Sinn Fein: the Alliance party of the Republic?
Gerry Adams concedes that his party faces a lot of work in the next two years before the council elections in 2009. The sheer size of the gap between current political reality and the party’s own ambition is see when you consider that its performance compares unfavourably with the Alliance party in Northern Ireland. In the recent Assembly elections the Alliance Party garnered 5.2% of the vote and took seven seats in an Assembly of 109 members. Sinn Fein took 6.9% of Thursday’s vote, which brought them just four seats out of a total of 166 in Dáil Éireann. Although on a better day they might have expected to made a gain or two on their previous total, the poor correlation between percentage of the vote and their seat tallies suggests that they have some considerable way to go before becoming accepted as part of the political landscape south of the border. That their sole surviving Dublin TD only made it with the help of transfers from several other leftist candidates also suggests they are fishing in the margins of an over crowded market.
The sheer foreign-ness of the party to most southerners is a major problem. Adams almost completely ignored Roisin Duffy’s question on This Week today that the widely held perception of the party was as ‘political tourists’ whose political legitimacy is part underwritten by their status as MPs, ie the Westminster parliament, and not the Dáil. There is little doubt that the heavily accented northern leadership is becoming increasingly incongruent to southern voters.
The failure to take even one of the two Donegal seats, and the large slippage in the support of Mary Lou McDonald’s vote in Dublin Central, presents a major problem for them going forward in this area.
The problem is Sinn Fein voters have always been pretty radical. I can’t see the party gaining votes from transfers unless they become more middle ground. They are, quite frankly, in a pickle and need to come up with a new political identity in the south.
Jaffa
Anything other than membership of the UK is not currently an option – not economically, not politically, not socially.
The next phase of the process, surely, is to make it so.
I’d rather live in an NI that both London and Dublin wanted, not one they both want rid of!
“lib, surely even you aren’t suggesting that integrating the economies of N.I. and the RoI would reduce the subsidy required from the rest of the U.K.?”
Er, what exactly is the economic basis for ridiculing that? The whole point of all Ireland structures is to reduce costs and make markets more competitive. Tax harmonisation is an attempt to bring more investment Northwards. An expanding economy naturally reduces the transfer of wealth from the UK. The only way we get more dependent on England is if our economy screws up even more.
On what planet does your economics work?
Sammy, they only voted them in once they gave up violence. They had no mandate for what they did before that. SF were the minority nationalist party until well after the ceasefire. Show me any poll which showed that a majority of nationalists did or do support the SF/IRA murder campaign. “Dividing the country on the basis of a sectarian head count (partition) is a recipe for disaster”. It worked fine for Belgium and the Netherlands?
Gréagóir O’ FráinclÃn, I absolutely agree. It wasn’t partition as such – after all partiton is the basis of almost every European country as very few have natural borders. What caused the Troubles was Unionists treating their nationalist neighbours disgracefully.
It time for the big wigs in the PROVO PLC band to realise that no one in the mainstream Southern Electorate really give a F**k for Northern Ireland and the unification of the country!
The SF leadership were really niave in putting up complete political amatuers to stand on convention election issues.
The facts are simple:-
(1). You sold out on the PSNI
(2). You betrayed the Hungerstrikers
Now Catholic Ireland sees you for what you are:-
A bunch of bank robbing, scumbags with no political ability in a peacetime senario.
STARTING TO BECOME AS INSIGNIFICANT AS THE WORKERS PARTY NOW!
Paul,
funny enough I was referring to the partition of Ireland not Belgium or elsewhere. Ireland was partitioned in circumstances that sowed the seeds of disaster with 2 ethnic camps with a distaste for each other and access to weapons and support from neighboring counties. The fact that the Englezes both set up and ignored the behaviour of the dominant tribe has re-ignited the republicanism that many in ROI seem now to have rejected. Those who fought against it – the Provos – have been rewarded for that in the North – but not rewarded in the South – at least not for the time being. Trying to pretend that Nationalists in the North dont remember that it was Provos that blew the place to bits is silly.
