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40 — village july 2009
Sinn Féin
PHOTO: photocall ireland
Recent exits from Sinn Féin
expose the cracks in the party’s
foundations
e d m o l o n e y
41
of Irish Central, Niall
O’Dowd’s online magazine cum lifeboat for
his ailing Irish Voice newspaper, carried a se-
ries of reports about Gerry Adams’ American
crusade for a united Ireland which debuted
on June th at the Hilton hotel in midtown
Manhattan. Tucked away at the bottom of
the main piece on the meeting of Sinn Fein-
friendly Irish-Americans was a painfully hon-
est but insightful admission which somehow
escaped Mr O’Dowd’s normally vigilant red
pen. “At the end of the conference”, the report
said, “the precise plans for creating a united
Ireland remain unclear.....”
While some might complain that there
was nothing new in this statement, it none-
theless left unanswered, and unasked, the ob-
vious question: What on earth is Gerry Adams
doing in New York at this stage of the peace
process on such a cockeyed mission? It would
seem, according to Mr O’Dowd’s fearless scribe,
that not even the Sinn Fein leader really knew:
‘“This generation can make it real”, Adams said.
“But I can’t tell you how to do it. You know how
to do it, and if you don’t, you’ll find out.”’
The notion of reaching out to Irish-America
was first raised at the end of January in a speech
given by Adams at a Sinn Fein conference com-
memorating the th anniversary of the First
Dail. The promise of equality offered by that
memorable moment had not been realised, Mr
Adams told those in the audience, so he and his
colleagues would start looking further afield to
realise its ambition: “Sinn Féin will be inviting
Irish-America to discuss with us how we can ad-
vance a united Ireland campaign . . . Our inten-
tion is to engage with the diaspora and seek to
marshal its political strength.”
Now when Adams made that pitch the
diaspora had lots of other things on its mind.
The worst economic slump in living memory
was into at least its fifth month, house prices
and stock markets were nose-diving through-
out Europe and North America and the Irish,
British and U.S. economies were heading
down the toilet. If there was ever an inoppor-
tune moment to revive an issue that most had
thought sidelined ten years ago and for whose
realisation the necessary capital, emotional
or financial, was just not available anymore,
then this was it.
Being the astute character that he has always
been, it would have been extraordinary if the Sinn
Fein president had not been completely aware of
all that. So why suggest it? One clue to the answer
lies in the fact that the venue chosen for that Janu-
ary conference was the Mansion House, an appro-
priate spot for such a commemoration to be sure,
but one which Sinn Fein has assiduously avoided
since the early s because of its historical as-
sociation with the years when the Provos meant
only one thing, the IRA. The party’s annual ard-
eis and other gatherings have all, since then,
been held in the RDS where only respectable Irish
political parties can be found.
So returning to the Mansion House to wave
the green flag, albeit for just one evening, was
for Sinn Fein a symbolic revisiting of the repub-
lican roots that the party had previously been
trying assiduously to push well out of public
sight. And for those who have made something
of a career out of Sinn Fein-watching, it was
another sign that the party has lost its way.
The recent European election results not only
confirm that the strategy which underpinned
and propelled the move into constitutional pol-
itics during the years of the peace process has
failed but that Sinn Fein is a party which is now
in decline. It is in a place where it’s possible to say
that its best years are behind it. Seen in this light
Gerry Adams’ mission to America has more the
look of a flimflam about it, a trick pulled out of
the bag to mollify an increasingly disenchanted
grassroots than anything else. After all if the
peace process strategy was working in the way
it was supposed to, and Ireland was on target
for re-unification by , why mobilise Irish-
America to do the job instead?
The reason for that lies in the priority
accorded by Sinn Fein, ever since it ditched
Southern abstentionism in , to achiev-
ing political success in the twenty-six coun-
ties. Those of us who covered Sinn Fein back
in the s could not but have been aware of
the covetous glances those around Gerry Ad-
ams would cast at the Workers Party because
of its success in winning Dail seats, even in
sufficient number at one point to hold Charlie
Haughey’s government hostage. “Those are
our seats the Sticks have taken”, one of their
number once complained.
Little did we know that when this was be-
ing said a strategy was being slowly construct-
ed out of sight that in the not too distant fu-
ture would make the prospect of imitating,
even surpassing the Workers Party south of
the Border one of the motors that would drive
the Provo leadership into the peace process.
The argument that Sinn Fein might get into
power in both jurisdictions, that the party could
have bums on seats around cabinet tables in
Dublin as well as Belfast, shaping policies that
could eventually erode the Border, swayed many
of the Northern footsoldiers and won them over
to Adams’ side. They were
being asked to let the IRA
go, to forsake the leverage
of armed struggle and here
was a strategy that offered
just as much chance of suc-
cess as the IRA had, and
maybe even more.
