Sinn Féin and the Politics of Left Republicanism (Irish Left Republicanism)

Sinn Féin and the Politics of Left Republicanism Sinn Féin and the Politics of Left Republicanism EOIN Ó BROIN PLUTO...

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Sinn Féin and the Politics of Left Republicanism

Sinn Féin and the Politics of Left Republicanism EOIN Ó BROIN

PLUTO PRESS

www.plutobooks.com

First published 2009 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 www.plutobooks.com Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 Distributed in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland by Gill & Macmillan Distribution, Hume Avenue, Park West, Dublin 12, Ireland. Phone +353 1 500 9500. Fax +353 1 500 9599. E-Mail: [email protected] Copyright © Eoin Ó Broin 2009 The right of Eoin Ó Broin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7453 2463 0 ISBN 978 0 7453 2462 3

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Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd, Sidmouth, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Printed and bound in the European Union by CPI Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Dedicated to Ihintz Oliden ... for everything

Thanks to ... Inaki Soto for sarcasm, support and long walks by the sea Roger van Zwanenberg for patience Laurence McKeown for suggestions and corrections David and Conor Kennedy for all the bad jokes Catherine Ó Broin for interest and support Sara Burke for West Cork and other encouragements Robert Ballagh for The History Lesson and to Sinn Féin for thirteen years of comradeship, empowerment and the opportunity to play a small part in one of the most important periods in modern Irish history

CONTENTS

Introduction

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1 The Origins of Left Republicanism Republicans – The United Irishmen – Nationalists – Young Ireland – The Fenians – Socialists – Conclusion

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2 The Arrival of Left Republicanism James Connolly and the Irish Socialist Republican Party – After the Irish Socialist Republican Party – Connolly’s Socialism – Connolly’s Republicanism – Connolly and Unionism – Connolly and Gender – The Connolly Paradox

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3 Left-Republican Interventions 113 Left Republicanism on the Margins: 1916–26 – Political Radicalism and Partition – Left Republicanism After Partition – Left Republicanism and the Rise of Fianna Fáil – Left-Republican Retreat: the Republican Congress – A New Departure: Clann na Poblachta – Discarding the Republic: From Official Sinn Féin to Democratic Left – Conclusion 4 A Century of Struggle 174 Arthur Griffith’s Sinn Féin – Sinn Féin After the Rising – Sinn Féin During the War of Independence – Sinn Féin After the Anglo–Irish Treaty – Sinn Féin on the Margins – Sinn Féin Reorganises – Sinn Féin in the 1960s – Unionist Hegemony and State Crisis – Civil Rights and Conflict – Provisional Sinn Féin – Political Expansion – Changing Dynamics – Adapting to Changing Political Conditions – Towards a Lasting Peace – The Peace Process – Agreement – Building the Future – Conclusion vii

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SINN FÉIN AND THE POLITICS OF LEFT REPUBLICANISM

Conclusion The History Lesson – Eight Theses on the Future of Sinn Féin – 2016: The Prospects and Risks of Success

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Notes Appendix 1: Sinn Féin Election Results 1982–2007 Appendix 2: Sinn Féin Policy Documents Recommended Reading Bibliography Index

312 325 327 331 333 340

INTRODUCTION

This book is not a history of but rather a critical engagement with the past, present and future of Sinn Féin and left republicanism. I am neither a historian nor a political scientist. I am, first and foremost, a political activist, committed to a particular political project. That project is based on a certain critique of the existing order of things, and a set of values about what is right and wrong, what is just and unjust, in today’s world. On the basis of this critique and these values, I have consciously become part of a broader political struggle for change, in Ireland and the wider world. That struggle provides the context in which this book is written and in a small way its writing is part of my activist contribution to that struggle. More specifically I am an Irish republican socialist. I believe that the best form of democracy can be achieved in Ireland today through the ending of partition, the withdrawal of the British state from the north of Ireland and the building of a political system in which all the people who inhabit the island of Ireland are sovereign. My conception of sovereignty is neither insular nor anachronistic, but a genuinely radical democratic one, in which self-determination is vested in people in a plurality of ways – individual, communal, local, national, international – while recognising the complexity of life in today’s internationalised world. The challenge for Irish republicanism at the start of the twenty-first century is to articulate forms of sovereignty and selfdetermination and to build institutions of governance that are open, democratic, plural and just, in meaningful and materially effective ways. Central to this articulation has to be a socio-political and economic critique of contemporary society that recognises the structural inequalities embedded in the very fabric of our 1

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lives. These structural inequalities – along lines of class, gender, race, religion and sexual orientation, to name a few – form the architecture in which we live our lives and which prevent us from realising the meaning of equality. From such a critique we can build strategies for removing these inequalities and continue the long and uncharted process of building new architectures – social, political, economic – based not on inequality and discrimination, but on empowerment and solidarity. This process of critique, strategy and struggle is what I understand to be socialism, albeit heavily indebted to the parallel movements of feminism, anti-imperialism, anti-racism and ecologism, which have motivated progressive movements across the globe throughout the twentieth century. This articulation is left republicanism: a commitment to radical participatory democracy, popular pluralist sovereignty, social and economic justice, and political and cultural equality, coupled with a commitment to confronting and challenging the loci of power and inequality which constitute the architecture of modern society in order to radically alter the way in which we as human beings organise our lives. But why choose the term ‘left republicanism’? Most authors prefer the labels ‘socialist republicanism’ (English 1994, 2003) or ‘social republicanism’ (Patterson 1997) to describe Irish republicans with left-leaning politics since the nineteenth century. In fact, the term ‘left republican’ is almost wholly absent from the existing academic and historical literature. Nor is it widely used in the everyday activist vocabulary of those on the left of Irish republican political life. The value of the term is twofold. First, ‘social republicanism’ has pejorative connotations, especially in the context of Patterson’s work, implying a lack of socialist or left-wing substance to what that author argues is the republican populism of modern-day Sinn Féin. However the more strident term ‘socialist republicanism’ is too restrictive to capture the broader historical reality of left-wing republicanism in twentiethcentury Ireland, particularly when socialism is used in its more traditional, Marxian form. By using the term ‘left republicanism’, therefore, I want to avoid Patterson’s negative use of the ‘social’ label, while at the same time broaden the reference of the term

INTRODUCTION

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to include left republicans concerned less with a traditional economistic socialist politics than with a politics informed by the radicalism of the New Left, anti-imperialism, feminism, ecologism and other popular movements. Left republicanism includes unambiguously socialist individuals and formations such as James Connolly and his Irish Socialist Republican Party (ISRP) at the turn of the twentieth century, and Peadar O’Donnell and the Republican Congress of the 1930s, but also Seán MacBride and Clann na Poblachta, who in the 1940s and 1950s, while certainly not socialist, did articulate a more left-leaning radical republicanism. This label also includes the left radicalism that helped bring Fianna Fáil to power in the early 1930s. Likewise, the left-republican label adequately describes Official Sinn Féin and The Workers Party during the 1970s and early 1980s and contemporary Sinn Féin up to the present. Indeed, left republicanism also includes individuals and tendencies within the broader women’s movement, the trade unions, sections of the Green and Labour parties and associated movements and intellectuals on the left of the Irish political mainstream. Thus ‘left republicanism’ as a term connotes all those republican activists, intellectuals and organisations who during the course of the twentieth century attempted, with varying degrees of success and failure, to integrate a left-wing politics in the most plural sense of the term with traditional republican demands for full national independence and popular political sovereignty. Semantic debates and grand rhetoric notwithstanding, the actual business of political struggle is always less glamorous and exciting than the history books suggest. It can be a slow, monotonous, challenging and disempowering experience, with defeat or compromise more readily available than victory. It is also always a collective enterprise with all the attendant strains, stresses and personal compromises involved. In the heat of all of this, there is seldom time to step back, take stock and attempt to glance, even momentarily, at the bigger picture. Equally difficult is the task of self-reflection and self-criticism, as essential as it is problematic, for political movements as much as individuals. Opening oneself up and laying bare one’s weaknesses for all to see

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is a dangerous and at times traumatic undertaking, from which friends and colleagues often recoil. Absorbing and learning from the criticisms of one’s opponents is even more difficult, as it involves resisting the natural inclination to defend one’s position at all costs. Yet without such reflection and critique, without regard for the arguments and positions of others, locked as we are in the heat of ongoing struggle, how can we get a sense of where we are, and what changes, if any, we need to make in order to move our struggle one step further? The questions that form the basis of this book emerge out of these interrelated realities. They are an exercise in self-reflection and self-criticism, exploring the development of the Irish leftrepublican project throughout the twentieth century, in order to understand our failures so that we may better confront our weaknesses and shortcomings in the present and in the future. In doing so I want to trace the emergence of left republicanism from its origins in the Europe and Ireland of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, through to its critical interventions in Irish political life during the twentieth century. This critical narrative will frame a more detailed discussion of where left republicanism is today, at the start of this century. My questions will be rather simple: What constitutes left republicanism? Why did it emerge and take the forms it did? Why did it move in certain directions and take particular decisions at key moments in its history? Crucially, I want to understand why left republicanism failed to become hegemonic within the broader nationalist movement during the first half of the twentieth century, and in Irish society more generally into the present. Equally important is the ongoing antagonistic relationship between republicanism and unionism from the end of the nineteenth century and through the twentieth, and the question of where this relationship is likely to travel in the future. The purpose of asking and possibly answering these questions is not an academic exercise. At a time when left republicanism is growing in political power and impact in Ireland, primarily in the party political form of Sinn Féin, understanding these issues takes on a more immediate importance. If we are to learn from

INTRODUCTION

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the mistakes and miscalculations of the past and build a stronger vehicle for change in the present, then we need to take a hard and cold look at who we are and where we have come from. Asking questions about the past of left republicanism will lead to questions about its present and potential futures. Where is left republicanism in the present? What are its strengths and weaknesses? Where are the blind spots and shortcomings? Can we seriously think about left republicanism becoming the hegemonic political force in contemporary Ireland, and acting as the engine for change across the entire spectrum of society? Do we have the necessary political and social capital to offer a real alternative to the existing though fragile status quo? Can we build a community for change of sufficient strength to challenge those who benefit from inequality and discrimination, and whose political function is to preserve the present societal architecture at all costs? In asking and hopefully answering these questions I want to depart significantly from previous writings by republicans and non-republicans alike. My purpose will not be to define the ‘true’ republicanism – as if such a thing actually existed – nor to blindly defend republican principle from its detractors. I am not interested in recovering a ‘lost’ or ‘authentic’ republicanism from its apparently abused deviations. Such ideas are banal legitimisations used to avoid frank and open critical discussion. However, while engaging seriously with critiques of left republicanism, I also want to challenge many of their confusions and misreadings, whether based on poor analysis or political prejudice. Equally, I want to return left republicanism to its proper international context. Writings on Irish politics and history, whether by republicans or revisionists, are often too insular, arguing that Ireland’s development is an internal and exceptional affair, different from the ‘normal’ path of European or indeed world events.1 For a country as small and porous as Ireland such an argument is patent nonsense, yet it continues to hold widespread currency. I also want to include discussion of what left republicanism has ignored or misunderstood in the course of its history, the effect of which has been to weaken the left-republican analysis of society

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and in turn our political project. Crucial issues here are those relating to gender and Irish unionism. The result of all of this should be neither apology for the past and present of left republicanism nor a surrender to the positions of our critics, but rather an honest and critical reflection into the past, present and future of left republicanism, by an active and committed proponent – the aim of which is to provide greater understanding of the content and rationale of our political tradition while at the same time strengthening the ability of the project to achieve its aims. As Irish society north and south settles into the twenty-first century, there are clear signs of political change. The existing hegemonies – national, regional and global – are stumbling, and in the flux and uncertainty that marks our present transition many opportunities are available to build a different kind of society. It is incumbent on those of us who are motivated to play a part in this change that we examine and develop the tools with which we hope to shape the outcome of the process. In Ireland today there are a number of conflicting and contradictory understandings of republicanism as an ideology and as a political force. Politicians, journalists and academics offer a wide array of explanations, descriptions and assessments of where republicanism has come from and of what its effects are on contemporary society and politics. Republicans see themselves as agents of positive and radical change. Whether in the form of Sinn Féin, the IRA, other political or military groupings or independent activists and writers, Irish republicanism is part of a long tradition that has been at the forefront of campaigns for democracy, justice and equality in modern Ireland. Indeed, this placing of republicanism at the radical pole of Irish politics has meant that, for many republicans, implicit in their self-definition is a commitment to a left-wing socio-economic and political programme, however defined. Sinn Féin’s constitution commits the party to the ‘establishment of a democratic socialist republic’.2 In his presidential address at the party’s 2004 Ard Fheis (national conference) Gerry Adams outlined the meaning of this commitment in the following terms:

INTRODUCTION

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The past decade has been the decade of the peace process in Ireland. The politics of Sinn Féin’s peace strategy is to empower people. But the past decade has also been the decade of tribunals when the corrupt relationship between leading politicians in this State and big business was exposed as never before ... Communities suffered from atrociously sub-standard housing in bleak estates without facilities. They endured the worst of the drugs scourge and the poverty and the unemployment of the 1980s and early 1990s. This party stood shoulder to shoulder with those people ... We opposed cuts in health and education. We fought for facilities and decent homes. We stood up to the drugs barons. We organised in the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods. We protested at the senior politicians who grew rich through criminality while they cynically urged the rest of us to tighten our belts ... Since then of course and for the last decade the wealth of this state has been greater than at any time in its history. We welcome that. Do we have better schools, better hospitals, affordable homes? Have people with disabilities benefited? No ... Let us send a clear message from this Ard Fheis that Sinn Féin is in the business of righting these wrongs. People have the right to a home, to a job, to education, and to health care from the cradle to the grave. Campaigning on all of these issues is the core of Sinn Féin activism. It is the key to bringing about change now. By acting locally, while thinking nationally we tie together the great historic elements of our philosophy ... Equality is the key. We are committed to building ... an Ireland of equals, a united and free Ireland.3 Thus for republicans the struggle for an independent Irish democracy is part and parcel of the broader struggle for a social and economic transformation of society based on principles of need and equality.

This self image contrasts sharply with the views offered by Sinn Féin’s political opponents. In 2004, the former Progressive Democrat (PD) Minister for Justice Michael McDowell described Sinn Féin as a Nazi party. Speaking in an interview with the Irish Star on Sunday the minister said: ‘When it comes to the next election, we [the Irish electorate] shouldn’t do what the people of Germany did in the 1930s when they elected to office people that liked to have it both ways – the Brownshirts and the Nazis which were a threat to democracy.’4 McDowell’s comments were echoed the same weekend by a number of other government ministers

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during the Ard Fheis of the PD’s senior coalition partner Fianna Fáil. Sinn Féin had turned the border counties into an ‘economic wasteland’, alleged one senior party spokesperson, and had made politics with ‘the ballot box in one hand and a cudgel in the other’, in the view of another.5 These themes of Sinn Féin as a danger to democracy, a violent fascist or authoritarian force and a threat to economic and social stability are not new. Similar views have been expressed by senior British government figures, leaders of unionism, the Social Democratic and Labour Party and other nationalist political parties and journalists for almost a century. Indeed such views have a wider currency than party political opponents, and it is this currency that means such rhetorical flourishes in the mouth of an election or on the eve of important peace process negotiations cannot be ignored as the ‘sabre rattling’ of competitive party politics. They are ideas and opinions that are embedded in many sectors of Irish public and private opinion. Take for example the collection of essays Republicanism in Modern Ireland, edited by Fearghal McGarry (2003). Eleven essays written by a variety of commentators and historians trace the development of republicanism through the twentieth century. In his own introduction, McGarry describes republicanism as an ‘introspective tradition with a marked preoccupation with the past and its own place within it’.6 The primary characteristics of this ‘introspective tradition’ are ‘abstention from participation in electoral politics, refusal to acknowledge the reality of Protestant support for the Union and commitment to the use of physical force’.7 However, contemporary republican leaders have, McGarry argues, ‘willingly consigned to the past’ such ‘anachronistic baggage’8 and in doing so produced an ‘irreversible revision of republican ideology’.9 What is interesting about McGarry’s brief comments is the distance between his characterisation of republicanism and that maintained by republicans throughout the twentieth century. Republicans see themselves almost universally as both internationalist in their thinking and actions and focused on the present and future rather than the past. Indeed it would be hard to think of any of the leading republicans, particularly left republicans of

INTRODUCTION

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the twentieth century, as fitting McGarry’s mould, whether one is talking of James Connolly, Peadar O’Donnell, Seán MacBride, Tomás MacGiolla or Gerry Adams. Equally, his confusion of the use of armed struggle and electoral abstentionism as principles rather than tactics suggests that somehow these aspects of political strategy are actually defining characteristics of republicanism, the abandonment of which involves an ‘irreversible revision of republican ideology’.10 What McGarry is articulating is a view of republicanism as inherently violent, narrow minded, suspicious of politics and obsessed with the past – all central ingredients of authoritarian and fascistic politics. A variation on this theme can be found in Eoin O’Malley’s paper ‘Populist Nationalists: Sinn Féin and Redefining the “Radical Right”’.11 A further confusion is articulated in another contribution to McGarry’s volume. Irish historian R.V. Comerford argues that ‘there is, in fact, no ideal or set of ideals that defines the boundaries of Irish republicanism, past or present’;12 what does define republicanism for Comerford is ‘the practice or advocacy of physical force insurgency under the banner of independence’.13 He goes further, ‘taking mutually exclusive connotations of democracy and republicanism’,14 the possibility of any democratic deployment of violence, or the use of violence to achieve democratic goals, is absent from his considerations. Republicanism is devoid of ideology, inherently anti-democratic and exclusively violent. Unfortunately for Comerford such descriptions fit neither the historical evidence nor the self-definition of republicans themselves. Comerford, McGarry and O’Malley are respected and academically accomplished historians and political scientists. The views they express are widely held amongst their contemporaries. Indeed there is a clear continuity between the work of these writers and the views expressed by politicians from a wide variety of political parties and positions. Clearly there is more at stake here than political point scoring and ideological positioning. If we accept that these different views of republicanism are serious and sincerely held by their proponents, then a number of questions arise. How are these contrasting and contradictory views of

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Irish republicanism possible? Which of these views is closest to the actual reality of republican ideology and political practice? Why does there appear to be such basic confusion about the fundamentals of republicanism? Moreover, if the negative views articulated by such a wide variety of academic, journalistic and political individuals and groups are right, then why are a growing number of people across the island of Ireland accepting the self image of contemporary republicans and joining or voting for Sinn Féin? The answers partly lie in the fact that all commentators approach the subject of Sinn Féin in the context of a protracted period of armed conflict in which more than 3,500 people have been killed. Thus all writers, including this one, whether consciously or not, are protagonists in the broader political battle of ideas that accompanies the conflict. The brutal reality of that conflict, Sinn Féin’s role in it, and both state-imposed and selfimposed censorship, have produced an intellectual environment ill equipped to the task of understanding Sinn Féin or its impact on modern Ireland. Richard English, in his detailed history of the IRA, rightly comments that republicanism post 1970 has received little ‘serious analysis’ and that much writing on the subject ‘has lacked rigour’.15 This is particularly the case with Sinn Féin. Before 2000, the majority of work on Irish republicanism focused almost exclusively on the IRA. Sinn Féin was addressed only as a secondary theme and consequently most writers failed to deal adequately with the ideological and strategic development of the party as a political force in its own right. Henry Patterson’s Politics of Illusion, first published in 1989, and Michael Laffan’s archival history of the party’s early years, The Resurrection of Ireland, published in 1999, are two notable exceptions. Since 2002 there has been a significant growth in literature dealing specifically with the history and politics of Sinn Féin. Works by Brian Feeney (2002), Agnes Maillot (2005), Martyn Frampton (2005), Gerard Murray and Jonathan Tonge (2005), Eoin O’Malley (2006), John Doyle (2006) and Kevin Bean (2007) have greatly improved our knowledge of this history.

INTRODUCTION

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Unfortunately much of this literature focuses on biography and chronology rather than analysis and critique, or, where analysis is attempted, it is based on poor research or political prejudice. Despite the intentions of the authors they are unable to tell us why Sinn Féin developed in the way it did. There are also serious gaps in the chronologies themselves, with writers failing to capture the detail and depth of Sinn Féin’s development, particularly over the last thirty years. Crucially there is a lack of appreciation for the external influences on Sinn Féin, whether from other left-republican discourses and formations or from the changing domestic and international contexts in which the party operates. Republicans have also failed to provide a convincing account of our own history. Patterson is correct when he argues that republicans display a ‘pronounced tendency to project a monochrome remembrance of [themselves] – as a principled and self-sacrificing minority which has challenged British rule down through the centuries’.16 Indeed there is a strong and powerful tradition, annually served by commemorations of the rebellions and leaders of Irish republicanism, through which contemporary republican activists locate ourselves within a proud and long tradition of political struggle against the British state. From the mass commemorations each Easter to remember the 1916 Rising, and the annual mobilisations celebrating the 1981 hunger strikes, to a myriad of smaller events across the country and indeed the world, republicans chart the ups and downs of political and military confrontation with Britain from 1798 to the present, and in doing so continually recreate a lived sense of community and tradition. Such events serve a number of functions. They allow us to legitimise our political project on an ongoing basis, laying claim to a rich and powerful political heritage, especially at times of intense demonisation and criminalisation from the state and its allies. They are also a reminder of the very real and serious sacrifices of earlier generations of republicans, many of whom gave their lives in the struggle for democracy and justice in Ireland. This is not just a symbolic process, but also a very material and

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human one, during which we individually and collectively draw inspiration from the efforts and contributions of others in order to motivate ourselves in the immediate future. Such commemorations are also important opportunities for political intervention and popular mobilisation, whose purpose is contingent on the politics of the day. However, one of the consequences of this important and valuable commemorative calendar – and indeed its associated rhetoric – is that we tend to construct a linear and at times ahistorical understanding of ourselves. We gloss over the contradictions and failures of the past in order to mobilise its symbolic value in the service of present political immediacies. We replicate, albeit for political expediency, the same mechanistic, mythologising narrative of republican history as both earlier generations of nationalist historians and more modern revisionist critics. We talk of three hundred years of unbroken struggle against British imperialism and one hundred years of Sinn Féin as if throughout this entire period our political project, its form and content, its shape and style, have all remained essentially the same. As a result of this we have left ourselves open to the criticism of historians and commentators that our vision of the past is inaccurate, inadequate, and based on romanticised and shallow readings of our political history. In turn, we have allowed such writers to claim to occupy the ground of objective, accurate and legitimate readings of that past. More serious than this charge, however, is that in failing to adequately understand the complexity and contradictory nature of our own political history, we limit our ability to learn from the mistakes of our past and strengthen our project in the present and future. Examples of this can be found in many of the key historical and political writings by republicans, such as Berresford Ellis’ The History of the Irish Working Class and T.A. Jackson’s Ireland Her Own. Both books chart the development of republican, nationalist and socialist politics in Ireland from Celtic times through to the twentieth century. Both avoid the revisionist claim of telling Irish history as a ‘morality tale’, instead offering the reader an analysis that is as much based on class as it is on the interaction of

INTRODUCTION

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Anglo–Irish power relations. The divisions within the Irish nation, whether between unionist and nationalist or working class and bourgeoisie, are as central to the account as the divisions between Dublin and London, and the broader international context is always present. However, despite the close attention to social and economic context, and the structural factors which strengthen or weaken the prospects for rebellion and social change at any given moment, both writers find themselves unable to explain, analytically, why successive generations of republicans failed in their objectives of supplanting British rule in Ireland, ensuring radical social and economic change, or even sustaining popular public support for anything longer than brief periods of time. The political rightness and justness of republican leaders and formations from the eighteenth century to the present is always in inverse proportion to their political failure. In turn this political failure is always external to republicans themselves, laid at the door of British repression and Irish treachery. We are told the story of an unbroken line of political courage and sacrifice, from Wolfe Tone to Fintan Lalor and Connolly, who, despite all their best efforts, and when at the point of success, were betrayed and denied victory. Irish history is filled with state repression and political compromise at the expense of real societal change, and these factors are part of the overall picture of republicans’ failure. But they are not adequate explanations in themselves. Why did the United Irish rebellion fail in 1798, and the mass support for republicanism dissipate by the end of the century? Why were the Fenians unable to launch a successful rebellion at any stage in the nineteenth century, despite considerable social and political support? Why were Connolly’s ISRP and Citizen Army such marginal forces in the decades preceding the 1916 Rising, and, despite intensive industrial unrest, why did the Irish left exert such little influence in the post-1921 political order? These are questions which Jackson, Berresford Ellis and their successors are unable to answer other than by blaming conservative nationalist, Catholic and unionist political and religious leaders colluding with

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British imperial interests and deceiving the Irish working class. Are these really credible answers? We cannot properly understand why republicanism has repeatedly failed to achieve its objectives if we do not also critically assess the contribution of republicans themselves to that failure. Elevating our political forefathers/mothers to the status of icons does not serve the politics for which they fought and in many cases died for. However, we must also avoid the revisionist demand to abandon our political history altogether. The validity of revisionist critiques of nationalist and republican narratives of our political past does not automatically validate their narrative of those historical moments themselves or their proscriptions in the political present. John Newsinger, writing in his 1994 study Fenianism in MidVictorian Britain, argues against those readings which view republican history as an unbroken tradition of struggle against British rule that goes back 800 years. This tradition is in fact an ideological construct, a manufactured history that was invented to give legitimacy to the modern nationalist cause. It celebrates a mythical past rather than helping to understand the actual development of Irish society.17

Instead he suggests that we assess republicanism as a series of ‘distinct movements of opposition to English, later British rule, that were the products of specific conditions and circumstances’.18 Newsinger, unlike mainstream revisionist writers, does not deny the existence or legitimacy of the republican political tradition or ideology, but rather asks the student of history to locate the emergence and development of republicanism within its shifting and changing socio-economic and political contexts with all of the similarities and differences, continuities and contradictions, which that involves. His challenge is a formidable one, to rewrite our own history in ways that acknowledge its limitations, weaknesses and failures as much as its strengths, successes and possibilities, and in so doing to produce a narrative which is both respectful of the historical continuity over three hundred years of Irish republicanism while at the same time sensitive to

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the contingent and specific contexts from which republicanism has emerged and impacted in distinct and forceful ways on the broader development of Irish society. Thus the work that follows tries to offer a more rounded and comprehensive framework for analysing and understanding the historical development and contemporary manifestations of Sinn Féin to that offered by supporters, opponents or selfprofessed objective observers. I want to apply a more materialist approach, focusing on the specific historical context in which left republicanism develops and evolves. How did the past and readings of the past shape left republicans’ conception of themselves? How did left republicans develop their own ideological, organisational and strategic repertoire? What happened when these repertoires came up against the political or economic forces of the day? How did left republicans respond, adapt and develop in response to the strategies of their opponents? Central to this approach is the issue of context, national and international. It is impossible to understand the history and development of Irish left republicanism outside of the national and international context in which it is operating. This may seem a very obvious statement, but is one which is not taken into account in practice by many writers on the subject. To do so involves understanding the complex and reciprocal relationship between international, European and domestic events and left-republican ideology and political practice. It also requires a reading of how these overlapping and interlocking contexts produce limitations and disruptions to republicanism and how in turn left republicanism addresses and responds to these factors, not just in tactical but also in strategic and ideological ways. Equally, left republican ideology needs greater exploration. We need to move away from the common-sense understandings that pervade academic and journalistic texts and outline the historical evolution of left republicanism as an ideology, what it stands for, how it changes, wherein lie its contradictions, blind spots and omissions as much as its positive and conscious content. In addition to ideology, there is also the question of policy, in the

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broadest sense of the term. What do left republicans have to say about matters political, social, economic, cultural, institutional and international? How have these policies changed over time, and why? What are the areas of policy where left republicanism remains silent or ambiguous and what does this tell us? More ignored than policy in the literature but just as important is the question of form. How do left republicans make politics and where do they make it? What are the locations of political struggle, the modalities of struggle, the strategies and the styles? How and why have these forms changed and, again, what does this tell us about the broader politics of left republicanism? What is the interaction between ideology, policy and form, and how does each inform and mould the other? How, furthermore, has left republicanism managed and responded to the fundamental antagonisms in modern society, in particular those of nation, class and gender? Where are the gender and class politics of left republicanism in terms of ideology, policy and form? And finally, what are the outcomes of left republicanism as distinct from its motivations? What are the political, institutional, economic, social and cultural consequences of left republicanism? How does it impact on the world around it and shape its own context? How does it relate to and impact on other political protagonists, whether institutional or social? To what extent do these outcomes measure up to the stated intentions and objectives of left republicanism? These six indicators will form the framework for the discussion of left republicanism that follows. They will allow me to describe and assess the various moments and manifestations of left republicanism. In doing so I want to offer the reader an understanding that is substantially different from that available elsewhere. More importantly, for this author at least, it will also provide left republicanism with a more critical and therefore more useful reflection on our past, the aim of which is to strengthen our ability to intervene in the present and shape our collective futures.

