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Power Play. Deaglán de Bréadún
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isbn 9781785370434
Автор произведения Deaglán de Bréadún
Издательство Ingram
In current discourse, Sinn Féin are, in many ways, the pariahs of Irish politics. That is partly due to genuine revulsion at deeds carried out by the IRA during the Troubles, such as the horrific 1972 abduction of widowed mother of ten Jean McConville from Belfast, whose body was found on a beach in County Louth in 2003. Despite these continuing controversies, the party retains a high standing in the polls, and there appears to be a disconnect between what Sinn Féin’s critics are saying and the mindset of a sizeable proportion of the electorate. This may be due to a perception that, apart from the occasional foray by dissident republicans, the Troubles in Northern Ireland are a thing of the past. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Sinn Féin supporters share the view expressed by party president Gerry Adams on the McConville case: ‘That’s what happens in wars.’2
Critics of the party tend to forget that Sinn Fein’s IRA associates were part of a very long tradition of republican violence. The Irish Left Review carried a piece by Fergus O’Farrell who pointed out that some of the leaders of the War of Independence 1916-22 were responsible for actions which aroused a similar moral disgust:
More civilians were killed during Easter week than British soldiers or Irish rebels [...] On Bloody Sunday [21 November 1920], the IRA [including future taoiseach Seán Lemass, D. de B.] carried out an operation against what they believed to be a British spy ring in the city – they killed 14 men that morning. As careful historical research has made clear, not all of these men were spies, let alone combatants [...]When the innovative Minister for Finance Michael Collins rolled out the ‘Republican Loan’ to raise money for the establishment of an independent Irish state, the British sent a forensic accountant, Alan Bell, to Dublin to investigate the money trail. Concerned that Bell would scupper the revenue-raising scheme, Collins dispatched members of The Squad to deal with the inquisitive accountant. Bell was escorted off a city-centre tram and executed in the street in broad daylight.
O’Farrell goes on to point out that Fine Gael pays tribute to Collins every year at the place where he was assassinated and that FiannaFáil and Labour have, as their respective icons, Éamon de Valera and James Connolly, both of them part of the ‘tiny, unrepresentative armed group’, whose actions resulted in the deaths of so many civilians in Easter 1916.3
The author of the present book subscribes to the sentiments of the 19th-century nationalist leader Daniel O’Connell, who said that freedom should be ‘attained not by the effusion of human blood but by the constitutional combination of good and wise men’.4The only reservations I would have are in cases where the territory of the state is invaded by some foreign power and, of course, O’Connell’s failure to include women among the ‘good and wise’! Unfortunately, however, a vast quantity of blood has been spilled in pursuit of a 32-county independent Ireland. What makes Sinn Féin interesting these days is that it decided, as part of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, to end its support for violence in favour of peaceful, democratic, consensual methods. Since I had reported in detail on those negotiations, it seemed worthwhile exploring the political aftermath, and the success or otherwise of what could be described as the biggest shift in the strategy and ideology of Irish republicanism for very many years. At time of writing, the Sinn Féin project seems to be meeting with some success, but this could, of course, change. As someone once said – possibly Mark Twain or perhaps Samuel Goldwyn – ‘Predictions are hard to make, especially about the future’. It is unclear, at present, whether the entire Sinn Féin venture will succeed or run into the sand, but there are valuable lessons to be learnt either way.
Sinn Féin’s rise has coincided with the emergence of Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain as major electoral forces. The pronouncements of all three against austerity are very similar and, with Syriza in power in Greece and Podemos knocking on the door in Spain, the prospect of Sinn Féin in government as part of an anti-austerity coalition cannot be ruled out. This may be an appalling vista to elements in the other parties, parts of the media and the middle and upperclasses, but the trade union movement has been taking a keen interest.
Giving an address at Glasnevin Cemetery on 31 January 2015, in memory of ‘Big Jim’ Larkin, leader of the 1913 Lockout in Dublin, the President of SIPTU (Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union), Jack O’Connor made what could turn out to be a significant intervention. Predicting that the year ahead would ‘turn a new chapter in the history of Ireland and of Europe’, O’Connor, who leads some 200,000 members, said that the trade union movement would be seeking to retrieve the ground lost during the economic crisis. Among the ‘difficult compromises’ which had been made, he included ‘the call on Labour to step into hell in the current coalition to head off the threat of a single-party Fine Gael government, or worse’. But now, ‘in the light of improving economic conditions’, he was recommending a new strategy. The SIPTU chief welcomed Syriza’s ‘dramatic’ election victory in Greece the previous Sunday, ‘which signals the beginning of the end of the nightmare of the one-sided austerity experiment’. He continued:
Dramatic possibilities are now opening up here in Ireland as we approach the centenary of the 1916 Rising. At this extraordinary juncture, history is presenting a ‘once in a century’ opportunity to reassert the egalitarian ideals of the 1916 Proclamation, which were suffocated in the counter-revolution which followed the foundation of the State. It is incumbent upon all of us Social Democrats, Left Republicans and Independent Socialists, who are inspired by the egalitarian ideals of Jim Larkin and James Connolly, to set aside sectarian divisions and develop a political project aimed at winning the next general election on a common platform – let’s call it ‘Charter 2016’.
Pointing out that this would be ‘the first left-of-centre government in the history of the State’, the SIPTU chief continued by calling upon parties and individuals on the Left to not simply ‘do well in the election’, but to display ‘a level of intellectual engagement around policy formation, free of the restrictions of sectarian party political interests’. The point was to secure a Dáil majority for the Left, which needed to set these differences aside and ‘seize the moment’.
There was no mention of Sinn Féin in the speech, and the only reference to the Labour Party was in the context of the previous general election. But an alliance of ‘Social Democrats, Left Republicans and Independent Socialists’ could only mean those two parties along with others from the ‘broad left’ among the Independent TDs, as well as their followers and co-thinkers.5The speech was welcomed in a statement later that day by Senator David Cullinane, Sinn Féin’s spokesman on trade union issues, who said that his party was ‘committed to forming broad alliances with parties and independents to maximise the potential for an Irish Government that is anti-austerity’.6
Next day, Justine McCarthy reported in the Irish edition of the Sunday Times that Sinn Féin had been in talks for more than two months with trade unions, left-wing groups and independent TDs to agree a platform for the general election, with the talks gaining impetus from Syriza’s election victory in Greece the previous weekend. Union officials and co-ordinators of the Right2Water campaign against the water charges, Brendan Ogle of the Unite trade union and Dave Gibney from Mandate,were named as two of the ‘key promoters’ of the talks. TD Richard Boyd Barrett, a member of the Socialist Workers’ Party, a Trotskyist group, was quoted as backing the talks. He added, though, that ‘Sinn Féin have to decide whether they’re building a specifically Left project or whether they just want to be in government.’
Another Dáil deputy, from a different wing of the Trotskyist left, Joe Higgins of the Socialist Party (SP), said that his organisation was not involved in the talks, and wouldn’t be prepared to make an election pact with Sinn Féin