Tonight the Pensive Quill features radical unionist commentator and former Blanket journalist Dr John Coulter as he casts an eye over why Sinn Fein is so anxious to get its Northern-based ‘big guns’ into Southern politics.
Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams’ decision to leave his West Belfast Stormont and Westminster stronghold for a seat in Dublin’s Dail is the start of a new phase in Irish republican tactics. It most certainly is not a case of Adams being put out to graze politically. Nor should Stormont deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness’ Irish Presidential bid be dismissed as finding the aging Shinner a political green field to spend his days until his formal retirement, whenever that might be.
When Adams announced he would be his party’s candidate for the Sinn Fein seat in County Louth, it seemed at first sight a one-way ticket to electoral suicide. In the 2007 Southern General Election, Sinn Fein had expected to double its Dail tally to 10 TDs. However, the party went into meltdown, and Sinn Fein finished with only four out of the 166 TDs. Essentially, Southern voters still viewed Sinn Fein with economic suspicion, tending to write off its policies as too Marxist.
In 2007, the Republic’s economy, dubbed the Celtic Tiger, was riding high and talk of a credit crunch, property bust, or economic downturn was not in the Southern political vocabulary. Based on this analysis, it seemed Adams had taken leave of his senses when he switched his attentions south of the border, particularly when the 2011 Stormont poll had returned Sinn Fein as the second largest Assembly party and his life-long colleague Martin McGuinness was back as the North’s Deputy First Minister – probably the second most influential post in Northern politics.
But Adams had rebranded Southern Sinn Fein as an effective protest party against the disastrous policies of the outgoing Fianna Fail/Green Party coalition government. Adams also played the clever nationalist card that Sinn Fein was the only true all-Ireland party with seats in Stormont and Dublin. Gone to the dustbin of history was Sinn Fein’s traditional abstentionist policy of not taking seats in the Dail or in a Northern partitionist parliament in Belfast. Sinn Fein sits in the European Parliament, but its five Westminster MPs still refuse to take their Commons seats.
The double whammy of protest party and all-island movement worked brilliantly for Adams and the 2011 Dail general election saw Southern Sinn Fein march into Leinster House with 14 TDs – and Adams as group leader. This was Sinn Fein’s best Dail result since the Irish Republic was created in the late 1940s.
Another boost for Sinn Fein was that its biggest electoral rivals in the South, Fianna Fail, recorded its worst ever Dail result. Adams is effectively laying the foundation for a carbon copy of Sinn Fein’s election success in the North.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the 1981 republican hunger strikes in which Provisional IRA commander and Fermanagh and South Tyrone Westminster MP Bobby Sands and nine other IRA and INLA inmates died in the North’s Maze prison. Then, Sinn Fein was a political non-entity and merely the apologist for the Provos’ terror campaign.
Adams built Sinn Fein by first using the hunger strikes to electorally mobilise the Catholic working class in the North. Traditionally, this substantial section of Catholic opinion mostly boycotted Northern elections, or reluctantly voted for the moderate nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party.
But to become the North’s leading nationalist party, Sinn Fein had to target the lucrative and growing Catholic middle class. Adams introduced an increasing number of female candidates and candidates who had no track record of involvement in the IRA. There was still a significant number of ex-prisoners running for Sinn Fein to keep republican heartlands firmly behind the party’s peace strategy.
Adams successfully presented Sinn Fein as a democratic socialist party, selling both IRA decommissioning and working in a power-sharing Stormont Executive with Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionists as mere stepping stones to an eventual united Ireland.
In this respect, he was using the same ploy which Sinn Fein founder Arthur Griffith and IRA leader Michael Collins had implemented to sell the Treaty to the majority of republicans in the 1920s. But where does Adams go now as Sinn Fein still remains outside the realms of coalition government in the Republic?
His 14-seat Dail victory was founded on galvanising working class anger at the collapse of the Celtic Tiger. To become a serious contender for coalition government partner, Adams must convince the Southern Catholic middle class to back Sinn Fein in significant numbers.
Current Fine Gael Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s recent hard-hitting criticism of the Irish Catholic Church’s cover-ups of allegations of clerical sex abuse has finally shattered the Republic’s historic bond between church and state. If Adams can sell Sinn Fein to Southern middle class Catholics as the party that will expose alleged pervert priests through more inquiries, he could gain those extra dozen Dail seats which put him in the bargaining position of a power broker in the Dail and Stormont. With this outcome, Adams’ Southern gamble will have worked.
That gamble can be made a certainty if McGuinness can score an impressive vote in October’s Irish Presidential campaign. Indeed, could the sight of a President McGuinness be the shock treatment which Unionism needs to unite as a political family?
