Party insider reveals how election campaign was blindsided by rise of anti-immigrant feeling in new book
She was in the passageway of a block of flats in the inner city, knocking on doors, and looked around for the source. Fenton, a media adviser to the party leader, Mary Lou McDonald, felt another sting on her shoulder, then another on her forearm.
They were coins, thrown from a balcony above, where a man’s voice was shouting. “Sinn Féin traitors!” he roared. “Mary Lou Mohammad! Ireland is full!”
It was May 2024, and instead of steaming towards victory in local and European elections – widely deemed a foregone conclusion, to be followed by a historic triumph in a general election – the party was experiencing a backlash fuelled by anti-immigrant sentiment in what was usually a bastion of working-class support.
The coins left Fenton with gashes and bruises that augured an electoral hammering.
Continue @ The Guardian.
Behind pay wall, Anthony
ReplyDeleteBarry - The Guardian is not behind a paywall . . . or is it?
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During the blockade in Dublin Pearse Doherty accused the Government of "insulting people who were forced to take to the streets" and of "demeaning" them with threats of deploying the army.
Nobody was forced to take to the streets but people were certainly forced off them by the blockaders.
I hope Sinn Féin refrain from right wing rhetoric in the future.
There may be more of a swing to the right in the South compared to the North because society in the South hasn't been as influenced as the North has by Republicanism. Republican internationalism and its relationship with struggles overseas hasn't been felt as keenly in the South. The political thinking and activism which sprang from it in the North also wasn't as widespread in the South. The Falls Road had a mural of Nelson Mandela in the days in which the British government described him as a terrorist. An Phoblacht regularly had stories of international struggle. There were Republican prisoners in the South as well but the internationalism aspect which grew from the struggle and from the jails didn't impact every aspect of society like it did in the North. Visiting delegates from overseas struggles also came to the North in greater numbers.
The North isn't immune to the influence of the far right and let's not forget that greater numbers of Irishmen fought for Franco than against him. We can only fight our corner and hopefully in the future as Omar El Akkad's book title says "One Day Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This".