Voices
The plaque stating “This is the birthplace of An Taoiseach, Charles J Haughey” was fixed to
a wall of the two-storey house on Mountain View, Castlebar in 1980. The driving force behind the project was Cathal Duffy.
He was a Co Mayo-based car dealer and businessman, right out of central casting in what then were the Soldiers of Destiny on the march.
He backed Charlie throughout the exile phase that followed the Arms Trial and was delighted when the Jack Lynch chapter ended and his man was installed as leader.
Knock Airport, despite its location on a foggy boggy hill, was one of the projects Charlie backed. Duffy became its first and able chairman.
He was, in the tradition of Fianna Fáil, a tangler. He occasionally enjoyed winding up some of his circle, including a man of the cloth.
“Monsignor” he’d say, “I can see a day when a bus full of Japanese tourists will pull up outside a church and the guide will explain ‘at a time in our past, these buildings used to be full every Sunday and a man dressed in colourful robes would stand on the altar and issue the people with instructions about their behaviour.”
Little did Cathal Duffy realise that his beloved Fianna Fáil party might end further down the road than the Catholic Church beyond the signpost marked “demise.”
Will Micheál Martin be the last Fianna Fáil Taoiseach? After he goes, who will try to rally the troops? Michael McGrath..Darragh O’Brien.. Norma Foley.. Jim O’Callaghan..Dara Calleary.. Barry Cowen…Eamon O Cuív….Jack Chambers…Lisa Chambers?
What odds would the bookies offer on the likes of Deirdre Gillane and Pat McPartlan from the current Fianna Fail kitchen cabinet or the party general secretary, Sean Dorgan, having a revivalist master plan for the post-Micheál Martin era?
Or is Fianna Fáil already on the journey to a town called oblivion?
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Creation sometimes has an unlikely back story. Tony Blair and George W Bush had a role in shaping the chaos that is current-day Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.
Margaret Thatcher as well as Bobby Sands contributed to inventing the modern version of Sinn Féin, the political party.
Sands was prepared to die on hunger strike as part of his campaign to be recognised as a political prisoner who had been fighting a war. Thatcher was the British prime minister who was resolved to let him and his IRA colleagues die rather than provide credibility for what she saw as terrorists.
The extent of the public reaction following the death of Bobby Sands forty years ago this year caught the republican movement by surprise. More than a decade into The Troubles, mass anger and grief provided republicans with the possibility to channel energy in a different direction.
Outside the Sinn Féin bubble Gerry Adams will always draw a range of negative reactions, ranging from suspicion to contempt. His most influential years coincided with the worst of the killing and the mayhem in Northern Ireland.
There never will be definitive truth about the role of Adams and his partner, Martin McGuinness, in the IRA’s activities over three bloody decades. At different times were they managers, participants and/or sleeping partners in the campaign?
Difficult as their many critics and enemies find to acknowledge it, Adams and McGuinness spotted the opportunity to launch a political movement from the emotional response to the hunger striker deaths.
Adams retired as Sinn Féin president in early 2018. McGuinness passed away in 2017. But they had a crucial role in shaping Sinn Féin, the power-sharing partner in Northern Ireland and Sinn Féin, the main opposition party, threatening to move to the government benches in the next Dáil election.
In 1983, during the first Westminster election after the Hunger Strike, Adams took the West Belfast seat of Gerry Fitt, a founder member of the SDLP. Even though Dr Joe Hendron sensationally regained the seat for the SDLP in 1992, Adams came back stronger in 1997 and it has remained Sinn Féin property since.
But Shinners are abstentionists in the House of Commons. They refuse to take the Oath of Allegiance to the monarch. At best Sinn Féin’s contribution in Westminster is ‘smoke but don’t inhale’ political representation.
The party’s importance growth and development have taken place at local level, mainly in Northern Ireland, where the energy levels among its membership are highest.
Sinn Féin activism, particularly during The Troubles, involved significant commitment. Some of its members had relations or friends in the IRA. Some were in both organisations. Some were committed to the political movement alone.
But in all cases, the ‘project’ and ‘the movement’ were given a significance that went well beyond hobby status. The Sinn Féin machine usually worked longer and harder than opponents.
And for Sinn Féin, what matters is the result. Sometimes, the end justifies the means.
