What Kind Of Party Is Sinn Féin?

The party most likely to lead a left government in Ireland would be Sinn Féin. So what would they be like in power? Well, we’re lucky there - we already know that. They’ve already been in power in the North.

Before we remind ourselves just what kind of party Sinn Féin is it’s worth noting that the socialist left have always voted alongside Sinn Féin in the Dáil when their proposals help the working class, and more importantly, socialists have worked with Sinn Féin in building big social movements such as the movement against water charges. Socialists will continue to do so.

When Sinn Féin fights the establishment, every socialist should stand with them. But when they don’t? We need to explain exactly what kind of party Sinn Féin is. That way we can understand what they’re likely to do in government. We can make a prediction as to their future trajectory.

First things first: Sinn Féin aren’t socialists. They are a nationalist party. They don’t want to overthrow capitalism - they want a 32-county Ireland that exists within capitalism. But there’s a big difference between the nationalism of Sinn Féin, which was anti-imperialist in origin, and the nationalism of an imperial nation like Britain. The oppression of Ireland gave Irish nationalism a left colouration.

British nationalists identified with oppressors - for example, with Apartheid in South Africa or with genocidal Israel - whereas the national liberation movement in Ireland identified with the Palestinians or with those struggling against Apartheid in South Africa. To this day that difference, between the nationalism of the oppressor and the nationalism of the oppressed, is evident in the estates of Belfast and Derry - Israeli flags fly in Loyalist areas whereas Palestinian flags often fly in Catholic estates.

Left nationalism is about liberating a people from political oppression - but unlike socialism its final goal is to carve out a space for its ‘people’ within the framework of the current system. The bourgeois (an old way to say ‘capitalist’) revolutions that established nation states with clear borders saw some nations get a head start on others. The more developed nations took colonies and prevented the completion of the “bourgeois revolution” by those peoples they oppressed. They stopped the emergence of an integrated nation state.

Every time Ireland took a step forward, the British Empire slapped us back into a state of backwardness. Uniting Ireland North and South would complete the historic formation of an Irish state. That task is a left-over from a previous time. That doesn’t mean it’s of no concern to socialists - it’s of the utmost concern because the border is an imposition of the Empire, and it divides the Irish working class. But we want to tie the battle against partition to the battle for economic liberation - like James Connolly wanted, we want to see the Irish working class united, liberated from the Empire and liberated from capitalism. An Ireland united under capitalist rule wouldn’t be real liberation - that’s how Connolly saw it.

There have been many incarnations of Sinn Féin, and nearly all of the main parties in the Irish state have their origins in the party. Nationalist parties appeal across classes - the key thing is to support the movement for national liberation. When you build a nationalist cross-class party - that spans rich and poor - then there will always be tensions that erupt in regular splits.

Sinn Féin was founded by Arthur Griffith as the “National Council” in 1905. They adopted the slogan “Sinn Féin” - meaning “ourselves”. Griffith had some bizarre ideas - he wanted a ‘dual monarchy’ - arguing that Ireland and Britain would have two governments, but one monarch. He defended anti-semitic rioters and denounced socialist opponents of war. He wanted a capitalist Ireland that could compete with capitalist Britain.

Griffith had worked as a journalist and machine supervisor at a gold mining company in South Africa for 18 months in 1897 and 1898. When he got back to Dublin he joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood. The IRB was a secretive oath-bound organisation founded in 1858. In April 1907 the National Council united with other groups and took the name “the Sinn Féin League”, standing for the first time in a Westminster by-election in Leitrim North in 1908.

The new party got 27% of the vote with the old Irish Parliamentary Party getting the other 73%. They had no real national presence before the 1916 Easter Rising. By 1915 they couldn’t even pay the rent on their headquarters in Harcourt Street in Dublin. They were broke. Griffith didn’t take part in the Rising and urged others to steer clear. On Easter Sunday, Griffith made his way out to Bray to issue Eoin MacNeill’s countermanding order to Joseph Kenny, a Captain in the Irish Volunteers. At the time of the Rising, Sinn Féin was tiny, but in the wake of the executions of the rebels – and British propaganda calling the Easter Rising the “Sinn Féin Rising” - there was an increase in the party’s popularity.

Sinn Féin was reborn. Republican prisoners were released from jails in December 1916, and joined the party. As a police report from the time stated: “In each place where an interned prisoner has been released, the Sinn Féiners have begun to meet”. They soon had hundreds of branches across the country. Republicans such as Eamonn DeValera joined, but they were willing to compromise with Griffith’s conservative ideas like ‘Dual Monarchy’ saying: “Sinn Féin aims at securing the international recognition of Ireland as an independent Irish republic. Having achieved that status the Irish people may by referendum freely choose their own form of Government”.

From the start ‘divisive’ arguments about what kind of Ireland would come after freedom were discarded in favour of a cross-class alliance. But uniting rich and poor often meant silencing the poor to keep the rich on board. This prejudiced the kind of Ireland that would come form the fight for freedom. 1,700 people attended their conference in 1917. The Irish Volunteers were transformed into the Irish Republican Army - with Sinn Féin as the political wing of the military organisation.

A by-election in North Roscommon gave the opportunity to test this rising level of support. The candidate was George Noble Plunkett, whose son had signed the 1916 proclamation and had been executed by the British. Plunkett won 3,022 votes against 2,395 won by the other two candidates combined. De Valera stood in an East Clare by-election winning an amazing 70% of the vote. He was escorted around the area by IRA volunteers as Sinn Féin became more militant. Capitalist William Cosgrave then won a by-election in Kilkenny. These victories were just a taste of what was to come.