INTRODUCTION

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‘To understand society deeply’, argues Brazilian social theorist Roberto Mangabeira Unger, ‘is always to see the settled from the point of view of the unsettled’ allowing us to uncover ‘the perilous, uncertain, malleable quality of society’.19 If what follows is unsettling, particularly for republican readers, then this book will have gone some way to achieving its intended task.

1 THE ORIGINS OF LEFT REPUBLICANISM

Left republicanism is a twentieth-century political phenomena. In ideological and organisational terms its arrival was signalled by the formation of the Irish Socialist Republican Party in 1896, and in the writings of James Connolly from that time through to his execution for participating in the republican Rising of 1916. However, the origins of left republicanism are to be found in the political and economic context and radical ideological and organisational formations of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Ireland and Europe. Proper consideration will be given to Connolly and the ISRP in Chapter 2, but before that it is important to understand the foundations upon which left republicanism was built.

Republicans It is impossible to understand the emergence and character of the mass revolutionary republican movement that developed in Ireland at the end of eighteenth century outside the context of events in England and Europe in the proceeding hundred years. Europe, during this period, was in the grip of what historian Eric Hobsbawm has called the ‘dual revolution’. The political power of the old monarchies was being challenged by the revolutionary demands for parliamentary democracy on the part of emerging bourgeois republicans. Simultaneously, the old feudal economic relations between landlord and peasant were being undermined by the arrival of capitalism and the explosion of the industrial revolution.1 Neither of these revolutions were quick or simple processes, and their emergence, development and eventual 18

THE ORIGINS OF LEFT REPUBLICANISM

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triumph was to shape the continent throughout the course of the seventeenth, eighteenth and much of the nineteenth centuries. In Ireland the particular political manifestation of these two revolutions came in the form of United Irish republicanism. Its character and shape were not unique by any standards, drawing both structurally and consciously on the experience of their European counterparts. Indeed Irish republicanism was very much part of the European mainstream. However the particular political and economic relationship which existed between the English state and Ireland at this time, a relationship undeniably colonial, conditioned Irish republicanism in ways which would mark it as profoundly different from that mainstream, not so much in its political and practical character as in its implications and legacy for future Anglo–Irish relations, and for Irish society more generally. England experienced these great challenges to feudalism and monarchy almost a century before the rest of Europe. At the heart of the confrontation, which led to the English Civil War of 1641 to 1653, was the republican challenge to the old order. However, unlike its European counterparts, the confrontation did not end in bourgeois victory and the declaration of a republic, but in a very typical English compromise. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 was the product of a trade-off between the two competing political forces of seventeenth-century England, the emerging class of merchants and business people and the old landed gentry and royal court. The compromise was, in the view of its protagonists, necessitated by a fear of the consequences of popular revolt and a challenge to the privileges of both classes by the ‘lower orders’.2 A constitutional monarchy was established, stopping short of the republic demanded by more radical forces; feudal tenures were abolished without providing for common ownership of the land; government interference in industry ended, leaving employers and the market in control of industry and neutralising the democratic demands of small artisans and labourers; and religious radicalism was undermined by allowing the union of church and state to remain. Thus the post-Civil War settlement created a space for the coexistence of the old feudal regime and the new bourgeois

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order, thereby blocking the erosion of the social fabric threatened by the proliferation of radical political movements, such as the Levellers and the Diggers, in the space that had opened up during the conflict.3 In the longer term the bourgeois character of this compromise was to triumph, but through a longer and more cautious process than in the rest of Europe. In this way England remained effectively insulated from the revolutionary currents that would sweep Europe in the century that followed. In Ireland, however, the post-Civil War settlement not only failed to resolve the key fault lines of local politics, but left intact fundamental antagonisms which, as the eighteenth century dawned, would make the Irish more fertile subjects for the subsequent French and American revolutionary challenges to absolutism and English colonialism. The social, economic and political conditions which prevailed in Ireland throughout the late seventeenth and early to mid eighteenth centuries were as much a product of the failure of the English Glorious Revolution to resolve questions of land, property and liberty in Ireland as they were part of the broader European bourgeois challenge to the feudal relations of the old order. Berresford Ellis describes ‘the general condition of the Irish people in the eighteenth century [as one of] extreme wretchedness and poverty. In the 1740 famine it was estimated that 400,000 people died while famines in 1757, 1765 and 1770 increased their desperate condition.’4 Roy Foster confirms this bleak picture when he describes the ‘general unanimity of contemporary impressions: that where Ireland was poor and backward, it was astoundingly so’.5 Berresford Ellis rightly emphasises the impact of the unreformed landlord system as central to the hardship and grievances of the rural Irish peasants. But equally, political corruption, negligence and indifference were all the hallmarks of the Ascendancy’s rule of the Irish parliament. In addition to the poverty of the masses, the penal laws continued to deny political and religious rights to the emerging Catholic and dissenter middle classes. Combined with government restrictions on Irish, predominantly Presbyterian-run, trade and restrictions on Catholic ownership of property, such inequalities


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ensured that a significant level of grievance among the propertied classes would run parallel to that of the peasant majority of the population.6 These grievances would lead to both social classes engaging in significant levels of political activism throughout the course of the eighteenth century. The Irish parliament, representing the Anglican landed elite, was at the centre of these grievances, and operated as a colonial outpost, taking every measure to ensure its own survival. The parliament’s legitimacy was based not on popular or democratic support, even by the limited standards of the time, but on political and military backing from London. Because of this central fact, the political and economic exclusion of Catholics and Presbyterians was seen as essential in maintaining Anglican power and privilege. Thus the demands for economic and political reform and Catholic emancipation which came to dominate the politics of opposition to the parliament during the first half of the eighteenth century could only lead to a more radical confrontation, as such reform would inevitably be denied. When it came to Ireland, England was primarily concerned with the broader strategic and geo-political implications of the island. Internal matters were read against the backdrop of potentially greater external threats, particularly in the postFrench revolutionary period. Maintaining order in Ireland was paramount, and the Anglo–Irish Ascendancy was viewed as having an integral part in this. Their control of Irish affairs ensured broader strategic safety for England. Thus London adopted a different set of priorities in Ireland than it did at home.7 The compromise of the Glorious Revolution ensured stability in England by providing the old Anglican gentry and Crown and the emerging Presbyterian propertied classes with a shared stake in the political and economic order. In Ireland it simply served to consolidate the power and privilege of the Ascendancy at the expense of the Presbyterian and Catholic middle classes. In Foster’s words: ‘Whereas in England the revolution meant the victory of Parliament, in Ireland it represented the final guarantee of colonial ascendancy.’8 Thus not only was Ireland ripe for the radical promise of revolution, but in the process it would

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create a space whereby the political and economic programme of republicanism would become wedded to the institutional and constitutional demand for separation from England. However, any challenge to the political authority of the Ascendancy would be viewed as an assault on the integrity and security of England itself. The emergence of the United Irishmen at the end of the eighteenth century was not merely a matter internal to Ireland, or a dispute between different social and political classes, but an issue which went to the very foundations of the English state. It is impossible to understand the response of that state to the United Irishmen in anything other than this context.

The United Irishmen Irish republicanism emerged, like its counterparts across Europe, as a demand by the middle classes for greater political representation in parliament and less governmental interference in their economic activity. In France, such demands were made against the monarch and his arbitrary system of absolutist and aristocratic patronage. However in Ireland, as in America, the grievances were made against a parliament unrepresentative of the interests of the propertied classes and supported by a colonial power in London. Thus the demands for change were not only directed against the local government. The very structure of the relationship between Ireland and the English state was being called into question. In their earliest manifestation these demands were for a programme of parliamentary reform, and as such were more in line with the prevailing English radical Whig tradition than the emerging French republicanism. In their own words, the United Irishmen were calling for ‘a complete reform in the Legislature, founded on the principles of civil, political and religious liberty’.9 In general terms, the early United Irish conception of liberty drew great inspiration from Paine’s Rights of Man, and they were instrumental in popularising the tract throughout Ireland. Paine’s argument in favour of the inclusion of ‘the commercial and manufacturing sectors in government’ was a powerful one for the urban radicals in Belfast and Dublin.10 However, even within this


23

group there were significant divisions as to who exactly should receive the franchise. In 1792 as the Society was drafting its first programme of reform, a disagreement emerged over whether or not to use ownership of property as a precondition to voting rights. The committee voted eleven to nine in favour of the more radical principle of universal manhood suffrage, and in doing so initiated a process of alienating more cautious middle class reformers who ‘had much to fear from the full exercise of rights of citizenship by the lower classes’.11 The radicals had clearly won the day, but events beyond their control were soon to alter their project in profound ways. The unfolding revolution in France had two consequences for Irish republicans. The first was that it provided them with great political and ideological encouragement and held out the prospect of practical support. However, it also provided radical Presbyterians with a set of arguments in favour of a new political alliance with the Catholic majority population on the island. The fact that the French Revolution took place in a Catholic country – and abolished the relationship between state and church together with its system of taxation to fund religious orders – created an opening in the Presbyterian mind which was quickly recognised and acted upon by United Irish leader Wolfe Tone. At the centre of his much celebrated 1791 text, An Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland, was not only an argument against the inequities of the exclusion of Catholics from political and economic power, but more importantly the claim that ending these unjust conditions depended on an alliance between dispossessed Catholics and radical Presbyterians against both the Ascendancy and, crucially, the institutional link between Ireland and England. Nancy J. Curtin tells us that Tone’s pamphlet was an enormous success, with ‘sales of 6,000 by early 1792’, and that it ‘did much to overcome prejudices [against Catholics] in Belfast, and the pamphlet took pride of place, second only to Paine’s Rights of Man, in the canon of Belfast radicalism’.12 Later that year the Society of the United Irishmen held its first public meeting, inaugurating its existence and tabling motions which were to

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become its founding principles. Three resolutions were passed unanimously, all of which were drafted by Tone. They declared: First, that the weight of English influence in the government of the country is so great as to require a cordial union among all the people of Ireland to maintain that balance which is essential to the preservation of our liberties and the creation and the extension of our commerce. Second, that the sole constitutional mode by which this influence can be opposed is by the complete and radical reform of the representation of the people in parliament. Third, that no reform is practicable, efficacious, or just which shall not include Irishmen of every religious persuasion.13

It was on this basis that the United Irishmen sought and were successful in securing a tactical and strategic alliance with the representatives of Catholic Ireland. A Catholic Committee in opposition to the penal laws was formed in 1773 by the Catholic middle class. It experienced a period of radicalisation at the end of the 1780s, as its leadership passed from the more traditional gentry and into the growing numbers of urban professionals and businessmen. A mood of optimism that a period of change was coming assisted the development of a more aggressive approach which led to the call for a Catholic Convention in 1792. Jackson highlights the radical implications of the event, calling as it did for a petition to be sent to the king demanding ‘full equality with Protestants’.14 However, the full detail of the convention reveals a more nuanced picture. Curtin describes the deliberations as ‘moderately Whiggish in its proceedings’.15 And while delegates endorsed Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform, they stopped short of supporting republicanism and emphasised the long-standing middle-class Catholic belief that the British constitution provided the best backdrop against which to campaign for equality. Clearly the alliance between Presbyterian radicals and the Catholic middle classes was tactical, and cannot be read at the expense of ignoring deep-seated ideological and strategic differences.


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Differences of opinion notwithstanding, the government moved quickly to counter this dangerous political alliance, particularly after the declaration of war against France. Legal restrictions on meetings, associations, bearing arms and forming militias were introduced, United Irishmen meetings broken up, and the group declared illegal. The impact of the government’s response was twofold: the United Irishmen, at a strategic level, moved from reform to revolution and thus closer to their French counterparts, and their Catholic allies began to adopt a deeper understanding of the utility of republicanism. Curtin confirms this double shift: Reform by conventional and legal methods appeared impossible under the existing system. Faced with a corrupt and unresponsive administration, reformers became revolutionaries. Many Catholics who had optimistically and patiently looked to the eventual removal of their grievances by the government now turned to the United Irishmen and sought redress through rebellion. ... Catholic leaders ‘declared that though there was a time when they looked no further than a reform in parliament and a full emancipation of the Catholic body, yet now their interests were general and not confined to themselves; the question to be determined was no longer a Catholic question but a national one – the freedom of Ireland’. The Catholics had become patriots.16

In turn the republicans responded by launching a concerted drive to recruit the ordinary mass of Catholics, localised agrarian and urban radicals knows as Defenders, to the cause of national rebellion. In addition French military support was sought. The stage was set for rebellion. United Irish mobilisation was met with a serious and sustained response by the state. As Curtin describes: ‘The policy – indeed the system – of government in Ireland was to be one of unrelenting assault against the United Irish conspiracy. British troops became much more numerous as the crisis became more acute.’17 The Earl of Camden put it more bluntly when he proclaimed ‘that government meant to strike terror’.18 On the eve of the rebellion itself the United Irishmen claimed to have half a million members, over half of whom were allegedly armed. French assistance proved ineffectual, the rising poorly coordinated, the rebels badly armed, and the degree of active

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commitment to the rebellion concentrated in particular parts of the country, notably Antrim, Down and Wexford. Roy Foster described the result as ‘probably the most concentrated episode of violence in Irish history ... By the end of the summer [of 1798] the death-toll on both sides, from various causes, had been estimated at 30,000.’19 Foster goes on to describe the postrebellion retribution by the state, amounting in his estimation to 231 sentences of death, 240 transportations of local leaders, 24 executions and 12 imprisonments.20 The rebellion was over, and the United Irishmen crushed. The government in London moved in 1800 to abolish the Irish parliament and, with the Act of Union, to institutionally and ‘morally’ integrate Ireland into the United Kingdom. Despite strong protestations from the Ascendancy, London recognised that its own interests and indeed those of Ascendancy privilege were best preserved, if only in the short term, by formal legislative union.

Assessment How should we understand the United Irishmen? Who were they, what did they stand for and whom did they represent? Of course none of these questions have a singular answer and part of our understanding needs to grapple with the complex and at times contradictory nature of the programme and activities of these eighteenth-century radicals. Indeed it would be wrong to treat the United Irishmen as a single homogeneous entity with a defined and coherent programme. This is simply not an accurate historical account. Their political and ideological evolution was as dependent on their context and political alliances as it was on questions of social class. In the first instance they were bourgeois parliamentary reformers who wanted better government in order to advance their own political and economic interests. The intransigence of government in London and Dublin and the general revolutionary climate throughout Europe and America led them to argue for rebellion to achieve their goals. However, more important than the means was the end, as separation from Britain became an


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integral element of the radical pole of the movement. In Tone’s famous words, the intention was ‘To subvert the tyranny of our execrable government, to break the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our political evils, and to assert the independence of my country – these were my objects.’21 Clearly the leadership of middle-class Catholics, as evidenced by the Catholic Committee, was not wedded to separatism as a matter of principle, but rather as a matter of circumstance. For them Catholic emancipation was the end goal, and by the mid 1870s separatism appeared the best route by which to achieve it. Beyond these two groups was the mass of Irish peasants, poor, hungry and without allegiance either to the Ascendancy or to the English King. Urban artisans and rural radicals with a history of localised opposition, political and violent, to their social and economic circumstances, were ripe for a political project that by connecting their immediate concerns with the demand for legislative independence transformed them for the first time in history into a coherent political force. Thus the United Irishmen contained three distinct social groups, with separate yet overlapping interests and demands. The uniting element was a common enemy, the Ascendancy and their political masters in London, and a common goal: separation. However, while separatism was not in question, the detail of who would govern after the rebellion and how remained an openended matter. The issue of the franchise was a case in point and a key litmus test of the depth of radicalism at any given moment. In an age when the mass of the population was viewed even by European radical republicans as uneducated, uncivilised and unable to make meaningful political decisions, the question of the franchise was never clear-cut. Priscilla Metscher, in her study Republicanism and Socialism in Ireland, illustrates the point: Whitley Stokes, a Fellow of Trinity College, commented that the lower classes ‘are better qualified to choose an honest neighbour, than to judge of a member of parliament’. Even William Drennan did not think it advisable to give every man a vote until Ireland had ‘advanced considerably in knowledge and civilisation’. Thomas Addis Emmet, on the other hand, came out boldly

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in favour of universal manhood suffrage, arguing that every male aged eighteen upwards should have a vote. The final adoption of the principle of universal suffrage accepted by the committee on reform by a narrow majority led seemingly to a considerable withdrawal of membership.22

Such sentiments were shared among the leadership of the Catholic middle classes, whose interests were in securing rights, not for all Catholics, but for the commercial and professional strata of the community. While the republicans adopted universal male suffrage this cannot hide the degree of opposition, or the political and ideological tensions it created, which were to surface at a later stage with significant and negative results. It is also instructive that the final agreement was for ‘manhood’ suffrage. Women’s rights did surface within the radical milieu in Belfast – through figures like Mary Ann McCracken, in the formation of Women’s United Irish societies, and in the pages of radical publications such as the Northern Star – but the extent to which these ideas permeated even into the politically conscious leadership of the broad United Irish movement has yet to be established, and there is no reason to believe that female emancipation was a serious or widespread demand of the movement as a whole. The society was, in the first instance, primarily interested in securing rights for the emerging male middle classes, like its counterparts in America and France. The unlimited extension of political rights to the ‘lower orders’ of society presented an equally serious risk to eighteenth-century republican notions of liberty and property as did the existing undemocratic order of things. Moreover the adoption of a more radical stance on the franchise, apart from those who ideologically believed it its inherent value, was as much a product of tactical necessity and conjectural reality as it was of evolving political belief. The same underlying tensions are to be found in the republican approach to issues of property and poverty. Berresford Ellis argues that the social programme of the United Irishmen ‘can best be summed up in the phrase “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”’.23 He goes on to quote at length a United Irish manifesto with an endorsement from James Connolly


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describing the manifesto as ‘international’, ‘democratic’ and ‘of a class nature’.24 At the heart of this reading, common among twentieth-century left republicans, is the view that taken to its logical conclusion the broad social approach of the United Irish movement was based on the same values which would inspire the labour and socialist movements of the following century. However, eighteenth-century republicans were not taking their own rhetoric to its logical conclusion, as is demonstrated by the reaction of merchant republicans in Dublin whose opposition to trade unionism and equality of property led them to differentiate themselves from more radical seventeenth-century English groups such as the Levellers. Metscher argues that: the early aims and ideals of the Society are a reflection of the middle-class composition of its membership ... The majority of the United Irishmen from the Presbyterian and Catholic middle class made it quite clear that equality was political and not social equality. ‘By liberty we never understood unlimited freedom, not by equality the levelling of property.’ The lower classes were to be enlightened ‘by the most rapid of all instructors – a good government’.25

The notion of the greatest happiness to the greatest number was not a radical demand for the unlimited redistribution of wealth and power across all classes and genders of society, but a more modest demand for inclusion of the male middle classes into the centres of political and economic power. Where radicals did include the ‘lower classes’ in their considerations it was in a more paternalistic manner, believing in notions of civic responsibility to educate and improve the well being of the poor through ‘good government’. Curtin describes the social basis of the United Irish movement as made up of ‘petty-bourgeois activists’ whose opposition to the status quo was based upon its obstruction of ‘good government and consequent economic prosperity’.26 Their attitude to the ‘lower classes’ is best described by borrowing Marx’s famous phrase from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: ‘They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented.’ However, even such a limited form of radicalism contained within it serious tensions, especially in the context of the republican

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alliance with the urban and rural poor. When Tone announced that ‘if the men of property will not help us they must fall; we will free ourselves by the aid of that large and respectable class of the community – the men of no property’, he was making a call echoed by republicans across Europe for a broad democratic alliance with the popular classes. Once mobilised, however, the popular classes often took a different view of their ability to represent their own interests and began to demand the full outworking of the social and political logic of the republican demands for liberty and equality. As with the franchise, the question of property rights once extended runs the risk of undermining the basis of bourgeois demands for reform and in turn challenges the very alliance that is required to achieve these reforms. Eric Hobsbawm has called this tension ‘the dramatic dialectical dance’: This ... dance was to dominate the future generations. Time and again we shall see moderate middle class reformers mobilising the masses against die-hard resistance or counter-revolution. We shall see the masses pushing beyond the moderates’ aims to their own social revolutions and the moderates in turn splitting into a conservative group henceforth making common cause with the reactionaries, and a left wing group determined to pursue the rest of the as yet unachieved moderate aims with the help of the masses, even at the risk of losing control of them.27

While Hobsbawm was speaking about the revolutions that swept Europe in 1848, the dialectical dance was no different in late eighteenth-century Ireland. It highlights not only the tension but also one of the fatal weaknesses of the alliance that underpinned the United Irish movement. As the moment of rebellion arrived the revolutionary fervour of many, and particularly the rank and file, would be undermined by the ‘cautious timidity of many of the leaders’.28 Some revisionist scholars such as Henry Patterson have dismissed the radical content of the United Irish moment as ‘ambiguous populist republicanism’ on the basis of its shallow commitment to the principles of liberty and equality. However to do so is to miss the point. Tone was expressing the unambiguous demands of the emerging Irish middle classes for the abolition of privilege in


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the feudal sense of the term and its replacement by the values and virtues of good bourgeois government and economic management. The values were radical for their time, despite the paternalism and caution inherent in their Whiggish liberalism. However, the real political and economic radicalism of the United Irish movement emerged at the moment when both the Presbyterian and Catholic middle classes entered into an alliance with the urban and rural lower classes. At that point the extended possibilities of republican demands were opened up in new and fundamentally more challenging ways. While this challenge, following its defeat in the rebellion of 1798, would not re-emerge until the Young Ireland and Fenian movements of the following century, its force and relevance cannot be dismissed. Latter-day left-wing republicans are wrong to retrospectively read a socialist intent into the discourse of the United Irishmen, for such an intent is clearly not there, nor indeed was it there for the popular classes, whose demands and grievances were more localised and specific. However, what cannot be denied are the more radical left-wing implications of the republican discourse of liberty, equality and fraternity when developed in the context of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The United Irish men were not socialists, but without the existence of their political and ideological project the development of radical and socialist politics in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Ireland would have been very different. Crucially they linked the demand for social and economic equality to political liberty and national independence in a way that would make the emergence of Irish cultural nationalism and labour socialism during the course of the nineteenth century more democratic than many of their European counterparts. Alongside the political content and ideological legacy of the United Irish movement consideration must be given to the forms and modalities of politics that they adopted and developed to achieve their aims. Through newspapers, pamphleteering and the dissemination of political thought, Irish republicans took up where radical movements of the seventeenth century such as the Levellers and Diggers left off. Curtin described them as possessing a ‘real genius for disseminating their ideas’.29 However, such