But it was all depen-
dent upon getting into gov-
ernment in the South. Hav-
ing a place in the executive
in Belfast was assured by
dint of the power-sharing
settlement of Good Fri-
day but not so in the
twenty-six counties. But the peace process had
given Sinn Fein and its leader, Gerry Adams
a wonderful makeover and for seven or eight
years it was looking good for the party. A single
Dail seat won in became five in and
then in Mary Lou McDonald won a seat in
the European parliament. Up in the North, Sinn
Fein were doing equally well and by had
relegated the SDLP to second place amongst a
majority of Nationalist voters.
By many were predicting that Sinn
Fein’s moment had come, that after the general
election that year they would surely hold enough
seats to qualify as a government partner with
Fianna Fail. As we all know well, that was nev-
er going to happen. The loss instead of one Dail
seat was a huge psychological blow to a party
that had known nothing but electoral success
for over a decade but it was worse than that. Sinn
Fein was like a shark that forever needs to move
forward; if it stops or worse, moves into reverse
then it is doomed.
“So returning to the Mansion
House to wave the green flag,
albeit for just one evening,
was for Sinn Féin a symbolic
revisiting of the republican
roots”
42 — village july 2009
Sinn Féin
The result of the June th European and
council elections, the loss of Mary Lou Mc-
Donald’s seat and the council seats lost in Dub-
lin are all a huge lurch backwards. While a few
years ago Sinn Fein’s leaders could imagine
that one day they would be strolling down the
corridors of Government Buildings to their
offices, now it is a question of whether any of
them survive after or .
There are some persuasive reasons given
for Sinn Fein’s decline. One says that once
the St Andrews deal was done and the IRA’s
guns embedded in cement, a major induce-
ment to vote for Sinn Fein south of the Bor-
der had evaporated. Another that it has to do
with Sinn Fein’s ideological flip-flopping and
lack of fixed beliefs. The move to the right af-
ter in the search for respectability was
such a transparent ploy that it made it impos-
sible for Sinn Fein to tack back in the wake of
the economic collapse. Such antics invariably
fail to impress the voter while disillusioning
the grass roots activists.
There is no doubt these were both impor-
tant factors in Sinn Fein’s southern demise
but history may judge that the real cause of
the party’s woes was the leadership’s addic-
tion to playing the IRA card for so long in the
Northern peace process. Seen from this angle,
Sinn Fein’s decline began in December
with the Northern Bank robbery and was ac-
celerated a month or so later with the savage
murder of Robert McCartney and its subse-
quent cover-up by the party’s leaders. The evi-
dence from opinion polls convincingly sup-
ports the view that Southern distaste for the
Provos deepened immediately thereafter.
Neither event could or would have hap-
pened had Gerry Adams and his colleagues
done the deal they finally cut with Ian Pais-
ley with David Trimble instead, back in
or , when the Ulster Unionist leader en-
joyed the confidence of his party and elector-
ate. Had that happened Sinn Fein’s break-
through in the South could have come earlier,
might well have been more substantial and al-
most certainly would have
been more enduring.
But instead the Sinn
Fein leadership chose to
drag the process out, to
delay and obfuscate over
IRA decommissioning
and to subject Trimble to
death by a thousand cuts.
It is difficult not to con-
clude that it wasn’t inter-
nal opposition that held
up decommissioning -
because there just wasn’t
any - but two other fac-
tors. One was Tony Blair
and Bertie Ahern’s incur-
able habit of throwing
concessions Sinn Fein’s
way whenever a problem
in the process arose, thereby making such
problems more frequent, and the other was
the desire to destroy the SDLP, to mobilise
Northern Nationalist anger against the stub-
born, bigoted Trimble to the electoral ad-
vantage of Sinn Fein. Not only was this lat-
ter ambition excessive greed on the Provos’
part, it was unnecessary. Once John Hume
and Seamus Mallon retired, the disintegra-
tion of the SDLP to its present state was vir-
tually a given. The Provos could have had a
deal with Trimble, replaced the SDLP and
at the same time enjoyed a more propitious
electoral lift off in the South.
To all of this, Sinn Fein loyalists will un-
doubtedly cry: ‘Well, what about the North?’
Bairbre de Brun’s performance looks impres-
sive on the surface but her topping the poll
was the result of DUP in-fighting - and this in
an election where protest votes usually cost
nothing - and not because of anything Sinn
Fein did. Furthermore her victory reinforces
the impression created by the Southern re-
sults, that Sinn Fein is becoming what it really
always was, a Northern party, not an all-Ire-
land party. The truth is, as one former mem-
ber commented, very simple: ‘They’d gladly
have Bairbre finish third if it meant Mary Lou
would hold on to her seat.
Sinn Fein’s difficulties help to explain why
dissident republicans have recently made some-
thing of a comeback. The killings in Massare-
ne happened because disillusioned former Pro-
visional IRA activists have moved over to their
ranks, adding military skill and ruthlessness to
groups that since Omagh had been justifiably re-
garded as incompetent and infiltrated.