Despite a drop in their vote in the by-elections in early 1918, by the time of the British General election of 1918 Sinn Féin won 73 out of 105 Irish seats. The threat of conscription, and hunger strikes in Mountjoy Prison, had added to the fire of popular anger against the British administration. Sinn Féin set up their own Irish parliament - declaring the formation of Dáil Eireann on January 21st 1919.

But Sinn Féin’s message to the working class was that ‘labour must wait’ - first you would get freedom from the Empire, and then at some later point economic inequalities would be addressed. This was not how Connolly saw things - he saw working class rebellion as the best way to kick out the Empire and simultaneously fight for socialism. The two went hand in hand. The mass strikes and protests of the years of Ireland’s revolution from 1918 to 1923 were seen by the Sinn Féin leaders as a background to the real fight by a minority of rebels. There were huge class tensions in the movement.

When the treaty was signed, pro-treaty representatives broke away from Sinn Féin to form the ultra-conservative Cumann na nGaedheal - the first government of the new ‘Free State’. Cumann na nGaedheal later joined with the fascist Blueshirts to form the Fine Gael party. Anti-treaty Sinn Féin boycotted the Dáil until DeValera split to form Fianna Fáil - leading his supporters into Parliament in 1927. Both the main right-wing parties in Ireland had their origins in Sinn Féin.

The classes that had aligned to fight for liberation split over different interpretations of what kind of Ireland was to be built afterwards. Cumann na nGaedheal - later the Fine Gael party - represented the capitalist elite - they wanted to consolidate a counter revolutionary state machine and maintain trade links with Britain to facilitate the interests of their big farming supporters. Fianna Fáil also represented an elite of small Irish businesses but they preferred a strategy of protectionism - tariff and trade barriers to build up Irish industry behind a protective wall. They agreed on building Irish capitalism, but disagreed about which strategy was best to use to exploit Irish workers.

The remains of Sinn Féin stood on an abstentionist platform in the 1923 elections, but debates about ending abstention and taking seats in the Dáil led to the IRA breaking from the party. The IRA said: “The Government (Sinn Féin) has developed into a mere political party”. The Republicans always described themselves as the ‘Government’ because they never drew their mandate from the people but from tracing their heritage back to the Easter Rising. The Irish working class didn’t get a say in this ‘government’. It was declared by force of arms in 1916.

Every subsequent split from the movement would declare themselves the legitimate government of Ireland - even when they had little or no support among the people. At the 1925 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis there were heated debates on entering the Dáil. DeValera took 21 of the 47 Sinn Féin TDs with him when he went off to form Fianna Fáil. Sinn Féin only got 3.6% of the vote in 1927. The party went into the 1930s incredibly weak. Those who represented more privileged classes had used up the vehicle and had moved on. Some Sinn Féin members turned left to try and whip up support from the working class - having lost their members to Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.

Many in Sinn Féin thought DeValera coming to power in 1932 would help them out - but while DeValera did release IRA prisoners, he soon turned on the IRA. In 1936 DeValera reintroduced the 1931 Public Safety Act, banning the IRA, and imprisoning its Commander, Moss Twomey. Party membership by the 1940s was down to about 100 people.

They tried to gain access to £24,000 in funds belonging to the ‘original’ Sinn Féin - but the High Court ruled against them saying they weren’t the same organisation. Fianna Fáil took a zero tolerance approach to the IRA during World War II - and in the late 1940s Sinn Féin and the IRA reunited. The IRA issued an order that members were to join the party. It wasn’t difficult to take over the small political organisation. The new united military political movement was highly conservative.

The party began to advocate a conservative social policy inspired by the Papal Encyclicals of Pope Pius XI, with the aim of creating a Catholic state, advocating a far right and corporatist Portuguese-style government. The new party constitution was even vetted by the Catholic clergy. But Sinn Féin still declared their continued aim of “the complete overthrow of English rule in Ireland”. Two IRA men stood in the 1950 Westminster election to raise the profile of a campaign on the treatment of republican prisoners.

They stood in the North again in 1955, getting 152,310 votes - because the Nationalist Party had nominated no candidates. It was the biggest anti-partition vote since 1921. Unionists campaigned to have the elections overturned, and succeeded in Fermanagh-Tyrone. The Stormont government banned Sinn Féin.

On December 12th 1956 the IRA started “Operation Harvest” - a campaign of attacks on targets along the border. The list of targets included rail and telephone lines as well as the police. They bombed a BBC transmitter in Derry and a police hut in Newry. In the end the campaign involved 500 attacks with 17 deaths, 6 of them RUC officers and 8 of them members of the IRA. In 1957 the IRA launched an attack on the RUC in Brookeborough leading to the death of 2 of their volunteers. The campaign was a flop - but the movement had to be seen to be doing something and it helped keep people on board.

Sinn Féin contested the 1957 election in the South, getting 5.3% of votes, with 4 candidates elected to the Dáil, but they didn’t take the seats. DeValera decided to act - he introduced internment without trial in July of that year. The Irish state upped repression of the movement just as the border campaign began to flounder - the movement lacked funds and public support. Their vote fell dramatically in the 1959 Westminster election, and in the Dáil election of 1961 they lost all 4 seats. They had no policies apart from ending partition.

