Thursday, August 16, 2007
Sinn Fein’s activists in ‘deep denial’?
For those with some Irish, this interview with Eoghan Harris on last Monday’s Blas is well worth a listen. But so is this piece from Liam Clarke, who witnessed Harris’s performance at West Belfast Talks Back. Considering his claim to political consistency is his opposition to the Sinn Fein project, he was, by most accounts fairly gentle in his criticism. What seems to have struck Clarke more than anything Harris said was that “Sinn Fein activists are in deep denial. They won’t even admit where they are politically. If you don’t know where you are now, it’s going to be hard to find a way forward.”
By Liam Clarke
Could Sinn Fein and Christian churches become new projects for Eoghan Harris, a newly appointed senator in the republic? Speaking as part
of a panel at the West Belfast festival last Wednesday, he proclaimed his intention of re-creating and redefining republicanism for the 21st century and referred on a number of occasions to the importance of Christian values.
The Christian bit was a surprise. The last time Harris wrote about spirituality it was to recommend the message of Tibetan Buddhism. All the same, he has a strong record of spotting and shaping trends in public opinion.
He doesn’t always get it right,
of course. While working as an
adviser to Fine Gael he famously introduced an off-colour comedy sketch by Twink into one section
of party leader John Bruton’s
televised address. Overall, though, his record is impressive. He generally calls Irish elections right and often throws in his lot with the winning side.
Harris spotted Mary Robinson’s potential to win the Irish presidency when few others did, and gave her the crucial advice she needed to kill off her frumpy, woolly jumper image. He groomed Proinsias De Rossa for government and, in the most recent election, spotted the fact that Fianna Fail could win and intervened to give Bertie Ahern crucial backing on the Late Late Show. Last week a Red C poll for the Sunday Business Post showed one-fifth of Fianna Fail voters said they had been influenced by his statements.
That’s why the notion of a Christian republicanism emerging in
Ireland cannot be discounted. Neither can Harris’s bold prediction that Sinn Fein will lose all its seats to Fianna Fail in the next Irish general election and that the party should concentrate its efforts on the north. It was bitter advice, especially since Gerry Adams, who masterminded Sinn Fein’s southern election strategy, was sitting in the audience.
The statement brought Dr Jude Collins, a University of Ulster academic and former Daily Ireland columnist, to his feet and Sinn Fein’s defence. Collins waved a £100 note (assuring everyone it wasn’t from the Northern Bank) and offered to bet Harris was wrong. Harris took the bet. “What odds will you give me? I suggest you start at 10-1,” said Collins.
“I’ll give you 10-1,” Harris replied. “I’d have given you 100-1 if you had asked for it.” Collins, no mean debater, was left asking if he could have 100-1 after all. “Not now you can’t,” replied Harris, laughing.
The suspicion that Harris might be right about Sinn Fein’s fate deepened when Catriona Ruane, Sinn Fein’s Mayo-born education minister at Stormont, predicted Sinn Fein would go from strength to strength, but then refused to put any money on it. Harris goaded her: “In the southern election you were put out of business.” Ruane told Martina Purdy, the BBC journalist chairing the event, that she didn’t gamble.
Adams, who won money from Barney Eastwood when he took his West Belfast seat from the Social Democratic and Labour party’s Dr Joe Hendron, also kept his hands in his pockets.
The next step in Adams’s strategy involves a breakthrough in the south. That is why he did not take a ministry in Stormont. Instead, he visited every constituency in the last Dail election and dominated Sinn Fein’s slots on RTE’s party political broadcasts.
Last week, though, Sinn Fein’s contribution to the debate looked increasingly tired and formulaic. The party appeared lost and fell back on slogans. One man in the audience proclaimed, with a cheer, that the British Army had admitted “the IRA was unbeatable”.
Edwin Poots, a Democratic Unionist minister who might have been expected to react with apoplexy to that boast, instead gave an unemotional account of the main phases of the IRA campaign before pronouncing evenly that “by the late 1980s the IRA was stuffed”. He said it was no surprise they hated Special Branch so much, given the extent to which it had infiltrated the IRA.
Poots went on to praise Adams for giving Ian Paisley most of what he had asked for. Harris also praised Adams for his “epic” achievement in bringing the IRA campaign to an end and weaning his supporters away from the gun.
Harris went on to refer to his key role in weaning the Official Republican movement away from violence and said it made him admire Adams’s skill in achieving the same thing with a larger movement.
