Sunday, May 27, 2007
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.
Mick Fealty @ 11:00 AM
I have to say reading the posts on Sinn Fein’s poor performance makes it clear that most people haven’t realised what a calamitous defeat the Republican Movement suffered on Thursday. It is unquestionably the biggest defeat suffered by the Republican Movement in forty years. Forget Operation Motorman, Roy Mason, or Loughgall, the Republican Movement have just received the most crushing, perhaps fatal, blow they have ever received since the Civil War and it was from the 26 County electorate (again).
Many write as if Sinn Fein is just another political party. They suggest leadership changes, a new front bench, a better manifesto, new look policies, they’ll be coming up with focus groups next. To do so is to fundamentally misunderstand what Sinn Fein is; it is not just one more political party but is in fact merely a front in an ongoing (up to last Thursday) and, to a certain extent armed, revolutionary movement.
Now we old timers in the North are fully aware of this fact, we’ve lived among members of this movement and we’ve seen the often horrific consequences of the movement’s actions. However the younger, more southern inclined posters seem to have been taken in by the propaganda of the past decade and a half and genuinely believe that Sinn Fein is merely a radical new left of centre political party who suffered a bit of a lapse last week but don’t worry sure we’ll just try harder for the next election eh?
Such a hope is forlorn, don’t kid yourself that all Sinn Fein wanted was to get a few junior ministries to alleviate the hardships of their constituents. Danny Morrison stated the object from the outset and despite all the guff and spin, real Republicans will tell you the object never changed merely the tactics, as Danny put it at the ‘81 Ard Fheis; “Will anyone here object, if with a ballot paper in this hand and an Armalite in the other we take [note the “take”] power in Ireland?”, there were no objections.
Ah yes Harry you old dinosaur, get into the modern age, that is ancient history, it’s all in the past, we’re a new young dynamic people now. Indeed we are, and Sinn Fein has just discovered this fact but never be fooled about what Sinn Fein’s real intentions were, right up to last week.
They’ve been soundly defeated, that election was supposed to have been the “Our Day” that they’ve been Tiocfaidhing about all this past quarter century, they were to see their crowning victory after successfully getting into power in the North, now it has all crumbled to ash before their eyes.
So what’s their future? Well obvious, the boys of the old Northern brigade hang up their broad black brimmers, the Gerrys and the Martins of the North quietly slink into retirement to fish trout in Donegal. The new bright young things in the South will take over and rebrand “New” Sinn Fein, the shiny happy Social Democratic party which after a few years will merge into Fianna Fail or Labour.
And the rest of us old fossils? We’ll think of our youth, when we had a lot more hair and a lot less waistline, when we should have been having fun and instead grew up in a psychopathic blood drenched madhouse. We’ll smile at our kids with their iPods and nice new Peugeot cars and pause for a while. We will take down our well thumbed volume of “Lost Lives” open a page at random from the 1970’s or ‘80s and as a quiet tear drops on to the silent list of names we’ll ask ourselves;
“What in Christ’s loving name was it all about?”
Posted by on May 28, 2007 @ 12:07 AM“What in Christ’s loving name was it all about?”
Partition.
Posted by on May 28, 2007 @ 03:20 AMSammy it was about “Partition”? We’ve still got “partition” (aka self determination) and there is no violence now. So logically it can’t have been about partition.
Posted by on May 28, 2007 @ 07:37 AMALEX S
“...even at the start of the programme it was obvious from his wee bit of ‘Irish’ that he was’nt a true Irish speaker and that it was just a tacky gimmick.”
What was tackier was Pat Kenny audibly tutting and sighing when Adams spoke in Irish. (It’s not like Pat’s cupla focail is much better than Adams’.)
Anyhoo, back to SF being rattled. And badly rattled at that.
Posted by on May 28, 2007 @ 08:01 AMSinn Féin’s performance was really disasterous. They were sure that they would get 10 seats and maybe more, but it backfired and it all went wrong. A factor of this would have to be Gerry Adams rather desperate performance on the debate programme prior to the election. The panel were debating the details of Celtic Tiger economics and Gerry insisted on mentioning equal rights each time, totally way off the mark and the points being made by other contributers at the time. I think the Irish public saw the limited knowledge Gerry & Co. has on such matters and decided from then on that the Shinners were not for them. Seán Crowe lost his seat in working class Dublin, Mary Lou McDonald didn’t make much of an impact and Aengus O’Snodaigh just barely scraped in. Back to the drawing board for the Shinners then and time for the Shinners to read up on Adam Smith, Richard Cantillon and the like. (Perhaps the paramilitary black garb of the colour party could be dropped too in favour of civies now that the ‘war’ is over. Perhaps it can look sinister and intimidating to Dubliners when parading through the city.)