They were a conservative Catholic organisation, and that created a barrier to winning working class support. They were able to win people in the wake of the deaths of volunteers, or when the state, North or South, did something particularly reprehensible. But that wasn’t a sustainable strategy for growth. They entered into the 1960s at a low point - they resorted to blaming the Irish people for not supporting the Border Campaign: “The decision to end the resistance campaign has been taken in view of the general situation. Foremost among the factors motivating this course of action has been the attitude of the general public whose minds have been deliberately distracted from the supreme issue facing the Irish people - the unity and freedom of Ireland”. They blamed the people for not putting the nation before other issues that were ‘distracting’ them. But poverty and housing weren’t distractions - they were burning issues for working class people as Ireland entered the 1960s.

As important as a united Ireland was, it had to be connected to the fight for economic change. Younger IRA leaders like Cathal Goulding, who was IRA Chief of Staff from 1962 on, argued for including a programme of social and economic demands. The movement was so marginalised - they desperately needed to mobilise working class support. They started to join protests on housing and other issues important in working class communities. Republican Clubs were set up in universities and young people like Gerry Adams were encouraged to take the bus to Dublin to join housing protests.

At the 1966 Ard Fheis there was a debate about taking seats in the Dáil. There was a push over the next few years from Goulding and others to remove abstentionism and let workers know they’d take seats if elected. They headed towards another split. They broke into Officials and Provisionals. The Official IRA eventually became the Workers Party - espousing a top down politics influenced by Stalinist countries like North Korea. The Provisional IRA represented the more Catholic republican traditionalists. Sinn Féin became the voice of the Provisionals.

In October 1968 police baton-charged a peaceful civil rights march in Derry. By 1969 the scale of resistance in Northern Ireland meant the Unionist regime couldn’t keep control. The Labour Government sent in British troops to prop up the Unionist state - and they started killing Catholic civilians. In the wake of this mass repression, the IRA began to grow. The mass community defence of Catholic areas became a narrowly-focused terrorist action campaign. The IRA wanted to use spectacular terrorist attacks to bomb the British ruling class to the negotiation table.

The British state responded with vicious repression. The Russian socialist Lenin once remarked that the terrorist was just a liberal with a gun. That might sound contradictory because how can you be a liberal if you take up arms? But their attitude to the mass of working class people is the same. The liberal says “Get me into power and I’ll change things for you, I’ll force the establishment to listen with the power of my words!”  The terrorist says “I’ll force the establishment to listen with the power of my bombs!” They both say “sit at home and we’ll do it for you!” The terrorist doesn’t care to consult the people. They see themselves as self-appointed liberators of their ‘community’. People miss out on the participation in struggles that can begin to empower them. They sit passively waiting for the great liberator to do it for them.

How many times have terrorist movements put on suits and become mainstream politicians? The transition from terrorist to liberal is not as confusing as it first appears. Look at the ANC in South Africa or the history of the PLO.

The blame for all violence in the North lies firmly with the British state, and socialists should have no time for ruling class hypocrisy about violence from the oppressed – British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, for example, could weep crocodile tears for victims of the IRA while massacring young Argentinian sailors and soldiers - or she could order the police to baton miners into submission. She also wanted shoot to kill policies on the streets of the North.

Socialists stand shoulder to shoulder with the oppressed and against the oppressors, but while doing so, you also have to debate which tactics work, and which don’t. The violence was a product of the sectarian state and its backers in Westminster. But was a terrorist bombing campaign the best way to beat them? Without a vision for workers power all the bombs could get was a place at the table with the British and Unionist bosses. The movement produced many brave people who made heroic sacrifices to take on the Empire.

Sinn Féin members faced major repression by the state with the introduction of internment - imprisonment without trial. In April 1973 the British Attorney General admitted that ‘there have been 55 abandoned cases in Belfast since the beginning of 1972 mainly because of the inadmissibility of confession statements’ - in other words the British authorities were jailing people without trial and torturing them.

On internment day, 9 August 1971, at least 10 civilians were killed by the British Army. On 30 January 1972 British paratroopers opened fire on a civil rights demonstration in Derry, massacring 13 unarmed people. Membership of the IRA exploded after Bloody Sunday. The IRA had been poorly armed entering the 1960s, but they began to grow as repression increased. They’d been caught off guard by the attacks on Catholics in 1969, but were now positioned to recruit hundreds of angry young people from the ghettoes. Now IRA leaders wanted to open a line of communication with the British state - the whole point of their strategy was to bring the British to the negotiation table.

In 1971 they met with Harold Wilson, the leader of the British opposition. The early 1970s were the most intense period of the conflict - over half of all British soldiers killed were killed between 1971 and 1973. The British Army built fortifications and walls. Barbed wire and machine guns greeted Catholics when they woke up every morning. In the early 1970s the IRA leaders thought they could actually drive the British troops from the North. When negotiations were opened with the British in 1972 - the IRA called a temporary ceasefire. The British had no intention of leaving.

When the ceasefire ended, the IRA exploded 22 bombs across Belfast - killing 9 people and injuring 130. The chaos and deaths were a PR disaster for the IRA. After the second ceasefire in the mid-1970s, which coincided with more talks with the British, the IRA dropped talk of a quick victory and began to talk of a ‘long war’.

