Inside Sinn Féin, But None the Wiser
In a lifetime of reading, only two books have seriously tempted me to give up halfway through. The first was Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. The second was Siobhán Fenton's account of her time working for Sinn Féin. In both cases, I suspect my expectations had rather more to do with my disappointment than the books themselves.
I bought Fenton's book when it was first released but deliberately put off reading it. I had a holiday coming up and wanted to take my time with it, rather than rush through something I had been looking forward to.
When I finally settled into my seat for a three-hour flight, I opened it with genuine interest. Having spent twenty years in the Republican Movement, I wanted to know whether Sinn Féin had changed much since I left. Had the party changed internally, or had it simply learned to present itself differently? A book written by someone who had worked inside its communications operation seemed a good place to look for answers.
What followed was a long account of the everyday business of political communications. Fenton goes into unremarkable detail about her time working for Sinn Féin. We learn about Mary Lou McDonald's clothes and lipstick, the décor of buildings, press cycles, polling and the arrangements surrounding political announcements. At one point, she even tells us what the choir was wearing at the lighting of the Dáil Christmas tree.
Much of the book is taken up with policy announcements on housing, childcare and other issues, along with detailed explanations of how Sinn Féin tested public opinion and managed the media reaction. We are taken through the mechanics of polling, market testing and press management, often at considerable length.
Fenton also spends a surprising amount of time explaining why she went to work for Sinn Féin. I can understand why a journalist might feel the need to explain that decision. But having done so once, there seems little reason to keep returning to it. I had no particular interest in judging her career choices. I wanted to know about Sinn Féin.
There are also occasions when Fenton repeats Sinn Féin's account of its own history without questioning it. This is particularly noticeable in how the party presents its relationship with the IRA, the peace process and its move into constitutional politics, as though these were all part of a carefully worked-out strategy rather than a series of decisions shaped by changing political circumstances. Sinn Féin has spent years putting its own interpretation on that history. I had hoped Fenton might test some of those claims rather than take them at face value.
Working inside an organisation does not necessarily mean understanding it. Sometimes it simply means becoming familiar with how it wants to be understood. A journalist writing about Sinn Féin should be prepared to question that.
It is not until chapters fourteen and fifteen that the book begins to tell us something about the Sinn Féin I had hoped to read about.
With a general election approaching, the party was struggling to hold together two different groups of voters. There were its traditional working-class supporters, many of whom had stayed loyal through difficult years, and a newer, more middle-class electorate attracted by the prospect of political change.
Sinn Féin was trying to ride two horses, and neither appeared particularly happy with the direction of travel.
At the same time, the party leadership seemed to be losing touch with its grassroots. Mary Lou McDonald appeared increasingly removed from the problems developing around her, while those running the party were busy with polling, public relations and the prospect of entering government.
Here, finally, was something worth reading.
How had a party that once prided itself on knowing its supporters become so distant from them? Had the pursuit of middle-class votes changed Sinn Féin itself? Or had the leadership simply become so used to telling people what they wanted to hear that it had stopped listening to what they were saying?
For years, Sinn Féin had presented itself as the alternative to the political establishment. It was the party that would do things differently. Yet the closer it appeared to get to government, the harder it became for some voters to see what made it different from Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael.
The party that promised to change the system was now working hard to show that it could manage the system.
These were the questions I wanted Fenton to unpack. Unfortunately, much of what she tells us about the internal disagreements comes through unnamed sources and vague references. We are given glimpses of what was happening but little opportunity to understand why.
And just as the book begins to get interesting, we are back to press releases, polling and the daily work of political communications.
Perhaps I expected too much. Fenton worked in political communications, and it is reasonable that she should write about what she knows. There is value in understanding how a modern political party manages its public image. But the public image is not the organisation.
In recounting the circumstances of her departure from the party, Fenton appears to have discovered something many of us learned long ago. Sinn Féin has a habit of eating its own. You are useful for as long as you are useful, and when that usefulness ends, you can quickly find yourself on the outside looking in. In this respect, I have some sympathy for her. Whatever my criticisms of the book, I recognise something familiar in her experience. Indeed, it is perhaps the one insight the book offers that suggests the movement has changed very little in the twenty years since I left.
I spent twenty years in the Republican Movement before leaving. I wanted to know whether Sinn Féin had changed since I left. Was it much the same organisation, only with better suits and a more professional press office?
Having finally finished the book, which took rather more determination than I had expected, I still don't know.
Siobhán Fenton, 2026. Ourselves Alone: Sinn Féin Behind Closed Doors. ISBN-13:978-1844887095. Publisher - Sandycove.