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compliments miss the real significance of what was happening. Kevin Whelan explains: To achieve their aim of ‘making every man a politician’, the United Irishmen relied on the power of print (suitably customised) to shape politics out of doors. Especially successful were populist, scaled-down versions in pamphlet form of classic English authors ... Nor did these activities stop at mere distribution. In 1795 William Putnam McCabe, the charismatic United Irish emissary and organiser, was distributing Paine’s Age of Reason among mill-workers in Belfast, following that by discussions in which he ‘answered their several objections to any part of it’.30

The significance of this is hard to appreciate from today’s perspective, when such popular styles of political education and mobilisation are commonplace. However, in eighteenth-century Europe to distribute and popularise political literature and ideas in order to actively mobilise public opinion was not only deeply radical – and indeed illegal – but represented an attempt to fundamentally shift the location of politics, away from the royal court and institutions of government and into the street and village where the mass of the population lived. The United Irishmen were pioneering an approach to political life that was about democratising, and therefore challenging, the existing order of things. Politics was being presented as a public phenomenon, as belonging to all the people by right, rather than the preserve of the ‘educated’ or ‘enlightened’ classes. As much as the satirical and radical political messages or radical political theory being discussed, the form, space and location of such discussion was groundbreaking. This democratisation of political life would only begin to take hold across Europe after the 1840s, yet the success of the United Irishmen’s attempts to ‘make every man a politician’ is evidenced in their ability to connect local grievances in relation to rents, taxes and tithes into a coherent national programme of radical political action. This extra-institutional and popular approach to political activity was to become one of the hallmarks of Irish republicanism, making empowerment and participation two of its


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defining features, even as mainstream European republicanism was becoming institutionalised into nineteenth-century liberalism. Of course, in a society which rigidly adhered to a gendered division of both labour and social space in such a way that women were confined to the private sphere of the home, the empowering participatory forms of eighteenth-century republicanism would remain out of reach to the overwhelming majority of women, despite the interventions of a small number of important women activists such as Mary Anne McCracken, Bridget Dolan and Mary Shackleton Leadbeater.31 Nonetheless the United Irish rebellion failed. Thousands were killed, hundreds exiled, and the most dramatic political result in the short term was the consolidation of English and Ascendancy control over Irish affairs symbolised by the Act of Union. Contemporary republicans need to come to terms with such failure as much as we need to explore and celebrate the significant contribution of the United Irishmen to the development of radical political thought and action over the course of the centuries that followed. So why did the rebellion fail? Berresford Ellis offers three reasons: lack of coordination, the superior intelligence of the state, and the application by the administration of a policy of divide and rule.32 In the first two of these he would be supported by the weight of historical research. The rising was badly planned, resourced and carried out. Indeed much of this can be accounted for by the concerted efforts of the government, not only in the operation of intelligence and spies, but through brute force, the striking of terror in Lord Camden’s memorable phrase. However, these reasons are not enough and indeed too localised to explain not only the failure of the rebellion, but also the complete crushing of the movement before the end of the century. Berresford Ellis’ third reason – divide and rule – only partly explains the collapse of the movement. There is no doubt that the state mobilised politically as well as militarily in its counter insurgency efforts. In particular, the flagging Orange Order was reinvigorated as a political and cultural tool in the service of

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the Ascendancy. Whelan talks about the ‘refurbishment of the faded repertoire of commemoration, from which the state had retreated as politically obsolete in the 1780s’.33 But in the charged and volatile 1790s ‘a sectarianism deliberately injected by the government as a counter-revolutionary strategy of tension’ had a compelling and attractive logic.34 Its effect was that it inserted an implacable barrier to the linking of the United Irishmen and Defender territories; it stopped the spread of radical Freemasonry; it pulled Protestants in general firmly to a conservative pro-government stance; it split the nascent Presbyterian–Catholic alliance in mid-Ulster; it checked United Irish infiltration of the yeomanry and the militia. Given these advantages, which were soon apparent to strategic thinkers like Knox and Richardson, the government quickly abandoned its earlier weariness and espoused the Order covertly.35

Thus contrary to the claim of revisionist historians that the republican alliance with the Defenders and peasantry ‘debased the purity’ of their liberalism and in turn ‘compromised their avowed non-sectarianism by exploiting and exacerbating confessional hostility’,36 it was the state which reintroduced and mobilised sectarian communalism into the body politic in order to counter the spread of the radical non-sectarian message of the United Irish movement. However our analysis should not stop here, as the ability of the state to intervene in this way with such a degree of success highlights a more fundamental weakness that lay at the heart of the United Irishmen. While the state may choose to mobilise whatever counter-revolutionary strategy it likes, such strategies can only succeed if they are able to exploit existing contradictions and tensions within the progressive movement. Whelan argues the point as follows: The United Irishmen continued to believe passionately in the power of the national concept to harmonise the internal discordances of Ireland ... The decisiveness of the failed revolution of 1798 exposed the limits of [their] understanding of the cleavages within Irish society, and the extent to which the 1790s had polarised Irish politics. ... The United Irishmen


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consistently underestimated the powerful groundswell of support for conservatism; the popular appeal of the Orange Order and the yeomanry indicated that this was not just a chimera engineered by establishment politicians. Like the French Jacobins ... [they] could not comprehend how there could be a genuinely counter-revolutionary impetus of this type; in their reading, it could only be artificially induced by government and Ascendancy connivance.37

The overlapping tensions of class and religion which sat uncomfortably at the heart of the United Irish alliance between middle-class Presbyterians and Catholics and the urban and rural poor were too fragile to withstand the pressure of both the revolution and the counter-revolution. The logical consequences of the mobilisation of the popular classes split the moderates into a potentially conservative group and a more radical faction. While government repression in the lead up to rebellion served to hold these two factions together, the rebellion itself and the mobilisation of popular reactionary Protestantism drove a wedge between the different religious and class interests. The failure of the rebellion, and indeed of the broader United Irish project, was as much the particular outworking of Hobsbawm’s dialectical dance as it was to do with matters of poor organisation or counter-insurgency. If the defeat of the United Irish rebellion was to be lasting it would need more than military success. It would require a restructuring of Irish politics in ways that would consolidate the conservatism of those sections of Irish society prized away from republicanism through the fear of a Catholic peasant revolt. The middle classes, whether Protestant or Catholic, had been defeated, but their future needed to be secured in order to keep them away from future rebellions. As the eighteenth century gave way to the first decades of the nineteenth, government policy in London shifted, not away from supporting Ascendancy privilege, but towards creating a space for the Presbyterian and at a later stage Catholic middle classes. The accommodation of the former was without question successful, as former Presbyterian radicals became bulwarks of conservative and liberal unionist interests.

36


However, the accommodation of the latter social group came too late to guarantee a similar effect. The great innovation of United Irish republicanism was also its Achilles heel, the cross-class and religious alliance which has marked it out from all of its successors was too fragile to withstand the various pressures coming from within and without. Having lost the initiative even before the rebellion started, the fragmentation of that alliance supplemented by the various strategies and incorporations of the state created a realignment of political allegiances that was to shape much of the century which followed.

Nationalists If eighteenth-century Europe was characterised by the initial confrontations between the rising middle classes and the old feudal regimes, the nineteenth century marked the decisive victory of the former over the latter. Indeed the two overriding dynamics, which run through the entire century, shaping the political and economic life of the continent, were capitalism and colonialism. The nineteenth century was the first truly global century, as the marketplace became a worldwide phenomenon, owing to the European colonisation of the majority of the world’s productive territories. Mass markets created in turn mass industrialised populations, destroying the old feudal social relations and identities of the previous century. Agriculture was also transformed, becoming an industry in its own right, and experiencing its own boom during the middle of the century. By the 1850s, Hobsbawm’s ‘dual revolution’ had come of age. Not only was Europe and the ever-internationalising world experiencing dramatic economic and social changes, but two subsequent political forces were also taking root, namely democracy and nationalism. As the republican liberals of the French revolutionary era were moved to mobilise the masses against the old order, they opened up a new political force which, when combined with the impact of industrialisation on the emerging lower-middle and working classes, was to make the nineteenth century one of significant political turmoil and rebellion.


37

Although the nineteenth century saw the birth of ideologies that would dominate the twentieth – liberalism, conservatism and socialism – in the 1800s it was nationalism that truly triumphed. Hobsbawm asks: ‘What were the international politics of the years from 1848 to the 1870s about?’, and his answer is definitive: ‘it was about the creation of a Europe of nation-states’.38 This was the century of Italian and German unification, and of struggles for independence in Poland, Hungary, Romania and Croatia. It was also, albeit later, the century of the first anti-colonial struggles for national liberation in South America and the Caribbean, Africa and most prominently India. Ireland, occupying a place both in the European and colonial worlds, straddled both of these separate but intersecting political dynamics, and the course of the movements for independence during this century reflect this dual reality. For England, unlike say Germany or Italy, the issue was not unification or the assertion of nationhood, as those matters had been effectively resolved by the end of the seventeenth century, with the exception of Ireland. The nineteenth century was the age of English, and increasingly British, supremacy on the world stage. The industrial revolution and rapid territorial colonisation across all the continents of the globe made Britain the ‘workshop of the world’ and unparalleled in her economic and strategic power. As Britain’s influence and interests grew, and the pace of change at home deepened, the importance of Ireland for the policy makers and political rulers in London receded considerably. British considerations were increasingly geo-political – even if the word itself is from a later age – as its assessment and agreed action on any given matter became interdependent with its geopolitical consequences for other areas of concern. British economic expansion at home became so intertwined with colonial expansion abroad that neither sphere could be thought of in isolation. More than anything else this new reality had an increasing relevance for Anglo–Irish relations. The pattern established by the English reaction to the 1798 rebellion – severe repression in order to block French strategic interests being advanced in Britain’s closest neighbour coupled with ad hoc attempts to neutralise or co-opt

38


potential causes of disaffection – was to become the dominant paradigm for assessing and responding to the perpetual crisis that was to become known as the Irish Question in British politics. In Ronald Hyam’s words: Whitehall’s view of the problem of Ireland was at bottom and traditionally an unashamedly strategic one ... The Act of Union (1800) was passed during the French wars in order to strengthen Ireland’s position within the United Kingdom. It was therefore in the nineteenth century an integral part of the United Kingdom, sending MPs to Westminster. Its position was, however, deeply ambivalent, and in some ways a halfway house between the metropolis and the empire.39

Thus Anglo–Irish relations would be governed by two overlapping sets of relations during the nineteenth century. The general context would be shaped by the needs and imperatives of British industry and Empire. In turn the detail of the relations would be constrained by the interaction of the strategic requirements of the British state and the demands of sections of the emerging Irish nation. The ambivalent position of Ireland as a ‘halfway house between metropolis and empire’ would give much of this relationship its distinctive and – for both contemporary British politicians and modern Irish historians – confusing colour. Irish politics in the nineteenth century was dominated by issues of Catholic emancipation and Protestant revivalism; radical agrarian mobilisation and reform; the reality and legacy of the Great Hunger; starvation and mass emigration; emerging nationalism and unionism; the waning of the old Ascendancy; and the increasingly powerful and popular demand for the return of the Irish parliament whether in the form of Repeal or Home Rule. The century saw two significant nationalist rebellions, one in 1848 and the second in 1867. As the century’s end approached the country experienced the solidification of the political forces and social relations that were to dominate the first half of the 1900s. However none of this can be properly understood outside the overarching context of Ireland’s position within the United Kingdom and by extension within the broader British Empire. Indeed, as Joseph Lee argues, this is the era of Irish modernisation,


39

not in terms of a dramatic rupture with an agrarian or feudal past – as was the case with so many new world colonies – but rather in the form of a gradual yet accelerating process of change which began at the end of the eighteenth century and crystallised between the 1880s and the early years of the twentieth century. Describing the social reality for the mass of Irish people at the start of the nineteenth century, Berresford Ellis characterised the situation as one of ‘unspeakable misery’, telling us that: The war between England and France had raised the cost of living and rents; evictions of peasant farmers unable to meet high prices were increasing. As so often happens during periods of extreme poverty in a country, the population increased dramatically. Between 1800 and 1847 it nearly doubled.40

Famines in 1817 and 1821–22 added to the hardship. As the population increased, the economic hardship worsened, and in turn created a localised and spontaneous spiral of agrarian violence. Roy Foster argues that the ‘early nineteenth century saw the proliferation of rural protest movements’, leading to a serious escalation by the 1830s.41 Coinciding with this ‘episodic warfare’ were Daniel O’Connell’s mobilisations in favour of Catholic emancipation. The Catholic middle classes had returned to the strategy of pursuing emancipation through parliamentary and constitutional means, using popular mobilisations and electoral contests to impress upon the Whig government in London the merits of their cause. Set against the backdrop of the agrarian unrest and the ever-present danger of the cross-class and denominational alliance produced by the United Irishmen, the Liberal government chose reform rather than coercion to resolve the mounting crisis. Nineteen-twenty-nine brought about Catholic emancipation, in so far as it lifted the legal ban on admission of Catholics to parliament, the civil service and the legal profession. However the actual size of the Catholic electorate was dramatically reduced by an act disenfranchising the 40-shilling freeholders. The impact was to reduce the county voters from 216,000 to 37,000.42 In addition the Catholic Association, O’Connell’s political vehicle,

40


was banned outright. Despite the limited nature of ‘emancipation’ it served not only to raise expectations, but to give an additional ‘psychological boost’ to the emerging Catholic middle class.43 Clearly the Whigs had learned the mistake of the 1790s, using reform to defuse the mounting political crisis, and in so doing driving a wedge between that emerging Catholic middle class and the general population of urban and rural poor. Fresh from the success of the emancipation agitation, O’Connell embarked on a second reform project, this time focused on repealing the Act of Union. The campaign, which dominated Irish politics in the decade preceding the Great Hunger, produced a level of mass mobilisation unprecedented not just in Ireland but across Europe. It also coincided with continued rural agitation, primarily on the issue of the tithes (land taxes). It is important to stress that Repeal was not a demand for either independence or a republic, but a more modest proposal of legislative autonomy within the United Kingdom. O’Connell wanted to use the mass mobilisations – and indeed the agrarian revolts – to apply pressure on the Liberal establishment in London, who for a time depended on his parliamentary presence to maintain a majority. However, as Foster asserts, O’Connell overestimated the degree of interest among Liberals and radicals on the issue of Repeal.44 Following the Tory electoral success in 1841 and their tactical victory over O’Connell at Clontarf in 1842, the Repeal movement was effectively defeated.

Young Ireland As Ireland was about to be engulfed by the Great Hunger, some radical political figures were asking if the returns from almost 25 years of Repeal campaigning and mobilisation were enough. Emancipation had raised expectations but granted rights to only a tiny minority of the Catholic population. Rural poverty and dispossession continued and with it agrarian violence. Repeal was lost, and the political leaders of the movement were becoming increasingly institutionalised within the British parliamentary and state system. Emerging out of this negative balance sheet was


41

the Young Irish movement, once supporters of O’Connell and the emancipation and Repeal movements, but now increasingly radicalised by events inside and outside of Ireland. Labour historian Emmet O’Connor has suggested that ‘Young Ireland’s expulsion [from the Repeal Association] led to a large swing in working-class support away from O’Connell.’45 However rather than seek to mobilise the growing section of urban tradesmen and labourers, Young Ireland focused instead on rural grievance. Despite this, their influence never extended much beyond Dublin, notwithstanding the significant readership of their paper The Nation.46 Young Ireland was part of a broader European phenomenon. Hobsbawm describes one of the consequences of the general split in European revolutionary trends before 1830 as the emergence of ‘self-consciously nationalist movements’.47 Led by Young Italy, countries such as Poland, Switzerland, Germany, France, Turkey and Ireland were all host to societies who were for the first time advocating and mobilising for national consciousness and independence. While their political ideologies were based on versions of the earlier eighteenth-century revolutions, their focus was more clearly national, and their discourse and tactics more cultural and at times romantic. Hobsbawm attributes the rise of these movements to a discontent among lesser landowners and ‘the emergence of a national and even lower middle class’.48 Unlike many of its counterparts, Young Ireland never developed beyond a purely intellectual movement failing to develop a mass following. Under its banner, those sections of the population most disappointed with the outcome of Catholic emancipation, supported by those still in search of the promise of the French revolution, split from O’Connell and formed, in 1847, the Irish Confederation. Its stated purpose was ‘protecting our national interests and obtaining the Legislative independence of Ireland by the force of opinion, by the combination of all classes of Irishmen, and by the exercise of all the political, social and moral influences within our reach’.49 The Confederation was an assortment of Repealers, agrarian radicals and republicans who in the pages of The Nation developed a new political discourse combining the secular and rights-based politics of the United Irishmen with

42


social radicalism, cultural nationalism, opposition to the politics of Empire and an appeal – albeit rhetorical – to the use of armed force, if the government remained unwilling to listen to the force of opinion. Such an eclectic mixture of interests was always prone to invite tensions and splits. The unwillingness of some to embrace the demands of the English Chartists led radicals such as John Mitchel to break away, forming an alternative current centred on the newspaper The United Irishman. While avoiding urban radicalism, Young Ireland focused on the agrarian radicalism of Fintan Lalor, powerfully linking the issues of landlordism, peasant proprietorship and Repeal. The strategic threat of such a radical discourse was not lost on the British administration. Set in the context of European revolutions and the interplay of Anglo–Franco relations, preventing rebellion in Ireland was not merely an internal matter of law and order, but part of the broader battle to maintain the current balance of power in Europe and ensure British dominance. As Sloan comments: This fear of insurrection and treason can be detected throughout the period 1815 to 1850 when Britain’s continental rival France was both internally unstable and militarily weakened. In 1848, the year of the Paris Commune, the Duke of Wellington remarked: ‘there can be no doubt now of the object of the disaffected in Ireland – to deprive the Queen her Crown! And to establish a republic. To obtain that objective they are ready to arm and attack the City of Dublin.’50

However, Young Ireland was never to develop into the strategic threat envisioned by the Duke, as their plans were overtaken by the cataclysmic events of the Great Hunger. Massive crop failure caused by potato blight, combined with the laissez-faire response of the British government and the export of food from Ireland for the British market, left between 1 and 2 million people dead, with a similar number emigrating.51 As the country was crippled by famine and death, the British government introduced a Coercion Act, further dividing the moderates from the radicals within Young Ireland. Mitchel’s United Irishman caused a degree of concern amongst the government in London and the political


43

establishment at home, as it advocated and secured an alliance with radical currents in England. The worsening realities of the Famine and the French revolution of 1848 brought the disparate factions of Young Ireland together temporarily, as both The Nation and the United Irishman began to call for armed insurrection and revolt.52 Plans for a rising were hastily produced, closer cooperation with the Chartists took place, and the government responded in kind with the rushing through parliament of a Sedition Act in a single day.53 Young Ireland leaders were arrested, convicted and transported to the colonies. When the rising finally came it was short and ineffectual. O’Connor described it as inglorious: On 22 July, as Confederate leaders prepared for insurrection, the government acted decisively. Parliament suspended habeas corpus, the Confederate Clubs were suppressed, and arrests were intensified ... Poor preparation, confused planning, clerical hostility and popular debilitation after three years of famine combined to frustrate ... the rising fizzled out ingloriously.54

And so the rebellion of 1848 was an abject failure; lacking in popular support or serious organisation and planning, it served only to emphasise the desperation of a nation in the grip of mass starvation. However, if the Young Ireland movement failed to build a mass movement and seriously challenge the political status quo in Ireland, they did leave an important legacy laying the seeds for future confrontations with the state. The large displaced population of rural poor in the cities of the United States and Britain, pregnant with first-hand experience of the Famine, ensured that the political message of Young Ireland remained alive and would give birth to a more substantial challenge to the British government in the form of the Fenians.

The Fenians F.S.L. Lyons has described the period after the Great Hunger as ‘years of rapid and cataclysmic change. It was not just that in Ireland the whole structure of society seemed to be threatened

44


by the Famine, but that in Europe at large red revolution stalked through country after country.’55 The resentment fuelled by mass emigration was compounded for those who remained by a sustained agricultural crisis. Evictions rose dramatically, from 3,000 in 1845 to 58,000 in 1852.56 The 1849 Encumbered Estates Act replaced many English landowners with a growing number of native landlords and ended many of the traditional arrangements between tenants and landlords. Land holdings dropped from 568,000 in 1861 to 546,000 by 1867.57 Poverty and insecurity lead to an upsurge in agrarian radicalism and violence. The formation of the Tenants Rights League in 1852 returned the focus on parliamentary action to alleviate the plight of the tenant farmers. Galvanised by the efforts of a loose coalition of campaigners including farmers, religious leaders, former Young Irelanders and Repeal MPs, the aim of the League was to protect and extend the Ulster Custom. To this end they demanded a Land Act that would provide tenants with fair rents, fixity of tenure and free sale. The coalition was indeed loose and following a hung parliament in the 1852 general election, pro-Tenant Rights League MPs from Ireland held the balance of power. However the attraction of patronage was strong enough to buy off a number of the Irish MPs, allowing the Liberals to form a government and bury the nascent Tenants Right Bill. For Foster, the subsequent collapse of this social and electoral coalition saw ‘county politics’ settle ‘back into the landlord dominated mould’.58 More importantly it left the issue of tenant rights and agricultural crisis unresolved. With the potential of continued agrarian violence, a dangerous political vacuum opened up. From within this vacuum emerged the Fenians. Founded in 1858 as the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), the Fenians brought together veterans from the Young Ireland period into a secret oath-bound society whose primary aim was to secure Irish independence. Joseph Lee quotes from their proclamation of the Fenian Provisional Government in 1867: our rights and liberties have been trampled on by an alien aristocracy, who, treating us as foes, usurped our lands, and drew away from our unfortunate


45

country all material riches ... today, having no honourable alternative left, we again appeal to force as our last resort ... unable longer to endure the curse of monarchical government, we aim at founding a Republic based on universal suffrage, which shall secure to all the intrinsic value of labour. The soil of Ireland at present in the possession of an oligarchy belongs to us, the Irish people, and to us it must be restored. We declare, also, in favour of absolute liberty of conscience, and the complete separation of church and State ... we intend no war against the people of England; our war is against the aristocratic locusts whether English or Irish, who have eaten the verdure of our fields.59

This radical coupling of an appeal to agrarian discontent with the demand for legislative independence was a powerful mixture. Both the English government and Irish middle-class interests were at stake. To make matters worse the deliberate secularism of the Fenians was certain to alienate the Catholic Church. A number of chance events led the emerging Fenians to realise the level of public support available for a project more radical than that offered by the conservative nationalist political leaders. The funeral of 1848 veteran Terence Bellow McManus has been described as ‘a turning point in Irish public opinion’.60 The crowd of between 50,000 and 100,000 was a signal to Fenian leaders that the moment for an armed rebellion was approaching. All efforts focused on securing financial and political support, from Irish emigrant communities in the United States and Britain, and from other revolutionary forces in Europe, such as the newly established International Workingmen’s Association. Domestically, considerable effort was put into creating a national organisation, establishing local branches, providing basic arms-training and building up a network of committed revolutionaries. In predictable fashion political mobilisation was followed by arrests, trials and deportations of key Fenian leaders. Most notably Luby, O’Leary, Kickham and O’Donavan Rossa in 1865. A series of internal disputes and leadership displacements led to a failed rising in 1867, which was significant only in the numbers mobilised. A series of further events, including the botched Manchester escape plot, the Clerkenwell bombing and

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the hanging of the Fenians tried for the killing of a policeman during the Manchester escape, further debilitated the organisation while simultaneously generating public support in Ireland and political fear in England. As with Young Ireland, the insurrectionary activities of the Fenians were a miserable failure. However, unlike their predecessors, the Fenian legacy was more tangible. Lee argues that: Fenianism was the first political movement to channel the energies of agricultural labourers and small farmers, hitherto expressed in ribbonism and faction fighting, into a national organisation. By permeating local discontents with a national perspective the Fenians ... helped broaden petty horizons and foster a sense of national political consciousness.61

Badly armed and poorly planned amateurs the Fenians may have been, but by virtue of building a national movement, their legacy was as much organisational as ideological. The IRB continued in existence, albeit in clandestine form, for another 50 years, and played a key part in the emerging nationalist movement for Home Rule and the late nineteenth-century Gaelic cultural revival through to the 1916 Rising. Indeed Fenians were central in assisting the Parnell-led New Departure in the 1870s and Davitt’s Land League the following decade, both of which were to play a key role in shaping the consolidation of nationalist politics in the final decades of the century. Despite a decline in the IRB’s organisational strength, it was also instrumental in assisting the development of the ‘New Nationalism’ of the early twentieth century, through its role in the Gaelic Athletic Association, the Irish Language movement, advanced nationalist publications such as Griffith’s United Irishman and Alice Milligan’s Shan Van Vocht, and most importantly through its role in infiltrating the Irish Volunteers and coordinating the republican Rising of Easter 1916. While the United Irishmen had succeeded in organising a significant and threatening rebellion, they had been unable to build a truly national organisation. Young Ireland failed both to effectively build a mass following and to wage successful rebellion, but it left an important literary and ideological legacy. The Fenians,


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while following the failure of the Young Irelanders in the field, and failing to make significant advances on United or Young Irish ideologies, were most effective in building a national organisation and an international network of support. Their impact on Irish society lasted for over half a century and their members played key roles in every important political and cultural development within nationalism through to the Civil War in the 1920s. Even when they were at their weakest organisational point they remained an important reservoir of political personnel and practical skills.