Most people think that Grizzly got a reasonable deal (GFA/STA) fighting a tight corner and that is where he gets his support from both north and south.
If the South does not at some time decide to reward Grizzly & Co for their work then SF will wither way in the ROI.
But it was partition in Ireland what done it with due repsect to the Walloons.
Sammy Mc Nally what done it @ 09:38 PM
I know that it is traditional to have speaking in tongues at Slugger, but could someone kindly translate this one back into common argot?
Editor do help.
some curious pompous chappie with the agnomen of ‘Malcolm Redfellow’ is trying to draw me into exchanging personal insults.
Sammy Mc Nally what done it @ 10:29 PM
Benefits of a good Dublin eddication, actually. It taught the difference between agnomen, cognomen and pseudonym. But, seriously, I was trying to ascertain your point between the coded references.
Look, this thread is dead, passed on, ceased to be, expired and gone to meet its other clichés. So let it lie, and move on.
But, why does every thread here have to degenerate into the equivalent of daubing walls with partisan slogans?
Roy Foster said, as long ago as 1976, that the “myths” of Irish history were not used in any creative way, “their function is as a refuge in which to evade analysis”. Repeatedly, debate and discussion on Slugger initiate analysis, but deteriorate into sloganeering. The result is that anyone with a serious point to make gets pissed off, and goes elsewhere, leaving the arena to those who can do no more than shout the slogans.
If that’s being pompous, as “Dewey Flynn” put it [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0332379/]: “Read between the lines.”
Dear Mal,
I may have misconstrued your remarks as they were not adressed to me directly but to the wider audience.
I always refer to leader of SF as Grizzly – after the TV character with a penchant for bears and sharing the same surname. Other than that I’m not sure where your difficulty with my turn of phrase may lie.
On your more serious point I dont know if you are directing the ‘myth’ and ‘slogan’ comments at something I said earlier but I personally favour a mixture of humour and fact and dont have a problem with an element of sloganeering as long as it has been thought through.
I personally think Slugger is quite a good balance – but I do think if someone posts as a supporter of SF as Chris Donnelly did in a later post he should then have to answer questions form those who reply to his remarks.
Regards, Sammy
Comrade Stalin et al—-A few comments on Sinn Fein’s alleged historical “socialism”.
SF founder was Arthur Griffith and his party was more nakedly bourgeois than the Home Rule party. Griffith was also a notorious racist in the tradition of John Mitchell.
De Valera commanded Labour to “wait” in 1918 and the period of revolutionary SF government 1919-21 was one of strict governance in the interest of private property.
Both sides in the civil war were anti-socialist and even opposed the embryonic British welfare state. The De Valera constitution of 1937 and subsequent legislation was wedded to Catholic theology.
Leftists like Frank Ryan and Peader O’Donnell were seen off by Sean Russell who went on to form a military alliance with the Nazis.( A group of socialists recently beheaded Russell’s statue in Dublin).Frank Ryan himself morphed into a Hitlerite.
The fourth split in SF in 1940 produced Clann na Poblachta which stabbed the progressive Noel Browne in the back when the Bishops decreed against his Mother and Child bill. Sean McBride ex-IRA Chief of Staff was a leading Bishops’ man.
The leading post-war SF propagandist was Brian O’Higgins who was a reactionary puritanical Catholic. Sean South, the leading Republican leader of the 50′s was also in the advance guard of the process of Catholicising the public life in the Republic and of the movement to incorporate the North into it.
The 60′s saw SF take its leftwards Marxist turn. The fifth split took place when the Provos emerged . Provisional SF in reaction to the communistic Officials, adopted a strong Catholic ethos.
Granted, in 1981 SF policy was the “abolition of capitalism in Eire Nua” -but of course policy like this was kept quiet when fund-raising amongst the Yanks!