The 1975 ceasefire led to division in the IRA as the Southern-based leadership around people like Ruairí Ó’Brádaigh were accused of damaging the movement, that they had been “duped” by the British establishment. Some of the leaders thought they could get the British to withdraw, but in the aftermath of the talks, the British just cracked down harder. The balance of power in the IRA was shifting to the North. Gerry Adams was elected Vice-President of Sinn Féin in November 1978. At the Ard Fheis that year they debated participation in elections.

Some members were for a complete boycott of all elections, while others were starting to see the value of political representation in their ‘long war’ - this fault line saw the Southern leaders stand up and bitterly denounce the North. They decided to boycott the European Parliament election of 1979, leaving the way open for civil rights activist Bernadette Devlin to stand. Convinced there was a constituency of voters that would support Sinn Féin, the party returned to the question of elections in 1980: just as the Hunger Strike campaign began.

Seven prisoners refused to eat from October 27th 1980. They went 53 days without food before the protest was called off. The Republican prisoners were demanding political status - whereas the British authorities were treating them as criminals. They were freedom fighters, whatever one might think about differing strategies for liberation. It was disgusting of the British to deny these brave men political status. Republican prisoners had been fighting for political status since 1976. Before that they had a ‘Special Category Status’ and were treated like prisoners of war. After ‘76 they were treated as criminals again.

Prisoner Kieran Nugent gave an interview describing his arrival at the newly-constructed H-Blocks at the prison complex: “I was brought straight to the blocks. I was stripped and beaten. The screws who knew me said, ‘We are the bosses now. There are no OCs here’. A screw said to me, ‘What size are you in the waist and what size are you for shoes?’ I asked him ‘What for?’ and he told me ‘For a uniform’. I said, ‘You have got to be joking’. I was the only one in the H-Blocks. They dragged me into the cell. Davy Long [one of the warders] wanted me to compromise. He suggested I wore my own shoes and trousers if I wore a prison shirt. I just laughed. He locked the door. I lay on the floor all night without mattress, blankets or anything else.”

The heroic Bobby Sands refused food on March 1st 1981 - he was serving a draconian 14-year sentence for possession of arms. Sands led the way - other prisoners followed his example. He was the IRA’s OC or ‘officer commanding’ in the prison. The Hunger Strike soon became a showdown with the ruthless British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. There were protests North and South in support of the strike. A by-election in Fermanagh-South Tyrone saw some in Sinn Féin suggest a prisoner candidate, leading to Sands winning 30,492 votes to the Ulster Unionist Party Harry West’s 29,046 - with a massive turnout of 87%.

For Sinn Féin members, this was their first taste of canvassing, as Jim Gibney recalls: “We hadn’t a clue. I hadn’t fought an election in my life. Anybody who came in from Belfast was the same”. They had started down the path of building an electoral machine. After Sands’ tragic death triggered an election, the British government changed the electoral rules to block prisoners from standing. Bobby Sands’ election agent Owen Carron stood in that election, promising to follow an ‘active abstention’ strategy proposed by Gerry Adams. This would see him refuse to take his seat in Westminster, but take the position of MP to continue “fighting the national, social, economic and cultural battles of our people”.

Carron lost his seat in the Westminster election in 1983, but Sinn Féin shifted to electoral politics as an accompaniment to the armed campaign. Danny Morrison tried to keep everyone happy at the 1981 Ard Fheis when he said “Who here really believes we can win the war through the ballot box? But will anyone here object if, with a ballot paper in one hand and the Armalite in the other, we take power in Ireland?” The balance was shifting.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Sinn Fein developed leftist rhetoric to maintain a support base among workers. Nationalist movements look to both bosses and workers. The republican use of socialist language went hand in hand with massive fundraising from right-wing US politicians. Ó’Brádaigh promoted the Éire Nua programme - which proposed a federal Ireland with four provinces wed to Eastern Bloc-style socialism. Adams argued that federalism was a sop to Loyalists. The 1981 Ard Fheis saw the marginalisation of the Ó’Brádaigh group, who would split away in 1986. Sinn Féin had won a new generation of members through the H-Block Campaigns.

By 1986, Sinn Fein had dropped its abstentionism to the Dail and Stormont. Caoimhghín Ó’Caoláin had been elected to Monaghan County Council in 1985. He would eventually give Sinn Féin their first Dáil deputy in 1997. The path from terrorist violence to electoral politics had been walked by many in the Republican movement before them - Fianna Fáil had made the same transition. The Sinn Féin leaders began talking about the Free State in ways that would have been unimaginable only a few years earlier. But this was a well worn path in Irish politics.

When Adams was elected to Westminster in June 1983 he observed that people in the Republic: “…accept the Free State institutions as legitimate. To ignore this political reality is to undermine the development of our struggle.” But this meant recognising the legitimacy of the counter revolutionary state machine - a machine built by elite monsters like Kevin O’Higgins to keep the mass of people down. Elections are an important means of engaging with masses of working class people - anarchists are wrong to ignore that opportunity, but elections will never change the nature of the state machine, or overturn the counter revolution that established the rotten states, both North and South.

As James Connolly said: “The election of a socialist to any public body is only valuable insofar as it is the return of a disturber of the public peace.” When socialist Keir Hardie set up the reformist Labour Party in Britain, Connolly noted that workers needed a revolutionary party “to overthrow the capitalist class in the only way it can be done - by putting up barricades and taking over factories by force. There is no other way.” Elections are a good way to get your message across. More people listen to you if you have a TD or an MLA. But that’s about it.