A republican activist once drew upon the modh díreach to educate me. “We couldn’t apply for IDA or Invest Northern Ireland grants or get bank loans to fund the IRA.”
With Sinn Féin it was different. No solid evidence has ever been produced to show the party was or is part-funded by the proceeds of crime. But it is adept at fund-raising, particularly in the US, and has been streets ahead of its rivals for decades rather than years.
A feature, particularly during the early years, was how the money was pooled and the prominent public figures were content to live on the same wages as the staff manning the network of information centres and research jobs.
(The ‘all for one and one for all’ Sinn Féin salary arrangements are more nuanced nowadays).
If the IRA used a tight cell system to practice guerrilla warfare, Sinn Féin’s reputation and influence were built through community activism. Representatives got a foot in the door at local council level. Unionists regarded them as pariahs but the important, early argy-bargy was with SDLP representatives, members of their own tribe.
Progress in mainly nationalist areas, west of the Bann, happened incrementally. In unionist strongholds, the interactions were sometimes brutal and raw.
The career path of Alex Maskey gives a sense of Sinn Féin’s story, north of the border.
In 1983 at the age of 21 the former IRA internee became the first Sinn Féin representative elected to Belfast City Council since the 1920’s. In 1987, he survived after being shot at close range by loyalist paramilitaries. In 1993, loyalists carried out a gun attack on his home in Belfast and one of his friends was killed. In 2002, he became the first republican to serve as Lord Mayor of Belfast. In 2020, he was elected speaker of the Northern Ireland power-sharing Assembly, the role he currently occupies.
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For decades, a very hard border operated on the island of Ireland in terms of the growth of Sinn Féin, the political force. In the 1981 General Election, anti H block candidates, Kieran Doherty in Cavan/Monaghan and Paddy Agnew in Louth, won two Dáil seats on an abstentionist basis.
The motion to end Sinn Féin’s Dail abstention policy was successfully shepherded through a party Árd Fheis by the Adams-led modernisers in 1986. Yet in 3 subsequent general elections (1987, 1989,1992), Sinn Féin failed to win a single seat. For a decade it attracted less than 2 per cent of the first preference vote.
Caomhghín Ó Caomhláin created history by taking a Cavan-Monaghan constituency seat in the June 1997 General Election – a first for post-abstentionism Sinn Féin, and the party’s 2.5% support was an increase of .9% from the 1992 general election.
An obvious point worth making in relation to southern attitudes to Sinn Fein is the Ó Caomhláin breakthrough came 3 years after the IRA ceasefire announcement. (The IRA campaign resumed with the Canary Wharf bombing in February 1996 but the ceasefire was formally reinstated in July 1997).
Sinn Féin supporters would point to the significance of the ending of the Section 31 Broadcasting Ban in 1994, forbidding the transmission of interviews with Sinn Féin representatives and others.
The Good Friday Agreement was four years in place when Sinn Féin won five Dáil seats in the 2002 General Election. Its first preference vote share was 6.5 per cent, an increase of 3.9 per cent. Five years later, just weeks after Sinn Féin entered power-sharing at Stormont as the main partners of the DUP, it actually lost one of its 5 Dáil seats (Fine Gael’s Brian Hayes ousting Sean Crowe in Dublin South West) and its vote share was slightly up, 6.9 per cent compared to 6.4 per cent.
The dramatic transformation came four years later. The party president, Gerry Adams, ran in the Louth constituency where Arthur Morgan was standing aside. Sinn Féin won 14 seats, an increase of 9 – and 9.9 per cent of the first preference vote.
The previous October Adams had decided Sinn Féin had no choice but to up its profile and its performance south of the border. Otherwise, it risked suffering concussion, damaging its head against a glass ceiling in Dáil Eireann. The reason I know the background to the Adams decision to switch his attentions south is because he gave me the interview, making public the unexpected news.
In the 2016 Dáil election, again under Adams leadership, Sinn Fein’s growth continued – up from 14 to 23 seats. Its share of the first preference vote grew to 13.8 per cent – shoving aside Labour 6.6 per cent (down 12.8%) and out of sight of The Greens 2.7 per cent (up .9 per cent).
In the most recent Dáil election – February 2020 – with Gerry Adams retired and Sinn Féin under the leadership of Mary Lou McDonald, the party won the largest slice of the first preference vote – 24.5 per cent compared to Fianna Fáil’s 22.2 per cent and Fine Gael’s 20.9 per cent.