Posted by on May 28, 2007 @ 08:37 AMseanzmct:
After all Sinn Fein were a party of the right prior to the sixties lurch into “socialism”.
Are you sure ?
Republicanism has historically always been associated with the left, look at the text of the 1916 proclamation.
Posted by on May 28, 2007 @ 09:06 AMby It was Sammy Mc Nally what done it on,
you obviously didn’t try and follow the NI Assembly elections on the BBC website.
Just as a clarification, I was not talking about news coverage as a whole, I was talking about election coverage and in the recent NI and Dáil elections, which were both under the STV system, RTE was streets ahead.
Posted by on May 28, 2007 @ 09:13 AMSinn Fein ; the Alliance party of the Republic?
Boy - You really know how to hurt a guy!
It’s good to see from some of the other posts that Sinn Fein still inspires such and (and sheer lunacy) from it’s opponents. Considering the nature of those same opponents and the sort of politics they practise I deduce that Sinn Fein must be still on the right track.
Posted by on May 28, 2007 @ 09:15 AMRepublicanism has historically always been associated with the left
So why did people like Peadar O’Donnell, Frank Ryan and George Gilmore leave the IRA and form the Republican Congress Comrade Stalin? What was the infamous attack at Bodenstown all about ?
Posted by on May 28, 2007 @ 09:20 AMPaul,
we now have partition with partial Nationalist ‘consent’ - partial because all the options were not availble at the time of the vote e.g. U.I.
But Nationalists having tried the violence route have now given up on that and in my opinion. Grizzly deserves great praise for achieiving that having given the other alternative his best ‘shot’.
But with the Tories in power in Englezeland who is to say it wont kick off again in 20 years or when demographics bring a UI closer and people forget the unpleasantries.
Partition, Partition Partition.
Posted by on May 28, 2007 @ 09:30 AMComrade Stalin @ 11:06 AM:
There may be a valid point in there somewhere. Is there, anywhere, a convincing critique of the ideology of the blood-sacrifice men? Was Connolly’s the only socialism on parade at the Post Office?
The link from there to the 1934 Athlone Manifesto (Maggot @ 11:20 AM) involves crossing a generational divide while ignoring a world slump and the rise of fascism. It certainly is not merely evolution in the movement.
A further link to the Provos of the post-1969 split needs an even greater intellectual leap.
All of this deserves serious debate. These columns are not the suitable arena. Where else?
Posted by on May 28, 2007 @ 09:43 AMBoth governments now accept that partition is a source of ongoing instability. It won’t last much longer but we’ll have to put up with the usual inanities while the Brits declare victory and leave, as they have done in other countries around the world.
Even if the Brits don’t want to accept it the next Democrat administration will make sure they do. Only a few more years of Ingram etc. - makes it easier to accept when I remind myself of that.
Posted by on May 28, 2007 @ 09:45 AMThe Spotlight programme last week on BBC NI had economic experts giving their opinion on the future of NI and they generally agreed that NI would be financially better off within a UI situation.
Posted by on May 28, 2007 @ 10:02 AMlib2016 @ 11:45 AM
Where have you been for the last few years? Yours is the rhetoric of a quarter of a century gone.
The “Brits” (please define) long since have lost all interest in partition, except as an element in the “expenditure” side of the balance sheet.
On the other hand, there may well be a nascent administration at Stormont capable of managing things (well, OK, so far, so good). Besides, there is now supra-national machinery and co-operation which transcends the narrow statelet policies of Craig and Andrews, on which the like of lib2016 could feed. The notion that any US administration (or any other deus ex machina imposes régime change on NI is cloud-cuckoo land. At some stage, probably not in my lifetime, a further referendum may happen (without much support, one might think, from Dublin): place your bets if you like.
By the way, could one equally argue that separatism for Scotland would be “a source of ongoing instability”?
And, yes, this is definitely “off topic”.
Posted by on May 28, 2007 @ 10:08 AMIs money the deciding factor ? After all for most of it’s existance the FS/ROI would have been better off financially within the UK . From what I can see ‘tribalism’ still rules the roost on both sides of the border - in NI it’s still Orange vs Green, in the ROI is still locked into the civil war, FF vs FG ?
Posted by on May 28, 2007 @ 10:12 AMPrior to this election, everybody in the south who was going to vote Sinn Fein had already done so. They were never going to make any serious gains on 2002. Protest votes only last so long.