It is part of a story that has largely gone
undetected and unreported in the Irish media,
the sudden erosion of support in some key Pro-
visional areas, not necessarily to the benefit
of the dissident groups but to a stage just be-
fore that, to an attitude of cynicism about the
Sinn Fein leadership, its motives and lifestyles,
the widespread corruption at middle ranking
levels, the sudden wealth. Most of what was
Provo North Belfast, for instance, has turned
against Adams.
Going meekly into government with Ian
Paisley, accepting the PSNI and the collapse
of the southern part of Sinn Fein’s strategy
form part of the explanation for all this. But
so too does the drip-drip damage caused by
Richard O’Rawe’s allegations of dirty dealing
during the hunger strikes. His story is
not just about whether the republican lead-
ership rejected a British deal to end the pro-
test that the prisoners’ leaders had endorsed,
but whether the peace process strategy has
its origins in the willful deaths of six hunger
strikers. It matters probably not at all to Na-
tionalist voters but to the Provos’ IRA base,
it is everything.
Which brings the story back to Gerry Ad-
ams, the architect of that strategy and the
man at the centre of O’Rawe’s narrative.
Three years ago he still had hopes that come
and the th anniversary of the Ris-
ing, he could be living in Phoenix Park. That
prospect vanished after to be replaced
by rumours that he would soon quit politics
and hand over to Mary Lou, suggestions given
credibility by Adams’ heightened profile as
an international peace person and a barely
disguised yen for the American lifestyle. But
walking away now after Mary Lou’s demise
will look like he’s the captain abandoning a
sinking ship. Gerry Adams has little choice
but to stay on duty on the bridge even if the
ship is eventually scuppered, trapped by cir-
cumstances that are arguably of his own mak-
ing. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
“While a few years ago Sinn
Fein’s leaders could imagine
that one day they would be
strolling down the corridors of
Government Buildings to their
offices, now it is a question of
whether any of them survive
after 2011 or 2012.”
43
Sinn Féin
settles and the results of the lo-
cal and EU elections are analysed, many chal-
lenging questions about Irish politics and po-
litical parties are raised. The elections took
place against a backdrop of economic freefall,
soaring unemployment and deeply unpopular
cuts – especially those targeted at children
and older people. The political climate was
charged with resentment and anger at the gov-
ernment, impatience with its incompetence
and despair at its lack of connection with the
daily realities of ‘ordinary people’. The politics
of change became the mantra of politicians
as the populace questioned the very ability of
politics to deliver for the people.
As predicted the people delivered an over-
whelming verdict of no confidence in the Fi-
anna Fáil /Green government. The Fine Gael/
Labour axis had a good day out, while inde-
pendent and smaller left wing parties made a
number of electoral gains.
How did Sinn Féin fare? The result was
mixed. Despite seat losses we recovered some
of the political ground lost at the general elec-
tion of . Sinn Féin went into the election
with city and county council seats, and
came out with . Our European vote was up
overall. So, the party held its own, matching
the result of the local elections, which
was widely acknowledged as the breakthrough
election for Sinn Féin in the South. We lost
many seats by handfuls of votes; some fell foul
of the boundary changes to local electoral ar-
eas. Equally the party made a number of sig-
nificant gains – in Limerick, Wicklow, Cork,
Tipperary and Kilkenny - in some areas where
Republicans have not held seats for genera-
tions, if at all.
The Sinn Féin vote was over , in the
EU elections. For the first time we topped the
poll in the North, returning Bairbre De Brun
to the European Parliament. Our vote share
increased in the South and East constituen-
cies and was down in the North West and Dub-
lin. Toireasa Ferris (South) and I battled to the
sixth count and lost out in very tight electoral
contests. The loss of the Dublin seat was a huge
disappointment. We fought a strong campaign
and predictably the political establishment
unified against us with charges that we are
anti Europe and anti enterprise. Shrill non-
sense from the very politicians that have pre-
sided over record job losses and who have no
appetite or ambition to shape an EU that de-
livers for the people.
I spent five busy and fruitful years repre-
senting Dublin at an EU level. In the course of
that mandate I defended the rights of workers,
the provision of public services and the demo-
cratic decision of Ireland to reject the Lisbon
Treaty. None of these are popular positions
among the political establishment in Ireland
or the EU, but they are the things I believe in. I
also had a baby in that time and took materni-
ty leave, a fact that was shamelessly exploited
in the election campaign by senior politicians
in an attempt to cast me as an indifferent pub-
lic representative. The truth is that I am a com-
mitted campaigner for change and a mother. I
make no apologies on either count.
The election campaign is over and the chal-
lenges ahead for Irish politics remain substan-
tial. The opportunities are great. The Celtic
tiger was built on foundations of sand and
the political establishment’s short-term op-
portunism has squandered what should have
been a legacy of investment, enterprise and
social justice.
The European election reflected a wide-
spread and legitimate desire for an early gen-
Its recent electoral performance
was mixed but Sinn Fein will
bring to social and economic
agendas the leadership it
brought to the peace process
m a r y l o u m c d o n a l d
,
