Of course, the social media so-called ‘Shinnerbots’ and numerous elected representatives will be wheeled out to pump out the myth that Sinn Fein is a separate political party and has no links to the Provisional IRA, or its Army Council.
Far be it from me, as a radical Right-wing Unionist and ardent Brexiteer, to lecture Sinn Fein on how it should get the party rollercoaster back on track after the IRA’s apologetic mouthpiece walked on a political landmine in the South’s local government and European elections.
Clearly, the recent series of opinion polls suggesting Sinn Fein was on course to become the largest party in Leinster House after the next Dail general election had gone to the Shinners’ heads.
Sinn Fein simply both took the Southern electorate for granted, and equally failed to get its core vote out. So what’s the solution for the Shinners if the general election in the 26 Counties is not to deteriorate into a Dail disaster?
The Shinner spin doctors will be burning the midnight oil as to how they can sell getting an MEP elected into a demand for a border poll. Basically, the solution is to get Northern Sinn Fein to run the entire political wing. In short, the republican movement needs to order ‘an 1986’.
That’s a reference to the political coup which Northerners Gerry Adams, the former West Belfast Westminster MP, and the late Martin McGuinness, the former Derry IRA commander and Stormont deputy First Minister, staged at a special Sinn Fein conference in 1986.
During that conference, delegates overturned Sinn Fein’s historic abstentionist policy at the Dail, allowing any elected Sinn Fein TDs to take their seats. The Adams/McGuinness tactical victory sparked a walkout by hard-liners to form the fringe organisation, Republican Sinn Fein.
Yet again, it could be suggested just as Sinn Fein in a previous Southern election ran too few candidates, this time around, the party ran too many sending its vote management ‘up the left’ strategically.
However, me thinks the real reason for this month’s electoral catastrophe was that Sinn Fein’s Southern leadership tried to sell the party as if it was a dark green version of Fianna Fáil. And as we know, that tactic has crashed and burned with the Southern voters.
The real fear for republicans is that if the Southern electorate has the potential to defy the opinion polls and desert the party, could the same fate await Northern Sinn Fein in the UK General Election on 4th July?
Could we see traditionally safe republican seats such as West Tyrone, Mid Ulster, Newry and Armagh, Fermanagh and South Tyrone (in spite of the boundary changes in favour of republicans) and even dare I say it, West Belfast, become marginal constituencies?
Maybe Sinn Fein needs a few political U-turns. With the Centre Right and Far Right making gains across the European Parliament, maybe Sinn Fein needs to dump its James Connolly Hard Left-style socialism and rebrand itself as a Right-wing patriotic nationalist movement? Go with the flow, as the statement says!
What is abundantly clear is that in terms of the Dublin establishment coalition of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, there is no way Sinn Fein will be able to ‘out green’ that partnership. There is no way the IRA’s ruling Army Council will sanction Sinn Fein evolving into a new millennium version of the now defunct 1970s democratic republican organisation, the Irish Independence Party.
Had its leading spokesman, the Protestant former British Army officer and Larne councillor, John Turnley, not been murdered by the UDA in 1980, it could have been the IIP - not Sinn Fein - which eventually took over from the SDLP as the leading voice in Northern Ireland for nationalism.
One key attribute which the IIP could boast about was that it was not aligned to any republican terror gang - a key factor in attracting Catholic middle and upper class voters.
Modern-day Sinn Fein can recruit all the middle class Catholic ‘draft dodgers’ (folk with no known terror convictions or links to the Provos) it wants, but the party will never be able to escape, deny or ditch its past firm ties to the Provisional IRA.
Could you imagine a Sinn Fein elected representative telling the ruling IRA Army Council where to go to if asked to speak at an IRA commemoration? To defy the IRA Army Council would be tantamount to political suicide.
Like it or not, the Mary Lou ‘dark green’ experiment has come off the rails electorally and a Northern leader with family connections to the IRA is needed to restore Sinn Fein credibility with the Southern electorate in time for the next Dail showdown.
That allows Sinn Fein to boast about the republican movement’s historic links to armed struggle among a new generation of first-time voters. Mind you, a lot of rewriting and revising of Irish history will have to be done to achieve this. Maybe what Sinn Fein really needs are middle class Catholic academics who can spin IRA atrocities as a necessary part of republicanism?
Perhaps Sinn Fein now needs, not just a new Northern-based leadership, but a redefining ideologically of what it means to be an Irish patriot? Maybe the bitter medicine which Sinn Fein now needs to swallow is that it requires a large dose of European-style, Right-wing populist nationalism to get the republican bandwagon back on track?
Sinn Fein’s current Left-wing agenda is an electoral disaster. Just as the Shinners have ideologically flip-flopped over elected representatives taking their seats in Leinster House and Stormont, why not really flip-flop and become a Hard Right nationalist party - the Southern version of the Right-wing Reform UK party in Great Britain?
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| Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter Listen to commentator Dr John Coulter’s programme, Call In Coulter, every Saturday morning around 10.15 am on Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. Listen online. |
Are southern Sinn Fein infiltrated to the same extent the North were/are? Would explain a lot about how badly they fucked up, maybe the spooks didn't like the idea of the last vestiges of the PAC running their nearest neighbour.
ReplyDeleteit would make a lot of strategic sense to have infiltrated them in the South back in the day and have them in place to be called upon. Although today, they have become so establishment - Adams claimed they were an establishment in a debate with Ruairi Quinn - that a hands-on agent running operation is hardly essential for the spooks. Their people on the ground down here can be quite radical while remaining surprisingly courteous in contrast to the Belfast mob where the bullying culture so relied on by Percy Pompous still holds sway.
DeleteThey became establishment when Adams and the Goldman Sachs CEO, Lloyd Blankfein had a meeting nearly 10 years ago were Adams assuaged the Big Money man that they posed no threat to international finance should they gain power in Ireland.
Delete(Hope you don't mind the link to Ed's page)
https://thebrokenelbow.com/2016/02/10/now-we-know-why-lloyd-blankfein-was-re-assured-by-gerry-adams/
Momentum is a funny thing in politics. Sinn Féin had it, you could feel it, see it, hear it, taste it... and then *it* was gone.
ReplyDeleteMonths before polls registered a dip you knew it was waning. Was immigration the issue, or was immigration just the issue which crystalised the contradictions of a broad tent coalition? Was it Gaza and Palestine? Had the party moved itself so far to not frighten older middle class voters that it lost any identity separate from FF/FG?
In 2020 to vote in the general election, if you were under thirty, nearly meant by default voting for Sinn Féin. That crowd did not turn out this month. The 2024 Euros/Locals were the revenge of the settled Irish middle class and they are legion; pop down to the count centre in the Tucson/Quashai and vote for the continued comforts of a work from home job and a thumbs up to the nice local man/woman in FF/FG and a preference for whichever washed up celebrity and old hand they're running for the MEP job. Slán abhaile.
I cited this yesterday to a guy I was being interviewed by for a podcast. He thought it was very much on the money and at one point quoted it back to me.
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