An Phoblacht claimed Sinn Féin candidates would be immune to the influence of power “Leinster House does corrupt. It corrupts corruptible people.” Gerry Adams went further arguing that “we are very, very clear in terms of our recognition and acceptance and support for the Garda Síochána”. But the choice shouldn’t be between terrorist armed struggle and acceptance of the corrupt institutions and structures of the counter revolutionary Irish state. Sinn Féin would later employ the same arguments to defend partnership in running Stormont: the choice was acceptance of the state, or back to the war.

But there has always been a third option - mass working class revolt that challenged the state from below. There were those in the IRA suspicious of the new strategy, as the IRA had always declared itself the legitimate government of Ireland. Tensions constantly bubbled under the surface in the movement. Sinn Féin threw itself into building a working class electoral base in the South. Working class candidates like Christy Burke in Dublin began to engage in community activism, and were rewarded with victories in local elections.

They stood candidates in 24 constituencies in the 1987 general election, but their candidates were still banned from the national airwaves under Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act 1960. Sinn Féin got 2% of the national vote, twice the vote of the 1982 election, but 24 of their 27 candidates failed to get their deposits refunded. They fell back to just 1.2% of votes in 1989.

In 1992 they won less votes than they had in 1987, but in the North they were managing to hold about 35% of the nationalist vote, with 10% of the overall vote. In 1997 Caoimhghín Ó’Caoláin topped the poll in Cavan-Monaghan. Sinn Féin were seen as a party of protest, and they were beginning to capture votes in areas where people felt alienated from the Irish state. The electoral advance continued in the local elections in 1999.

The so-called ‘Celtic Tiger’ boom was leaving many communities behind, leading to Sinn Féin focusing on anti-government sentiment in the South. They went from 1 to 5 Dáil seats, making gains in Dublin, particularly in some of the poorest working class areas like Ballyfermot and Tallaght. Most of these candidates were people who’d been associated with the IRA - people like Martin Ferris - but a new generation of activists were joining. Mary Lou McDonald left Fianna Fáil to join Sinn Féin near the end of 1999. She said she joined because Sinn Féin were “the unique blend of politics that’s of the left and also that’s very solid around the national question. All that appeals to me.”

The Adams leadership came out of the struggle in the North, whereas the new layer of activists, like McDonald, weren’t associated with the IRA. This was to be an advantage, as the leadership shifted to appeal to centre ground voters. The electoral turn was accompanied with more engagement with the establishment in a whole series of talks - some secret, some open.

In November 1985 British Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher met with Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald in Hillsborough and signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement. It copper-fastened partition, and gave the governments in Dublin and London a negotiated role in the North - with the British Empire retaining full executive power. Nothing had changed - the war continued. The British state had no solution.

For Sinn Féin the new electoral path was creating more internal problems - Republican Sinn Féin split away in 1986. At the Sinn Fein Ard Fhéis in November, a 429 to 161 vote saw Adams win on the issue of abstention from the Dáil. The IRA were kept on board with the new strategy with a promise of more freedom for local units. In the North, Sinn Féin were finding it hard to overtake the SDLP on the electoral front. In the 1993 council elections the SDLP got 75 more seats than Sinn Féin, but in working class Catholic areas like West Belfast, Sinn Féin had a serious base. The IRA continued the strategy of big terrorist attacks on Britain - they had hit the Tory conference in 1984.

But the British government remained unmoved by those actions. The IRA began to talk about “Victory in ‘86!” It was time for another big attack. The Libyan government had promised 240 tons of arms and explosives to the IRA. Sinn Féin got their electoral strategy through, while the IRA wing of the movement were happy that the military campaign was to carry on. But despite this, the leadership started to understand they were just treading water - the British establishment weren’t bending.

The British government offered them a chance to come into mainstream politics: “An Irish republicanism, seen to have finally renounced violence, would be able, like other parties, to seek a role in the peaceful political life of the community. In Northern Ireland it is not the aspiration to a sovereign united Ireland against which we set our face, but its violent expression.” You’d think Sinn Féin would reject the hypocritical overtures of the British state, but with the military campaign going nowhere they said the British statement “had to be tested”. The IRA dropped the demand for a British withdrawal as a precondition of a ceasefire.

They went into secret talks with the government in 1993, leading to the “Downing Street declaration”. This was just a rehash of the previous agreement between the governments with talk of “self determination” for the people of Ireland thrown in as a sop to the IRA. The establishment in the South helped win Sinn Féin back to the mainstream by lifting the media ban. Adams jetted off to the Whitehouse to get pats on the back from the Clintons and an assortment of US Republican politicians willing to donate to Sinn Féin. The main aim of the movement was a united Ireland - all other concerns were put on the back burner - so they could shake hands with the world’s biggest imperialists if it furthered the cause.

As US capitalists flew into Belfast promising an influx of corporate investment, the IRA issued a statement on a ceasefire: “Our struggle has seen many gains and advances made by nationalists, and for the democratic position. We believe that an opportunity to secure a just and lasting settlement has been created. We are therefore entering into a new situation in a spirit of determination and confidence, determined that the injustices which created this conflict will be removed, and confident in the strength and justice of our struggle to achieve this.” But while the IRA had moved, the British establishment hadn’t. Meanwhile Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin had begun meeting with the SDLP, starting what would become known as the ‘peace process’.