Assessment Although Young Ireland and the Fenians were two separate movements, their historical proximity and overlap in personnel and ideas requires a single treatment. As with the United Irishmen, we need to ask who they were, what was the origin of their ideas, and why were those ideas so potent and popular while their military insurrections were such a failure? Equally we need to understand the contradictions and tensions that lay at the heart of their complex and at times contradictory political discourse. Young Ireland activists centred on The Nation newspaper were primarily lower-middle-class cultural nationalists, influenced by the growth in like-minded nationalist movements across Europe. Most were impatient Repealers with a conservative social worldview pushed leftwards after the failure of O’Connell’s Whig alliance and the devastation of the Famine. Some were uncomfortable with the rise of trade unions and alliances with Chartists, others were ambivalent about the full implications of Lalor’s agrarian radicalism, and only embraced these more radical currents when other potential avenues of political strength – such as support from landlords – were not forthcoming. Young Ireland ideologues like O’Brien and Duffy are said to have ‘feared social disorder, preached class harmony, and not had time for the Chartists in Britain’.62 However the radical currents were as strong within Young Ireland as their more conservative counterparts, and should not be underestimated. Lalor’s writings on agrarian reform were indeed

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radical for their time, and represented a profound challenge to the prevailing landlord system. Mitchel’s embrace of the emerging labour currents and radical demands for parliamentary reform were at the vanguard of contemporary radical democratic politics. His rejection of free trade in favour of economic protectionism also secured the support of both indigenous industry and the emerging trade union movement, anticipating economic nationalism by almost half a century. The unrelenting secularism of the movement, in a country where Catholic and Protestant religious revivalism was on the increase, was remarkable. Most importantly, through their popular writings in The Nation and United Irishman, they developed a political language that was at once nationalist and anti-imperialist. Both newspapers critically covered issues of the British imperial expansion in India, Persia and the Americas, and connected the demand for Irish legislative independence with a rejection of the British imperial project.63 They also did much to articulate a radical and renewed sense of pride in Irish cultural and national identity. However, as always, contradictions remained, with Davis’ support for colonised peoples in the British Empire standing in stark contrast to Mitchel’s support for Confederate slavery during the US Civil War.64 The position of women, as with the United Irishmen, was clearly marginal. O’Connell has suggested that ‘a small number of women became involved in male dominated organisations such as the Young Irelanders’.65 Through their contributions to The Nation women like Ellen Mary Dowling, Mary Eva Kelly and Jane Francesca Elgee helped ‘to create a sense of national identity’, often as authors of patriotic poetry and ballads. It is instructive that, when writing, these women often used genderless or male pseudonyms. Feminist historian Maria Luddy has argued that while such women were not ignored within the broader Young Ireland movement, ‘they were kept in a subordinate role’.66 Moreover, the structure and politics of the emerging cultural nationalist movement ‘was laden with culturally constructed concepts of gender, which in turn helped to define clear gender specific roles’.67 Whether it was through the emotional appeal of poetry or direct appeals to Irish women to use their roles as consumers in promoting Irish


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industry, women’s position as activists and supporters was clearly demarcated and rarely strayed into the ‘more serious’ business of ‘practical or theoretical’ matters. Young Ireland, conscious of the failure of post-United Irish nationalism to successfully appeal to Protestant opinion, made a number of concerted attempts to recreate the Presbyterian– Catholic alliance of their forefathers. Indeed the political and economic climate seemed to provide fertile ground upon which to build such a strategic connection. Tenant insecurity and the attractions of Repeal offered a space for dialogue that was all but absent by the 1880s. Indeed, Davis has argued that the ‘Young Irelanders appeared well-qualified to win Protestants to their all-embracing nationalism’.68 However, their own ideological confusions vis-à-vis understanding the cultural and economic basis of Protestant unionism, coupled with the continued resonance of Orangism and Presbyterian revivalism, were to prove too harsh a climate on which to build any successful alliance. At the heart of the Young Ireland project was an eclectic mixture of cultural and political views. Separatism, cultural revivalism, agrarian radicalism, Chartism, bourgeois repeal nationalism, radical conservatism, secularism, anti-imperialism and a masculinised conception of social space and political responsibility were all key elements. While primarily literary in form, the inevitable political contradictions between these different elements were never far from the surface. However, though clearly divided at various times and on key issues between radical and more conservative elements, the combined weight of the movement presented the political and religious establishment in Ireland and Britain with a substantial ideological, if not organisational, challenge. Clearly Young Ireland was not a cohesive political movement nor did it offer a unified political programme. However, the presence of such internal differences does not justify the movement’s dismissal.69 It produced a rich reservoir of ideas whose import only became apparent in the period directly after the Great Hunger. This significance is most clearly found in the Fenians. Again it would be wrong simply to see the IRB as a manifestation of

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Young Ireland twenty years on. Irish political life had been altered radically by the Famine, and although British strategic interests remained the same vis-à-vis rebellion in Ireland, the domestic political dynamics were, for a brief period, open to change. The failure of the Tenant Land League, and the subsequent discrediting of parliamentary intervention in the eyes of many, reopened the space for a radical challenge to the bourgeois politics of the Irish nationalist MPs and a resurgent Catholic Church under the leadership of Cardinal Cullen. Coupled with a change of context was a more sophisticated and indeed internationalist series of ideological influences on key Fenian leaders. While their foundations were clearly those of the United Irish and Young Ireland rebellions – albeit reinterpreted to suit the 1860s – they also drew on French and Italian influences such as Luis Blanc, August Blanqui and Giuseppe Mazzini. John Devoy and James Stephens both joined Karl Marx’s International Workingmen’s Association while living in the USA, although neither is reported to have played an active role.70 However, the emerging Socialist International took great interest in Irish politics, the development of the Fenians and the release of Irish political prisoners. These links have led some contemporary opponents and sympathetic historians to retrospectively reinterpret the Fenians as a socialist political organisation.71 Clearly this is not the case. Hobsbawm is right when he says that the Fenians ‘lacked the core of socialist labour organisation, or perhaps the inspiration of socialist ideology’, to develop in such a manner.72 However the significance of the Fenians lay in their ability to mobilise new sections of the population against the political establishment, in an attempt to attain their political and economic rights, defined both individually and nationally. Newsinger argues that ‘while Fenianism did not have a social revolutionary programme, its very existence as a working-class revolutionary organisation inevitably challenged the position and authority of the Protestant ascendancy, the British and, of course, the Catholic middle class’.73 For Hobsbawm, ‘the novelty of the Fenians ... was that they were entirely independent of the middle-class moderates, that their support came entirely


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from among the popular masses ... and that they were the first to put forward a programme of total independence from England, to be achieved by armed insurrection’.74 However, within this mixture of influences and forces lay an important tension. The primary influence which the Fenians gained from their radical continental allies was organisational and oppositional. From Blanqui came the oath-bound secret society committed to armed rebellion. From Mazzini and Marx came an opposition to the existing political and economic order of things. From the United Irish and Young Ireland movements came the demand for political independence based in a civic republicanism and an anti-imperial nationalism. What was absent, however, were positive ideological alternatives to the status quo. Again Hobsbawm suggests that the Fenians’ wholehearted concentration on an Irish Republic won by armed struggle replaced a social and economic, even a domestic, political programme ... Fenianism was mass nationalism in the epoch of triumphant liberalism. It could do little except reject England and demand total independence through revolution for an oppressed people, hoping that somehow this would solve all problems of poverty and exploitation.75

Hobsbawm’s conclusion is that the Fenians ‘generated the force which was to win independence for most of Catholic Ireland but, since they generated nothing else, they left the future of that Ireland to the middle-class moderates, the rich farmers and small-town tradesmen of a small agrarian country who were to take over their heritage’.76 The Fenians relationship to the Catholic Church is also important. Their political growth and popularity came despite widespread clerical opposition. Indeed their emergence on the post-Famine political landscape was mirrored in some respects by the centralisation and modernisation of the Catholic Church under Cardinal Cullen. The Church’s opposition to the Fenians was unambiguous, and Cullen was their archenemy. However, despite the strongly articulated opposition to clerical censure and religious involvement in the political sphere, the Fenians as individuals remained in general devout Catholics. Newsinger comments that

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‘the Church’s hostility to revolution did not, in Ireland, produce the ferocious anti-clericalism that was to characterise revolutionary movements on the Continent throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century’.77 Indeed, he argues that, ‘the contrast with European revolutionary movements in this period could not be more dramatic. While the Fenians responded blow for blow to clerical condemnation and censure, in every other respect the clergy were treated with all due reverence.’78 Of course the position of the Catholic Church in nineteenthcentury Ireland, and its relationship to the mass of ordinary Catholics, was fundamentally different to that of their coreligionists in France, Spain or Italy. Catholicism was not the established church, and was not identified with the primary centres of wealth and power. Indeed Catholicism was becoming, in the context of the post-Famine devotional revolution led by Cardinal Cullen, one of the key defining features of Irish cultural identity. In addition to legislative independence and agrarian reform, Catholic emancipation was a central element in the worldviews of many nineteenth-century Irish radicals. Understanding the religious devotion of Fenians who supported a secular political project vehemently opposed by the Catholic Church is less difficult in this context. However, one of the unintended consequences was a greater degree of social conservatism in a movement that was nonetheless politically and constitutionally radical. Despite the avowedly anti-clerical and secular political message of the Fenians, they were unable to build the same crossdenominational alliance with Protestant Ireland, as did their eighteenth-century predecessors. While it is clear that Anglican landowners, north and south, were never open to the radical implications of the IRB movement, their inability to mobilise sections of the northern Presbyterian farmers and merchants is a more significant failure. During much of the nineteenth century, significant disparities continued to exist between Anglicans and Presbyterians in much of the north of the country, in terms of economic position and political influence. In addition Presbyterians continued to, in the main, occupy the liberal end of the political spectrum. Catholic and Protestant cooperation


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on issues of land reform was common throughout much of this period, bringing together not just nationalists and liberal unionists but also sections of the Orange Order. However, two factors were decisive in blocking the integration of this section of the Protestant community into the broader republican movement. First, northern Catholics were slow to embrace Fenianism as a political project. Marion Elliot suggests that ‘organised nationalism took a very long time to gain a foothold in Ulster, and when it did it was solidly constitutional. Militant republicanism held little attraction ... Fenianism itself was weaker in Ulster than in any other province.’79 Second, while an alliance between poorer Protestant and Catholic tenants was always a possibility, the existence of the Ulster Custom in the north, and the desire on behalf of many landlords to preserve such arrangements, made northern farmers less susceptible to the radical demands of the Fenians. Protecting the Ulster Custom and the rights it entailed was best achieved through legislative action in Westminster. Of course, set against the backdrop of religious revivalism evident not just in Ulster but across Ireland and Britain, there were more powerful factors pulling poorer Presbyterian farmers and merchants towards a liberal-conservative unionist alliance than one with nationalists and republicans. This Protestant alliance was consolidated following Gladstone’s Land Act of 1881 that drove a wedge between the liberal Presbyterian land reformers and their more radical Catholic and nationalist counterparts. The cause of this failure to build a truly cross-denominational alliance combining radical agrarian reform with demands for legislative independence is unclear. By the 1880s the effective integration of the Belfast Presbyterian middle classes and growing working class into the economic realities of imperial free trade added another key bind in the unionist alliance, which in the context of the looming battle over Home Rule would become almost entirely conservative in character by the century’s end. By the second half of the nineteenth century a division had opened within the Irish body politic between a Protestant unionism and a Catholic nationalism, which although neither inevitable nor at this stage permanent, would nonetheless

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become solidified during the Home Rule crisis and the first two decades of the twentieth century. Fenianism was less capable of understanding, never mind intervening in, this development, and by the 1880s had abandoned any meaningful attempt to build that cross-denominational alliance which had been key features of both the United Irish and Young Ireland movements. Fenianism had other significant blind spots that also need exploring, most notably with regard to the issue of gender. Both The Nation and the United Irishman appear silent on the question of women’s rights, and most importantly the extension of the vote to women. In this they are not unlike the Chartists and other European political movements of the time. Those women that were involved played a similar role to their predecessors in the 1840s. Luddy describes women as playing a supporting role, carrying ‘dispatches between the local leaders of the Fenian movement in the 1860s, and organising support committees for families of Fenian prisoners’.80 She also describes the more general mobilisation of women during elections, protests and food riots. What is clear is that organisationally, politically and culturally Fenianism contained strict gendered divisions of labour. Luddy is right in asserting that ‘equality between women and men was rarely advocated’.81 Indeed, not only did the Fenians do little to challenge the exclusion of women or the gendered nature of politics, which had been a fact of life in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century nationalist movements, in one important respect their prioritising of the secret, oath-bound, conspiratorial and insurrectionary modes of politics effectively pushed these issues further into the background. While the United Irishmen and Young Irelanders had adopted similar organisational tactics, it was as a matter of circumstance rather than self-definition. Fenianism, particularly by the 1880s, became in essence a secret, revolutionary underground movement. The opportunities for women to access this conspiratorial world were even more difficult than in the public participative politics of the United Irishmen or the literary cultural publications of Young Ireland. That a political movement, whose key organisational features were those of an oath-bound secret society, would produce such


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an exclusively male-dominated political environment should not be surprising. As the civic and rights based republicanism of the United Irish and Young Ireland movements gave way to the insurrectionary, culturally nationalist and socially conservative politics of the Fenians, the marginalisation of women within the political discourse of republicanism became further embedded, and was to remain so until the start of the twentieth century. Hobsbawm’s assertion that the Fenians generated the force to win independence but left the political content of that independence to the middleclass moderates equally applies to the gender dimension of their politics and organisational culture. As Cardinal Cullen’s devotional revolution continued to imbue Irish nationalism with its conservative social content as the nineteenth century came to a close, Fenianism would slowly become a political force both revolutionary in terms of its challenge to the existing institutional and constitutional order and simultaneously conservative in its social and economic attitudes, particularly when it came to questions of gender and class. The space for exceptions to this rule was never closed, but exceptions they undoubtedly were. On balance, the Fenians inherited many of the contradictions of their Young Ireland and United Ireland predecessors. They provided Irish society with a radical pole of attraction around which a disparate array of grievances could be organised, with legislative independence as its core. In doing so they created a national movement, and more importantly a national consciousness, which tied these grievances together in the popular mind, producing a deep reservoir from which later generations of radicals could drink, as the more constitutional and conservative methods of addressing these and other issues came up against the intransigence of British government policy in Ireland. However, the limitations of the continental influences which informed their political practice – Blanqui and Blanc – combined with their inability to develop a truly national, cross-denominational movement and their failure to develop a positive political and economic project which would provide rights and equality for all sections of society, meant that Fenianism contained within itself an

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almost irresolvable contradiction, whose significance would only become apparent in the first decades of the twentieth century. Neither radical nor revisionist historians’ assessments of the Fenians are fully adequate, despite both containing elements of truth. Like earlier manifestations of Irish republicanism, revisionists such as Foster and Elliot are too quick to dismiss their truly radical nature, while left historians such as Berresford Ellis and Jackson are too quick in ignoring the many contradictions and weaknesses. Understanding the Fenians’ inherent contradictions allows us to appreciate both their revolutionary importance at the same time as their conservative limitations.

Socialists While the major narrative of nineteenth-century Anglo–Irish history was preoccupied with the energies of Irish nationalists and republicans vying against conservative and liberal unionists, a minor but nonetheless important narrative tells the story of the rise in the organisations of labour and from within this milieu the emergence of organised socialist politics in Ireland. Indeed, as the European nationalist movements of the first half-century began to take root, their ascendancy opened up a new political fault line between those who owned wealth and those who produced it. The mobilisation of popular opinion in the revolutions of 1848 connected with older currents of cooperation and unionisation creating a new and powerful political force. As the century unfolded, the emerging working-class movements began to look for political influence and eventually parliamentary representation. From within these new movements emerged a smaller political current, socialism, whose real influence would become apparent only during the course of the twentieth century. If government policy in London focused its energies on responding to land agitation and the spread of radical republican and separatist ideas in Ireland during the nineteenth century, at home its concerns were more with its own labouring classes. Rapid industrialisation and urbanisation had brought into being a new urban working class who were influenced by the


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radical politics of the revolutionary waves sweeping across the continent. While the forms of organisation of this class were not in themselves new – combinations of artisans had existed for almost 100 years – their size, degree of organisation and sense of common purpose was of an entirely different order. For Hobsbawm, the ‘rapidity of the social change which engulfed’ this new class, ‘encouraged the labourers to think in terms of an entirely changed society, based on their experiences and ideas as opposed to their oppressors’.82 Hobsbawm confirms that the ‘dual revolution’ produced a distinctive working class during the first half of the nineteenth century in France and England, and throughout the rest of the continent in the decades that followed. In England this new class found expression in two forms – the new trade unions and the Chartists – both of which were to have an important impact on Ireland. In turn the anxiety created amongst the political and business establishment by this new and dangerous social force produced counter-measures, both coercive and reforming, which in turn shaped the emergence of Irish labour and socialist politics. The earliest collective organisations of labourers in Ireland were known as combinations. These localised and often temporary associations of skilled artisans in the towns of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries focused mainly on protecting the interests of those operating within the profession, attempting to limit the number of apprentices, excluding outsiders and fixing wage rates. Legislation prohibiting such combinations was enacted by the Irish parliament from the 1730s, however serious concern regarding their impact only began to surface in the latter decades of the century. Emmet O’Connor has observed that ‘in 1780, the Irish Grand Committee for Trade concluded that combinations were becoming a threat to prosperity’, and that in the ‘same year 20,000 artisans paraded in the Phoenix Park in protest at the introduction of legislation’ which in effect liberalised the system of apprentices and ‘provided penalties for absence from work or for violence resulting from combination’.83 Economic hardship, trade slumps and inflation produced, among the skilled and

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manual urban labourers, similar conditions to sections of the rural poor. Thus, as the end of the eighteenth and first decades of the nineteenth century were marked by agrarian violence, the towns responded with an increasing propensity to strike. Artisans played their part in the 1798 rebellion, as artisan and trader alike shared opposition to government interference in trade. Indeed so prominent were Dublin and Belfast artisans in the politics of 1798 that one Labour historian has described it as ‘in part a trade union revolt’.84 Following a campaign for reform, the anti-trade union laws were overturned in Westminster in 1824. However the motivation of those responsible was not benign, as they believed that the Combination Acts encouraged unionisation and workplace violence. Removing the prohibition, they hoped, would reduce workplace tension and restore order. The effect of course was the opposite, so much so that the following year new restrictions were placed on unions. Strikes were made illegal, but significantly combinations were permitted, although only for the limited purpose of negotiating wages and hours of work.85 Thus in the decades that followed localised unions grew in number and strength across Ireland and England, and began to employ full-time officials. By mid century they had begun a process of federation which would transform them from parochial to national associations. However, it is important to remember that this first phase of unionisation was very different from that we associate with trade unions today. Indeed they operated more like craft unions of an earlier century. They represented the most skilled and prosperous sections of the labour force, operating to strictly limit the numbers working in any given trade, and primarily benefiting the masters in the said trade. In addition to providing such protections, combinations also offered ‘their members the status of being a recognised artisan, an opportunity to defend the wider interests of the trade, and a social comradeship’.86 In many respects the function of the combinations was to reach an accommodation with their employers that would be mutually beneficial to both. They avoided formal involvement in broader political issues and, representing as they did the upper strata of skilled labour, had


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a significant investment in the prevailing economic status quo. However, like the republicanism of the late eighteenth century, once the ideology and methods of working-class self-organisation became available, there would always be those who would take them to their logical conclusion. The emergence of the English Chartists in the 1830s is a case in point. Labour radicals based in English cities began to press for more political demands, and generated significant levels of support among the grassroots of the emerging trade union movement. The People’s Charter of 1838 – the document that gave the Chartists their name – contained demands for fundamental reform of the parliamentary system that would enable working men to play a role in the politics of the day. The Charter sought universal male suffrage, annual elections to parliament, secret ballots in parliamentary elections, equal electoral districts, the ending of any property qualification for MPs and a salary for elected representatives. While such demands would have to wait several decades before appearing on the statute books, and then only slowly and piecemeal, the Chartists brought the combinations out of their individual workplaces and both onto the streets – through a series of mass mobilisations – and into the broader political arena. The insistence upon some form of parliamentary representation for the interests of labour was to remain one of the central demands of the trade unions until the early twentieth century. In Ireland, while the Chartists had some success in recruiting among the urban artisans of Dublin, and within the more radical end of the Repeal movement and what would become the Young Ireland faction, it was the campaign for Catholic emancipation that had the most immediate politicising effect on the Irish combinations. While organised artisans had played a part in the United Irish movement, support for emancipation and then Repeal was more formal and organised. Labourers formed Political Unions, first at a local and then at a national level, to support and agitate for Repeal of the Act. By the 1840s protection for indigenous industry became a key plank of nationalist political rhetoric, and business and labour once again shared key strategic goals. O’Connor argues that for labour,

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these strategic interests ‘lay with self-government’ in opposition to the dominant laissez-faire political economy guiding English economic and trading interests.87 However, this alliance between the emerging Repeal movement and the trade unions was never an uncomplicated one. O’Connell himself was ideologically committed to free trade and only political expediency convinced him to state otherwise publicly. For their part the Repealers radical wing was equally ambivalent on the value of trade unions, often seeing them as a danger to economic prosperity and private property. The Repeal movement continually rejected the support offered by Chartists from across the Irish Sea, and when a Dublin branch of the radical group was formed in 1839, the pro-Repeal Trades Political Union successfully set about ensuring that it would have no future in the city.88 The end of the 1840s would see a greater degree of radicalisation and volatility among the more advanced sections of the Repeal and trade union movements. O’Connell’s expulsion of the Young Irelanders – as noted above – also saw the departure of much of his labour support. While the majority faction of Young Ireland saw a strategic alliance with rural agitation as their primary focus, the minority led by Mitchel and his United Irishman paper moved to the left and actively worked to build a relationship with Feargus O’Connor and the English Chartists. Despite the temporary uniting of these factions following the French Revolution of the same year, defeat and exile ended what was in truth a brief period of radical labour political activity. ‘Over the next generation’, concluded O’Connor, ‘labour would turn to more conservative forms of organisation and politics’.89 The post-Great Hunger period would see three related but distinct developments in Irish trade unionism. Industrialisation around Lagan Valley, in the north east of the country, would produce the most concentrated centre of labour organisation in Ireland, but one whose interests and politics became wedded to the economics and politics of Union and Empire. Simultaneously, as the post-Famine Fenians entered into an alliance with Parnell, in the campaign for Home Rule, trade unionists in the remainder of the country supported self-government and the broad protectionist


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aims of the nationalist movement. Most significant of all, and most enduring, the second half of the century saw the emergence, in Britain and Ireland, of a new model of trade unionism. These large, centralised general unions, though cautious at first, were more successful in placing the political interests of their members at the centre of the political stage. The unique character of industrial development in the north east – linen, cotton and later shipbuilding – would make employers and workers more sympathetic to the governing interests in Westminster, dependent as they were for their success on British economic and imperial expansion. While the primary political contests in Belfast and the surrounding regions at the time were between liberal and conservative unionists, the emergence of labour organisations simply added a new set of interests to this contest, rather than challenging its basic structure. Repeal, Home Rule and economic nationalism held little popular appeal. In addition, O’Connor has argued, ‘industrial growth intensified sectarian divisions in Ulster’ and particularly in Belfast.90 Competition for jobs and resources took on a distinctly sectarian character as religious denomination and political affiliation became barriers to participation in the economic expansion. As with agriculture, religious segregation and discrimination in urban employment became a fact of life from the 1850s onwards. Contemporary statistics clearly indicate that whereas Anglicans were primarily landowners, in the emerging industries Presbyterians held the dominant position in both the middle and working classes. Catholics for their part were disproportionately represented in the lower, manual and unskilled sectors of the labour force. While trade unions were not responsible for the sectarian distribution of economic resources and power, their modes of operating served to perpetuate it, and at times of conflict they often became vehicles for defending sectarian privileges.91 Economic prosperity and organisational strength gave the new Belfast working class a desire to play a more prominent role in politics. William Johnston is credited as being the first workingclass elected MP, standing as an Independent Conservative, with considerable trade union support in his campaign. His re-election

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campaign some years later was organised under the banner of ‘Belfast Orange and Protestant Workingmen’s association’. It is important to stress, however, that Johnston’s political project focused primarily on the skilled artisans and small businesspeople, rather than the mass of labouring poor in the city, whether Protestants or Catholic. However, his relevance lies in the political space he carved out for later generations of labour unionists such as William Walker, who powerfully, if at times uncomfortably, mixed working-class labourism and Presbyterian populism, in what was to become known as social-imperialism. Across the remainder of the country, and despite the involvement of many working-class activists in the Fenian rebellion, ‘unions were becoming concerned with distinct organisational interests, separate from politics, and were being drawn into the values of social consensus and moderation’.92 Yet in O’Connor’s phrase, ‘Fenian echoes persisted’. Indeed one of the great successes of Fenianism of the 1850s and 1860s was its articulation of a national consciousness that permeated among the great mass of ordinary rural and urban labourers and artisans. While the formal business of the unions remained focused on workplace issues, such as pay and working hours, the sympathies of many union members were clearly nationalist. Unions and trades councils played a key part in the mobilisations commemorating the Manchester Martyrs and campaigning for the release of Fenian prisoners. Likewise both the IRB and Parnell put considerable effort into mobilising labour organisations to support the Home Rule movement, with all the same tensions and contradictions that had bedevilled O’Connell decades earlier. The formation, by Michael Davitt, of the Irish Democratic Trade and Labour Federation in 1890 was a selfconscious attempt to resolve some of these tensions by asserting labour’s claims within the nationalist movement. However the very nature of the demand for Home Rule, focusing on the form of government rather than its content, allied to the lead role being played by conservative forces within both the IRB and Parnell’s Irish Party at Westminster, meant that the labour agenda would always take second place. It is instructive to note that Parnell’s


