John Coulter with a piece on Sinn Fein's potential in the wake of Martin McGuinness attending a banquet for the British queen. It initially featured in Tribune in April 2014.
Stand by for fresh concessions to Sinn
Fein after Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness had a
free dinner with the Queen Elizabeth at Windsor.
Dissident republicans will seek to spin McGuiness’ royal soirée as
further evidence that the peace-loving wing of his party is getting too
cosy with the British.
There is enduring bitterness about the negotiations that spawned the
Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, a move which partitioned Ireland and sparked
the bloody Irish Civil War in which republican butchered republican.
In Irish history, there is nothing so brutal as a republican feud.
During the Irish Civil War, pro and anti-Treaty republicans carried out
more atrocities against each other than the Black and Tans did in the
War of Independence.
However, McGuinness did not become a senior Derry IRA commander for
nothing. As he supped with the Queen, he out-manoeuvred both Taoiseach
Enda Kenny and Irish President Michael D Higgins.
McGuinness sought to show the British and Irish establishments that
Sinn Fein is worthy of being a minority coalition partner after the next
Dail poll. Sinn Fein must prove that it has truly shifted from being
the apologist for a well-oiled murder machine to a modern, democratic
political party with which either Fianna Fail or Fine Gael could do
business.
The message is simple: if the Queen goes to Croke Park (scene of the
notorious massacre by British troops in 1920), and McGuinness entered
Windsor, then Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams can become Tanaiste –
Deputy Prime Minister – in Leinster House.
The “normalisation” and “democratisation” of Sinn Fein is underway.
In fact, Sinn Fein is reaching out so many hands to Unionism, the joke
is that “PSF” should stand for Protestant Sinn Fein rather than
Provisional Sinn Fein.
The well-polished behaviour of many in 2014 SF is reminiscent of the
1970s democratic republican organisation run by the late Protestant
councillor, John Turnley of the Irish Independence Party, who was
murdered by the UDA in 1980.
But two more hurdles still have to be cleared before the
transformation is complete. First, like the Scottish and Welsh
nationalists, Sinn Fein MPs need to take their Westminster seats.
Second, Sinn Fein needs to find less provocative ways of commemorating
dead IRA members.
The Queen Elizabeth may have laid a wreath commemorating Irish
patriots who fought against Britain during the War of Independence, but
if there is to be any royal presence at the centenary of the Easter
Rising in two years’ time, Sinn Fein cannot afford a repeat of the
Tyrone Volunteers debacle in Castlederg. That was little more than an
“Up yours” to the Unionist community, following loyalism’s demand to
march past the Ardoyne Shops in north Belfast.
Just as McGuinness will want something in return for meeting the
Queen, so will the British want a favour from republicans if she is to
lay a wreath in Dublin in 2016 in memory of James Connolly and company.
The immediate benefit for Sinn Fein could be to return up to four
MEPs across Ireland in May’s European poll, as well as take the majority
of Northern Ireland’s nationalist seats in the new super council
elections.
But how does Sinn Fein please its hawks? Sinn Fein bosses have been
relatively successful at maintaining a public image of a
well-disciplined party. A dissident republican political alternative is a
non-starter. Unlike the Unionist family, there will be no split
republican vote. The worst-case scenario is a slight rise in nationalist
voter apathy.
If McGuinness is really smart, he’ll appoint a few republican hard
men to seemingly important posts thereby bluffing the hawks into
thinking they have a future in Sinn Fein.
However, in this era of the normalisation of republican politics and
the democratisation of Sinn Fein, does Gerry Adams really have the
profile, personality and appropriate past to become Tanaiste?
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