It wasn’t all sweetness and light. Martin Meehan, an IRA veteran from Ardoyne, described Harris as an embarrassment, accusing him of being ashamed to admit he had taken the IRA oath. Meehan, a republican legend in his day, compared his life of violent struggle and his years in jail to that of Harris, drifting from one political home to another.
The directness of Harris’s reply was cruel. “What’s bothering you is that you did not get what you wanted to get after 30 years. Now you are taking out your spleen on someone like me who copped on early that this was a dead end,” he said, denying he had ever joined the IRA.
Several IRA veterans, including Jim “Flash” McVeigh, the last OC of Provisional IRA prisoners in the Maze, sat in the audience. Not one of them stood to say the campaign had been worthwhile or that their years of violence, jail and sacrifice had been justified by the outcome Adams had negotiated. Harris’s advice was to move on, put it behind them and focus on the political opportunities ahead rather than the wrongs of the past.
There are no signs Sinn Fein is prepared to take this advice just yet. Today Adams will be the main speaker at a “March for Truth”, which culminates in a rally at Belfast city hall. Held under the banner of the National Hunger Strike Committee, it will attempt to conjure up the sense of purpose felt by republicans during the 1981 hunger strike, by wearing the black armbands used back then by supporters of the prison protest.
In the past, holding such an event in the centre of Belfast, highlighting collusion by the security forces with loyalists and ignoring the fact the IRA killed half of those who died in the Troubles, would have sparked outrage from unionists. Today, even in the August silly season, commentators are predicting neither trouble nor much interest.
When Adams was interviewed about it on the BBC a caller asked him how he expected to be taken seriously when he called for a truth commission when he wouldn’t even admit he had been in the IRA. Judging by the debate, Sinn Fein activists are in deep denial. They won’t even admit where they are politically.
If you don’t know where you are now, it’s going to be hard to find a way forward.
First published in the Sunday Times…
Mick Fealty @ 12:51 PM
Well of course I am not going to make any predictions. We could well have a general election in less than 10 months in NI and it will be interesting to watch the SF vote. Something tells me that SDLP will not win any off them.
Posted by on Aug 16, 2007 @ 02:12 PMAnyone else wondering what Gerry Adams was thinking when Meehan attacked Harris for being too ashamed to admit he had taken the IRA oath?
Posted by on Aug 16, 2007 @ 02:50 PMSlug - I suspect youre right SDLP will not win any seats from SF. But will SF’s vote hold up? Does anyone think Ruane can now beat McGrady? I doubt it.
Posted by on Aug 16, 2007 @ 03:54 PMWell, where is SF, politically?
In the north, the picture is clearer than in the south, stating the obvious. But SF’s position in the north should not be minimized. From the 1801 Act of Union, at least, the six counties of the north have been governed by the British and Unionists comprised in large measure of members of the Orange Order. Not a particularly healthy arrangement for any nationalist in the north.
Today, in those areas which have been devolved to the assembly, SF’s concurrance is required before Ian Paisley can enact any legislation. That in and of itself is a long, long way from the dark days when Unionists held a stangle-hold on Stormont, and the nationalist community was all but disnfranchised in every way.
The south is a different kettle of fish, but has been since Partition. Fianna Fail’s hold on the Dail may seem almost insurmountable, but Bertie Ahern had to cobble together a coalition to retain his position as Taoiseach, just as he had to do in the last Dail. While it is a reasonably firm coalition, and an early general election isn’t likely, IMHO, that gives SF five years, give or take, to reformulate its message so that it appeals to a wider electorate in the south.
If the economy remains robust, which is no sure thing, FF will in all likelihood do well in the next general election too. But given the vagaries of world economics, some slow down is bound to occur, and with it, some slippage from FF’s vote.
The south has never been overly concerned with the plight of the nationalist community in the north, but SF can grow in the south by focusing attention on problems there, that are bound to sprout like toadstools after a good rain in the coming years.
The republican movement has a long history in Ireland, and I for one, would not be tolling its death knell just yet.
Posted by on Aug 16, 2007 @ 04:02 PMThere’s a lot in all of these comments. If SF has lost the roadmap, then the SDLP is surely still looking for the front door. If SF’s problems are all medium to long term, SDLP’s are decidedly existential.
In NI, it’s a cinch. But 32 county force? Maybe. But largely by the same kind of arms length patronage as their Unionist partners will seek to exert in Dublin.