If Sinn Fein under McGuinness can share power in a partitionist parliament in the North, recognise the police, take their Assembly and Dail seats, and brand a section of the republican community as ‘traitors’, then maybe Sinn Fein would be prepared to accept an all-island structure which is part of the Commonwealth?
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John,s post I think would have us believe that Adams is some sort of organisantional genius,who by his sheer brilliance has transformed his partys fortunes down south, I take a rather different approach I see Adams as another waster who after years of useless representation of the people of west Belfast,saw the writing on the wall and knew the shit his constituency was about to have dumped on it ,with over half the population on social welfare, no indeed this genius sloped of to a safe seat down south ,the subsequent up turn in psf,s fortunes were down to luck and protest rather than great organisantional skills,this doesnt mean that they dont have a golden opportunity to expand on their good fortune ,indeed with people like Pearse Doherty the party has a fair chance to build in the south,but the sticks also had similar chances and maybe better,as they had people well placed throughout the media,yet they pulled themselves apart, I think psf as a party with the exception of a few individuals doesnt have the political punch needed to capture and hold high office.as a party they are more akin to smoke and mirrors and sooner or later the people will see them as the phonies and liars they really are. that more than the rest applies to Mc Guinness.as a tactic John I could well believe that they are being directed by the faceless men in grey suits in Whitehall, could well be a cunning plan to bring the republic back into the commonwealth.wont be the first time that idea has been mooted here on TPQ lately,and it certainly wouldnt suprise me in the least with that bunchs of rouges recent history.
ReplyDeleteMarty
ReplyDelete'I see Adams as another waster who after years of useless representation of the people of west Belfast,saw the writing on the wall and knew the shit his constituency was about to have dumped on it ,with over half the population on social welfare, no indeed this genius sloped of to a safe seat down south'
Don't think that this is even remotely accurate, as the constituency held by Adams was arguably the safest in Ireland, regardless the degrees of deprivation.
'indeed with people like Pearse Doherty the party has a fair chance to build in the south,but the sticks also had similar chances and maybe better,as they had people well placed throughout the media,yet they pulled themselves apart'
Did the sticks pull themselves apart because they'd too many eejits with guns, always better to decommission those.
'as a tactic John I could well believe that they are being directed by the faceless men in grey suits in Whitehall, could well be a cunning plan to bring the republic back into the commonwealth'
Seriously?? Wouldn't this mean the end of partition and the Orange in Ireland back in the minority, I for one would be all ears, only pigs don't fly.
Do think Sinn Fein have been lucky to a degree south of the border, but they have exploited this to their end relentlessly. With FF in their sights, and the recent experience of culling the SDLP, I think Sinn Fein are posed to become serious contenders on this island.
Ruairi J. your assertion that west Belfast is a safe seat for psf is hard to argue with at the moment, it was won for psf by sheer hard work and blood sweat and tears,but the previous mp ie ., Adams did little or nothing for the people of this area,now you need not take my word for that ,the anytout news which could hardly be described as impartial fired a shot across Adams bow on his performance as the representative of the people of west Belfast,the subsequent groveling apology did nothing to hide the fact that what was said in the article was correct.I believe that and the recession sowed the seeds of Adams jumping ship,I think in the coming months and years we will see a massive turn away from psf and new faces and parties being giving the mantle.as for the orange back being a minority I thought they already were? although the way they and their cronies in the uda/uvf are wined and dined in Áras an Uachtaráin,makes one wonder what power and influence this minority wields,the sight of Mc Donald and his mates in the garden of remberance alongside Liz the brit the head of an occupying army and her agents who brought death and destruction to the streets of Dublin and Monaghan,as if butter wouldnt melt in their mouths. makes me wonder as I said just what dirty deal is next on the cards.and you can bet your bottom dollar psf will not only go along with whatever that might be be the will give their full support to it,after all they will be following the lead of their founder Griffith who was a two faced git as well.
ReplyDeleteRuairi
ReplyDeleteFF predicament self inflicted. The greed factor and a self interest fest saw them take their eye off the job of governing the country. SF swamping of the SDLP in the north is one thing, FF voters may not 'lend' their vote for as long as SDLP voters have in the north.
A kick in the bollox last election for FF, but i doubt SF can count on the FF votes too long.
SF would take Ireland into the commonwealth at the drop of a hat. Sure the Irish are heading to commonwealth countries by the thousands every day of the week.
SF might have an eye on postal votes lol.
The SF success in the last Dail election was more down to apathy and disengagement with the southern political elite by the electorate.
ReplyDeleteAs to MMCG & Gerrys move south,an old expression comes to mind yet again.You can bullshit your way to the top but bullshit wont keep you there.