored us – fair enough – but one car slowed as it passed us. Two middle-aged men were in the car and as they slowed, they wagged their fingers in disapproval and shook their heads.

They wagged their fingers at two grown women.

They wagged. Their fingers. At two. Grown women.

Women.

I respect their right to vote as they see fit but to wag their fingers at two grown women as if we were bold children? I remember thinking, that whatever the result would be the following day, the day of women having fingers wagged at them was gone. And I was glad of that.