A substantial rump of the party, the Rosary Brigade was for a very long time the unwavering faithful, showing up without fail at graveside commemorations and the polling booth. What Gerry Adams did or didn’t do was no matter to them. The point was their belief in a United Ireland – Ireland for the Irish, if you will – and for a long time the IRA and Sinn Fein was the vehicle of transubstantiation.
The tensions between the Rosary Brigade and the Marxist revolutionaries within the Republican Movement has always led to the sort of duality that Adams embodied; depending on where you were in the room the picture shifted. Catholic Nationalists intent on overthrowing the state, which would also include the shackles of the church. The contradiction, while it did chafe, never broke through as long as there were Brits to fight or a peace process to pursue.
Sinn Fein’s main reason for being has always been financial. The Republican Movement has a strong property portfolio, a multi-million pound income stream funded by various government schemes, businesses, donations, and other sundries. Sinn Féin’s role has been one of accountancy. In this regard, its politics and policies don’t actually matter, as long as the books are kept in order. The momentum of the peace process was enough to keep it going without having to get too serious about actually being a viable political party.
Now the era of the peace process is over. The IRA as it was is gone, existing now as old men directing younger enforcers more concerned with cooking the books than the bombs or ballots. It is not the Catholic Church alone that lacks a surfeit of priests. Without the conflict and without the peace process, Sinn Fein does not have a fig leaf to hide behind that fits. This has become more evident since the retirement of Gerry Adams.
Mary Lou McDonald came into leadership painted as a fresh face to take the party into the future. She rode the promise of the peace process dividend into popularity. In the South, however, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail aren’t exactly the Brits. Taking them on in opposition as if they were only took Sinn Fein so far. As the peace process ended, Sinn Fein could not figure out how to politic in absence of it, and kept running the same script: everyone and everything else bad, ourselves alone good. Without a proper foil – which the British and unionists most definitely are – that type of opposition does not work. It becomes hectoring, predictable. In the absence of presenting viable policy alternatives and a clear vision, it is merely the bellows of populism.
The necessary self-importance of the peace process led to the pretentious policy of acting as the Government-in-Waiting. This was the outworking of having every previous utterance treated as historic. That led to an arrogance that assumed every future utterance would of course also be historic, and a need to behave accordingly.
But how historic can a populist opposition party be? No longer having a clear vision of what it wanted to be – apart from in government – and only defining itself against what it didn’t want to be on any given day, the contradiction within its support base could not longer hold together. The tension reached breaking point, and the Rosary Brigade, whose faith in miracles proved more unwavering than its faith in the old messiah, was lost.
It is likely, barring the resurrection of the IRA in the theatre of conflict, the Rosaristas are lost for good, finding their new messiahs preaching the old testament of “Ireland for the Irish”, a hymn they know the tune of, if not quite the new verses.
The Marxists aren’t happy, either, with the undecided nature of new Sinn Fein. The policies being enacted by the party north of the border aren’t exactly the worker’s paradise promised. The pandering done to protect its nationalist flank from hemorrhaging completely only served to alienate its leftist base. A change of leadership is only deckchair rearrangement, delaying the inevitable acceptance that the ship is sunk.
Like the Worker’s Party before it, Sinn Fein will atrophy but remain a zombie party as long as the finances continue to need the cover the existence of the party provides. As for the Rosary Brigade, charge as it might on its new horses, it still remains the rump of the rump.
Despite the pretensions of the first female Taoiseach-to-be, Sinn Fein never became, and now won’t be, the Government it thought it would. Maybe they will achieve a junior status in a coalition, but it won’t be as historic as what it believed it was entitled to. At its best, SF never reached majority status. The New Nationalists have captured Sinn Fein’s rear and will be unlikely to do better. The New Nationalists represent a regressive strain of politics that has always been in Ireland. They are what enabled the Catholic Church, the mothers and babies homes, the misogyny, the sexual oppression, and the cover-up of child sex abuse.
As the old messiah used to say, they haven’t gone away ye know. That doesn’t mean they represent the majority, any more than Sinn Fein’s claims that it was the Government-in-Waiting meant that it was the Government. While the New Nationalists may appear to be novel, earning new money for old rope only lasts so long before the con is up. The electorate has already made clear it’s not going to be buying these wares in bulk.
⏩Carrie Twomey hates Illinois Nazis (just like the Blues Brothers)
Pretty incisive synopsis there Carrie, it appears to be a race to the bottom in the shinners. I do find it a little odd at how badly they read the room however, normally they're able to course correct just enough to keep a straight face but these last results would have caused some loss of ego and it'll be interesting to see where the weathervanes turn them politically.
ReplyDeleteExcellent analysis Carrie; when I was growing up the mantra was 'Ireland united, Gaelic and free' and as recently as 2000 this was 'acceptable' rhetoric recorded as a chorus by the propagandist profiteers, The Irish Brigade, in their song 'Ireland United'. The same band which brought us a poem put to music in 1983; where the protagonist is wounded in an SAS ambush but rescued by a mysterious Volunteer. No doubt many of those who would learn the stark realities of SAS ambush were influenced by said mystical poem where Gerry Glackin told them "I knew then our struggle was a fight we could not lose for beneath his picture there I read in memory of Francis Hughes." During the darkest days of liquidation it was often quipped that Glackin had the ballads ready merely awaiting the next ambush to fill in the names. Much like SF the Glackin grift persists although, thankfully, despite tin whistle-accompanied exhortations the shortage of new material remains.
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