Sinn Féin talked of a “pan-nationalist alliance”. They wanted to work with Fianna Fáil to further the interests of nationalists. But Fianna Fáil were the party of Irish capitalism, and the main exploiters of workers in the South. They were sacrificing the class struggle to advance the project of Irish unity - but by working with the capitalist establishment, eventual Irish unity would be curtailed and deformed. Fianna Fáil’s vision for a united Ireland was a long long way away from James Connolly’s.

The 1994 IRA ceasefire announcement paved the way for the Belfast Agreement and power sharing in the North. The sectarian state was modified by the Good Friday Agreement - but not by much. A small Catholic elite were able to get their feet under the table of government. The Good Friday Agreement turned 21 in 2019 - it was signed in 1998. After years of Orange rule, the North was going to get ‘power sharing’ between nationalists and unionists. The whole capitalist establishment was behind the agreement - they emphasised the agreement would bring an end to decades of conflict, and were able to win working class support too. But the agreement enshrined sectarianism and capitalism.

As Belfast socialist Gerard Stewart argued “Socialists, uniquely I think, took the opposite (and at the time, unpopular) view; that (an)… assembly whereby elected representatives are compelled to align themselves as either nationalist or unionist—and where all resources would be divvied out on a communal basis—would only serve to embed and institutionalise the sectarian divide into the structures of the state. This arrangement would, therefore, exacerbate and normalise sectarianism not eradicate it. Those declining to designate—such as People Before Profit and the Green Party—are deemed “other”, and are consequently marginalised.” Was this what the decades-long struggle was for? Joining the state didn’t change its nature - it’s like painting a tiger; it’s still a tiger.

The much-talked-about “peace” dividend was just another form of the mythical ‘trickle down’ economics. People were told that if the communal camps at Stormont promoted neo-liberal capitalism, eventually their communities would benefit. But that never happened. The British government paid a subvention to the North to cover the shortfall in local tax revenues - but also to control the purse strings of the local government. Up until the 1930s the North had a surplus. LIberal economist David McWilliams estimated that a reunified Ireland could cover the shortfall in the North with 4% of the GDP of the 26 counties - something that could be made up by taking on the billionaires and millionaires across the 32 counties. But this further demonstrates the need to tie the fight for a united Ireland to the fight against capitalism.

The North became a grossly unequal society. There were 12,500 millionaires living in the North in 2018, while 20,000 households were recorded as homeless. At the 20th anniversary of the IRA ceasefire, the Catholic estates that had seen most violence during the conflict were the places with highest poverty. The same was true of Protestant estates. Suicides reached record highs in those estate in the years following the peace process.

Stewart was bang on when he wrote: “Obscured behind the terminology of ‘public sector reform and restructuring’, the Long Good Friday has facilitated the increasing encroachment of the private sector into public sector services, giving the green light to the creeping casualisation and de-unionisation of public sector employment, while also selling off local government services by contract to private companies. While the parties of cuts and privatisation parade facelifts and vanity projects—a leisure centre here, an annual community festival there—in exchange for votes on the doorsteps, the public office they preside over accelerates its recruitment of workers under agency, and zero hour contracts, while keeping council services out of the reach of many low-income constituents through hikes in access fees.”

The ruling class in Britain are sly - they’d give people something they wanted: a peace process. But they’d use it as cover for the introduction of a grossly unequal neoliberal economy - something all the Stormont parties allowed to happen on their watch.

In May 1996 Gerry Adams announced that Sinn Féin were willing to accept the “Mitchell Principles”. These were: a commitment to peaceful means of resolving political issues, the disarmament of paramilitaries, the establishment of an independent commission to verify disarmament, the renouncement of force to influence negotiations, to abide by the terms of all-party talks, and to urge an end to punishment killings. Hard-line Republicans resigned from Sinn Féin in disgust. Despite accepting the principles, Sinn Féin were excluded from all party talks until August 1997 when the British Government accepted the IRA ceasefire as genuine.

On Saturday the 15th of August 1998 they signed the Good Friday Agreement. The fundamental nature of the brutal state machine in the North wasn’t changed. The state that formed after partition was never dismantled. It was given a new coat of paint, and some new hands got to hang on to the steering wheel. Re-labelling the RUC as the ‘PSNI’ didn’t alter the organisation - both as a tool of sectarian division but also as a class weapon directed against workers in general. The experience of Sinn Féin in government in the North has been one of growing inequality and cuts for workers while they became more integrated into the ruling class. This is one of the factors underlying the rise of socialist candidate Gerry Carroll in the Sinn Féin heartland of West Belfast.

There are 300,000 people living in poverty in the North, and all the parties in Stormont - including Sinn Féin - bear responsibility for this. Sinn Féin often spoke out against austerity in the chamber, but then facilitated the companies that would hound poor people. In Nov 2012, the DUP and Sinn Féin government awarded private company Capita the contract - worth £59.25 million - to carry out Personal Independence Payment assessments in the North. In January 2015, the DUP/SF government agreed the “Stormont House Agreement” – they both cut up to 20,000 public sector jobs and brought in “Welfare Reform” measures.

In return, Westminster agreed to devolve corporation tax to Stormont. That meant that Sinn Féin were exchanging the power to lower corporation tax back from London in return for attacks on the poorest people. The argument that the British held all the cards and that they had no choice just doesn’t wash. Sinn Féin claimed opposing the cuts would have collapsed the Assembly - but they were willing to do just that in response to the Renewable Heating scandal. Why not do it to stand up for poor people? The choice is always presented as “accept neoliberalism or go back to war” - but there has always been another path - that of mass people-power resistance to Westminster.

