ТОП просматриваемых книг сайта:
Power Play. Deaglán de Bréadún
Читать онлайн.Название Power Play
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781785370434
Автор произведения Deaglán de Bréadún
Издательство Ingram
In the March edition of An Phoblacht, columnist and aspiringSinn Féin TD, Councillor Eoin Ó Broin, noted O’Connor’s call for Left unity and the separate initiative of the Right2Water unions in hosting a conference to shape a common political platform. He asked:
Can we really build that ever-elusive Left unity? Divisions between the anti-austerity unions and those supportive of the Government run deep. Will SIPTU be invited to attend the May Day ‘Platform for Renewal’ dialogue? […] And is it possible to have an anti-austerity government without the involvement of the Labour Party and the socially-liberal constituency they represent? […] It is time for the Irish Left to build common ground. We have a very rare chance to build a real alternative to the status quo, to be part of a new politics, a new political economy, a new Republic. Let’s not waste that chance.
Delegates at the Sinn Féin ardfheis, held in Derry between 6 and 7 March, unanimously backed a motion that the party would not enter into a coalition government led by either Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil. It was jointly proposed by branches ranging from Donegal to Corkand Roscommon to Dublin. Ó Broin told delegates:
We can start to build an Ireland of equals, a united Ireland, a better, fairer Ireland. But this can only happen if Sinn Féin makes a clear and unambiguous statement that we will not under any circumstances support a government led by Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael... If Sinn Féin can lead a government that invests in a fair recovery, in secure and well-paid jobs, in universal public services, in strong and vibrant communities, in a real republic that is committed to ending poverty and inequality – then and only then should our party be willing to take up residence in Government Buildings.15
It could well be that a coalition is negotiated in which Sinn Féin would numerically be the largest party. That would fulfil the terms of Motion 52 at the ardfheis. But the alternative scenario, cited earlier in this chapter, whereby Sinn Féin might not be the biggest party overall but would be the largest element in an anti-austerity majority, would arguably still be a permissible option. Much would of course depend on who held the office of taoiseach (prime minister). In the past, there had been talk of a ‘rotating taoiseach’ between Labour and its coalition partner. Motion 52 committed Sinn Féin ‘to maximise the potential for an anti-austerity government in the 26 Counties’. A profile of Adams in the Phoenix had reported north-south tensions within Sinn Féin on the coalition issue. The article, published on 13 December 2013, stated:
Adams and his closest comrades are more susceptible to coalition government with, say, F[ianna]F[ail] than those southern Sinn Féin activists who have little obvious IRA baggage […] The party organisation is still dominated by northern members whose position on party policy can differ from the southerners and certainly will, when the question of coalition in the Republic comes to the fore. The fear among some southern Sinn Féin activists is that the price Sinn Féin leaders would pay in any coalition negotiations for a Sinn Féin-led hands-on government approach to the North would be concessions on the economy and taxation.
The manner in which Sinn Féin surpassed Fianna Fáil on many occasions in the opinion polls and in the number of seats won in the May 2014 European elections was, of course, galling for a party which had been the sole or majority holder of government office for a total of sixty-one years since 1932. Small wonder, then, that Micheál Martin’s position as Fianna Fáil leader was being questioned.
Never slow to highlight Sinn Féin’s deficiencies as he saw them, Martin launched a multi-pronged assault on the rival party in mid-April 2015. He hit out at Sinn Féin on RTÉ’s Late Late Show, then in the course of a massive double-page interview with the Sunday Business Post and, later the same day, in his annual leader’s speech at the Fianna Fáil commemoration in Arbour Hill – the Dublin cemetery where the 1916 leaders are buried – and finally in a radio debate with Adams.He told Late Late Show presenter Ryan Tubridy that Fianna Fáil would not be going into coalition with Sinn Féin ‘in any shape or form’. Martin added that Sinn Féin was ‘a cult-like group in many respects, and you don’t get diversity of opinion’. He also ruled out government with Fine Gael because that party ‘have gone too right-wing for us’. In his Sunday Business Post interview, he said Sinn Féin was seeking to ‘undermine the very institutions of the state’.16
The Fianna Fáil leader’s speech to the party faithful at Arbour Hill was exactly 3,000 words long, but almost half of these were devoted to a critique of Sinn Féin (there was no mention of Fine Gael or Labour). He claimed that Sinn Féin was making ‘a deeply sinister attempt to misuse the respect which the Irish people have for 1916’. Martin said it was a ‘false claim that they have some connection to 1916 and to the volunteers who fought then’. This was part of a Provo agenda to ‘claim legitimacy for the sectarian campaign of murder and intimidation which they carried out for 30 years’. He continued: ‘This goes to the heart of why Sinn Féin remains unfit for participation in a democratic republican government.’ The Provos had killed ‘servants of this republic’ (members of the Irish security forces) and Sinn Féin was selling T-shirts with the slogan ‘IRA – Undefeated Army’.17
The Fianna Fáil leader won plaudits from Sunday Independent columnist Eoghan Harris, who wrote: ‘Martin’s polemic against the Provos came from deep in his personal moral core. It called to mind Jonathan Swift’s saeva indignatio, the savage indignation of which W.B. Yeats wrote so movingly.’18Given the tone and length of Martin’s Arbour Hill condemnation, it was inevitable that Adams would feel it necessary to respond in a formal way and in some detail. Normally, the media are informed by email, or at least by text message, in advance of Sinn Féin events that are open to them. But this one was clearly arranged in some haste for the following Wednesday. I was talking to some Sinn Féin staff and politicians in Leinster House when they mentioned ‘Gerry’s keynote speech’ which would be given in a place with the not-very-republican title of Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, a handsome building close to Leinster House.
When I worked as a reporter in Northern Ireland, the Republicans habitually arrived late for press and other public events, and the journalists consoled themselves for the long wait with the wry observation: ‘We’re on Sinn Féin time.’ This is not the case any more, in my experience, and the hall was full at 7pm, when the meeting was due to start. Members of the Sinn Féin parliamentary party were there in strength and sitting at the front. All the leading figures from the Dublin area appeared to be present, including some holding prison records for IRA activities. Adams began his speech with the usual digs at Fianna Fáil’s record in government, where Martin was a cabinet minister for 14 years, and then got to the nub of the matter:
Micheál Martin also raises the hoary old myth of there being a good Old IRA in 1916 and in the Tan War, and a bad IRA in the 1970s, the 1980s and the nineties. Of course, he ignores the reality that Volunteers in 1916 were responsible for killing women and children here in the streets of Dublin and that, through the Tan War, the IRA was responsible for abducting, for executing and secretly burying suspected informers. But he tries to sanitise one phase of war and demonise and criminalise another one. So let there be no doubt about it, war is terrible. All war. War is desperate. And those of us who have lived through the recent conflict are the ones who have worked to ensure that the conflict is ended for good, and that we never – none of us, ever – go back there again. And that’s why Sinn Féin is and was pivotal to the peace process. So those of us – and people died in this city also –but those of us who have come from communities that were ravaged by conflict, those