What the world needs to know about Ireland & Sinn Fein.
The past weekend was a surprise to everyone in Irish politics. Sinn Fein, the centre-left Republican party surged in the polls, now holding the most seats, beating out the two largest parties that have maintain control of the government since the state’s inception, Fine Gael (a moderate right party) and Fianna Fail (centre-right populist party).
For many, this is a welcome surprise but for many around the world headlines focused on Sinn Fein’s relationship to the IRA (The Irish Republican Army), a terrorist organisation, or on Sinn Fein’s self-appointed title as a “nationalist” party.
There are many nuances and subtle things that the world has forgotten to note about my small country that I wish to set right.
THE PAST.
Sinn Fein were the political arm of the IRA, and acted as a mouthpiece for the organisation. This relationship was so controversial that former party president, Gerry Adams, had his voice dubbed over whenever he spoke on British media. The party has always been attacked for this relationship and is often the low hanging fruit that is lobbed against them from Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, yet their break up has mostly gone unacknowledged because of the Good Friday agreement.
Sinn Fein cooperated both with the Irish and British government to end sectarian attacks on their end and agree to a power-sharing form of government with sworn enemies. For many, this was a peaceful end to a horrendous history of violence and loss. For the IRA however, this was a sickening betrayal by their own political arm.
Sinn Fein sacrificed many of their most hardline supporters in the name of peace. If you were to say to an ex-IRA member that Sinn Fein represented them, they would either laugh in your face or take it as an insult. Sinn Fein, to them, became too soft and compromising to ever speak for them again. Yet the old connection is still used as an easy excuse to criticize them. With Gerry Adams having retired from politics and stepped down as party president, Sinn Fein is as much part of the IRA as Donald Trump is a part of Lincoln’s idea of the Republican party; a connection in history only, but not ideals.
Meanwhile, no similar remarks have been given serious thought to the fact that Fine Gael started out as a fascist party, heavily influenced and inspired by Benito Mussolini. In fact, the formation of both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail came about through a split in the country because of the unfavourable conditions offered by the British after the War of Independence. This past of ugly ideology and noncooperation rarely gets mentioned.
NATIONALISM & NATIONALISM
Words in this age often lose their intended meaning. One only has to look at the fact that the word “literally” is more often than not used figuratively. It’s understandable that Nationalism, a word that has taken on the connotations of racism, discrimination, and fascism, would be met with a knee-jerk reaction, but much like how Republicanism, Libertarianism, and even Communism can have widely different meanings in different contexts, so too is the same of Nationalism in a country that colonised and a colonised country. Irish Nationalism traditionally followed similar paths to Mahatma Gandhi’s Indian Nationalism and China’s Nationalism by focusing on its declaration of statehood separate from British rule.
Sinn Fein, in their part to differentiate themselves from the more nativist sense of nationalism, has largely declared themselves a left party representing and welcoming marginalised groups like the working class, the LGBT community, immigrants and asylum seekers, and even have stretched out a hand to the Loyalist community, a group of the Northern Irish population who support British occupation in Ireland and it’s governance over the people of Northern Ireland.
The term Nationalism is outdated and doesn’t serve its purpose as much as it once did in Ireland, but it’s foolish for global publications to run with it and infer that Sinn Fein are another example of swelling support for far right ideas on a parallel with the Brexit or Golden Dawn. In fact, it’s very reminiscent of the classic mischaracterisation of the Third Reich as somehow being leftists because “Socialism”.
BREXIT & OTHER ISSUES
Much has been speculated about Sinn Fein’s possible approach to Brexit. It seems the old tried and trusted method of assuming Sinn Fein will foam at the mouth and start belting “Fields of Athenry” at British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has lodged itself in the minds of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail supporters. The aforementioned cooperation and sense of greater good displayed by Sinn Fein with the Treaty and the Good Friday Agreement have escaped everyone’s thoughts. Besides this, Sinn Fein may very well be capable of being in a unique position for Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Britain, mainly because they are in positions in all three.