Posted by on Aug 16, 2007 @ 04:24 PMSounded a fascinating meeting. Truly astonishing how far people have moved that such sentiments can be expressed freely and safely in such a forum.
Posted by on Aug 16, 2007 @ 05:39 PMI expect that Sinn Féin will win many seats in the Dail next time. The strong candidates are there including Mary Lou McDonald, and what will be different next time is (i) that Sinn Féin will have proven their economic competence by presiding over a successful period of economic growth in the six counties (ii) that the Greens and FF will have become very unpopular and (iii) FG will be unable to capitalise on that because FF voters will switch SF before FG.
Posted by on Aug 16, 2007 @ 06:18 PMI expect that Sinn Féin will win many seats in the Dail next time.
I remember you predicting that last time. I also remember you suggesting that Mary Lou should be party leader.
that the Greens and FF will have become very unpopular
Of the 22 governments that have existed in the Irish Republic since 1937, Fianna Fail have been in 17 of them. No amount of corruption, mismanagement, economic backwardness, or anything else has ever managed to keep them out of government for long. Why do you think things will change ?
Posted by on Aug 16, 2007 @ 06:47 PMGod, isn’t hindsight great altogether.
Is this all-seeing sage Eoghan Harris in any way related to the Eoghan Harris who was a leading light in the Workers’ Party?
You know, the one that foresaw class revolution led from the Phoenix Park foundries they planned. The Soviets, the Workers’ committees, the Stalinists, the greatest misreaders of history God put on this earth after the Waco mob?
Harris is against the Provos because they won out in the split.
Now he claims he knew all along what was happening.
The only consistency in his arguments is the arrogant I’m the smartest boy in the class preening.
And if that’s playing the man, well according to Harris there’s no ball - just himself on the pitch, An Saoi gan Locht.
Posted by on Aug 16, 2007 @ 07:10 PMGood point. Well spotted, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) .
The problem for the Shinners (as far as we in the South are concerned) is that they always wanted to call the tune—- while others always had to pay the piper. Sometimes with their lives. Sometimes with the loss of their OWN unique identity.Posted by on Aug 16, 2007 @ 07:21 PM“Of the 22 governments that have existed in the Irish Republic since 1937, Fianna Fail have been in 17 of them. No amount of corruption, mismanagement, economic backwardness, or anything else has ever managed to keep them out of government for long”
Comrade stalin,
Any thoughts on why the above is so?.
Posted by on Aug 16, 2007 @ 07:24 PMFianna Fail and the British Tories did not bother much with policy, and it did them no harm. Maybe theoretical consistency is overrated.
Posted by on Aug 16, 2007 @ 07:40 PMThere’s an amount of truth in what Eoghan Harris says, that SF in the north are the powers that be in the north, as far as nationalists are concerned, and will be for the forseeable future. Down south,it’s more difficult. Ideological politics is giving way to the more managerial type politics of the US/UK - ie no discernible difference between the parties on fundamental policy grounds - and that creates a problem for SF. They need candidates with more credibility and look to be going in the right direction with the likes of Piaras O Dochartaigh, Padraig Mac Lochlainn, Mary Lou McDonald. Those three by themselves are not enough to challenge Fianna Fáil, replete as it is with university graduate types on the make but with no ideals as to how Ireland should be governed.
So what to do? Well, I happen to believe that Irish democracy is best served by the emergence of a viable left wing in the south - and that includes Labour/SF/The Greens. “Left” wing is perhaps too descriptive a term - I’m looking for a genuine alternative, politicians who are competent - none of this electronic voting, aer lingus / transport chaos/ falling education standards/health chaos etc - and straight. I don’t believe Fianna Fail have competent or straight politicians. The best you can say to them is that they are ‘presentable’ but once you get behind that smooth exterior, well, you only have to look at Haughey, Ahern and co to see that what you’re getting is more than you bargained for.My optimism for the future is tempered by the fact that the Greens are in bed with FF/PDs, who are to Irish government what Mr Burns is to the Simpsons. There’s a great deal of political building to be done by SF to get to the position to where they can challenge FF. Whether they do that before the FF machine eats them up, that’s another question.
Posted by on Aug 16, 2007 @ 07:41 PMRegardless of your persuasion and even allowing for the fact that five years is a millennium in politics, 10-1 is pretty good odds. Unless they kick the bucket or radical boundary revisions orphan them, it’s hard to see O’Caolain and Ferris not being returned. Put me down for a tenner.
