Right2Water unions announced a two-day conference for the start of May. This was later changed to ‘an international May Day event’, followed by a policy conference nearly two weeks later, on 13 June. Both occasions would be by invitation only, due to space restrictions. The May-Day event would feature speakers from the European Water Movement, as well as from ‘progressive grassroots movements’ such as Podemos and Syriza. The policy conference would ‘discuss a set of core principles which will underpin a “Platform for Renewal”in advance of the next General Election. These core principles will be the minimum standards a progressive government will be expected to deliver in the next Dáil’.13Adams issued a statement welcoming the initiative: ‘It mirrors my own suggestion of a Citizens’ Charter, encapsulating the fundamental principles that could take us towards a citizen-centred, rights-based society.’ In his Glasnevin speech, O’Connor had suggested something similar, with the title of ‘Charter 2016’. The terms set out by Adams had a flavour of Syriza and Podemos about them: ‘Such a charter could be endorsed by various progressive political parties and independents, community groups and trade unions in advance of the next election. This would not compromise any political group, and does not imply any electoral pact. I believe that a Citizens’ Charter could form the basis for a new departure in Irish politics.’
The Labour Party’s annual conference took place in Killarney on the last weekend in February, and a number of Labour ministers, as well as Jack O’Connor, were on the panel for the Saturday with Claire Byrne show on RTÉ Radio 1. When asked about the SIPTU leader’s proposal, Environment Minister Alan Kelly said: ‘Sinn Féin aren’t a left-wing party. They’re a populist movement with a Northern command.’ Expressing security concerns, he said he didn’t believe, as deputy party leader, that Labour would be negotiating a partnership in government with Sinn Féin: ‘How can you do that credibly when the first thing on the agenda of whoever is doing so would be the fact that the Department of Justice, Defence and probably Foreign Affairs would be vetoed away from them?’
The SIPTU leader responded: ‘In my engagement, since I became president of our union in 2003, with the leaders of Sinn Féin, I believe them to be very good and well-intended people. I believe that Sinn Féin has many socialists in it. I believe that we could work with them.’ But O’Connor said he did not foresee any break in the formal link between his union and the Labour Party. (In the May 2014 local and European elections, for example, Labour candidates received a total of €20,040 from the union as well as paying an annual affiliation fee of €2,500.14) At a news conference a few days later, when I asked Mary Lou McDonald for her response to Minister Kelly’s claim that Sinn Féin was run by a ‘Northern command’, she replied: ‘We don’t operate to a command structure. We are thoughtful, free-thinking individuals who, each in our own way and in our own time, has chosen freely and voluntarily to be part of this great political party and this great political project […] There are no sheep, and there is nobody who takes commandments from on high.’
In the March edition of An Phoblacht, columnist and aspiringSinn Féin TD, Councillor Eoin Ó Broin, noted O’Connor’s call for Left unity and the separate initiative of the Right2Water unions in hosting a conference to shape a common political platform. He asked:
Can we really build that ever-elusive Left unity? Divisions between the anti-austerity unions and those supportive of the Government run deep. Will SIPTU be invited to attend the May Day ‘Platform for Renewal’ dialogue? […] And is it possible to have an anti-austerity government without the involvement of the Labour Party and the socially-liberal constituency they represent? […] It is time for the Irish Left to build common ground. We have a very rare chance to build a real alternative to the status quo, to be part of a new politics, a new political economy, a new Republic. Let’s not waste that chance.
Delegates at the Sinn Féin ardfheis, held in Derry between 6 and 7 March, unanimously backed a motion that the party would not enter into a coalition government led by either Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil. It was jointly proposed by branches ranging from Donegal to Corkand Roscommon to Dublin. Ó Broin told delegates:
We can start to build an Ireland of equals, a united Ireland, a better, fairer Ireland. But this can only happen if Sinn Féin makes a clear and unambiguous statement that we will not under any circumstances support a government led by Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael... If Sinn Féin can lead a government that invests in a fair recovery, in secure and well-paid jobs, in universal public services, in strong and vibrant communities, in a real republic that is committed to ending poverty and inequality – then and only then should our party be willing to take up residence in Government Buildings.15
It could well be that a coalition is negotiated in which Sinn Féin would numerically be the largest party. That would fulfil the terms of Motion 52 at the ardfheis. But the alternative scenario, cited earlier in this chapter, whereby Sinn Féin might not be the biggest party overall but would be the largest element in an anti-austerity majority, would arguably still be a permissible option. Much would of course depend on who held the office of taoiseach (prime minister). In the past, there had been talk of a ‘rotating taoiseach’ between Labour and its coalition partner. Motion 52 committed Sinn Féin ‘to maximise the potential for an anti-austerity government in the 26 Counties’. A profile of Adams in the Phoenix had reported north-south tensions within Sinn Féin on the coalition issue. The article, published on 13 December 2013, stated:
Adams and his closest comrades are more susceptible to coalition government with, say, F[ianna]F[ail] than those southern Sinn Féin activists who have little obvious IRA baggage […] The party organisation is still dominated by northern members whose position on party policy can differ from the southerners and certainly will, when the question of coalition in the Republic comes to the fore. The fear among some southern Sinn Féin activists is that the price Sinn Féin leaders would pay in any coalition negotiations for a Sinn Féin-led hands-on government approach to the North would be concessions on the economy and taxation.
The manner in which Sinn Féin surpassed Fianna Fáil on many occasions in the opinion polls and in the number of seats won in the May 2014 European elections was, of course, galling for a party which had been the sole or majority holder of government office for a total of sixty-one years since 1932. Small wonder, then, that Micheál Martin’s position as Fianna Fáil leader was being questioned.
Never slow to highlight Sinn Féin’s deficiencies as he saw them, Martin launched a multi-pronged assault on the rival party in mid-April 2015. He hit out at Sinn Féin on RTÉ’s Late Late Show, then in the course of a massive double-page interview with the Sunday Business Post and, later the same day, in his annual leader’s speech at the Fianna Fáil commemoration in Arbour Hill – the Dublin cemetery where the 1916 leaders are buried – and finally in a radio debate with Adams.He told Late Late Show presenter Ryan Tubridy that Fianna Fáil would not be going into coalition with Sinn Féin ‘in any shape or form’. Martin added that Sinn Féin was ‘a cult-like group in many respects, and you don’t get diversity of opinion’. He also ruled out government with Fine Gael because that party ‘have gone too right-wing for us’. In his Sunday Business Post interview, he said Sinn Féin was seeking to ‘undermine the very institutions of the state’.16
The Fianna Fáil leader’s speech to the party faithful at Arbour Hill was exactly 3,000 words long, but almost half of these were devoted to a critique of Sinn Féin (there was no mention of Fine Gael or Labour). He claimed that Sinn Féin was making ‘a deeply sinister attempt to misuse the respect which the Irish people have for 1916’. Martin said it was a ‘false claim that they have some connection to 1916 and to the volunteers who fought then’. This was part of a Provo agenda to ‘claim legitimacy for the sectarian campaign of murder and intimidation which they carried out for 30 years’. He continued: ‘This goes to the heart of why Sinn Féin remains unfit for participation in a democratic republican government.’ The Provos had killed ‘servants of this republic’ (members of the Irish security forces) and Sinn Féin was selling T-shirts with the slogan ‘IRA – Undefeated Army’.17
The
