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Sinn Féin’s flop
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Gerry Adams now says that the general election in the Irish Republic was always going to be difficult for his Sinn Féin party. Yet, like any good boxing pro, he talked a good fight at the time. If he had doubts during the campaign, he didn’t let it show. [Good discussion where this blog was first published on Comment is Free]
In the event, the electorate largely returned to the two large populist parties of the southern state. Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s Fianna Fáil lost just two seats, and his opponent Enda Kenny’s Fine Gael added 20 – mostly at the expense of independents and the smaller parties rather than the government.
Although Sinn Féin lost only one of its five seats, its ambition to double its tally and become a critical part of government never materialised. In fact they lost one of their two Dublin incumbents, and only retained the other up by a mere 69 votes. In real terms, they performed less well in the Republic than the tiny Alliance party in the Northern Ireland assembly elections in March.
However it is what Sinn Féin did not win that may hurt them most in the longer term. Their most prominent candidate, Mary Lou McDonald, who has featured in all campaigns north and south since she won a European seat in 2004 actually saw her vote fall in Dublin Central by 5.4%. Instead of building in the capital, where they had hoped for three gains, they are now hanging on by a very thin thread.
Liam Clarke in the Sunday Times offers a possible explanation:
“Instead of the five seats targeted in Dublin constituencies, one is the most they can hope for. They hoped for as many as 12 TDs but they will end up with less than they started with. The unstoppable Sinn Féin bandwagon, which is still supposed to deliver Irish unity by 2016, is off the tracks and needs a refit.
“Community workers in Dublin say Sinn Féin has lost some of its appeal in working-class communities.
“‘The party is not as active in these areas as people would believe,’ one former Sinn Féin activist said. ‘They are no longer associated with the anti-drugs movement, or even most community groups. Gerry Adams rambles on about the scourge of heroin in the city but on the ground the Shinners are doing nothing about it.
“‘They do a lot of talking but nobody believes a word they say round here. Local community groups see Sinn Féin in the same light as the other parties. They show up when they want something.’”
The party’s decision to use Gerry Adams extensively in its poster campaign and media appearances, primarily at the expense of the southern candidates themselves, may also have created a sense among the electorate that this was a group of outsiders ambitious only to take over the state.
Adams also gave the impression that he had little grasp either of his own party’s policy detail, nor the complex workings of the Irish economy. During the campaign he even admitted to having to bone up on economics at night. In effect the party’s proposals for nationalisation and massive investment in the poorer areas of the Republic, though rarely explicitly outlined, may have entailed an abandonment of the Republic’s Anglo economic model for the Nordic one, but without the roadmap. It steadfastly ignored the fact that most of the public tax take is currently being called directly into rolling out infrastructure just to try to keep up with the growth of the country’s economy.
It’s not as though the government was invulnerable to criticism. A whole series of major capital projects such as Dublin’s new tramway system have come in massively over budget. The rapid expansion of Dublin’s “exburbs” has left people with long and often uncomfortable journeys into work each day. And the health service is struggling to meet demand.
But as Olivia O’Leary pointed out on RTE last Monday, they are also glad they be commuting from Carlow and not having to emigrate to Australia. This generation of Irish people have children who have the economic choice to grow up and live at home. It is as genuinely historic as anything that has happened in Northern Ireland recently.
Paradoxically for a party founded with the explicit purpose of getting rid of “foreign” political influence on the island, in this election at least, it came across as foreign. And not simply because of Adams’ northern accent. Sinn Féin’s economic strategy, based on seemingly endless demands for public money from the UK treasury works well for it in the highly subsidised north, but translates into an independent sovereign state as basket case economics. In the aftermath, Adams was taunted relentlessly in the media about his political centre of gravity being Westminster, rather than in the Leinster House parliament in Dublin.
As Mark Hennessey explained in the Irish Times yesterday, Dublin’s working classes are considerably more nuanced in their understanding of economics than the party gave them credit for:
In places such as Tallaght the working class has become middle class or at least possessed of middle-class aspirations. Jobs are more plentiful, mortgages secured. Some who voted for Sinn Féin before now have assets to protect.
On the plus side, there were some rises in the party’s vote around the border areas. But even here there are elements that should worry party strategists. It suggests that while the party has a distinct appeal to the northern parts of the state, it has failed to take hold further south in areas like Wexford and Waterford. And, perhaps more worrying, the border counties are the last places in the Republic to feel the warm glow of the Celtic Tiger. As development moves northwards, the fear has to be that these too will fall to the canny charms of mainstream Dublin politics, and turn their backs on the would-be radicals of the north.
By the next election in 2011, Sinn Fein will need to have come to terms with the modern Ireland beyond their own British subsidised stronghold in Northern Ireland if they are to stand a chance of moving their all-island project further forward. But they will also need to come to terms with the fact that after generations of viewing their Unionist neighbours in Northern Ireland as being part of Ireland’s “British problem”, they must confront the fact that they are now viewed by many of their fellow citizens in the Republic as foreigners themselves.
This must be one of the best reasoned articles on this malign party that I have read.
Well done you.
Very good article – thank you for posting it here!