Peadar Toibín had departed to found Aontú – Sinn Féin’s Dáil cohort of 22 expanded to 37. The Greens won 12 seats with a 7.1 per cent vote share and they were the preferred partners of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to form a coalition government.
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Frankie Feighan waited to see Progressive Democrat, May Sexton, nudge aside Fianna Fáil’s Greg Kelly, to win the last seat in the Longford Roscommon constituency in the May 2002 General Election.
In the small hours I gave him a lift down the road to Boyle. Frankie was a member of Roscommon County Council at the time and was thinking about trying his luck in the deeper pool.
When he sought my view about what is required to survive in the politics trade, the response was designed to test his constitution for the road under consideration.
“To prosper, Frankie, you have to be willing to stick a knife into a colleague as well as an opponent, twist it and when the deed is done, you must clean the knife, put it back into its sheath and have it ready for when it is needed again.”
(Sitting in the passenger seat, Frankie was quietened by the stark description. But five years later he was elected a TD for the Roscommon – South Leitrim constituency. After an attritional phase over Roscommon Hospital, he switched addresses and is currently a Sligo-Leitrim TD and a Fine Gael Minister of State in the coalition.)
The observations about the confrontational nature of the political trade hold true. To survive and prosper, others must be shoved off the road.
Regularly, there is a rumpus and sometimes a breakaway within one’s own tribe. Kevin Boland and Neil Blaney left Fianna Fáil over the Arms Trial; the Progressive Democrats were formed following another row in the Fianna Fáil camp. Lucinda Creighton, Billy Timmons and Terence Flanagan created the Renua party after a falling-out within Fine Gael.
(As with Lucinda Creighton, the abortion issue was the reason Peadar ToibÍn upped sticks from Sinn Fein in 2018 and founded Aontú.)
But the longest and most rancorous family row in Irish politics is the one simmering since the foundation of the state involving Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin.
In the early days of Fianna Fáil Éamon de Valera and Constance Markievicz were two of the prominent defectors from Sinn Féin. The edge has been there in the century since.
It’s not insignificant that Mary Lou McDonald joined Fianna Fáil in 1998, the year of the Good Friday Agreement but quickly decided she would prefer to commit to Sinn Féin.
Chris Andrews, the Dublin Bay South, Sinn Fein TD defected from Fianna Fáil in 2012 – his deceased father, Niall, his uncle David and his deceased grandfather, Todd, were prominent Fianna Fáil representatives.
The tension isn’t created by just shared family history. There is also the competition for style and presence. If Fine Gael was often associated with the merchants and the professional classes in rural Ireland, Fianna Fáil made its pitch to the small holder and the factory worker. Sinn Féin has methodically and successfully courted that ‘champions of the little people’ space, once the preserve of Fianna Fáil.
In Northern Ireland Sinn Féin could never topple John Hume or Séamus Mallon. But the forceful nature of their political machine regularly allowed it to outmanoeuvre the SDLP.
Because of the orange-green nature of the terrain, the unionist electorate is a no-go area for the Shinners. There they are matched by their opposites and partners in government, the DUP.
The DUP cannot compete with Sinn Féin in ‘boots on the ground’ terms. But it more than compensates by the use it makes of access and influence with the British government, the cheque writers – where Sinn Féin has little sway.
The machine Sinn Féin has in place south of the border – the work practices, the zeal, the hunger to grow and to make its way to the very centre of power – are important factors in its ongoing story.
Wexford-born Dawn Doyle began working in Sinn Féin’s press office in the early 1990s, before the party had a single representative in Dáil Éireann. In 2009 she became the party’s General Secretary. She is a crucial member of Mary Lou McDonald’s kitchen cabinet.
Co.Tyrone born Stephen McGlade could easily pass as a Google or Microsoft senior manager or an able lawyer in the Four Courts. He was on the Gerry Adams staff when the then Sinn Féin president was based in Dáil Eireann. Nowadays he is the most important non-elected Sinn Féin staff member in Northern Ireland and a trusted sounding board for both Michelle O’Neill and Mary Lou McDonald.
Mutterings about the influence of middle-aged and elderly characters from a malign past fail to grasp the significance of the quality players now in the Sinn Féin backroom.