Reasons why SF did poorly in this election? One word: “socialist”
Posted by on May 28, 2007 @ 10:51 AMSammy, but that still means it wasn’t partition that caused the violence. A minority of nationalists once thought they had the right to kill people to end partititon and force unification but most nationalists didn’t. After 25 years and 3000+ deaths later that minority decided that the rest of nationalists had been right all along. There was partition before and most nationalists didn’t murder anyone. There is still partition now but the violence has stopped.
SF/IRA want to absolve themselves of responsiblity by saying “partition made me do it”. No, it was their choice to shoot the man in front of his family or or set off the bomb at the Remembrance ceremony. And now they’ve recognised that the majority of nationalists were right when they said that wasn’t the right thing to do.
I’m always interested by this perjoritive word “partition”. We’ve seen partition in north America, the Iberian peninsula, the Low Countries, Scandinavia just to name a few - these didn’t lead to terrorist campaigns. Its a standard way of drawing borders.
Posted by on May 28, 2007 @ 11:56 AM‘I’m always interested by this perjoritive word “partition”. We’ve seen partition in north America, the Iberian peninsula, the Low Countries, Scandinavia just to name a few - these didn’t lead to terrorist campaigns. Its a standard way of drawing borders.’
However were there communities within these partioned areas getting a raw deal or the shitty end of the stick? The very cause of ‘the Troubles’ is becomming more and more overlooked.
Posted by on May 28, 2007 @ 12:16 PMLib
It’s good to see from some of the other posts that Sinn Fein still inspires such and (and sheer lunacy) from it’s opponents.
So does Alliance. So there’s another link!
And here’s another one: did SF’s “journey” end on 8 May? Was it rejected simply because it was all about the “process”, and the “process” is over?
Posted by on May 28, 2007 @ 12:50 PMLet’s not forget that re-unification would need a dual mandate, majorities in support being required in both countries. Both would be voting for collossal tax rises, required to make up for the loss of GB subsidies. They would also be voting for an undoubted return to war by loyalist paramilitaries, whose membership in a “doomsday scenario” is likely to increase innumerably, and major southern cities would surely be the main target of attack.
I dont foresee the turkeys voting for Christmas for a long time!
Posted by on May 28, 2007 @ 01:02 PM“And here’s another one: did SF’s “journey” end on 8 May? Was it rejected simply because it was all about the “process”, and the “process” is over?”
Ian,
Alliance’s future is dependent on its role in the next phase of “the process”.
Small as you are you can’t sit on that constitutional fence forever. You now need a position that isn’t just “let’s not make things worse”. Stand for something before you get splinters in your liberal backside, (not calling you big-arse or anything by the way).
Posted by on May 28, 2007 @ 01:10 PM“Both would be voting for collossal tax rises, required to make up for the loss of GB subsidies.”
This is highly speculative. Nobody can predict how the two economies in Ireland will be performing in 20/30 years’ time, which is when I imagine a referendum would be held.
Posted by on May 28, 2007 @ 01:33 PMPaul,
given that most nationalists voted in the anti-partitionist insurrectionists into power (PSF)they can claim to have got a mandate after the event - 1916 and all that.I put that down to the good sense of Grizzly and the fact that the boy Blair went to Donegal on holidays and found out what was going on.
Dividing the country on the basis of a sectarian head count (partition) is a recipe for disaster especially when you put a hostile intolerant ethnic minority in charge of the bit you slice off. It is true the Englezes took there eye off the ball but that can be attributed to the fact that they agreed to Stormont as part of the partition deal.
Posted by on May 28, 2007 @ 01:51 PM“Both would be voting for colossal tax rises…”
These days even unionists are giving lip service to the idea of integrating the economies North and South. Argue all you want, guys. It’s already happening. Economic union first to be followed by whatever political developments are decided upon by a generation most of whom will never have seen republicans at war.
The PD’s did even worse than Sinn Fein and the Greens aren’t too happy either yet to read these posts one would think that SF were the only party which had a bad day. If the local elections in two years show the Sinn Fein vote still growing it won’t mean certainty about anything but most observers won’t be too surprised.
Posted by on May 28, 2007 @ 02:04 PMlib, 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.?
Did you by any chance study at the Gerry Adams School of Economics? lol
If anything, it would increase the subsidy required therefore leading to even more collossal tax increases in the unimaginable case of re-unification.
That is why it is such a great progressive game plan for unionism to argue for harmonisation of certain taxation areas. We are in effect tying ourselves closer to the U.K. by making the tax rises required to bring about a united ireland so absolutely horrifying that no-one in their right mind, in either the RoI or N.I., could vote for bringing it about. It’s the economy, stupid!Posted by on May 28, 2007 @ 03:21 PM