Good post, I think Chris Gaskin’s points, when added to this, make for some very tough reading for the Sinn Fein leadership.
To put it in perspective, it is the first election (north and south) in about 30 years where the party has not gained in seats/votes/vote %. The shuddering halt to momentum is usually a precursor to a new leadership with new ideas. The problem is that no new leadership was elected in the South.
The blow to the image of SF as workers is equally hard to counteract. They need to begin to grapple much harder and with more commitment with the FF machine. It is clear from this election that the working-class republican vote is a fight between FF and SF primarily with Labour occasionaly present in certain areas/constituencies.
It was Adams on the debate coupled with a very dodgy policy programme that managed to portray Sinn Fein as distant. Yet they never cared about media ‘portrayal’ they cared on the ground. Only after this election it seems that was not entirely the case.
An election won by pounding the streets, getting out and meeting people. SF cannot afford to begin losing this noted characteristic of their party. The question is how to keep members coming in and working for/with them.
Excellent analysis. A lot of it can be applied to all the broad-left parties – independents, socialists and so on. (Gregory is an institution at this stage, having worked tirelessly and consistently for years. McGrath is the only other independent socialist TD left. Labour is centrist.) But SF, Higgins, etc: Irish people are richer and more middle-class than ever before. With the Northern issue sidelined (let’s face it, it isn’t high on anybody’s agenda anymore…) then the economics are all important. SF is just out of touch with modern Ireland. Mention “nationalise” and most people think Cuba or Albania!
There may well be a sustained benefit to SF’s increase in the vote in the border areas because these are the areas which have had least from the Celtic Tiger and which suffer most and worst from its inadequacies. AS the economy slows, then SF’s presence and popularity in those areas will increase. But I wholeheartedly agree that SF’s policies lack sellable substance, however if one listens to the podcast here by Eoin O Broinn there is real evidence of analytical thinking in SF that goes beyond sloganism and criticism of the status quo.It also interests me that SF won 5 seats in the last election at a time when they had not got the tide of the new Stormont on which to ride and when progress in the North was becoming moribund. So, the old arguments about voters rejecting SF’s paramilitary past don’t quite line up. I think that SF’s failure to increase their seats ( and their struggle to hold on to some of their existing seats)has two main reasons
They fell foul of the general squeeze on the smaller parties in this election; and putting Adams forward as spokesman for SF in the election campaign was a mistake for all the reasons that have been previously cited, although using him in posters was sensible because of the personal poularity/recognition factor he enjoys among many w/class republican voters here.
And finally, there is the specific Mary Lou factor.Mary Lou’s candidacy was too transparent to voters in that constituency. She was being groomed and marketed cynically by SF. Having won a Euro seat it was clear she had no intention of staying there and thus her previous campaign was exposed for what it was- a means to an end when she had been given a mandate to represent her electorate in Europe. Also she was regarded as a “blow-in ” in the constituency attempting to erode a base built by a locally respected and resident independent TD, Gregory who has served his community as such for 20 years. I think that the Mary Lou campaign is one where SF should and must do most learning.
They need to begin to grapple much harder and with more commitment with the FF machine. It is clear from this election that the working-class republican vote is a fight between FF and SF primarily with Labour occasionaly present in certain areas/constituencies.
McGuinness, I believe, said before polling day that Sinn Fein were going to be the story of the election. While their swift resignation of their old nemisis, Michael McDowell put in a strong bid it seems that SF finally made the cut, but for the wrong reasons.
Just as Labour lost seats because they couldn’t be distinguished from their larger partner, so it could be argued that by being vague on policy – in the case of their economic policy spectacularly so – they came across as Fianna Fail light and as Mick says, simply weren’t aware that too many traditional working class voters felt that their very equity was tied up with FF. Cowen spent most of his time on TV pre-election saying that a change to stamp duty would destabalize the housing market and that he was determined not to do this. By the time Bertie did his u-turn the electorate had indelibly associated Cowen and cohorts with a desire to maintain stability.
This is quite funny because all of the economic strategies proposed by SF in 2007 would sure come in handy now that we realise the country is broke and the government washed away all the money…oh if only we knew then what we know now. Fianna Fail wasted money, the health service is shite, likewise for public schooling and transport, the gap between rich and poor has WIDENED, almost 400,00 on the live register soon to be 600,000 and if only we voted for the party who wanted high taxes and to focus on public services…
Sorcha,
If only that were true. It was in part their vascillation on tax that diminished their appeal to the electorate. Labour’s offer of a 2% cut in Income Tax indicates everyone, to one extent or another, bought into the bull market ethics of the time…
At least Labour stood back from backing the bank guarantee scheme last September..
Mick,
Sinn Féin thought about backing the bank guarantee but decided not to. If you remember. This was because they discussed alternatives, Labour offered and still don’t offer any alternative to FF’s soon to be budget. Labour are a joke, they are all talk, they are the party who went into coalition with FG and whose policies were no better than FF’s are today.
Also, can I add that Sinn Féin would have backed the bank guarantee had it been done properly. The banks should be held accountable, and if they were, the guarantee probably could have worked…but instead they did nothing and the banks won’t lend leading us into a deeper recesssion.