Much of Adams’s SF’s socialism has been at the empty rhetorical level. Now that they are in government in the North we will se if they abolish academic selection or end PFI schemes in the public sector. I confidently predict they will not. And, I repeat my prediction that SF will move to the right to increase their electoral support in the South. The weight of historical precedent suggests the same.
seanzmct @ 11:41 PM
Yup: that’s it in a nut-shell. Perhaps a bit hard on Frank Ryan, though: let’s not take Francis Stuart and Vessenmayer entirely on trust (RóisÃn Nà Mheara – Stuart’s mistress du jour – implies a different story). And Ryan seems throughout to have insisted that de Valera had power of veto.
Pity none of us know where to go from here.
“Perhaps a bit hard on Frank Ryan”.
Ryan was rescued from Spain by Nazi agents and until his death in Dresden in 1944 he was an honoured guest of the Reich and participated in a failed attempt to raise a Hitlerite Irish Brigade in the POW camps. SF’s greatest socialist????
Harry
“What in Christ’s loving name was it all about?â€
I remember once hearing an Ulster Unionist councillor in east Tyrone give the best, sanest explanation I’ve ever heard for the troubles.
“We all just sorta lost the heads for a while there.”
seanzmct @ 12:13 AM
Who’d a thunk it? This thread has wandered a heck of a long way from its origin.
However, back to Ryan. I thought the story was like this:
Kerney, the Irish Minister in Spain (not “Ambassador”, as wikipedia suggests, for constitutional reasons before 1948), used an intermediary to effect Ryan’s transfer to the Abwehr. This implies some fishing in murky waters: Kerney was probably not the “monumental fool” others claimed him to be (that derives from Desmond Williams’ opinion, who is now recognised as working for British intelligence); and Canaris, running the Abwehr, is still a long way from being fully plumbed.
My point here is that, at no time after he was incarcerated at Burgos, was Ryan “free” to make decisions for himself. So, whose creature was he: de Valera’s? Canaris’s (and therefore of whoever Canaris was serving)? Veesenmayer’s (as Ireland-desk officer for Canaris)?
There is some reason to believe, though, that Ryan in Berlin (after the failure of Operation Dove) was actively watching and subverting the pro-Nazism of Charles Bewley: in effect being de Valera’s agent (de Valera’s comments to Michael McInerney suggest something like admiration and gratitude).
Two final complications:
Feargal McGarry’s biography of Ryan is weak on the wartime period. It ignores evidence from British intelligence (which was surprisingly forgiving of Ryan) and seems to follow David O’Donoghue, who in turn accepts Francis Stuart as a reliable source.
Veesenmayer, condemned to death as a war-criminal, was whisked off by the Americans. Why?
No: I’m not claiming beatification for Ryan. I’m trying to be as objective as possible, in a cramped framework. Your mileage may differ.
“Now Catholic Ireland sees you for what you are:- A bunch of bank robbing, scumbags with no political ability in a peacetime senario”
Rory has nailed these narco fascists. Sinn Fein are not wanted. Brit agents out!
Sammy “Those who fought against it – the Provos – have been rewarded for that in the North – but not rewarded in the South – at least not for the time being. Trying to pretend that Nationalists in the North dont remember that it was Provos that blew the place to bits is silly.”
My point is that most Nationalists didn’t vote for SF/IRA when they were blowing the place to bits, only when they stopped the violence. So I don’t think it can be argued that they retrospectively supported SF/IRA’s violence.
That’s like saying New Labour winning in 1997 means that people were retrospectively supporting the 1983 Labour policies of unilateral disarmament, nationalisation etc. They only got the support becuase they chanegd and repudiated all that. The same with SF.
Paul,
the labour party is a reasonable comparison but you could equally say the old provos in 1916 did not have mandate but in 1918 those involved were rewarded with one for blowing dublin to bits -albeit with some assiatance from the Engleze.
The point is nationalists may not like the fighting but they may like the results – partition with consent and ROI influence and have decided to reward those that gained it.
But on balance there is probably some truth in both interpetations and its probably a matter of ideology which one either of us might like to highlight.