Over 3,000 people had died in the Troubles and 50,000 had been injured - that was 3% of the population of the North. Most of the deaths were concentrated in the poorest estates. The British state had blamed the low level of support for poor people on security spending - people had voted for peace expecting there would be a change in their economic situation as well as the political situation.

In Naomi Klein’s book “The Shock Doctrine" she explains how wars and disasters are used by the ruling class to make inroads for capitalism - it’s called “disaster capitalism”. Global corporations gobbled up Iraq’s public services after the USA had blown the place to smithereens. The Strategic Investment Board established under the period of direct rule in 2003 promoted public private partnerships - ways for corporations to make a killing from public services. This is what socialist Goretti Horgan called “the privatisation of peace”.

But this growing turn towards privatisation and outsourcing continued under Sinn Féin’s watch. In the South, Sinn Féin would speak out against this encroachment by private capital into the public sector, and, on paper, the party North and South was committed to bringing it to an end. But leading figures like Martin McGuinness defended the role of private companies in the public sector saying: ”The award of these PFI contracts highlights the opportunities for partnership with the private sector in the pursuit of good value for money and the effective use of resources. It is now clear that PFI does offer real potential for value for money solutions to the pressing capital investment needs of our schools generally.”

The private finance initiative (PFI) was a way of creating “public–private partnerships” (PPPs) by funding public projects with private capital. 33 PFI contracts in the North were signed off on within a 15-year period between 1995 and 2010, and ranged from five-year agreements to contracts that were to run for over 15, 20, 25 and 30 years. In their time in government Sinn Féin had on occasion ran health, education, agriculture and regional development. Announcing cuts of 10 million in her department in 2010, Sinn Féin agriculture minister Michelle Gildernew, said the cuts were needed to balance the books: ”These savings are necessary to allow the Executive to balance its books and enter the next financial year ready to address in-year pressures constructively.”

She added: ”There will be some impact on the frontline and job numbers.” The “policy for sustainable schools” was launched by Sinn Féin Minister for Education, Caitriona Ruane, in January 2009. The policy said that any secondary school with less than 500 pupils was not ”financially viable” and should close. Sinn Féin justified a whole raft of cuts to special needs education - all the while defending tax cuts for the wealthy corporations to encourage them to invest in the North.

While opposing austerity in the South - they were quick to defend it in the North: “It would be churlish not to acknowledge that the Minister (Wilson) had a difficult job. He gave timely warning and spelled out to the Assembly the significant pressures that were building up, particularly because the Assembly has a fixed budget. When the global economy goes into decline, that has an effect here.” This was Sinn Féin’s Mitchel McLaughlin defending the DUP and an austerity budget.

As Sean MacVeigh explained: “The Sinn Fein leadership and their DUP partners in government have made it clear they are fighters for the 1%. The Executive’s record is unambiguous on this - it does not hesitate to make working people pay for the crisis,” but he continues “Sinn Féin voters, supporters and rank-and-file members are in a different category entirely. They are, in the main, part of the 99%, are victims of the system, and will be part of the struggle to overthrow it. Most Sinn Féin voters would be appalled to discover the extent to which the party leadership at Stormont is attacking the interests of working people.

Sinn Féin has built a durable relationship with the DUP which has a history of bigotry and sectarianism. Today SF and DUP politicians play out the role of tribal chieftains, with each party out to get the best deal for ’their’ respective communities. But the only people who benefit from this system are members of the 1%.” While workers in the North were being kicked by the Stormont parties, Sinn Féin continued to rise as the main party of “protest” in the South.

The 2008 crisis saw Sinn Féin’s vote grow in the South, as they were seen as the party of opposition to the austerity agenda of Fianna Fáil. Most Irish workers had traditionally voted for Fianna Fáil - but the bank bailout saw a huge shift to Labour in the working class areas. When Labour entered government in 2011 people moved over to Sinn Féin, with a significant minority voting for the radical left.

From 1997 to 2007 Sinn Féin had presented themselves as the best defenders of the peace process, while ditching many of the sacred mantras of Republicanism, like opposition to Stormont in the North. They used left-wing language in the South to win over workers who were shifting left under the impact of austerity. They won over blue-collar workers with promises to “tax the rich”. They had initially voted for the bank bailout - concerned to save Irish capitalism - but shifted dramatically when they realised how unpopular that was. They joined protest movements - but always emphasised the need to get Sinn Féin into government office. They didn’t mind who they’d have to shake hands with to get into government.

At the 2010 Ard Fheis there were 2 motions urging the party to reject coalition with Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael. Up until the economic crisis Sinn Féin had spoken of the need for a “pan-nationalist alliance” - uniting with Fianna Fáil and the SDLP, but after 2008 that just wouldn’t wash with angry working class people. Yet the motions opposing coalition with the right were voted down. As Gerry Adams said “If you can work with Ian Paisley, you can work with anyone!” That included the parties of Irish capitalism like Fianna Fáil.

To make themselves appealing to the ruling class, they made clear they accepted EU budgetary rules, including the constraints of the Fiscal Treaty. You can’t promise public housing to workers while at the same time telling the ruling class you’ll accept rules that ban the necessary spending required to fund your public housing programmes. This acceptance of the constraints of Irish capitalism included paying up to €8 billion a year in interest payments on Ireland’s national debt until the year 2053. Any party that accepts those limitations cannot deliver for working class people. That would require a challenge to capitalism, not partnership.