Posted by on Aug 16, 2007 @ 08:18 PMThe only thing remarkable about Hariis is that he seems quite willing to abandon any and all principles for the sake of a ride on the new hobby horse. If you look at all the “dark horses” he has backed the most obvious thing that comes to mind is how diametrically opposed his new set of principles are to his old ones. Add to that a good mind for the bon mot and people start to over estimate his fore sight in picking who to back and what the new fad is
Posted by on Aug 16, 2007 @ 09:08 PMWhat is this IRA “oath” and why is yet again again being paraded as if some mystic, bloodcurdling ritual?
Volunteers on admission to the IRA made a simple declaration of allegience to the Irish Republic, as proclaimed in 1916, and undertook to follow the properly constituted orders of the IRA relayed through their commanders.
Oaths of allegience and fealty might be necessary for the conscripted and press-ganged wretches of the armies and navies of nervous monarchs but free willed, free hearted men volunteer their service to the struggle against human dignity without need of such loathsome surrender of spirit.
Posted by on Aug 16, 2007 @ 09:12 PM“Today, in those areas which have been devolved to the assembly, SF’s concurrance is required before Ian Paisley can enact any legislation. That in and of itself is a long, long way from the dark days when Unionists held a stangle-hold on Stormont, and the nationalist community was all but disnfranchised in every way.”
...but that cuts two ways. If Sinn Fein want to do anything they need DUP support. So what SF have got is that they can do things only as long as the extreme edge of Unionism agrees. Otherwise the status quo holds (which Unionism is generally quite happy with).
Even then, they can only do this in “in those areas which have been devolved to the assembly” ie handed down by the hated Brits who control the whole show anyway, albeit now at one remove and usually after a quiet chat with Bertie.
Result!
Posted by on Aug 16, 2007 @ 09:17 PM“Any thoughts on why the above is so?” - Mick Hall
I’d be more interested to know why he thinks that a government that is characterised by “corruption, mismanagement, economic backwardness” could produce one of the world’s most economically successful and multicultural and pluralist societies in record time from a post-colonial starting point of absolute penury.The logic seems to be that bad governments produce great economies. Or perhaps it means that brilliant economies are self-creating entities that exist independently of the management of government? In which case, it doesn’t matter who we elect, does it? Either way, I suspect a Nobel Prize won’t be far from this thread.
Posted by on Aug 17, 2007 @ 12:27 AMAm I right in understanding from the above that Harris gave the guy in the audience 10/1 on SF getting at least 1 seat in the next Dail election. Just one at 10/1???
Why didn’t the whole audience get in on the act & bankrupt him?
Posted by on Aug 17, 2007 @ 08:03 AM“Slug - I suspect youre right SDLP will not win any seats from SF. But will SF’s vote hold up? Does anyone think Ruane can now beat McGrady? I doubt it. “
Interesting, I assumed Ritchie had got the Ministry so she could challenge Ruane with her Ministry.
Posted by on Aug 17, 2007 @ 08:12 AM“I’d be more interested to know why he thinks that a government that is characterised by “corruption, mismanagement, economic backwardness” could produce one of the world’s most economically successful and multicultural and pluralist societies in record time from a post-colonial starting point of absolute penury. “
Governments can bad through action or inaction. Perhaps in the Irish case it was because they did so little, just created the right conditions for business (lots of brown envelopes available that way) and let those who knew how to do it get on with it and create the growth. Sure there were some social casualties - but, frankly, what the hell, there always will be be and perhaps there were fewer than there otherwise would have been.
Anyway, if the money keeps rolling in and the electorate feel good they will be reelect whatever shower is in power no lmatter how venial, morally bankrupt or corrupt(cf the UK).
That’s real politics. (Almost) everyone wins.
Posted by on Aug 17, 2007 @ 08:14 AMhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seán_Lemass
Dubliner - Sean Lemass never gets enough credit IMHO. A fascinating life, from one of Collins assassins to the single most important catalyst of Ireland’s prosperity.
Posted by on Aug 17, 2007 @ 08:20 AMCynic, waffle much?
So, if I correctly understand your theory on how to create a successful economy, it is that governments should not formulate and implement economic policy, national development strategies, legal frameworks, regulate taxes, promote vocational or third-level education, et al, but should sit on their backsides while citizens “get on with it” in a state that is de facto devoid of functioning government but where, for examples, laws miraculously appear on the statute books and international trade policies and agreements just spontaneously appear out of nowhere? Interesting.