As part of the Good Friday Agreement, Sinn Fein are technically able to represent their voters in three different governments; Dail Eireann (the Republic of Ireland), Stormont (Northern Ireland), and Westminster (Britain). And while as an official stance of the party is to not take their seats in Westminster (as a protest to not recognise it as a legitimate form of governance over the people of Northern Ireland), it still means that they could encourage their fellow opposition parties, Labour and the Scottish Independence Party, to object to any hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Indeed, the opportunity for Sinn Fein to persuade the people of Northern Ireland to vote for Independence from the UK is ripe, as their power sharing partner and longtime rivals the DUP (Democratic Unionist Party) have shown themselves to have sold the people of Northern Ireland, who were largely against Brexit and leaving the union, and have fallen prey to the very Conservative party they propped up under Theresa May, who continuously promised no hard border and no sea border, only for Boris Johnson to sweep the last election and discard them, nearly ensuring they will have no say for a border they don’t want either way from a government that saw them as nothing but a pawn. Sinn Fein have found themselves proven right not to trust the conservatives, to stand for the rights of Northern Ireland, and at the least have a real chance at persuading even the Loyalists to leave the UK, if for nothing else than to rejoin the EU and keep the border open.
While Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar and his government have stood firm against Brexit, it’s overly simplistic for the international media to only analyse Sinn Fein’s surge under that frame. For all the talk of recovery and a rebuilding of our economy, Ireland under Fine Gael has fallen in standards. The average monthly rent in Ireland is coming close to €2000, with many cases of landlords behaving as though we should be grateful that they can offer us and nine others a single room. There’s been cases of landlords even offering accommodation for sex. Those unemployed and seeking work have been shifted off to private contractors like Seetec’s Jobs Path program which regularly intimidates and berates people for not taking low paying work that comes nowhere close to the true cost of living in Ireland. A generation of 20 and 30-somethings have been shut out of the housing market with no choice but to linger with their parents, putting off their dreams. People have died on the streets in Dublin, with one noteworthy incident right in front of the house of government. The homeless and housing crisis is constantly acknowledged and yet targets Fine Gael set for themselves have continued to fall short. All the while, Leo Varadkar constantly spoke highly of us as a country. A country that boasts a tech sector that isn’t ours. A country that boast a wonderful corporate tax yet and yet refused to collect the €13 billion owed to us by the likes of Apple, even when the EU insists on doing so. A country that boasts about its long history of scholarship and education, only to force students to the far corners of the world to find any semblance of purpose.
To say Sinn Fein was a protest vote or a move towards populism or nationalism is an insult to the young, the elderly, the working, the seeking, the struggling, and the dead.
THE FUTURE
Talks on government formations are still ongoing. In the Irish system of government, any coalition needs 80 seats to have a majority. Since Fine Gael’s vehemently opposed to Sinn Fein, this leaves two likely options;
Go into government with Fianna Fail and make up the rest with (most likely) the Green Party, a largely environmentally focused party.
…or…
Go into government with the remaining left parties; Greens, Labour, People Before Profit, Social Democrats, at least fourteen of the twenty-one independents, some of whom align themselves closer with Fianna Fail and Fine Gael.
While the former seems easier, it is the latter that would solidify Sinn Fein as truly something new and radical, as this would be the first time in the state’s history that the once overly Catholic conservative Ireland had a left government of any form, with our first female Taoiseach, Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald.
It’s amazing how much Ireland has changed in my own short life. We’ve gone from a country that once criminalised homosexuality to being the first country in the world to legalise marriage equality by a popular vote. We’ve gone from shipping our women to England or to the laundries whenever they “needed a holiday”, to finally give women autonomy over their own bodies. Look beyond the headlines and you see Sinn Fein’s surge not as a shock or a stunt but the slow awaken of a country that has had enough of the old ways, of old promises that have been broken time and time again.