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most concerted attempt to mobilise the political strength of labour came after his loss of influence within the Irish Party. While the emerging modern forms of nationalism and trade unionism clearly held sway with much of the rank and file of the labour movement, at an official level the primary focus of the trade union leadership took a more neutral political line. The new model of nationally organised mass unions, which developed from the 1850s, took a new turn as general unskilled unionisation gathered pace in the 1880s and 1890s. Organisations such as the National Union of Dock Labourers were responsible for a wave of industrial action aimed at improving the lot of the most disadvantaged section of the labour force, the manual working class. Gradually these general trade unions became the mainstay of the labour movement, with huge membership, significant levels of funds for strike and other purposes, and opposition from an increasingly hostile political and economic establishment. The first phase of this new model was marked by a ‘cautious policy of consolidation’, discouraging strikes, and focusing on ‘maintaining demand for labour through control of apprenticeships and enforcement of restrictive practices’.93 However, the second and in many ways more significant phase of this model, from the 1880s onwards, was more militant in industrial terms, focusing to a greater extent on the unskilled and mounting ever greater challenges to the existing position of workers. The dockworkers strike in Belfast of 1907 is an example of this newfound spirit of confrontation. However, while a willingness to confront the plight of the unskilled ensured that the older guard of the trade union movement frowned upon the spread of such syndicalist ideas, the younger organisers shared a certain degree of political caution with their elders. As organised labour grew in strength, and incurred the legislative wrath of Tory governments when in office, it sought to increase its own influence on legislation. Rather than advocate a separate political party, or support the emerging but still small socialist organisations, the mainstream of the British labour movement developed a working relationship with the Liberals. This Labour–Liberal reform alliance, articulated

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primarily through groups such as the Labour Representation League, acted as a constraining influence on the overt politicisation of the movement.94 In Ireland, notwithstanding the developing relationship between organised labour and nationalist MPs and the rise of local government labour representation in the 1890s, the political policy of organised labour became increasingly complicated by the tensions between nationalists and unionists in the battle over Home Rule. The Irish Trade Union Congress, established in 1894, influenced both by the Liberal–Labour reform agenda and a desire to avoid becoming embroiled in the broader Home Rule debate, observed a studied political neutrality. It confined its business to issues of working hours, wages, conditions and internal labour organisation matters. However, as the Home Rule issue gathered momentum, and its Irish protagonists moved to secure the support of labour, organised or otherwise, the trade unions could not remain detached from what was becoming the most pressing issue of the day. O’Connor has argued that during this crucial period in its history, Irish labour ‘hovered between two contending conceptions of progress’.95 They could either follow the Britishbased model and tread the path of political neutrality, or they could embrace the logic of a labour nationalism, in an attempt to ensure that when Home Rule came its form would be inclusive of the needs of the working classes. However, the strength of the emerging labour unionism led by Belfast Trades Council figures such as William Walker made such a decision more difficult than O’Connor estimates. The consequence, however was the same, as organised labour became sidelined in what was to become the decisive political contest of late nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury Ireland. Industrial militancy would continue through the first two decades of the new century as evidenced by the great Dublin lock-out of 1913. But the degree of political influence which the formal trade union movement would have was sidelined, in the north east of the country, as labour unionism collapsed into reactionary working class loyalism, and in the remainder of the country as nationalism – whether reformist or separatist


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– once again focused on the question of the form rather than the substance of legislative independence. In the end organised labour was sidelined, or in the eyes of some sidelined itself, on several counts. While the majority of its supporters were fast becoming unionists and nationalists, its leaders were wary of division at a national level if they embraced either side. Following the predominant political trade union strategy of the day, they preferred engagement with existing political formations in order to secure influence rather than creating an alternative political force in the form of a Labour Party. Thus as the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, trade unionism in Ireland was stronger in terms of membership and legislative protection than at any earlier stage in its history, but in terms of political influence it remained marginal. In Britain, following the dramatic defeat of the unions in the Taff Vale legal case – whereby unions were made liable for the costs incurred to business resulting from strikes – the need for political and parliamentary influence led to the demise of Labour–Liberal reformism in favour of an independent Labour Party. In Ireland however, the policy of political neutrality and the political realities on the ground ensured that organised labour would have to wait for several decades before it followed its British counterparts. Although political neutrality and caution was a distinctive feature of mainstream trade unionism in Ireland and Britain during this period, both movements contained within them minority currents of radicals and socialists arguing for more forthright forms of political intervention. While these dissidents were not entirely new, drawing on earlier traditions of social and economic thinking and activism – such as the cooperative movement of the 1820s, the Chartists of the 1830s, the International Workingmen’s Association in the 1860s, and even Michael Davitt’s advocacy of land nationalisation in the 1880s – their form and content ensured that their ability to mount a challenge to the political and economic status quo was more substantial. To this was added the involvement of many Irish migrants in the labour and emerging

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socialist movements in Britain and the United States, whose influence on returning to Ireland was also important. The new context, shaped by the rise of the trade union movement and greater demands for franchise reform and political participation by the working class, generated what has become known as the British ‘socialist revival’ in the mid 1880s.96 The engagement of new self-consciously socialist organisations such as the Democratic Federation (later Social Democratic Federation) and the continued interest of the International Workingmen’s Association in issues relating to Fenian Amnesty campaigns, land reform and Irish nationalism, created the space for organisational and ideological dialogue between Irish radicals and their English and continental European counterparts. The consequence of this was both the spread of socialist ideas into Ireland and a number of attempts to create distinctively socialist associations and organisations, primarily in Dublin. The foundation of the Dublin Democratic Federation in 1881 and the Socialist League a few years later produced a number of centres of discussion which, in the early 1880s, linked Irish and foreign radical currents. Leading figures of the British socialist movement – such as William Morris in 1886 – visited Ireland to discuss and debate the meaning and implications of socialism with Dublin’s intellectual elite.97 While such societies provoked a degree of public debate, it was not until the formation of the National Labour League in 1887 that socialist ideas began to take on a more organised political form. The League’s formation coincided with an upsurge in labour militancy in Dublin, centring on the rights of the unemployed. Mass public meetings at Harold’s Cross and the Phoenix Park in the same year brought speakers from the League to public prominence as advocates of a self-consciously socialist programme modelled on that of the Social Democratic Federation.98 Despite this initial success, Lane suggests that ‘unfortunately for the league it was activated at a time when nationalist Ireland was mobilising in opposition to the new coercion bill ... [and] the Labour League was wholly uninterested in accommodating itself within the nationalist movement’.99 Isolating itself from the broader issue of Home Rule ensured that the League would


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be unable to develop any meaningful mass public following, and it soon dissolved, as did its debating predecessors. However out of the same milieu emerged a succession of similar groups, with a continuity of both aims and personnel. The Dublin Socialist Club, the Saturday Club, the Progressist Club and the Fabians were all spaces for Dublin and Belfast based radicals to continue the intellectual debate about socialism. As the new unionism began to take hold during the 1890s, intellectual radicals and labour organisers began to look at local and national government as a possible forum for advancing the cause of socialism. The Dublin Trades Council agreed such a course of action in 1892 and was followed by the formation of the Belfast Labour Party in the same period, with regional towns such as Waterford and Cork following shortly afterwards. However, as with the broader union movement, prospective candidates for local or national government were always under pressure to align themselves with broader political currents of nationalism or unionism. While space for the development of a labour nationalism was proved possible by the success of nationalist MPs such as J.P. Nannetti, the fate of labour unionists such as William Walker demonstrated that while unionism was intent on mobilising the Protestant working classes, it would have to be at the expense of the interests of labour and working-class unity.

Assessment In the opening years of the twentieth century, after one hundred years of significant organisational and ideological development, English socialists, and indeed many of their contemporaries across the European continent, were about to embark on a period of significant political growth. In Ireland however, socialists continued to be consigned to the margins of political life. Fintan Lane, in his authoritative account of socialism in nineteenth-century Ireland, suggests that the realities of rural Ireland, the enduring influence of religious revivalism, both Catholic and Protestant, and the centrality of nationalism and Home Rule to the politics of the time, provided obstacles which Irish socialism was either unable

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or unwilling to overcome. Combined with the refusal of the broader trade union movement to fully embrace its own political possibilities, for a variety of different and at times contradictory reasons, the organisations of labour and their minority currents of socialist dissent singularly failed to carve out a sustainable political space in Irish society. The issue of land dominated the politics of nineteenth-century Ireland. Both before and after the Great Hunger, Irish nationalist politicians depended for their political success on their ability to link agrarian grievance with Repeal and Home Rule in order to mobilise popular support. O’Connell and Parnell, whatever their differences, understood the centrality of rural Ireland in their efforts to pressurise the British government to adopt their desired legislative reforms. While at the start of the twentieth century almost one third of the Irish population lived in towns, the majority of these, unlike their English counterparts, relied on the countryside for their livelihood. Even in its urban life, with the exception of Dublin and Belfast, Ireland was a profoundly rural and agrarian society.100 One of the key failures of the Dublin and Belfast based socialists was their inability to understand this reality, which not only cut them off from the majority of the population in the countryside, but also made their politics irrelevant to the agricultural labourers in the towns. The uncritical transposition of an urban and labourist socialism, from figures such as Hyndman and Morris in England and Henry George in the United States, led either to an ignoring of rural Ireland completely or to the advocacy of programmes for land nationalisation. The idea of land nationalisation was political suicide, forcing even popular land agitators such as Michael Davitt into political obscurity. Thus, while the inability of early Irish socialists to integrate their socialism with the realities of agrarian politics prevented them from developing a broad base of support in the countryside, the same cannot be said for the urban working class, which although smaller than its European counterparts, could nonetheless have offered a more stable political base from which to operate. Indeed the conditions of the urban working class in Belfast and Dublin provided ample ground from which to build. Here, the crucial


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question for the socialists was the issue of legislative independence, and again the uncritical transposition of socialist discourse and labour modes of organisation from Britain prevented even the Labour League from capitalising on their initial success. In Britain the rise of political labour was based on the need for legislative reform within the existing state. In Ireland, nationalism from 1798 onwards, and unionism from 1880s onwards, succeeded in integrating the advancement of popular demands for rights with the discourse of either support for or opposition to legislative independence. In the north, the coalescing of socialimperialism, labour unionism and sectarian conservatism at the end of the century succeeded in mobilising the Protestant working class to the cause of Empire and Union. Nationalists, including labour nationalists, saw political change in the context of Home Rule and later, complete independence. The political space simply did not exist for the articulation of a successful socialist project outside of these parameters. As the ideological conflict between republican socialism and labour unionism drew William Walker and James Connolly into a war of words from 1905 onwards, those socialists and trade unionists who attempted to stand aloof were consigned to obscurity or political impotence. Ireland’s nineteenth-century socialists advocated the programmatic socialism of the Social Democratic Federation, or ideas articulated by artists like William Morris and trade union leaders like Kier Hardie, despite the inability of these sources to provide an adequate response to Irish conditions. Irish socialism before Connolly simply refused to be drawn into the issue of Home Rule. However, their disinterest in issues relating to Home Rule should not be overplayed, as their English mentors had just as little success during the 1880s and 1890s in securing a popular base for socialism. Understanding this shared failure requires two additional elements that Lane ignores. British and Irish socialists at this time displayed a distinct lack of interest in the emerging working-class movements, seeing trade unionism as inherently orientated towards compromise with the capitalist system. Attempting to develop a self-consciously revolutionary political space, demands for improvements in conditions for employees was

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deemed irrelevant in the broader struggle for the transformation of existing property relations. While such a doctrinaire position would not last into the twentieth century, at this crucial stage of working-class politics, as labour electoral associations were being formed in towns and cities and the Liberal–Labour alliance was coming under increasing strain, the socialist non-engagement with trade unionism cut it off from what was its only possible source of meaningful political support. Of equal importance in understanding the socialist isolation from the mass of working people is an understanding of the origin of much of their political discourse. The SDF and its subsequent English and Irish offshoots were all loosely part of the broader socialist movement emerging across Europe. The formal inauguration of the Second International in Paris in 1889 began a process of codifying the doctrine of Marxist-inspired Social Democracy that came to dominate socialist politics until its first major crisis during the First World War. Ideologically and organisationally, early British and Irish socialism focused more on importing emerging strands of revolutionary thought from continental Europe, and gave little thought to its applicability to, or malleability for, more local political and economic conditions. The net result was that in both Ireland and Britain socialism began its life in the form of theoretical discussion clubs, with little intervention in or meaning for the outside world. The more organic relationship of labourism to the English working classes, and nationalism and unionism to their Irish contemporaries, ensured that in both countries socialism would remain detached from the social forces it sought to represent and was thus relegated to a minor player in the major political movements of the twentieth century. In a sense nineteenth-century Irish socialists were a minority tendency within a social and political movement – the trade unions – who were themselves a minor current in Irish society more generally; so their failures should neither surprise us nor be held against them. A more profound failure, however, clearly can be laid at the door of the trade union movement itself. Despite a considerable national network, a formidable national congress


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structure, and significant levels of mass mobilisation from 1880 through to the 1920s, trade unionism remained effectively impotent on the political front. There is a certain irony in the fact that the only nineteenth-century political movement in Ireland able to build a substantial cross-denominational base of popular support was unable to transform this into an effective political force independent of nationalism or unionism. Capitulation to unionist sectarianism and imperial conservatism in Belfast, and retreat into the isolation of political neutrality in Dublin, rendered the two main centres of trade union membership and leadership politically dependent on their respective Home Rule adversaries. These trends would be challenged during the early twentieth century, most notably by trade union leaders such as Jim Larkin and socialist republicans such as James Connolly. Both the Irish trade union movement and the emerging socialist societies failed in another profound respect, with respect to the position of women. While the 1880s and 1890s saw the first powerful challenge to the exclusive gendered space of Irish politics in the form of the Ladies Land League, and of suffragette societies formed first in liberal circles in Belfast and Dublin to be followed by the most advanced sections of nationalism, the strict gendered division of labour in society was not only mirrored by but perpetuated in the form and content of trade union and socialist politics. Lane recounts that despite the widespread struggle for the extension of the franchise in trade union circles, and the growing advocacy by women for the vote – albeit it with the property qualification – many radicals failed ‘to envisage women as part of the suffrage demand’.101 Although some notable exceptions among the socialist and trade unionist ranks, such as Will Thorne, encouraged women to join trade unions, women were in the main seen as a threat to the security of male labour and actively excluded from most fields of employment and active trade union membership. Again, a rigid gendered demarcation of the labour market, and the active exclusion of women from trade unions, would be subject to profound challenges in the coming decades. But as the nineteenth century came to a close women’s role in this sphere of radical politics was much the same

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as it had been among the Fenians, Young Irelanders and even the United Irishmen – either wholly absent, or when admitted wholly subservient to a patriarchal view of the world.

Conclusion Left republicanism is a distinctively modern phenomenon in Irish politics. Despite various attempts by historians and activists to retrospectively read a socialist republican content into eighteenthand nineteenth-century radical Irish politics, the reality is that until the formation of the Irish Socialist Republican Party in 1896 no ideological or organisational formation combining these two positions existed. However, this is not to imply that left republicanism has no origins in eighteenth- or nineteenth-century Ireland. Clearly it does. The various radical currents described above laid the foundations upon which James Connolly and subsequent generations of socialist republicans attempted to build in order to legitimise their interventions into contemporary political and economic realities. The fact that, from Connolly to the present, left republicans have continually misread the way in which these foundations shaped their own political reality is lamentable. That they more often used this history purely to legitimise rather than to understand is indeed unfortunate. However, it is impossible to understand the emergence and subsequent history of left republicanism from the end of the nineteenth century through to the present outside the historic context sketched out above. We must interrogate the ideological and organisational legacy bequeathed by these various radical movements, and in doing so come to grips with their weaknesses and contradictions as much as their strengths. First, it is crucial to understand the context within which these movements emerged. While the colonial relationship between England and Ireland during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries undoubtedly forms the overarching framework for this understanding, it is important not to reduce all of the disparate forms of radicalism to this one cause. One of the great weaknesses of many left-republican readings of this period is its reduction of


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Irish history to an unbroken, continuous, essentialist tradition of opposition to British rule in Ireland. That the United Irish, Young Ireland and Fenian movements opposed British rule is not in question. But the various reasons behind this opposition, and the broader attitudes of Irish society to these demands, are more complex and indeed at times contradictory. Eighteenth-century radicals wanted an end to Ascendancy interference in trade, and greater access to the emerging British colonial markets. Nineteenth-century nationalists were concerned with the negative impact of free trade on emerging Irish industry. Likewise rural, urban, Presbyterian and Catholic Ireland, throughout these centuries, were all more likely to support the moderate aims of Liberals, Repealers or Home Rulers, and seek redress for their grievances within the context of the Union, than to give support to the more radical demands for separation. What was decisive in shifting popular support from reform to rebellion, and from accommodation to separation, at each point in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was the actions of governments in London. Irish republicanism was not, for the most part, a matter of principle, but a strategic and tactical response to the policy of the British state that continually placed its interests before those of the people it was governing. The particular nature of English rule in Ireland, as distinct from the rest of the Union, ensured that the integration of legislative independence with a broader social, economic and political agenda for change would become the dominant political paradigm from the end of the nineteenth century. However, as subsequent developments after the War of Independence show, if these disparate interests and grievances could be partially or temporarily resolved on the basis of less than the full demand for independence, then support for more modest change would grow and undermine the strength of republicanism. While there is little doubt that the eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury Protestant Ascendancy would have been unable to support either the moderate or more radical political positions of nationalists and republicans, the position of northern Presbyterians was less clear. However, their grievances, as

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articulated at the end of the eighteenth century, were gradually resolved within the context of the emerging British Empire, a fact misunderstood by many republicans. The success of the unionist political project from the 1850s onwards was its ability to construct a cultural hegemony among northern Protestants – Anglican and Presbyterian – on the foundations of religious revivalism and anti-Catholic sectarianism, and welding this to the economic benefits of industrial development in the context of the Empire and political union with Britain. As the era of mass participation in politics opened up at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the integration of the Protestant urban working class into this project secured is future, and closed off the possibility of recreating the Catholic–Presbyterian alliance central to the strength of the United Irishmen. While there was nothing inevitable in this formation, and its future would be volatile and insecure, its existence cannot be reduced to the machinations of political elites in London or Belfast. There is little doubt that these elites invested significant energy and resources in this project. But the success of social-imperialism was never solely a matter of its considerable backing in Westminster. These three key facts, the colonial nature of English – later British – rule in Ireland, the contingent nature of Irish popular support for republican aims, and the organic nature of Ulster unionism, are the contextual fabric within which we must asses the development of republican and socialist politics in these centuries. Of course the broader European context of the industrial, national and democratic revolutions is the more general continental context within which Anglo–Irish relations must be read, in terms of the structural antagonisms which modern European society was developing such as class and gender; the ideological and organisational influences which impacted on the contours of Irish republicanism and socialism; the priorities, policies and strategies of the state; and the concerns and allegiances of the public. At an ideological level Irish republicanism during this period developed a distinct character. It was civic in its aspirations towards governance, disagreements over the extent of the franchise notwithstanding. It was nationalist in its conception of


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the people. It was also secular, anti-imperial and revolutionary. It sought the maximum degree of political change as understood by particular protagonists at particular times. However, in social terms, particularly from the mid nineteenth century, the failure of Fenianism to develop a parallel social critique of the status quo, coupled with early Irish socialism’s ideological and organisational weakness, ensured that a conservative Catholicism would prevail on matters beyond the purely political. In practical policy terms republicanism sought legislative independence from Westminster, although only gradually did this develop into a programme of full national independence. It always opted for the most advanced position on the question of the extension of the franchise prevalent within (male) society at the time. It effectively linked concrete social and economic grievances with this broader programme for constitutional and institutional change. At times such connections were sincere and integral elements of the republican programme, however on occasion this was more a matter of expedience or necessitated by the need for strategic alliances among different sections of the population. Socialism, again owing to its underdevelopment and self-distancing from these more practical realities, was content to debate the issues of exploitation and class politics, without ever developing meaningful policies or programmes. Contrary to the writings of contemporary historians, and many contemporary adherents, republicanism was not primarily a physical-force tradition. The United Irish, Young Ireland and Fenian movements all adopted constitutional and parliamentary tactics at various stages in their development. The first two supported armed rebellion only after reform failed to produce meaningful results, while the Fenians were for most of their existence involved in some form of constitutionalism, whether through Parnell’s New Departure, the IRB’s cultivation of advanced political and cultural nationalism from the 1890s, or indeed their role in and position on the Treaty negotiations after the War of Independence. Indeed, for the IRB, armed and constitutional strategies and tactics were often deployed simultaneously – not unlike their adversaries in the British state – despite the

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IRB’s rhetorical insistence on privileging the former over the latter. Interestingly, early Irish socialism was affected by the separate but similar debates current within English socialism which, although not as crystallised as it was to become, engaged in heated debate about the merits of reform over revolution, and insurrection over parliamentary engagement. The form of republican politics as it evolved during the hundred years from the 1780s is equally important, combining as it does the participatory and very public approach of the United Irishmen’s desire ‘to make every man a politician’ with the underground, conspiratorial modalities of revolutionary armed rebellion. The popular dissemination of literature, and the popular forms of such literature, such as ballads, poems or political tracts, did more than just popularise political ideas, they shifted the location of politics into the public realm where the overwhelming majority of the male population lived. United Irish street-based polemicising reached new audiences when adopted by trade union and socialist activists in the second half of the nineteenth century, creating a level of political knowledge and activism which would profoundly challenge the status quo of the political elites. However, despite being driven by necessity, the more clandestine culture of the Fenians would sit uneasily with this radically democratic approach. As oath-bound societies became the primary mode of organisation within republicanism from the 1860s, it undoubtedly lost – albeit temporarily – one of its most innovative components. State repression and the fear of coercion, while primarily to blame for this shift, cannot be held responsible for the continuance of a culture of intrigue and secrecy dominating republican forms of organisation into the twentieth century. Arriving at a similar position but for very different reasons, the decision of the early Irish socialists to remain apart from the growing working-class trade union movement, and their more singular focus on debating societies, produced an elitism which acted as a barrier to a more meaningful relationship between socialist ideas and working-class political or industrial action.


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Possibly the most complex and contradictory legacy left by both socialism and republicanism concerns their different understandings of the fundamental antagonisms which existed within Irish society and between Ireland and Britain. From the time of the United Irishmen through to the Fenians, the antagonism of metropolis and colony was understood, and formed the key ideological and programmatic link between the two distinct periods and movements. However, the parallel antagonisms which existed between landlord and peasant, between employer and labourer, between men and women, and between Catholic, Presbyterian and Anglican, were of a more problematic nature. The Presbyterian United Irishmen understood the inequities of religious discrimination and actively formed an alliance with the Catholic Committee and Defenders. However their commitment to the full extension of rights – political, social and economic – to all sections of Irish society was much more conditional and contradictory. While the radicals endorsed universal male suffrage, few were willing to explore and challenge the inequities of wealth and economic power, or to contemplate the implications of Paine’s rights for women. The result was a union with the ‘men of no property’ on the most limited and fragile of bases. Young Ireland were a more diverse mix, containing a left, centre and right, as agrarian radicalism mixed shoulders with Carlylean Tory radicalism, with neither faction ever gaining ascendancy and both positions often competing within the same individual at different moments in their political career. Subsequently the Fenians resolved such problems by relegating questions of social and economic policy to a secondary position. Despite the close relationship between senior IRB leaders and Marx’s First International, post-Famine republicanism became singularly political in its focus. While undoubtedly part of this was a result of the desire to generate and preserve ‘national unity’, particularly in the post-1916 era, there was nonetheless an ideological imperative which saw the attainment of political objectives as strategically and chronologically prior to the form and content of a postindependence government.

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The socialists for their part returned the Fenian serve by focusing purely on questions of class and ignoring the broader political realities that surrounded them. All of these radical movements, however, refused to consider, even in its most moderate form, the reality of society’s social, economic, political and institutional exclusion of women. The rigidities of a gendered society in which male and female roles were clearly demarcated were never in doubt. But the refusal of male radicalism, whether republican or socialist, to respond in anything other than the negative when these inequalities were challenged should both surprise and disappoint. Figures such as Mary Ann McCracken, Anna Doyle Wheeler, William Thompson, Isabella Tod, and Fanny and Anna Parnell, all challenged the masculinised nature of politics throughout this period. The challenge would have to wait until the twentieth century before it would be finally heard, and even then changes within republicanism and socialism would be slow and reluctant. If these are the ideological, organisational and policy contours of republicanism and socialism as they developed from the 1870s, what were its consequences? Here the balance sheet is just as mixed. By the end of the nineteenth century both republicanism and socialism were marginal political positions, overshadowed on the nationalist side by the Home Rule movement, liberal and conservative unionism, and apolitical trade unionism. In terms of generating mass popular support or organisational strength the indications were not positive. An ideological and organisational legacy should not be confused with a meaningful and measurable political impact. Indeed, the 1880s and 1890s were, for the most part, an inhospitable period for the growth and development of radical politics in Ireland. Conservative unionism was gaining strength in the Protestant north; Catholic nationalism was near hegemonic among the remainder of the population; both political positions were succeeding in mobilising the newly enfranchised ‘lower classes’ to their respective causes; three successive republican rebellions – 1798, 1846, 1857 – all ended in failure; no republican or socialist organisation of any size or credibility appeared to exist; and, most significantly, the British


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Liberal government’s policy, reliant as it was on Irish MPs in the Commons, seemed close to resolving the key nationalist issue of legislative independence for Ireland. Despite the dramatic events of the previous one hundred years, there seemed little to show in terms of meaningful outcomes for either republicanism or socialism in Ireland.

