the 2014 local elections although its average opinion poll ratings had not improved to that extent on the 17.45 per cent that the party received at the ballot-box in 2011. Sinn Féin’s performance in the ‘locals’, in contrast, was below what the opinion surveys had indicated.The party nevertheless did well in the same day’s European Parliament elections, where grassroots organisation was somewhat less important.1
Sinn Féin is subject to an unrelenting stream – richly deserved, according to the party’s critics – of negative publicity and unfavourable media coverage, which is mainly related to the behaviour of some IRA members in the past, and how it was dealt with by the movement. But this didn’t seem to inflict any long-term damage: Sinn Féin kept bouncing back. Commenting on the phenomenon in the Sunday Business Post of 26 April 2015, Pat Leahy called Sinn Féin the undeniable ‘coming force in Irish politics’, as shown by the previous two years of polling research. In the same edition of that newspaper, Richard Colwell of the Red C polling company commented upon Sinn Féin’s ability to ‘swat away losses on the back of any controversy just a month later’. He referred to the 4 per cent loss endured by the party ‘on the back of a significant controversy surrounding its handling of alleged sex abusers within its ranks’. That was in the Red C poll published on 28 March but, just a month later, that support returned, leaving Sinn Féin with 22 per cent of the first preference vote. (However, a Red C poll in the 13 September Sunday Business Post had Sinn Féin at 16 per cent.)
Just as Labour did before the last general election, Sinn Féin takes an anti-austerity stance on the issues of the day. This has paid off in terms of support, and looks likely to win extra seats for the party at the next election. Unless there is a very dramatic change in public opinion, a one-party government next time can be ruled out. The Dáil is being reduced in size from 166 to 158 TDs, making the minimum number of Dáil seats required for a majority 79, since the Ceann Comhairle (Speaker) of the House traditionally supports the Government in the event of a stalemate. Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin would be an unprecedented alliance, as would Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, although they all trace their historical roots back to the original Sinn Féin, founded in 1905. Some observers see Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael as the more likely combination, though this would cause problems among the grassroots membership of Fianna Fáil in particular.
In current discourse, Sinn Féin are, in many ways, the pariahs of Irish politics. That is partly due to genuine revulsion at deeds carried out by the IRA during the Troubles, such as the horrific 1972 abduction of widowed mother of ten Jean McConville from Belfast, whose body was found on a beach in County Louth in 2003. Despite these continuing controversies, the party retains a high standing in the polls, and there appears to be a disconnect between what Sinn Féin’s critics are saying and the mindset of a sizeable proportion of the electorate. This may be due to a perception that, apart from the occasional foray by dissident republicans, the Troubles in Northern Ireland are a thing of the past. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Sinn Féin supporters share the view expressed by party president Gerry Adams on the McConville case: ‘That’s what happens in wars.’2
Critics of the party tend to forget that Sinn Fein’s IRA associates were part of a very long tradition of republican violence. The Irish Left Review carried a piece by Fergus O’Farrell who pointed out that some of the leaders of the War of Independence 1916-22 were responsible for actions which aroused a similar moral disgust:
More civilians were killed during Easter week than British soldiers or Irish rebels [...] On Bloody Sunday [21 November 1920], the IRA [including future taoiseach Seán Lemass, D. de B.] carried out an operation against what they believed to be a British spy ring in the city – they killed 14 men that morning. As careful historical research has made clear, not all of these men were spies, let alone combatants [...]When the innovative Minister for Finance Michael Collins rolled out the ‘Republican Loan’ to raise money for the establishment of an independent Irish state, the British sent a forensic accountant, Alan Bell, to Dublin to investigate the money trail. Concerned that Bell would scupper the revenue-raising scheme, Collins dispatched members of The Squad to deal with the inquisitive accountant. Bell was escorted off a city-centre tram and executed in the street in broad daylight.
O’Farrell goes on to point out that Fine Gael pays tribute to Collins every year at the place where he was assassinated and that FiannaFáil and Labour have, as their respective icons, Éamon de Valera and James Connolly, both of them part of the ‘tiny, unrepresentative armed group’, whose actions resulted in the deaths of so many civilians in Easter 1916.3
The author of the present book subscribes to the sentiments of the 19th-century nationalist leader Daniel O’Connell, who said that freedom should be ‘attained not by the effusion of human blood but by the constitutional combination of good and wise men’.4The only reservations I would have are in cases where the territory of the state is invaded by some foreign power and, of course, O’Connell’s failure to include women among the ‘good and wise’! Unfortunately, however, a vast quantity of blood has been spilled in pursuit of a 32-county independent Ireland. What makes Sinn Féin interesting these days is that it decided, as part of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, to end its support for violence in favour of peaceful, democratic, consensual methods. Since I had reported in detail on those negotiations, it seemed worthwhile exploring the political aftermath, and the success or otherwise of what could be described as the biggest shift in the strategy and ideology of Irish republicanism for very many years. At time of writing, the Sinn Féin project seems to be meeting with some success, but this could, of course, change. As someone once said – possibly Mark Twain or perhaps Samuel Goldwyn – ‘Predictions are hard to make, especially about the future’. It is unclear, at present, whether the entire Sinn Féin venture will succeed or run into the sand, but there are valuable lessons to be learnt either way.
Sinn Féin’s rise has coincided with the emergence of Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain as major electoral forces. The pronouncements of all three against austerity are very similar and, with Syriza in power in Greece and Podemos knocking on the door in Spain, the prospect of Sinn Féin in government as part of an anti-austerity coalition cannot be ruled out. This may be an appalling vista to elements in the other parties, parts of the media and the middle and upperclasses, but the trade union movement has been taking a keen interest.
Giving an address at Glasnevin Cemetery on 31 January 2015, in memory of ‘Big Jim’ Larkin, leader of the 1913 Lockout in Dublin, the President of SIPTU (Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union), Jack O’Connor made what could turn out to be a significant intervention. Predicting that the year ahead would ‘turn a new chapter in the history of Ireland and of Europe’, O’Connor, who leads some 200,000 members, said that the trade union movement would be seeking to retrieve the ground lost during the economic crisis. Among the ‘difficult compromises’ which had been made, he included ‘the call on Labour to step into hell in the current coalition to head off the threat of a single-party Fine Gael government, or worse’. But now, ‘in the light of improving economic conditions’, he was recommending a new strategy. The SIPTU chief welcomed Syriza’s ‘dramatic’ election victory in Greece the previous Sunday, ‘which signals the beginning of the end of the nightmare of the one-sided austerity experiment’. He continued:
Dramatic possibilities are now opening up here in Ireland as we approach the centenary of the 1916 Rising. At this extraordinary juncture, history is presenting a ‘once in a century’ opportunity to reassert the egalitarian ideals of the 1916 Proclamation, which were suffocated in the counter-revolution which followed the foundation of the State. It is incumbent upon all of us Social Democrats, Left Republicans and Independent Socialists, who are inspired by the egalitarian ideals of Jim Larkin and James Connolly, to set aside sectarian divisions and develop a political project aimed at winning the next general election on a common platform – let’s call it ‘Charter 2016’.
Pointing out that this would be ‘the first left-of-centre government in the history of the State’, the SIPTU chief continued by calling upon parties and individuals on the Left to not simply ‘do well in the election’,