Their policy documents over the course of the austerity years were a mix of radical left rhetoric directed to the working class, and economic “realism” directed at the ruling class. As James Connolly remarked about calls to be “practical” in politics: “Let us, be practical. We want something practical. Always the cry of humdrum mediocrity, afraid to face the stern necessity for uncompromising action. That saying has done more yeoman service in the cause of oppression than all its avowed supporters….Don’t be “practical” in politics. To be practical in that sense means that you have schooled yourself to think along the lines and in the grooves which those who rob you would desire you to think.”

Connolly’s remarks remind you of the history of the Irish Labour Party or the Green Party - where the call to be “realistic” or “practical” ruled out taking on capitalism time and time again. Being “practical” for Sinn Féin meant accepting Tory austerity, using Westminster as an excuse to help introduce neoliberalism in the North: “We want to work together with visionary Irish entrepreneurs, researchers, farmers, trades unions and others to build a new republican ethos for Irish business - business that can be socially responsible, have a sense of social solidarity and that sees social investment as a benefit.”

This “practical” approach amounts to a complete utopianism - that an economy that facilitates the rise of capitalist “entrepreneurs” can also work in co-operation with trade unions to build a better life for all. Nationalism out of power appeals across the class divide - but in power it always becomes a vehicle for the wealthy.

The years of austerity were followed by a recovery for the few. This led to a growing desire for an alternative to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. There was an increase in the Sinn Féin vote, culminating in the 24.5% they got in early 2020 and a further rise to 34% in the years following.

They had failed to run enough candidates in 2020 to capitalise on the vote they got. The huge transfer votes that went to the radical left showed the thirst for change among workers. Irish politics had long been dominated by the two main right-wing parties who now represented less than 50% of the vote combined. This was the third so-called “volatile” election - where huge shifts in voter patterns had emerged.

In 2011 Fianna Fáil had faced near annihilation for their role implementing austerity - a shift which benefited Fine Gael and Labour. In 2016 Labour were destroyed for their role in government, while the Fine Gael vote dropped. The problem facing a Sinn Féin government is that they accept the same confines that were accepted by those previous governments - not only Irish capitalism but also the policy straight-jackets imposed by a whole series of neoliberal EU treaties. Running the tax haven economy will destroy the left nationalists as it destroyed the Labour Party.

The establishment was able to break Sinn Féin’s forward momentum with debates around immigration - far from fighting to hold their voter base the Shinners shifted right, then left, then right again, losing votes in the process. They fell to 18% in the polls yet still represented most working people’s desperate hope there could be an alternative to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. But what would Sinn Féin actually do in government?

I’m sure they would initially win some token reforms for workers - but they would then coalesce with Irish capitalism. Their aim is to be in government on both sides of the border and fight for Irish unity. They do not see taking on capitalism as a priority - they are a nationalist party, not a socialist party. We’ve already seen a radical nationalist party tread the path from terrorism to running Irish capitalism - Fianna Fáil. They were seen as gunslingers in their early years. They talked about abolition of the armed forces and nationalisation of the banks. Fianna Fáil used to steal Labour’s thunder. But once in power nationalists - who represent a cross-class alliance - become a vehicle for the wealthy.

The idea that you can keep bosses and workers, landlords and tenants, racists and anti-racists happy is a middle class fantasy, a utopia. In reality such middle class utopias hide the same old capitalist reality. Davy Stockbrokers, a voice of the greedy rich, said a Sinn Fein government would be a safe pair of hands for investors, for vultures and the rich.

The report said Sinn Féin are more like Tony Blair’s New Labour than like Jeremy Corbyn’s wing of Labour and says the policies that most threatened landlords have been watered down. Sinn Féin are what Marxists have called a “petty bourgeois” party - they represent the middle classes. Not because all their members are middle class, not at all, but because they put forward a pro-capitalist fantasy typical of the middle class.   You can see the value of Lenin’s formulations on left government even in 21st Century Ireland - to support a left government, but from the opposition benches and case by case. That way, you can say to workers who have illusions in the Sinn Féin leaders - “Of course we’d vote for Mary Lou McDonald for Taoiseach and keep out the right! But we socialists don’t think the Irish state is democratic: it’s rotten - it’s completely corrupt - and we want to overturn it and build a real democracy where the people get a say. We’re not in this for mercs and percs - we’re in this for the working class people of Ireland! Maybe you don’t yet agree with all of that, and you want to try a left government. We’ll be the first to fight hard to help you get a left government. We’ll stand with you, but all the while trying to convince you to organise on the streets to go further than this rotten state.”

The radical left can’t be so afraid of difficult arguments that they sleepwalk into running Irish capitalism as partners of a nationalist party. Or we lie and tell workers we’d enter a government we’d no intention of joining. You have to be honest. All you’d be doing is putting a leash around your own neck and handing the other end of it to the likes of billionaires like Denis O’Brien. The Irish state was established by a counter revolution, and only revolution can change that. The history of the working class over the last century has seen a long line of parties promise that they’ll run capitalism differently - next time, next time, next time. “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” as Macbeth once said.

But it never ever works. They don’t run capitalism. Capitalism runs them: from the Social Democrats in Sweden to the Syriza government in Greece. We owe it to all the long-dead generations of workers who saw left governments rise and fall - and to all our future generations - to learn the lessons of history. When we take power it will be for real and we will put the leash around the necks of the billionaires.