The party’s representative for North America, Ciarán Quinn and the likes of Joe Lynch in its Dublin press office are two more examples of that cadre.
Sinn Féin’s capacity to use social media is another factor in its growth spurt. Arguably it is ahead of all parties, south and north, in this field.
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The toughest tests for Sinn Féin, the political movement, lie ahead. Each day brings the decisive moments closer.
What’s going on in Northern Ireland is worth noting. The challenge of People Before Profit has been halted. But the SDLP under Colum Eastwood’s leadership, is experiencing a mini revival. In Westminster Sinn Féin has seven MPs to the SDLP’s two. But an active Eastwood and his equally able Belfast colleague, Claire Hanna, take their seats and in Brexit times, it is an obvious contrast to Sinn Féin abstentionism.
In the Stormont Assembly the pattern continues. Sinn Féin has 26 representatives compared to the SDLP 12. But the likes of Nicola Mallon, the Minister for Infrastructure, Matthew O’Toole (South Belfast), Colin McGrath (South Down), Justin McNulty (Newry and Armagh) and Daniel McCrossan (West Tyrone) are a match for their Sinn Féin rivals.
A key SDLP performer is Sinead McLaughlin, an Assembly member for the Derry (Foyle) constituency. She is a former chief executive of the Derry Chamber of Commerce . Her work along with the profile of party leader, Colum Eastwood, in Westminster have sounded alarm bells in the Sinn Féin system.
That’s why Mary Lou McDonald was on the walls of Derry City last week, confirming the ‘retirement’ of Martina Anderson and Karen Mullen and the plan to replace them with new Assembly representatives.
The first electoral test for Sinn Féin on the island will come north of the border, in the scheduled May 2022 Assembly elections. It will provide the opportunity to become the largest party in Northern Ireland for the first time. A very real statement of whether the momentum pattern is continuing.
In that context, it would be more than embarrassing for Mary Lou McDonald as well as Michelle O’Neill if Sinn Féin’s weakness in Derry is not addressed.
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Sinn Fein’s next outing in Northern Ireland will be important. But the goal and the acid test is a government role in Dáil Éireann. If the next general election takes place as scheduled in 2025, Mary Lou McDonald will be expected to build on what happened in the three elections since Gerry Adams came south in 2011 – grow the seat numbers and the first preference share – currently 37 and 24.5%.
If she fails to do so, she might be offered one further chance.
Power will be the ultimate test of Sinn Féin. Since 2007 when it first entered power-sharing with the DUP, it has been using Northern Ireland to gain experience. In the Stormont government role it sometimes struggles with difficult choices.
Evidence of this mixed history of delivery easily found.
Northern Ireland has the longest hospital waiting lists in the UK. Its education system is littered with examples of duplication, waste and procrastination.
During the past decade tens of millions of pounds have been spent on legal and consultants’ fees around the proposed A5 road, linking Aughnacloy to Strabane. But to date not a barrel of tar has been spread.
The weeds are growing on the terraces of Casement GAA Park in West Belfast. While Ulster Rugby has drawn down its share of Stormont grant aid to modernise its Ravenhill headquarters and the same has happened with soccer at Windsor Park, the proposed GAA stadium in West Belfast, Sinn Féin heartland, is no further advanced than the drawings stage.
South of the border, where there is no orange-green factor, Sinn Féin will be judged by an electorate with a track record of punishing those who disappoint. Centre stage is the only place where performance and competence can be assessed.
Scrutiny takes on a whole new meaning when one’s representatives become the people in charge.
Some parties slip into the opposition benches and quietly fade away. That has happened in Irish politics before. For others, opposition provides a chance to reflect, to regroup and to put the spotlight on those who have undermined them.
In the past fifty years, two of Fine Gael’s seven leaders, Michael Noonan and Alan Dukes, didn’t make it to the Taoiseach role. All six Fianna Fail leaders in the same period got a run at the top job.
If there was a transfer market in politics, would Fianna Fáil be looking for a Paschal Donohoe type? Or Heather Humphreys?
If the Sinn Féin growth continues, is it conceivable that after the next general election, another government could be formed on the ABS principle – Anyone but Shinners?
There is a real sense that reckoning is coming. There will be blood.
In future years, the Dáil tour guides will be recalling what happened in the 34th general election, the three-way rematch of Civil War politics. And the consequences that flowed from it.