2 THE ARRIVAL OF LEFT REPUBLICANISM

European politics from the 1880s through to the outbreak of the First World War was dominated by three overlapping realities, whose interactions did much to shape the contours of the twentieth century. Imperialism, democratisation and the growth of labour would together alter the map of domestic and inter-state political relations among the nations of Europe, and instigate a series of profound changes in the nature and shape of national, continental and global politics. Although colonial expansion had been a key feature of the eighteenth century from its outset, the 1880s ushered in a period in which much of the surface of the world was partitioned between the dominant powers of Europe. It was also during this period that Britain’s colonial dominance was challenged, principally by her emerging rival, Germany. Imperial historian Ronald Hyam described this period as ‘the decline of British pre-eminence’, arguing that for Britain: The key theme for the latter nineteenth century was ... a pessimistic search for stability in the context of an international scene dominated by the re-emergence of Britain’s expansionist rivals. All European powers were in the grip of the same worries about being left behind in the scramble for finite resources.1

Imperial competition and the need for colonial stability would become dominant themes in both Liberal and Conservative governments’ policy towards all colonies, including Ireland. It is impossible to understand the emerging Home Rule crisis or the British reaction to the republican Rising of 1916 outside of this context. 80

THE ARRIVAL OF LEFT REPUBLICANISM

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Imperial competition, and in particular the rise of Germany as Britain’s main economic rival on the world stage, also had a relevance for Britain’s strategic considerations of the ‘Irish Question’. While Sloan has suggested that from ‘1904 to the outbreak of the First World War, Germany had replaced France as Britain’s main European and naval rival’, the reality was that such concerns predated the advent of the twentieth century.2 German technological innovations and economic expansion from the 1880s onwards compounded what was perceived as ‘Britain’s long term relative economic decline’.3 If British policy makers came to view Ireland as the Achilles heel of British defences against French revolutionary politics from the 1780s through to the 1860s, the threat from the 1890s onwards was decidedly a German one, a fact not lost on the emerging Irish separatist movement. This period was also one of considerable colonial insurgency and conflict. The outbreak of the Anglo–Boer War in 1899 was followed by the Afrikaner rebellion in 1914 and the Irish rebellion in 1916, and by conflict in India and Egypt after 1918. The First World War itself had its origins in the breakdown of the balance of power relations, established during the latter half of the nineteenth century as a check on the expansionist policies of the major powers. The desire by some to extend this influence beyond the limits set would usher in the most sustained period of violence in world history, engulfing not just the continent of Europe but its colonial possessions. At its heart, the First World War was an imperial war in the deepest meaning of the term. The consequences of all of this for Anglo–Irish relations were significant. Political developments in Ireland were intricately connected, both in reality and in British policy makers’ minds, with the broader imperial and Anglo–German strategic considerations. The fate of the Empire and the security of Britain itself often appeared to rest upon the shoulders of London’s Irish policy. Following the advent of the Home Rule crisis in 1886, Gladstone’s policy of supporting reform for Ireland was viewed by many within the British political establishment as threatening to ‘disrupt the unity of the empire and promote social revolution at home’, as opening the way to ‘the relinquishment of Gibraltar,

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the abandonment of India, the repudiation of the Colonies, and the resignation of our duties as a great fighting powers’, and as sending a signal to ‘every subject race ... that we [England] were no longer able to cope with resistance’.4 Ireland was fast becoming the battleground upon which differing conceptions of imperial policy were increasingly fought. Behind this battle over imperial policy lay a more fundamental conflict that went to the very heart of British parliamentary politics. While Ireland was certainly not the cause of this deeper conflict it became, like the question of Empire, the site upon which a fundamental realignment of party politics would take place, as the British state began to respond to the increasing democratisation of political life. Home Rule was no longer about the amelioration of localised Irish political grievances, but was to become one of the key issues around which the emerging political formations of twentieth-century British politics would coalesce. Indeed, if the period in question can rightly be termed one of crisis in the British state, then Ireland would be one of the sites both for the experiencing of that crisis and for the articulation of its eventual resolution.5 From the early 1880s onwards a number of franchise reform acts were passed through the Westminster Parliament, the effect of which was to significantly increase the degree of male suffrage. Wood estimates that after the 1884 act, ‘about 60 per cent of the adult male population was enfranchised and the wealthier section of society often had the right to several votes in different constituencies’.6 He argues that in England ‘more than half of those now on the electoral register were working class’.7 Women remained excluded from these changes and would have to undertake considerable agitation up until 1918 to ensure that the franchise would be extended. In Ireland, the extension of the franchise to more than half a million considerably strengthened the hand of those campaigning for Home Rule. The need for urgent land reform and a continued belief in the merits of repealing the Act of Union were the dominant themes of nationalist political discourse. In this context, this extension of the franchise had two significant consequences on the nature of politics in Ireland and Britain.


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The election of 85 Home Rule MPs to Westminster in 1885, placed Irish concerns at the centre of British parliamentary politics. Gladstone, converted to the cause of reform in Ireland by the numerical strength of his new parliamentary allies, announced his intention to introduce a Home Rule bill the following year. Despite the defeat of the bill, 1892 once again gave Home Rulers the balance of power at Westminster, ensuring Gladstone would give the bill a second try. While this second attempt would fall in the Lords in 1893, renewed campaigning by the post-Parnell Irish Parliamentary Party under the leadership of John Redmond would ensure that the bill would eventually become law in 1914, only to be suspended until after the looming European war. The centrality of Home Rule had a profound impact on politics in Britain and the north of Ireland, providing the occasion if not the cause for a significant realignment of popular politics. It produced an increasingly aggressive Imperial discourse amongst Tory radicals led by Churchill and his emerging allies within the Chamberlain wing of the Liberals. Hyam notes that ‘time and again Gladstone’s bill was denounced as a scheme for the disintegration of the Empire. A typical contention was: once start the dangerous principle of disruption, once foster destructive centrifugal forces, and no-one could say where the end might be.’8 By the first decade of the twentieth century the Home Rule issue had mobilised the Conservative Party around a single, radical and unifying cause. The threat of treason, armed rebellion and civil war [making] 1910 a year of profound political crisis, the magnitude of which threatened not just particular party policies but the foundations of the political institutions themselves.9

For the Conservatives, Home Rule, and emerging Ulster Unionist resistance to it, was to become a battleground with the Liberals for control at Westminster. Tory Leader, Bonar Law, emphasising the point at a rally in Balmoral, argued that Home Rule was ‘a conspiracy as treacherous as had ever been formed against the life of a great nation’.10

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The impact of Tory mobilisation against Home Rule was to consolidate the emerging trend within northern Protestant politics, following the defeat of the Irish Liberals in 1885. A new, crossclass political constituency was taking root in the north east of the island, supplanting the liberal ascendancy politics that dominated unionism in the rest of the country. The growing Lagan Valley working class was mobilised in a novel social-imperialist project through interventions such as the signing of the Ulster Covenant by more than 200,000 men in 1912. This emerging movement explicitly linked opposition to Home Rule with maintenance of the material and cultural privileges of Empire. While securing significant support from Conservative allies in London it is important not to underestimate the organic and autonomous nature of this new movement. And so, Ireland at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century was dominated by the politics of imperialism and legislative independence. Empire was to be the focal point around which democratisation – in an Irish context – was to take root, with nationalism and unionism providing the intertwined political spaces within which popular mobilisation would take place. Demands for land reform and Home Rule would dominate nationalist Ireland’s political horizon, while for unionists, maintaining the benefits of Empire would characterise theirs. Trade union mobilisation would also experience a significant expansion during this period, but always within the context of, and in many respects subservient to, the meta-narratives of unionism and nationalism. Despite the tendency of many historians to view such developments as internal to Ireland, the overriding importance of both Liberal and Tory interventions into these spaces cannot be ignored. Home Rule was no localised dispute between the inhabitants of Britain’s closest colony. The investment of considerable energy and resources by Tories and Liberals did much to frame the nature of this emerging conflict, whose outcome was as conditioned by events in and interventions from Westminster as those in Belfast or Dublin. Equally, the eventual form of a settlement – the Anglo–Irish treaty and partition – owed more to the requirements of British political elites than those in Dublin or Belfast. While subsequent British


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governments would demonstrate a desire to extricate themselves from the Irish Question when its utility had expired, this should not distract us from the central role they played in constructing the political framework which would dominate Anglo–Irish relations for the century that followed.

James Connolly and the Irish Socialist Republican Party It was into this highly charged political climate that Ireland’s first explicitly republican socialist formation came into being. Its character, content and eventual failure cannot be fully understood outside the specific context of Ireland’s position within the British state system and the broader imperial crisis of the time. The ISRP was formed in 1896, during a meeting of the Dublin Socialist Society, and at first appeared to be another addition to the small collection of radical debating societies which were emerging in Ireland, according to Fintan Lane’s description, as an outpost of the British socialist revival.11 The initial manifesto of the party demanded the Establishment of An Irish Socialist Republic based on the public ownership by the Irish people of the land, and instruments of production, distribution and exchange. Agriculture to be administered as a public function, under boards of management elected by the agricultural population and responsible to them and to the nation at large. All other forms of labour necessary to the well being of the community to be conducted on the same principles.12

The ISRP was not, however, just another progressive debating society like the Saturday Club or Dublin branch of the Social Democratic Federation. Rather, this new radical party was determined to break with two of the prevailing practices of Irish socialists. They wanted to actively engage with the working class through campaigns and electoral interventions and to attempt to formulate a meaningful connection between the politics of Irish republicanism and the then dominant European social democratic project. Under the influence of their full-time organiser, James Connolly, the ISRP outlined a new and distinct programme which combined

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an understanding of the radical Fenian tradition of Fintan Lalor, as relayed through the words and activism of Scottish radical John Leslie, and the British and Scottish strands of the Marxist Second International. Their initial manifesto was clearly an attempt to integrate the by now standard features of a social democratic programme and strategy with the demand for full Irish independence. The document’s ten-point plan included a series of demands for public control of national resources, expansion of public services, reform of the tax system in order to increase available public expenditure, legislative improvements in workers conditions, and universal suffrage.13 These were followed by what was to become a classic definition of socialist republicanism: That the subjection of one nation to another, as of Ireland to the authority of the British Crown, is a barrier to the free political and economic development of the subjected nation, and can only serve the interests of the exploiting classes of both nations. That, therefore, the national and economic freedom of the Irish people must be sought in the same direction, viz. the establishment of an Irish Socialist Republic, and the consequent conversion of the means of production, distribution and exchange into the common property of society, to be held and controlled by a democratic state in the interests of the entire community.14

The manifesto went on to assert that ‘the conquest by the Social Democracy of political power in Parliament, and on all public bodies in Ireland, is the readiest and most effective means whereby the revolutionary forces may be organised and disciplined to attain that end’. Contained in this founding document is a clear expression of the fundamental tenets of socialist republicanism at its very moment of birth. The interrelationship between class exploitation and colonial exploitation, the need for national control of production, distribution and exchange, and a belief in the utility of democratic and parliamentary interventions to achieve these objectives, were to provide the cornerstone of the ISRP’s political composition and activity for the following seven years.


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For the duration of its short life, Connolly’s party remained a small and marginal element of the broader Dublin radical scene. While it gained some exposure in its campaign activity with republicans and nationalists – particularly through the anti-jubilee protests, the 1798 centenary commemorations, and the mobilisation on the Boer war – its electoral interventions demonstrated a stark absence of any real popular support. Initially supporting the Trade Union Congress inspired Labour Electoral Association (LEA), when fielding their own candidate in the 1899 Dublin municipal elections the ISRP’s Stewart failed to secure election while the LEA took 20 per cent of the vote. The LEA’s subsequent incorporation into the nationalist United Irish League (UIL) the following year saw relations with the ISRP sour. However, even the poor record of former LEA councillors did not alter the radicals’ electoral standing, as the ISRP failed to elect their candidate Thomas Lyng in 1900, and even Connolly himself could only muster a paltry 431 votes in 1902 and 243 votes in 1903. The 1902 election witnessed the party’s peak, securing 800 votes in total for three candidates. While historians have rightly pointed to factors such as the small size of the Dublin working class, the strength and appeal of other parties, and the impact of clientelism as reasons for the ISRP’s electoral failure, in themselves these factors do not fully explain the inability of the party to offer any significant opposition to the more traditionalist candidates of the LEA or the UIL.15 If electoral success evaded the small republican socialist party, they compensated for this with an intense volume of publications and campaigning. The Workers Republic appeared periodically from 1889 through to the party’s dissolution in 1904. It covered a broad range of national and international issues and was, in many respects, groundbreaking for its time. The paper even extended its coverage to trade union issues, unusual for a social democratic publication. However, as Lynch points out, a comparison of the space devoted to industrial issues as compared with the Boer War or local government elections clearly demonstrates that the party did not see the emerging trade union movement as a central arena of political engagement.

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The bulk of their political time and energy was devoted to campaign alliances with advanced nationalists from the constellation of organisations that gravitated around the Gaelic Revival and the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). The ISRP’s republicanism made common cause with such groups in the context of the 1798 centenary and Boer War mobilisations logical. However, their opposition to Home Rule nationalism led to conflicts over who had the right to participate in these campaigns. Such arguments were illustrative of the distinction drawn by the ISRP between the conservatism of traditional Irish nationalism, as evidenced by the UIL at a local and Westminster level, and the more radical advanced nationalists such as Arthur Griffith. Connolly’s support for this latter group was always contingent on the specific moment and issue, and the Workers Republic was not slow to criticise radical nationalists if it felt the occasion required it. Connolly’s belief that ‘honest and uncompromising nationalist friends’ would be ‘forced to adopt ... uncompromising hostility to all half way men and measures’, while true, would come to pass at a different time and in a different manner to the one envisioned by republican socialists.16 Ultimately the failure of the ISRP to develop electorally, in the very arena of political intervention it saw as central to the advance of its objectives, created strains on what was in truth a small and overstretched organisation, whose active membership never reached more than 80 people. Ideological disagreements over the relationship with the emerging trade union movement; failure to expand beyond the small circle of radical groups in Dublin; disagreements over whether to pursue revolutionary or reformist strategies; and its unsettling political relationship with nationalism, were all eventually too great for the party to bear, and in 1903 Connolly resigned as full-time organiser. The inability of this republican socialist project to grow, and its failure to exert any meaningful influence on the broader advanced nationalist movement – let alone position itself to become a hegemonic force in what was to emerge a decade later as the driving force of early twentieth-century Irish nationalism – is a question I will return to at the end of this chapter. For the moment however,


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it is sufficient to observe with Fintan Lane that, irrespective of its organisational and electoral failures, ‘the ISRP introduced a new vocabulary into the Irish left. Socialist republicanism was Marxian, revolutionist, strongly anti-imperialist and rooted in a sense of historical place.’17

After the Irish Socialist Republican Party Following a period of political and trade union activism in the USA, Connolly returned to Ireland in 1910. The three movements that constituted Dublin radicalism on his departure – advanced nationalism, socialism and trade unionism – had all experienced significant organisational and political advancements in the intervening years. The remnants of the ISRP and the Dublin branch of the Independent Labour Party founded the Socialist Party of Ireland (SPI) in 1904. Sinn Féin had been formed in 1905, and Arthur Griffith’s daily newspaper the United Irishman had a significant circulation. James Larkin and the National Union of Dockworkers were redefining the nature of trade union mobilisation through a series of dock strikes in Belfast and Dublin in 1907 and 1908. Although the political geography of the island was still dominated by the nationalist and unionist movements and the political debate over Home Rule, it was clear that radical political currents were beginning to impact on the broader political landscape. However, on Connolly’s arrival, the three different elements of the Irish radical scene had little political engagement with each other. The SPI was highly critical of what it saw as the conservatism of Griffith’s petit-bourgeois nationalism. For their part, and despite significant internal disagreements, Sinn Féin was by and large hostile to both the SPI and the trade unions. The latter, in turn, maintained a singular focus on labour issues, partly by design and partly through circumstance. For the next five years Connolly would immerse himself in the world of trade union organising, which had, since the arrival of Larkin some years earlier, focused on mobilising unskilled workers into large general unions, determined to use their collective strength and radical strike action to secure improvements in working

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conditions and pay. This new model unionism, emerging across the European continent during the period, challenged the timidity of the established craft unions and radicalised a growing section of workers. O’Connor rightly described these new developments as ‘an international acceleration of militancy ... representing, in particular, an Irish variant of syndicalism’.18 Employed by the Irish Transport and General Workers Union in Belfast from 1911, Connolly’s focus was on organising unskilled dock labourers and women mill workers from the predominantly nationalist north and west of the city. This was his first direct experience of the emerging Protestant working-class, Orange and unionist sectarianism, and the labour unionism articulated by William Walker. Connolly was also never far away from more explicitly political debates, focusing on which party-political form the emerging labour movement should support. A failed electoral contest in the 1913 municipal elections in Belfast and the outbreak of what was to become the Dublin lockout brought Connolly back to Dublin following the arrest of Jim Larkin. The eventual defeat of the labour movement, in what was without doubt its most important battle to date, coupled with the continued unwillingness of organised labour, whether north or south, to fully embrace the republican socialist party form that Connolly espoused, produced a degree of despondency. The onset of the First World War and the collapse of the Second International threw radicals across the continent into a deep political and ideological crisis, as the foundations of their outlook were increasingly challenged by the conservatism not only of the labour and trade union leaders, but of the rank-and-file membership as well. The growing disillusionment of socialists such as Connolly with the electoral strategy of social democracy was compounded by the increasing inability of Home Rule politics to advance the cause of legislative independence. Advanced nationalist groups, whether in the form of the IRB or Griffiths’ Sinn Féin, were articulating a more profound challenge to the impotence of the Irish Parliamentary Party in Westminster. As war approached, radical socialists and nationalists in Ireland believed, often for different reasons, that a new political space was opening


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up from which a more profound, indeed revolutionary, challenge could be mounted against both the conservatism of mainstream Irish political opinion and, more importantly, the political heart of the Empire itself. In the same way as new model trade unionism had radically altered the political geography of labour politics north and south during the first decades of the twentieth century, equally the increasing mobilisation of populist unionism – as evidenced in the mass signing of the Ulster Unionist Convention (1905) and the creation of the Ulster Volunteer Force (1912) – indicated a further consolidation of the social-imperial project opposing Home Rule. Its success in articulating a cross-class political identity, as discussed earlier, ensured that opponents of Home Rule in Britain would have a stronger argument in support of some form of exclusion of the north of Ireland from the eventual Home Rule settlement. Equally, while nineteenth-century Irish unionism was neither unified nor hegemonic amongst the country’s Protestant population, by the time the Home Rule bill came to pass in 1914 it was clear that an independent and autonomous northern unionism had succeeded in constructing a solid social and economic base, whose existence, notwithstanding nationalist wishful thinking, could neither be easily ignored nor undermined. In response, advanced nationalists, both radical and conservative, began a process of mass mobilisation and militarisation through the IRB-inspired Irish Volunteers. While still very much a minority political persuasion at the war’s onset, the determination of republicans to use the cover of the World War, and possible logistical support from Germany, to launch an armed rebellion against British rule in Ireland ensured that the hegemony of the Home Rule establishment was to be challenged. The Volunteers acquired a membership of some 30,000 members by 1914, as both Home Rule nationalists and radical republicans vied for control of the organisation.19 At the outbreak of war Redmond led the majority into the National Volunteers in order to participate in the war as part of a strategy of securing British support for postwar implementation of the Home Rule bill. Lee

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estimates that less than 10,000 remained in the anti-war Irish Volunteers, committed to some form of rebellion. Connolly had taken up the leadership of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union in 1914 following Larkin’s departure to the United States. In addition he also acted as editor of the union’s paper, the Irish Worker, and chairperson of the small Irish Citizens Army, a socialist variant of the Irish Volunteers. The departure of Redmond from the Volunteer movement enabled a working relationship between the socialists and advanced nationalists to develop. As preparations for rebellion approached, Connolly became convinced of the need for a socialist republican presence at the centre of events. Despite their misgivings, the IRB eventually allowed Connolly on to the Executive Committee responsible for planning the Rising. While undoubtedly a military failure, the Easter Rising of 1916 acted as a turning point in the popular Irish nationalist imagination, fatally undermining the conservative Home Rule politics, and replacing it with a more militant separatism. Lee’s assessment is probably the most balanced, recognising that for the rebels themselves victory would not have been unthinkable, particularly when one considers the balance of military forces in Ireland at the time.20 Moreover his assessment that the Rising, and its declaration of a republic, was ‘dedicated to the modernisation of Irish society’ is undoubtedly correct.21 By ‘promising equality of political, social, economic and religious opportunity’ for all the citizens of the country, it held out a definition of the republic that enabled advanced nationalists, republicans and republican socialists to participate. Connolly’s participation in the Rising, and his execution as one of its leaders, has provoked considerable debate among the Irish left. Desmond Greaves, in what is the classic republican socialist treatment of the issue argues that Connolly held that the national revolution was a prerequisite of the socialist revolution. But he did not arrive easily at a clear conception of their mutual relationship. At first he was inclined to identify them. Later he distinguished them as the political and economic aspects of the process. Finally he


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reached the conclusion that they were two stages of one democratic reorganisation of society.22

Morgan, however, rejects the retrospective imposition of this ‘stagist’ interpretation of Connolly’s involvement in the Rising: It is disingenuous to maintain that Connolly was working for a socialist revolution, though a ‘stagist’ conception of an imminent bourgeoisdemocratic revolution is more credible, if it could be shown that he was simply using nationalism to break through a historical obstacle ... Connolly had little faith in popular revolutionary activity, and he based his expectations on the McNeill volunteers. The ICA secured his admission to the IRB’s military council, and Connolly went to his death an unapologetic Fenian.23

There is little doubt that Greaves is guilty of imposing his own conceptual framework for socialist advance in Ireland on Connolly and his involvement in 1916. Nonetheless, Morgan is equally mistaken to dismiss the radical potential contained in the Rising for socialist republicans. His assertion that ‘there were many opportunities to articulate a socialist project’ ignores the central fact that Connolly’s move to embrace the rebellion was born out of the post lock-out collapse of the labour movement, its failure to move beyond the conservative restraints of Walker’s labour unionism or the political caution of the southern TUC, and the more general crisis of parliamentary European socialism. That Connolly was a Fenian should not be in doubt, if Fenian implies an anti-imperial and radical democratic articulation of the republican project. Nor should there be any dispute that his confidence in the ability of organised labour to advance socialist republican objectives, whether in trade unions or political parties, was clearly undermined by his practical experience. However, his participation in the Rising was not the result of either a ‘maturing’ of his politics, as argued by Greaves and Metscher, or an ‘abandoning’ of socialism in favour of nationalism, as argued by Morgan. Rather, caught in the specific political moment, with the available options limited to participating in an alliance with advanced nationalists and republicans or remaining on the

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margins of what was becoming one of the central dynamics of Irish politics, Connolly’s political instincts drove him towards rebellion. That this participation was the logical outcome of both his socialist republican ideological framework – expressed from 1896 onwards – and his practical political experience over 20 years in Ireland and the United States is without doubt. Nor was his participation in the IRB-dominated insurrection without its own limitations and contradictions, the consequences of which would only become clear in the post-Rising period. In the end, the rebellion, while failing to succeed in its immediate objectives of establishing a national republic, did force a widening of the existing space for a popular radical republicanism, the existence of which would, within a decade, displace Home Rule nationalism as the dominant force in Irish politics, present a more profound challenge to the continued British control over Irish affairs, and mobilise a more direct confrontation with both Irish unionism and British imperialism. The participation of Connolly and the Irish Citizens Army in these events did not displace the dominance of the more socially conservative Fenianism of the IRB, but it did ensure that a more radical socialist republican discourse would continue to be available for later generations of activists seeking to combine the national and socio-economic dimensions of the republican project.

Assessment Connolly, and more generally Irish socialist republicanism during this period, have received an unprecedented amount of scholarly and political attention. Despite the undisputable political failure of all of the party political formulations in which he participated, and the limited ideological impact his writings had on the broader radical socialist and nationalist scene in Dublin at the time, historians and political commentators have expended a considerable degree of time and energy debating the history and impact of republican socialist politics and ideas. Indeed the result, in terms of articles and books, is well out of proportion to the actual impact Connolly and his ideas had


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on their time. This is as much a reflection of his importance to subsequent generations of radical intellectuals as it is a symptom of the lack of subsequent figures of equal historical or intellectual importance. The end result is that Connolly remains one of the most studied political figures of early twentieth-century Ireland, and in turn these studies reflect a series of broader debates within and about the Irish left. The history of the mobilisations of Connolly’s ideas in the service of subsequent political projects has meant that his activism, ideas and their impact continue to be a matter of significant contest. He has been used as an ideological weapon by nationalists, left republicans, Leninists and revisionists alike, in order to legitimise specific interventions into Irish history and to debate left republicanism’s relevance to and place within that history. In the immediate post-1916 period, Connolly, like the other executed leaders of the rebellion, was transformed into a nationalist icon. Pamphlets by activists like Constance Markievicz (1925) and historians such as Owen Dudley Edwards (1968) did much to emphasise his contribution to national struggle while simultaneously downplaying the relevance of his socialism.24 Subsequently, and following the influential publication of Greaves’ biography of Connolly in 1961, he was held to support the then official communist line on national liberation struggles, endorsing broad working class–petit-bourgeois alliances in a stages conception of history where national revolution preceded social revolution. Berresford Ellis’ History of the Irish Working Class, published a decade later, emphasised this point. However, such deterministic readings of Connolly faced a significant challenge from left-revisionist political historians from 1979 onwards, following the publication of Bew, Patterson and Gibbons’ The State in Northern Ireland in that year, Morgan’s biography in 1988, and Patterson’s The Politics of Illusion published in 1989. These writers have produced a considered and powerful critique of the central tenets of Connolly’s socialism, with a particular focus on the relationship between nationalism and socialism, and Connolly’s treatment of the issues of unionism and the politics of land. More recently Allen (1990), Metscher (2002)

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and Lynch (2005) have reasserted the importance of Connolly’s socialist republicanism, but have failed to either respond to or counter the substance of the revisionist claims. Indeed, while accepting the limitations of earlier nationalist and orthodox socialist readings of Connolly, they repeat the same mistake by retrospectively imposing their own ideological frameworks and political desires onto their subject matter. The end result is that the complexities and contradictions of Connolly’s activism and ideas remain uninterrogated as these writers seek not only to defend the idea that Connolly continues to have relevance today for the advancement of republican socialism, but also attempt to mobilise him in support of their own specific political projects. Political parties have also sought to mobilise various interpretations and critiques of Connolly in the service of their own organisational and ideological projects. Sinn Féin continue to emphasise the importance of Connolly in their attempt to articulate a modern form of left republicanism, as is evidenced by Gerry Adams’ chapter on socialism in the Politics of Irish Freedom (1989) and the party’s recent Sinn Féin: 100 Years of Struggle (2005). The Irish Labour Party vacillate between embracing Connolly’s historical importance as one of the founders of Irish social democracy and distancing themselves from the more radical consequences of his republican and trade union militancy. Meanwhile smaller and less influential left organisations such as the Socialist Workers Party, the Socialist Party and the Workers Party frequently quote Connolly against each other in the perpetual and peripheral battle over who has access to the ‘correct’ interpretation of their founding father. However, like their academic counterparts, all of these parties – and this includes Sinn Féin – in their rush to lay claim to the mantle of Connolly, fail to grasp either his historic significance or his contemporary relevance. The end result is not so much a debate on the issues at hand as an arid ideological stand-off between defenders and detractors of multiple Connollys and their legacies, the former ignoring his limitations, weaknesses and contradictions, arguing that he provides a template for contemporary political thought and


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action, while the latter refuse the possibility of any contemporary relevance, calling on the reader to abandon him completely. In this author’s view, a more sensible and fruitful position can be found somewhere between these two.