If governments have nothing to do the success or failure of economies, then their management of them is redundant, isn’t it? I think it’s a bloody disgrace that we have been paying “that shower” for decades and we haven’t yet copped on the truth of your theory. Out with the lot of them!
By the way, does the same ‘management is irrelevant’ principle apply to industry or, say, a sporting organisation? Just wonderin’ as I think a lot of companies would make more profit if they reduced costs by firing their management and just, sorta, “get on with it.”
Dewi, I never click Wiki links! But most of us know how important the actions of government are to our economy without citing the example of Lemass - one of Ireland’s greatest. Haughey, as hated as he is by many, was a similar genius, doing for finance what Lemass did for industry. Ahern is another genius. Derided as FF politicians are, many of them are exceptionally capable people with keen strategic vision.
I think a lot of this is rooted in a colonial legacy from the inoculation feelings of inferiority into the Irish in order to suppress their nationalism and desire for independence. Success is often put down to “the luck of the Irish” rather than ability. Even now we won’t accept that we are responsible for our success, attributing it to mysterious market forces or assuming it is transient and illusionary - and claiming that we had nothing to do with (even at government level). Ergo, we still need the British to guide us. ;)
Posted by on Aug 17, 2007 @ 09:02 AMAlan
Your right to a certain degree, Margaret Richie is on the executive in order to bring up her profile,
Ruane is in the executive for the same reason,
they are both going afterthe south down seat, but in my honest opinion i dont think that Ruane will succeed! Even in the assembley election the SDLP vote was ahead of the SF.
i think the seats will remain as they are now, witht he exception of maybe Fermanagh South Tyrone, in think Foster may get it ahead of Gildernew, it will be very close! as will south belfast, tho i think Mcdonnel has done enough work to re-tain the seat.
look for the SF vote to stay the same, and the SDLP to rise a lot more than its assembly showing!
Posted by on Aug 17, 2007 @ 10:47 AM“There’s a lot in all of these comments. If SF has lost the roadmap, then the SDLP is surely still looking for the front door. If SF’s problems are all medium to long term, SDLP’s are decidedly existential.”
Spot on – the one thing SF will have going for them in the North for a long time to come is that the SDLP is their opponents
“I expect that Sinn Féin will win many seats in the Dail next time”
They expected to win 10 in 2007 and got four. This was against a background of the successful establishment of a powersharing executive with Paisley. In 2012 SF will be even less in the news
“The strong candidates are there including Mary Lou McDonald”
Mary Lou will have a tough battle holding on to her MEP seat in Dublin. The 2007 GE figures show this. Given that the Dublin Euro constituency will probably go from a four seater to a three seater this is even a bigger ask
“and what will be different next time is :
(i) that Sinn Féin will have proven their economic competence by presiding over a successful period of economic growth in the six counties”Southerners don’t give a damn about the Northern economy and like in the 2007 debates if SF tries to rely on their Northern record in a South election it will be read as they don’t really know about the bread and butter issues here
“(ii) that the Greens and FF will have become very unpopular”
That could prove just as fertile for the Labour Party as SF. FG-Labour believed in a similar strategy for years and they got nowhere
“(iii) FG will be unable to capitalise on that because FF voters will switch SF before FG”
FF have been in a centre right coalition with the PDs for 10 years. Much of the soft FF support is centre to centre right and their middle class soft support will look to FG first as an alternative government leader and centre-right party. The safe middle class soft Fianna Fail vote have as strong an antipathy to PSF as Fine Gaelers - why else did Bertie feel the need to rule Sinn Fein as a coalition partner?
Sinn Fein has become a successful catch all centrist party in the North like Fianna Fail is in the South and is blessed with weak opponents in the SDLP. The centre ground is already crowded in the south and the “left of Labour niche” which Sinn Fein had used as a base from the mid nineties onward is a narrow and fickle constituency – breaking out of it and retaining it at the same time is nigh impossable
Sinn Fein might well retain a presence in the border counties but after their drubbing of Fianna Fail in the 2004 local elections in Dublin by Sinn Fein, Fianna Fail will remain focussed on rooting out Sinn Fein in their heartlands now that the Peace Process is not longer there to restrain them attacking Sinn Fein. The Southern Economic “debate” will continue to revolve on a Fianna Fail v Fine Gael/Labour axis.
Sinn Fein are now a better organised and all Ireland version of the SDLP. It is an impossibility for their activists to face up to this ideological reality – they’ll stay in denial.
Posted by on Aug 17, 2007 @ 10:52 AM