Connolly’s Socialism Connolly’s socialism, as articulated from the foundation of the ISRP, was grounded in the intellectual influences absorbed during his political apprenticeship in Edinburgh during the early 1890s. A member of the local branch of the Social Democratic Federation, his knowledge of international socialism and the ideas of Karl Marx were acquired through the particularly English prism of Henry Myers Hyndman, who was the driving force behind Britain’s first coherently socialist political party. Hyndman was a controversial figure in the emerging European socialist scene at the time, receiving support from leading figures such as Kautsky while attracting the derision and suspicion of Engels and Marx. Lane notes that ‘Hyndman perceived the imminence of profound political and social changes in Britain but, as he wrote to Marx in February 1880, he wished these alterations to occur “without troubles, or dangerous conflict.” He wanted a peaceful social upheaval.’25 This ‘gradualism’ was to be characteristic of Hyndman’s approach to socialist politics. As a result of his developing commitment to Marxism, he formed the Democratic Federation (DF) in 1881 in an attempt to mould the then disparate radical political currents in England into a single socialist political movement. His eclectic first manifesto, entitled England for All, mixed ambiguous support for the benefits for Empire and the need for universal male suffrage with the Marxist critique of capitalist exploitation of the working class, as outlined in Das Kapital. Eighteen-eighty-three saw the publication of the more overtly socialist Socialism Made Plain, which outlined the basis of Hyndman’s critique of and alternative to capitalism: So long as the means of production, either of raw materials or of manufactured goods are the monopoly of one class, so long must the

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labourers on the farm, in the mine or in the factory sell themselves for a bare subsistence wage. As land must in future be a national possession, so must the other means of producing and distributing wealth. The creation of wealth is a social business, where each is forced to cooperate with his neighbour; it is high time that exchange of the produce should be social too, and removed from the control of individual greed and individual profit.26

The following year the DF formally changed its name to the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), and although it never developed a membership of more than several thousand, it would do much to shape the form and character of future British socialist politics. Developments in Britain mirrored events across Europe, as socialist groups were forming alongside the expansion of the trade unions. Similar parties emerged in Germany, Italy and France. While there was no necessary correlation or relationship between these radical parties and the growing trade unions, their parallel appearance was part and parcel of the broader democratisation of working-class life throughout the continent. Eighteen-eighty-nine saw the coming together of left leaders from across Europe to form the Second International, whose proceedings would codify the developing socialist movement, providing it with its language and logic until its implosion provoked by the arrival of the First World War. This emerging movement, according to its most accomplished historian Donald Sassoon, had, ‘as its long-term goal, the destruction of capitalism and the establishment of a society where production would be subjected to the associated control of the producers, and not left to the mercy of the spontaneous decisions of millions of consumers and the calculations of thousands of capitalists’.27 However, the primary political focus of the Second International was on the attainment of a series of basic reforms the aim of which was ‘to make working-class life under capitalism endurable and dignified, and to enable workers to organize freely and independently’.28 Sassoon argues that this codification involved three basic propositions that did much to shape the contours of early twentieth-century European socialism. The first being that the inequalities of capitalism were caused by the relationship between


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the wage labourer and capital. The second was that history is made up of epochs defined by differing economic systems, implying that the present system, capitalism, was neither permanent nor secure. And third, that workers constituted a unified political subject in their own right, who through collective organisation could overthrow capitalism and lead humanity into a new era of social and economic equality.29 While early socialist parties were slow to appreciate the importance of organised labour in this third proposition, it would become increasingly apparent that political power and trade union strength were two sides of the one organisational and strategic coin. Thus, the basic features of early European socialism were revolutionary in aspiration while strategically reformist, simultaneously appealing to the increasingly conscious industrial working class while threatening the liberal and conservative political elites who dominated the continent’s political landscape. All of these elements were incorporated into Connolly’s socialism, through his exposure to SDF lectures and publications before his arrival in Ireland. Indeed the founding statement of the ISRP is in many respects a direct transposition from existing SDF documents of the time. While its innovation lay clearly in its demand for Irish independence and the recognition of the negative impact of imperialism, its socialism was no different from the European mainstream. Yet, while Connolly’s continental contemporaries experienced a dramatic period of initial political growth from the 1880s through to 1914, in Ireland socialism made little significant headway in either its republican or labourunionist forms. Unfortunately for Connolly and the ISRP, Ireland in the 1890s and indeed in the first decades of the twentieth century bore little comparison with the rapidly industrialising countries of Europe such as Britain, Germany, France or Italy. With the exception of the Lagan Valley shipbuilding industry and northern linen mills, all located in the north east, the economy was almost exclusively agricultural. The demand for land reform and legislative independence dominated local politics, leaving little space for the kind of socialism articulated by the parties of the Second

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International. Lee is correct is arguing that Connolly’s ‘fatal tactical error was his reluctance to acknowledge the existence of rural Ireland’.30 While the period witnessed the rapid expansion of Social Democratic and Labour parties in other parts of Europe, the crowded political space of Ireland, with the issue of Home Rule at its axis, ensured that there was little prospect of a party such as the ISRP, or more generally the ideas of a socialist such as Connolly, taking any firm root in Irish political soil. While those socialist organisations that predated the ISRP simply refused to engage with the broader politics of Irish nationalism, thus relegating themselves to the margins of Irish political life, Connolly simply bolted a radical Fenian-inspired republicanism onto an already existing socialist formula developed to suit a different political and economic context. In short, the three fundamental pillars of Second International socialism had little purchase in Ireland at the turn of the century. The primary relationship of exploitation was an imperial one, pitting landlord against peasant and nationalist against imperialist. Ireland’s history did not fit into the strictly defined schema of a progression from feudalism to capitalism, since its colonial relations placed it outside the normative narrative of continental European Marxism. Indeed, that narrative’s privileging of the working class as the subject of revolutionary change jarred against the reality of Ireland, where the only existing industrial working class was increasingly and aggressively defending the imperial, constitutional and social status quo, while supposedly backward and feudal rural labourers and small landowners were the driving force behind radical movements for change throughout the course of the nineteenth century. As a theoretical framework for understanding Irish society and guiding political engagement and action, Second International socialism was wholly unable to comprehend or respond to the contingent political and economic circumstances that existed in Ireland. For Morgan, the rigid application of Second International Marxism ‘proved a poor guide to political action’, obscuring ‘the agrarian backwardness of Ireland in 1896’ while failing to ‘appreciate the political significance of regional industrializa-


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tion in Ulster’.31 His point being that, rather than supporting a reactionary nationalism, Connolly would have been better served engaging with the emerging labour-unionist politics of Walker and others. A more balanced assessment would argue that by applying a political programme and theoretical framework developed in a significantly different social and economic context, Connolly’s socialism had little relevance or meaning to the working class or rural labourers in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Ireland, north or south, and as a consequence remained marginal to their concerns. What ensured the ideological survival of Connolly’s ideas, in contrast to the many other socialist writers and activists of the time, was his embrace of republicanism. By playing a role, albeit minor, in the important oppositional anti-imperial campaigns of the day, and ultimately in the 1916 Rising itself, he would continue to have a relevance where others clearly did not. But his inability to articulate a socialist project which spoke to the specific and contingent needs of Irish society at the time not only explains why his political project failed where that of radical or advanced nationalists succeeded, but surely provides the most compelling explanation for the failure of either the ISRP or Connolly’s other investments to become anything resembling an important national political force. That Connolly shares this failure both with his nonrepublican socialist contemporaries and subsequent generations of republican socialists alike, simply serves to make the point more salient in the present.

Connolly’s Republicanism Connolly’s republicanism was, like his socialism, learned during his early years of political activism in Scotland. The source, however, is of a distinctly Irish origin. The influence of John Leslie’s Present Position of the Irish Question cannot be underestimated, and contributed as much to the formation of his socialist republicanism as Hyndman’s Socialism Made Easy. Leslie’s history of nineteenth-century Irish radicalism mobilised Fintan Lalor, the Fenians and the Land League in the defence of an Irish republic,

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seeking to combine the struggle for legislative independence with the social content of ownership of the land by the people. For Leslie, the failure of nineteenth-century Irish radicalism was a consequence of the narrowing of its political vision, focusing exclusively on the form of Home Rule to the virtual exclusion of its social content. Thus, Leslie’s republicanism is closest to that of Lalor and Davitt than to the Fenian mainstream.32 The importance of Lalor to Connolly was further reinforced following his attendance at Fred Ryan’s 1896 lecture on ‘The Social Side of the Irish Question’.33 According to Allen: Connolly saw a parallel between Lalor’s fight within the nationalist movement against the majority of Young Irelanders and the ISRP’s fight with the Home Rulers. Soon after the Ryan lecture, Connolly produced excerpts from Lalor’s writings in what was the ISRP’s first pamphlet. ... It presented a deliberate attempt to root the ISRP in an earlier tradition of Irish nationalism.34

Allen is clearly right to highlight both the influence of Lalor on Connolly’s politics, and his attempt to situate the ISRP within the broader radical Fenian tradition. But it is more likely that he drew a parallel with Lalor’s critical engagement with Young Ireland in relation to the ISRP’s developing collaboration with the advanced nationalists of the IRB and Griffith rather than his opposition to the Home Rule movement, who would have been viewed as akin to the social conservatism of O’Connell rather than the more radical Young Irelanders. All of this begs the question, however, as to what constituted the basis of Connolly’s support for the radical republican demand for national independence. Indeed the ideological departure that this position entailed was not just a break with the prevailing socialist currents in Ireland at the time, none of which were seriously engaged in the national question, but represented a serious break with the Second International. Allen rightly points out that the International generally ‘assigned a passive role to the working class of colonised countries’ seeing their welfare as dependent on the primary struggles being carried out in the metropolitan centres of the ‘developed’ capitalist states.35 Supporting Home


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Rule was certainly compatible with such an approach, but only when couched in a paternalistic discourse of ‘improving the lot of the citizens in the colonies’ rather than affording it any progressive potential in its own right. Despite considerable debate, there remains no convincing account of the why of Connolly’s republicanism. Accounts of his acquiring an ethnic consciousness from the Irish diaspora in Edinburgh (Ransom); his developing critique of social democratic reformism in the ILD and SDF (Allen); or the revisionist argument that in fact Connolly only developed a nationalist identity in the last two years of his life (Morgan), all lack empirical foundation. While the sources of his republicanism (Leslie, Ryan, Lalor) are not in doubt, nor is its centrality to his developing political consciousness from the foundation of ISRP onwards, one of the most interesting questions – how and why he came to break with conventional socialist thinking on the subject, enabling him to make what is without doubt his most important intellectual innovation, namely, the articulation of a socialist republicanism – will remain, for the moment, unanswered. However, this should not prevent us from fully understanding the detail of that innovation. From the very outset of the ISRP Connolly argued for an integrated approach to the social and national aspects of the struggle for Irish freedom: The struggle for Irish freedom has two aspects: it is national and it is social. Its national ideal can never be realized until Ireland stands before the world a nation free and independent. It is social and economic because, as long as one class owns as their private property the land and instruments of labour, from which all mankind derives their subsistence, that class will always have it in their power to plunder and enslave the remainder of their fellow creatures.36

Thus, the republican aspiration to political independence, breaking from the bondage of colonial domination by Britain, is only one element in the emancipation of the Irish people; indeed it is a prerequisite for their complete emancipation through the dismantling of capitalist relations of exploitation. Connolly’s

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republicanism intertwines the political and social, making them mutually dependent. The logic of this interdependence would not only impact on the ideological and strategic character of that struggle – ‘the party which would aspire to lead the Irish people from bondage to freedom must then recognize both aspects’37 – but would also provide an innovative definition of the Irish nation itself. On the eve of the 1916 Rising Connolly asked: We are out for Ireland for the Irish. But who are the Irish? Not the rackrenting, slum-owning landlord; not the sweating, profit-grinding capitalist; not the sleek and oily lawyer; not the prostitute pressman – the hired liars of the enemy. Not these are the Irish upon whom the future depends. Not these, but the Irish working class, the only secure foundation upon which a free nation can be reared.38

And here lies the most powerful explanation of why his republicanism remained, as did Lalor’s, a minor current within the broader nationalist movement. Connolly’s definition of the nation, and his privileging of the working class as the sole agent of progressive social and political change, collided with the cultural and social reality of nationalism and unionism. While operating within the broader nationalist movement ensured that his ideas and activism would take their place as a minor narrative within the broader struggle, that same nationalist political and cultural context, ‘with its implicit and explicit avocation of pan-class alliances, was probably the greatest obstacle that confronted modern socialism’.39 Lane’s assessment, however, is only part of the picture. In the same way as Connolly’s rigid application of Second Internationalist Marxism failed to articulate a social project which had any direct meaning for the majority of Ireland’s working class and rural labourers, likewise the impact of his Marxism on earlier forms of radical social republicanism rejected the then hegemonic cultural and political identities of Irish nationalism and unionism. Ireland’s macropolitical context was that of the politics of Empire and its colonial relationship with Britain. The country’s dominant political subjectivities were formed in response to that context, something that Marxism was ill equipped to understand at that stage of its development. For labour unionists Connolly’s


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republicanism ran in direct contradiction to their material and cultural interests, while for advanced nationalists the logical conclusion of his Marxism held little practical organisational or strategic value. The end result was the same: failure. Connolly’s political life ended as it had started, advocating a marginal ideological position, connected primarily with organisations that had little popular support or meaningful political impact.

Connolly and Unionism For revisionists such as Patterson, Bew and Morgan, Connolly’s embrace of nationalism and rejection of municipal labourism and unionism marks one of the central theoretical weaknesses of the socialist republican project. Connolly’s inability to properly understand the complex relationship between the unionist working and middle classes, they argue, is a function of his uninterrogated acceptance of cultural nationalism, and nationalism’s failure to appreciate the structural nature of Irish working-class unionism and its relationship to the British state. The revisionists are correct to highlight the superficiality of those republican narratives which argue that the Protestant working classes were ‘manipulated’ or ‘duped’ by their political leaders in the Ulster Unionist Party and Orange Order, in turn adopting political positions and strategies at odds with their ‘objective class interests’, that is, support for republican socialism. Bew, Patterson and others have, in response, attempted to return Protestant working-class agency to their accounts of the period. In doing so they have argued that nationalist/republican readings of unionism have led to an underestimation of the depth and autonomous nature of unionist opposition to Home Rule and subsequent support for partition. In turn, they argue, the issue of working-class unionist support for the union is conveniently removed from republican political horizons, leading to the naive belief that once the historic imperial antagonism which lay at the heart of Anglo–Irish relations was resolved, the ‘illusions of Orangism’ would collapse, undermining the always brittle cross-class alliance that constituted Ulster unionism, enabling northern Protestants to discover their true Irish

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cultural and political identity.40 Thus, for Patterson, ‘Connolly seriously under-estimated the capacity of the Protestants of Ulster, including the majority of Belfast’s working class, to frustrate the aspiration for territorial unity.’41 The substance of Patterson and Bew’s critique is stronger when applied to subsequent generations of left republican readings of Connolly, than to Connolly himself. First, they underestimate the degree of fluidity that existed in working-class Protestant political and cultural subjectivities at the start of the twentieth century. It would not have been impossible for Connolly and his contemporaries to imagine significant Protestant working-class support for Home Rule infused with social democratic politics rather than partition as a defence of social-imperial privileges. Graham Walker, in his biography of leading unionist Labour MP Harry Midgley, argues that even as late as 1920 a ‘Home Rule settlement with the maintenance of close ties with the rest of the United Kingdom had been desired by the majority [of the Labour movement] including Midgley’.42 While Midgley’s own political career testifies to the dramatic closure of this political space in the decades after partition, it also undermines the rigid political subjectivity retrospectively imposed by revisionist readings of the Lagan Valley Protestant working class at the turn of the twentieth century. That this imposition is a consequence of their uncritical acceptance of later twentieth-century political and cultural identities is clearly the case, as the revisionists mobilise their own cultural and economic essentialism in opposition to the cultural essentialism of Irish nationalism. In so doing they close themselves off to the possibilities which clearly existed during Connolly’s time. Both Connolly republicans (Greaves, Allen and Metscher) and their revisionist critics (Patterson, Bew et al.) are guilty of allowing essentialism (the former cultural, the latter economic) to limit their readings of the interrelationship between socio-economic realities and political affiliations. In so doing, both have failed to grasp the materially contingent nature of unionism in general and workingclass unionism in particular as a political force in Irish politics. However, a closer reading of Connolly suggests that, while clearly


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constrained by the limitations highlighted by the revisionists, a more sophisticated reading of unionism is available. The revisionists also conflate the dominant cultural nationalism of fin de siècle nineteenth-century Ireland with the republican socialist conceptions of citizenship that underlay Connolly’s nationalism. In his debate with the leading Belfast labour unionist William Walker in 1911, Connolly argued that he did ‘not care where you were born – we have had Jews, Russians, Germans, Lithuanians, Scotsmen, and Englishmen in the SPI – but I do care where you earn your living, and I hold that every classconscious worker should work for the freedom of the country in which he lives’.43 In response, Walker’s argument rested on an appreciation that much of the economic benefit of his own section of the Irish working class rested on maintenance of the union and its imperial dividend. However, as evidenced in the 1905 north Belfast by-election, labour unionism was as willing to mobilise sectarian rhetoric in its opposition to constitutional change as its conservative counterpart, ensuring that unlike Connolly’s civic Irish nationalism, Walker’s unionism was more communal and exclusivist than internationalist. Indeed rather than blind him to the reality of northern working-class Protestant attachment to the union, Connolly’s refusal to embrace a culturally or ethnically based nationalism enabled him to see the materially constructed nature of the unionist cross-class alliance, albeit with less sophistication than was probably required.44 His attempts to articulate a class-based conception of citizenship allowed him to see beyond the cultural and political subjectivities forming around the opposing poles of nationalism and unionism, enabling him to imagine the possibility of a different conception of who constituted the Irish nation and on what basis. That subsequent generations of Connolly republicans chose to ignore the contingent and historically specific moment in which Connolly was writing is clearly a failing rightly exposed by the revisionists. The general crisis in the nature of Irish and British state politics from the end of the nineteenth through the first two decades of the twentieth century involved a period when political identities in both countries were fluid and in transition. That

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the Anglo–Irish settlement and its creation of two partitionist, culturally homogeneous states narrowed and eventually closed off the possibilities that existed in Connolly’s time is without doubt. While the failure of Connolly republicans to understand the specificities of his moment ensured that their grip on the political and cultural reality that was post-partition unionism would always be tenuous. However, the revisionists’ deterministic reading of the cultural and economic base of unionism equally closed them off to the possibilities that existed at the start of the twentieth century, and which could return should the contingencies of history allow. Connolly’s failure to build any meaningful Protestant workingclass support was a function of the material and cultural benefits of Empire and social-imperialism set against the promise of socialist republicanism as a marginal element of a broader national project whose economic and cultural benefits were hard to see from the position of the Lagan Valley. But while this failure was not inevitable, considering the balance of forces in play, it was always probable.

Connolly and Gender There is no doubt that Connolly, both in his writings and political activism, was one of the most advanced campaigners for women’s equality of his day. Indeed he is the first Irish republican to both articulate a detailed position on the issue of gender inequality and to advocate and involve himself in the collective organisation of women in pursuance of social, economic and political change. From the very outset, in the founding manifesto of the ISRP of 1896, the party advocated universal suffrage and free maintenance of all children, the effects of which would have empowered women greatly in both the political and the domestic sphere. However, as Anderson rightly points out, the ISRP ‘did not devote its energies to an active campaign in favour of women’s rights – the party in fact did not have a single woman member’.45 Despite this, the significance of the inclusion of women’s rights in the discourse of the party should not be dismissed. The more comprehensive


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demand for ‘complete political and social equality between the sexes’ was central to the Independent Labour Party founded by Connolly and others in 1912.46 And it is widely believed that the inclusion of women as an independent political subject – ‘Irishmen and Irishwomen’ in the opening lines of the 1916 Rising proclamation, as well as its commitment to ‘equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens’ – was a consequence of Connolly’s involvement. For Connolly, ending gender inequality was as central to his political project as ending class oppression: ‘Of what use to such sufferers can be the re-establishment of any form of Irish state if it does not embody the emancipation of womanhood.’47 More than this, Connolly understood the structural nature of gender inequality in capitalist society. He made explicit the relationship between private property, patriarchy – such as male inheritance of that property – and the exclusion of women from economic power. He also understood the double exploitation of women workers as workers but also as women: ‘The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave.’48 This in turn led Connolly to become an active campaigner for female suffrage after his return from the USA, as well as a keen organiser of women workers, particularly in the linen mills of Belfast. He argued that they should ‘interest themselves in the organisation of the working women and girls, not for suffragette purposes alone, but for the material benefits of the workers as well’.49 However, while Connolly understood gender inequality in political and economic terms, he was unable to apply the same logic to social relations, particularly when it came to the role of women within the family. The politics of sex, divorce and parenting, and the gendered division of both domestic life and the division of the public and private sphere, remained beyond his intellectual and cultural horizons. He had carried the egalitarian logic of radical republican socialism as far as it could go but was unable to un-think the gendered nature of social relations which characterised contemporary Irish and British society. In this sense he was both more advanced than both the mainstream

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of the internationalist socialist and labour movement and Irish nationalism and republicanism, while simultaneously anticipating many of the limitations that would be subject to the criticisms of socialist feminists half a century later.

The Connolly Paradox There is something very ironic in the fact that Connolly’s greatest ideological achievement – the articulation of a coherent socialist republican politics – is also the source of that project’s perpetual political failure. It is this paradox that socialist republican and Marxist writers and activists have studiously ignored and revisionist scholars exposed with such fervour. The reasons for both the enduring attraction of Connolly’s socialist republicanism and its continual marginalisation from the Irish political mainstream are surely to be found here. The tragedy of Connolly scholarship and political debate is that, in the rush to legitimise specific political projects in the present, writers have chosen not to see what is of most benefit in his project, namely the practical political relevance to the present of the failure of his specific left-republican articulation in the past. That Connolly developed, in systematic fashion, a coherent political logic and discourse resting on the interconnectedness of the national and social struggles for political and economic emancipation of the Irish people unquestionably met a number of ideological needs for radical movements in Ireland at the turn of the twentieth century. The overlapping realities of imperialism, capitalism and patriarchy constituted the overarching political context within which localised struggles for reform and change were taking place. Connolly’s socialist republicanism spoke to these struggles and provided them with an explanatory framework until then absent in Irish society. His recognition that national independence would prove meaningless unless coupled with a parallel transformation of the economic and social architecture of contemporary Irish society was proved correct in the immediate post-26-County independence period. Likewise, and contrary to the claims of left revisionists, his reading of the dangers of social-


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imperialism’s appeal to the unionist working class and the dangers of partition for the political development of the island was also borne out by subsequent political developments. Yet, while Connolly’s intellectual framework spoke to the generality of the specific historical moment in which he lived, it was in the outworking of that framework that its weaknesses emerged. At an ideological level, the limitations of Second International Marxism, combined with Connolly’s inability to meaningfully integrate his socialism with a radical democratic conception of the nation, led to a series of political, strategic and tactical pitfalls which neither he nor his successors would find easy to overcome. His inability to articulate these two central elements of the socialist republican project in a form more conducive to building a popular movement for change in Ireland led ultimately to his failure. Subsequent generations of left republicans, unwilling or unable to interrogate this central weakness, have ended up either strategically privileging one side or the other in the national/ social relationship – choosing nationalism or socialism as the task in most urgent need of attention, or jettisoning one in favour of the other, all with equally limited success. To his credit, Connolly was the first to successfully articulate a left-republican project, that, while unsuccessful, at least offered a way of integrating the complex issues of class, gender and nation, in turn holding out the possibility of a truly radical democratic project for national and social emancipation. The job of work for left republicans today is not simply to use Connolly as a ‘declarative resource’ in the slogan-dominated battles for ownership of our shared ideological inheritance. A more successful enterprise may be found in a critique and rearticulation of those elements that form the core of the socialist republican enterprise. While the historical context has not always been conducive, nor the appropriate theoretical and organisational tools always available for such an endeavour, the fact remains that despite the great volume of discussion and debate, this central paradox of Connolly’s socialist republicanism has remained obscure as contemporary politics continues to prevent various protagonists from getting to grips with the utility of Connolly’s

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failure. In a sense, defenders of Connolly’s project are right to view him as providing a powerful explanatory framework for understanding and attempting to change contemporary political and economic realities, while at the same time revisionist writers have, albeit often for the wrong reasons and with the wrong conclusions, pinpointed the substantial weaknesses in the way in which that framework was deployed by Connolly and continues to be deployed by later generations of Irish radicals. There is a need for a renewed debate about the ideological resources and limitations offered by the writing and activism of James Connolly. Central to this must be an attempt to unpack his nationalism, socialism, feminism and anti-imperialism. Understanding that these articulations were contingent on his specific historical location does not devalue them in the present. Rather, it requires us to readjust and recalibrate their form if they are to have any utility for our interventions in the present political conjuncture.

3 LEFT-REPUBLICAN INTERVENTIONS

Left Republicanism on the Margins: 1916–26 The year 1916 is rightly viewed as a turning point in modern Irish history. The military and political intervention by the radical separatist Irish Republican Brotherhood and the subsequent British government response – imprisonments and executions – actively undermined the hegemony of John Redmond’s conservative Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) across much of Ireland, while simultaneously consolidating that of Edward Carson’s Ulster Unionist Party in the north east of the island. That the Rising itself was contingent on a series of other factors, such as the inability of the IPP to secure the enactment of Home Rule and the threat of conscription by the British government, is not in dispute. Nor is the fact that the political impact of the actual rising was less significant than that of the state’s response to the insurgents, both in terms of the execution of the primary leaders and the imprisonment of the large number of advanced nationalists. Irish republicanism emerged in the immediate post-Rising period both stronger and more cohesive and with a greater degree of public support. However the real significance of the Rising is often missed in mainstream historical accounts, whose focus is primarily on the internal dynamics of Irish politics at the time. If, as argued in Chapter 2, the period following the 1880s can be understood as a crisis in the British state, and by extension in both the composition of the Irish state and its relationship to London, then 1916 is both the high point of that crisis and the opening moment of its eventual, if only partial, resolution. As noted in the previous chapter, the period surrounding the 1916 Rising was marked by anti-colonial insurgencies in South Africa (1914), India (1919) 113

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and elsewhere. While Hyam is right to suggest that ‘the First World War brought in its train a number of shocks, providing widespread evidence of the growing unpopularity of British rule and the imperial connection’, the war in itself cannot explain the deeper structural crisis underway at that time.1 Indeed, rather than view the crisis as one of imperial decline, as does Hyam, it may be more fruitful to follow Langan and Schwarz’s thesis in describing it in more specific terms as a crisis of the late-Victorian liberal state. Langan and Schwarz argue that ‘in the closing decades of the nineteenth century the liberal state and its attendant modes for regulating civil society could no longer be reproduced by means of liberal policies, practices and objectives’.2 Paraphrasing Dangerfield’s seminal study, The Strange Death of Liberal England, they suggest that ‘in the years from 1910 to 1914 the multiple threats to the social order – manifest in the struggles of the syndicalists, the suffragettes and the opponents of Irish Home Rule – had, even before the outbreak of war, brought about the death of liberal England’.3 As the old liberal hegemony crumbled, a number of new ‘collectivist’ and ‘statist’ projects emerged, competing for dominance in the race to recast and rebuild the new state formation after the war. In the British context, Langan and Schwarz identify these new formations as social-imperialism, new liberalism and Fabianism, corresponding to the emerging forces of twentieth-century British politics: Tory populism, post-Victorian liberalism and labourism. As these new political projects were settling down into the routine of postwar political contestation within the newly formed institutions of the modern British state, their ability to proceed with ‘business as usual’ was continually disrupted by the Irish Question. While broadly understood as an internal, specifically Irish affair, the degree of dissatisfaction within nationalist Ireland at the failure of Gladstonian liberalism to resolve their grievances – through granting Home Rule – was in direct proportion to the effectiveness of Tory populism in feeding the strength of Ulster unionism; not so much because of opposition to Home Rule, but in order to use that opposition as a secondary battleground

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in the bigger political struggle for hegemony within the British state itself. That Irish unionism was a political force organic to the conjectural moment in Ireland at the turn of the twentiethcentury is no less true than the fact that much of its strength, particularly during these crucial years, came from its exploitation by conservative political elites in London – whose actual interest in Ireland would rapidly diminish when Irish unionism had lost its utility. However, by that stage conservative Irish nationalism, with its willingness to accommodate domestic grievances within the existing, imperial Anglo–Irish frame of reference, had been supplanted by a more assertive and organised republicanism, the resolution of whose demands would require greater compromise on the part of Westminster if the ‘inconvenience’ of the Irish Question was to be prevented from disrupting the consolidation of the postwar British state. Wilson is correct when he argues that from 1880 to 1930, the crisis of Ireland was a central, integral factor in the crises of Westminster governments and the British state. More than anything it was under the impact of events in Ireland that the mid Victorian constitutional system disintegrated. In these years the configuration of political struggle in Britain was persistently refracted through the Irish issue.4

Central to this disintegration was the assault from Tory populism against the existing liberal regime, fought out primarily on the issue of Home Rule and through the mobilisation of a new political force, Ulster unionism and the Ulster Volunteer Force. Placing 1912, 1916, the subsequent War of Independence and the Anglo–Irish Treaty of 1921 in this wider context not only provides a more compelling account of the structural dynamics at work in this foundational period of modern Ireland, but reinserts the British state as the key protagonist in those dynamics both in the lead up to and aftermath of partition. The 1916 Rising and subsequent guerrilla campaign by Collins’ Irish Volunteers was indeed a reflection of separatist ambitions, but the fact that it was able to generate mass support in all but Ulster Unionist Ireland was as much a function of British state failure on the part

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of Gladstone, and Conservative Party opportunism on the part of Chamberlain and Bonar Law, as it was a product of internal Irish concerns, whether the legitimate grievances of nationalist Ireland or the equally legitimate fears of unionist Ulster. The ability of Sinn Féin and the Ulster Unionist Party to simultaneously hegemonise the popular political imaginary of the overwhelming majority of people in Ireland was, as with their British counterparts, a function of the emerging ‘collectivism’ of the post-Liberal era. Unionism was to a greater or lesser extent the Irish equivalent of the social-imperialism of Tory populism, albeit mediated through the specifically Irish lens of Ulster Presbyterian reaction. For its part, Sinn Féin nationalism (and later its Fianna Fáil and left-republican offshoots) approximated some of the ‘statism’ of British labourism (Lemass) and working-class radical collectivism (O’Donnell). However, post-partition, such tendencies were always subservient to a more conservative rural-based Irish communitarian Catholicism (de Valera). Looked at from this position, the emergence of two theologically dominated conservative state formations in Ireland, post-partition, was not an aberration from the ‘normal’ European frame of reference – i.e. that of a formal left–right opposition such as with the Conservative and Labour parties in postwar Britain – but rather a consequence of the process of British state formation itself, which in turn skewed the parallel process in Ireland by undermining functioning democracy and manipulating Irish political antagonisms for particularly British ends. None of this seeks to deny specifically Irish political agency, whether nationalist or unionist, in the formations which emerged in Ireland, but rather to argue that the limits of such formations were clearly circumscribed – discursively and institutionally – as a result of the interventions, and indeed the non-interventions, of political elites in Westminster.

Political Radicalism and Partition All of the above provides an illuminating insight into the successes and failures of various political formations in post-


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partition Ireland. To provide another answer to the question posed at the end of Chapter 2, the failure of Connolly’s socialist republicanism was at one level a consequence of the unavailability of any political space within the structure of Irish politics at the period of the formation of the two Irish states. While variations within unionism and nationalism were to some extent possible, the further they strayed from the central discursive apex of either sectarian unionism or conservative nationalism, the more difficult they found it to sustain themselves as viable political projects. While openings clearly existed in the period of the state crisis itself, once that crisis entered the phase of resolution, from the 1920s onwards, such spaces narrowed and eventually, if only temporarily, closed. The marginal position of left republicanism was partly a consequence of these structural factors. However, that this position occurred at a time when both the material conditions of the country and the subjective consciousness of large sections of the population were clearly conducive to mobilisation around a counter-hegemonic project also demonstrates left republicanism’s own weakness, namely its inability to read the political moment intelligently or respond effectively. Inflation caused by the First World War had a negative impact on the living standards of the urban and rural working class across Ireland. Labour shortages caused by migration, enlistment and compulsory tillage did not lead to a matching rise in wages. Resentment ‘at the unequal impact of wartime hardships’ ensured that alongside the political concerns of Home Rule and Empire, social and economic antagonisms did much to define the political contours of the moment. That such a context produced one of the most substantial periods of popular political and economic militancy in Ireland since the start of the nineteenth century is hardly surprising. Indeed the rising tide of Irish industrial working-class mobilisation and women’s self-organisation was part of a broader, European-wide phenomenon. Conor Kostick’s Revolution in Ireland, Popular Militancy 1917 to 1923, and Margaret Ward’s Unmanageable Revolutionaries, Women and Irish Nationalism, both chart the

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rise of political, trade union and suffragette radicalism during this period.5 In 1911 James Larkin’s syndicalist paper the Irish Worker had a circulation of between 20,000 and 90,000. Nineteen-thirteen witnessed the century’s most significant and embittered labour struggle in Dublin’s famous lock-out. The Russian Revolution of 1917 generated significant interest and modest but not negligible solidarity among sections of Ireland’s socialist movement. The years 1917 and 1918 were to witness one of the most sustained periods of trade union affiliation and mobilisation in Ireland, with numbers of strikes reaching unprecedented levels and union membership up 50 per cent from the preceding years.6 As the War of Independence gathered pace, trade unions began to intervene either to counter specific government measures, to block the movement of British soldiers and munitions, or in support of political prisoners. While often written out of mainstream historical narratives of the War of Independence, there is little doubt that labour mobilisations were as central a part of the destabilisation of British control of Ireland as was IRA activity or other forms of civil society intervention. Women’s radical activism, in the form of the Ladies Land League and the Irish Suffrage Society, both formed at the end of the nineteenth century, laid the basis for considerable political agitation at the start of the twentieth. Organisations such as Inghinidhe na hÉireann, Cumann na mBan, the Irish Women’s Workers Union and the Irish Women’s Franchise League were centres for political activism by women or on women’s issues, bringing new perspectives and forms of activism to the mainstream of male-dominated nationalist and trade union politics. That tensions existed, both between the women’s organisations and their male counterparts – such as over the issue of whether or not to support franchise reform from Westminster – or between women themselves – whether to prioritise their unionism, nationalism, labourism or feminism – does not undermine the central fact that in terms of participation and influence in the political mainstream, women were playing a more active part than at any previous period in modern Irish history.7 Despite


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their removal from conventional historical narratives of the time, they played a substantial if not fully equal part in the political struggles of the day. However, in spite of the powerful ideological legacy left by Connolly after the Rising, the growing strength of the trade unions, the substantial mobilisation of feminism, and the emerging strength of radical nationalism and social democracy in the forms of Sinn Féin and the Irish Labour Party, the period immediately after the Treaty negotiations in 1921 saw the almost complete eclipse of radical working-class, feminist and left-republican activism. There is little doubt that the internal divisions within the Labour Party and trade unions led them to withdraw from taking a clear and unambiguous position with regard to the Treaty. The desire of some to maintain all-Ireland organisational unity coincided with those – both unionist and nationalist – who were happier to allow their respective party political expressions – Sinn Féin and the Ulster Unionist Party – to provide unchallenged political leadership. As a consequence, Labour remained outside the central political dynamics of the moment, and was thus relegated to a secondary position in both post-partition states, complete with the unresolved ideological and organisational divisions that came with a single body in a constitutionally and socially divided country. Similarly, as the international women’s franchise movement was deeply divided over the question of the First World War, ‘in Ireland the added factor of the 1916 Rising shattered the remaining groups, and rendered all movements – feminist and labour – irrelevant in comparison with the task of completing the national revolution’.8 As the War of Independence gave way to the Civil War, whose outcome led to the dominance of the most socially conservative section of the nationalist movement – Cumann na nGaedhael – mirrored by their unionist counterparts in Belfast, the two new states mobilised considerable resources to limit if not put a complete end to the available space for women’s participation in public life. While for much of the labour movement the withdrawal from post-partition politics was a strategically driven choice, for women it was an imposition, no

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less strategic, but on the part of the new states and their emerging political elites. If labour withdrew from the primary arena of political engagement in order to maintain its unity, and women were forced out in order to restore patriarchal privilege, left republicans fell victim to the ‘creative ambiguity’ mobilised by the broader nationalist movement in order to maintain the cohesion of a cross-class nationalist alliance that was increasingly characteristic of post-1917 Sinn Féin. As will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 4, the revitalised party led by Eamon de Valera focused on the single issue of the republic, arguing that its precise form would be a matter for the Irish people once it was established. Industrial, agrarian or gender radicalism was acceptable only in the context of the broader strategic requirements of undermining British government authority in Ireland. Where such radicalism disrupted the operation of the cross-class alliance, central to de Valera’s strategy, it was actively opposed. Nowhere was this tension more apparent than over the question of land agitation, on which Sinn Féin’s position shifted dramatically depending on the geographical location and political moment. Thus, an uneasy but stable alliance was allowed to exist under the ever-broadening Sinn Féin banner. Conservatives, pragmatists and social radicals were all able to cooperate while the focus was clearly on the war with London. Crucially, the radical poles of the nationalist movement were willing to put on hold their social and economic demands at the moment of confrontation with the British, in the hope of having their concerns addressed in the postimperial settlement. However, once negotiations got underway and a compromise agreement emerged in the form of the Treaty, not only did the fragile unity implode and the divergent strands of the republican movement go their separate ways, but those most disappointed by the proposed settlement were those whose discursive and organisational matrix brought together the most progressive strands of the struggle, namely socialism, feminism and republicanism. In his authoritative two-volume account of the Irish War of Independence and Civil War, Michael Hopkinson outlines the


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development of and eventual fault lines around which the nationalist movement would both grow and fracture. That radicals such as Peadar O’Donnell, Liam Mellows or Hanna Sheehy Skeffington were to be sorely disappointed with both the political and social content and implications of the Treaty was as much a function of their own miscalculation as it was a demonstration of the real balance of forces within the national movement. Sean Ó Faoláin’s retrospective assessment that the radical Democratic Programme, which marked the high point of the left’s ideological influence in the independence movement, ‘was listened to and discussed for precisely twenty minutes and fifty seconds, and then buried forever’, suggests that the left never really understood their own subservient position.9 Ernie O’Malley, closer to the mainstream of the movement than either O’Donnell or Skeffington, was wrong when he concluded that Irish nationalism at the time of the Treaty was ‘at the political stage. We had not the faculty for thinking things through sufficiently.’10 Rather, the ‘creative ambiguity’ referred to above, whose social and economic implications were always present despite being concealed, inherently privileged the centre and right of the independence movement, effectively removing rather than delaying any process for the resolution of the social and economic contradictions which existed in the Irish state under British rule. As the independence movement increased political strength from 1917 through to 1921, the potential social and economic dimensions of the revolution receded, as did the political strength of the radical social, economic and gendered elements of the movement, despite the rhetorical centrality of their demands as expressed in the 1916 Proclamation and 1919 Democratic Programme. Cumann na nGaedhael’s victory in the subsequent Civil War was a consequence of their success in hegemonising the majority of nationalist Ireland during the Treaty debates and subsequent election campaign. This would not have been possible had the social and economic content of the nationalist project remained at the centre of the independence movement’s considerations as demanded by the Proclamation and Democratic Programme. By

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accepting the deferral of these aspects of the revolution, whether actively or passively, left republicans ceded enormous ground to the right, a fact evidenced in the narrowness of the Treaty debates, whose considerations seldom strayed onto the issues of partition or social and economic change. That the ability of Cumann na nGaedhael to win the political battle for a majority of nationalist Ireland was greatly assisted by the threat of war from Westminster, and London’s subsequent pressure for and assistance in the Civil War, does not change the central fact that conservative Irish nationalism’s victory was not only at the expense of the left, but equally a consequence of the left’s own strategic miscalculations and weak social support. Battered by civil war and unable or unwilling to respond, ideologically or organisationally, to the dramatically shifting context that was the emerging states north and south, radical republicans, socialists and feminists could find virtually no foothold for meaningful political intervention in the post-Treaty consensus which emerged between the political elites in London, Dublin and Belfast. Despite holding out great promise, both for radical political, social and economic transformation and for the development of left republicanism, the revolutionary period ended in failure. Contrary to anti-Treaty nationalist and left-republican discourse, it is misleading to say that the revolution was betrayed. Indeed in retrospect, considering the positions adopted by all protagonists during its evolution and the ensuing balance of forces, it is doubtful if things could have ended otherwise. However, the discourse of betrayal, so prominent in contemporary and future debates, provided a dangerous degree of comfort for subsequent leftrepublican readings of the revolutionary moment. Such readings allowed left republicans to lay the blame for the revolution’s failure squarely on the opponents of the socialist republic within the broader nationalist movement, and in so doing absolved themselves of any culpability for that failure and avoided any degree of critical self-reflection. Misunderstanding their own mistakes in the past had the inevitable if clichéd result of condemning left republicans to repeat them in the immediate future.


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Left Republicanism After Partition If radical left and feminist republicans were guilty of a degree of miscalculation during the period of the War of Independence, the more general defeat of republicans during the Civil War – followed by a decade of socially conservative and classicalliberal economic government from Cumann na nGaedhael in the south and a sectarian semi-authoritarian Ulster Unionist administration in the north – ensured that the demands for unity and cohesion would dominate ideological debate and organisational imperatives among anti-Treaty republicans. That the left continued to believe in the utility of an alliance with both the pragmatists and traditionalists in Sinn Féin and the IRA was as logical as it would be self-defeating. However, as with the war against Britain, no alternative political position was either imaginable or sustainable. The immediate post-Civil War moment was one of imprisonment, introspection, inactivity and regrouping. During their period in jail key anti-Treatyites discussed the reasons for their failure. The main strategic concern in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War was how to respond to and engage with the two new states on the island. Traditionalists such as Mary McSweeney and pragmatists such as de Valera continued to advocate the same strategic imperatives that they adopted to British rule: withhold consent, abstain from participation, and continue to agitate for the republic. As the new political conjecture unfolded and public support for both administrations took root, the republic as articulated by the traditionalists inside Sinn Féin increasingly took on a purely symbolic and abstract meaning, driving a wedge between the anti-Treaty republicans and their potential support base. The emergence of Fianna Fáil, resting as it did on an acceptance of partition and the Free State, was a consequence of the growing inability of pre-partition Sinn Féin discourse to meet the new demands of the post-partition settlement. The dispute between these two sections of the independence movement was a narrow one, focusing on the relevance of and engagement with the new state institutions north and south.

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For left republicans such as O’Donnell, the success or failure of the anti-Treaty movement would not be decided solely on the basis of these considerations. A failure to reintegrate the social and economic dimensions of the revolution would lead to yet another defeat without ‘a radical social programme to win the masses to the Republic’.11 O’Donnell’s thinking was the result of a cross-fertilisation of ideas between radical social republicans such as himself and Liam Mellows, and the emerging analysis of the Irish Communist Party (CPI). The most significant outcome of this dialogue, at least for the subsequent development of twentiethcentury left republicanism was Mellows’ 1922 jail notes smuggled from Mountjoy Prison. They were part of a broader discussion that was taking place both within the anti-Treaty republican movement, and between republicans and their allies on the left. The debate came as both the popular mood and the military direction of the Civil War appeared to favour the pro-Treaty faction. How to motivate the general public behind the cause of the republic, and the apparent causes of the weakening of the republican side, were implicit themes in Mellows’ considerations. One of the most crucial sections of the short document states that The Programme of Democratic control (the social programme) adopted by the Dáil coincident Declaration of Independence January 1919 should be translated into something definite. This is essential if the great body of workers are to be kept on the side of Independence. This does not require a change of outlook on the part of Republicans, or the adoption of a revolutionary programme as such ... It should be made clear what is meant by it. Would suggest therefore that it be interpreted something like the following which appeared in the Workers Republic of July 22nd last...12

Mellows goes on to quote the editorial from the CPI’s newspaper Workers Republic advocating state control of industry, transportation and banks and the repossession and redistribution of agricultural lands. 13 While reminiscent of the founding manifesto of Connolly’s ISRP 40 years earlier, and serving to validate those republicans seeking to integrate social and national concerns, Mellows’ argument departed from Connollyite socialist republicanism in one crucial respect:


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In our efforts now to win back public support to the Republic we are forced to recognise – whether we like it or not – that the commercial interest, so called, money and the gombeen men are on the side of the Treaty, because the Treaty means imperialism and England. We are back to Tone – and it is just as well – relying on the great body ‘the men of no property’. The ‘stake in the republic people’ were never with the republic.14

Mellows is not articulating an integrated republican socialism, as proposed by Connolly or the Workers Republic, but rather a more limited tactical alliance between the republicans and the working class. Greaves’ argument that Mellows’ jail notes constitute a serious return to revolutionary republican socialism overestimates their sophistication and underplays their contradictions.15 Indeed, there is a significant distance between Connolly’s attempt to integrate Second International socialism and Fenian republicanism as two equal halves of the same discursive and organisational project, and Mellows more tactical return to the ‘men of no property’ as a potential reservoir of support for the republic. In this instance Mellows is clearly closer to the political expedience of the United Irishmen, whose alliance with the masses was not, in the first instance, born out of ideological commitment to radical social and economic change, but rather a consequence of the need for political strength in the pursuance of more limited political and social goals. Mellows’ jail notes, while important in linking the republican socialism of Connolly and the post-partition generation of republican radicals, contain both ideological and strategic limitations which need to be explored. Patterson’s critique of Mellows is a more valuable starting point than Greaves’ if we want to understand these limitations. Following O’Donnell he argues that social discontent was not something that an existing republican leadership could use for its own purposes; rather it demanded a transformation in republicanism, which would become a broad popular alliance capable of ‘completing’ the national revolution in a socially and economically radical way.16

That Mellows’ jail notes did not constitute such a ‘transformation’ is clear, arguing as they did for the existing republican position to

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be bolstered by appeals to the urban and rural working class on the basis of social and economic issues. While clearly a genuine attempt to construct a meaningful alliance between republicans and the working class, Mellows own political underdevelopment meant that he drew on his only available ideological resource, namely the United Irishmen. His uncritical adoption of the ‘men of no property’ alliance ensured that the contradiction at the heart of the United Irishmen project, which had fatally undermined the revolution in 1798, was transposed onto the foundational moment of post-partition left-republican thinking. However, it would take O’Donnell several decades before he reached this conclusion himself. In the immediate post-Civil War moment, the key fault line within the anti-Treaty republican movement was not that of republican socialism versus a tactical alliance with workers, but rather the second of these options versus a more narrowly defined nationalism, nervous of any appeal to social radicalism. While the heady days of the late 1920s afforded a degree of unity within the ranks of the IRA, positioning themselves to the republican left of the new Fianna Fáil party, the contradiction contained within the left of the movement could not remain concealed indefinitely. This reality was reinforced if not compounded by the tactical decision of the IRA to offer critical and conditional support to the new Fianna Fáil party. Not only were left republicans unclear about the relationship between their republicanism and their socialism, but they were once again entering into a relationship with a less radical political partner, albeit more conditional than before, in the hope of securing political and economic outcomes which would be in direct contradiction to those desired by their would-be allies.

Left Republicanism and the Rise of Fianna Fáil The first decade of post-partition Ireland was dominated by simultaneous state-building projects north and south. The contrasting styles and content of William Cosgrave’s Cumann na nGaedhael and James Craig’s Ulster Unionist governments


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were to mark the subsequent development of both states. The cautious Catholic conservatism of the former produced stability and democracy but with little economic development, while the populist Orange sectarianism of the latter expanded the already existing levels of industrialisation, while substituting any normative conception of democracy with structural discrimination and profound communal antagonism. Despite the considerable levels of grievance from substantial minorities in both states, centring around the social, economic and political exclusions inherent in both new formations, Craig’s and Cosgrave’s conservative administrations were to prove remarkably successful, at least in the immediate term, in articulating and implementing their new state-building projects. However, while both states were socially conservative, economically liberal and tended towards authoritarianism when dealing with political opponents (whether real or perceived), there was a profound difference between them from the outset. The new Free State was founded on the outcome of a civil war whose dynamics shaped the character of its political contestation but never foreclosed the possibility of change. The greatest achievement of the Cosgrave government, despite its many failures, was to produce a political system whose defining structural features were normatively democratic, always allowing for the possibility of peaceful social, economic, political and constitutional change. Power could, and did, change hands. The Unionist administration, however, was different. While sharing many of the formal characteristics of its southern counterpart, its structural foundations were of a different order. It was not merely undemocratic at its beginning, but required, for its continued existence, a profoundly undemocratic state formation, considerably outside the normative European standards of the day. While not classically authoritarian, it can be more accurately described as informally authoritarian, utilising the social networks of local government, the Loyal Orders, the trade unions, the shop floor and the Ulster Unionist Party as networks for the distribution of social, economic, political and cultural power and privilege. That its structure – a pan-class unionist alliance

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– was always riven with contradictions was never in doubt, as the Outdoor Relief riots of the 1930s or the growth of the Northern Ireland Labour Party in the 1960s demonstrated. Notwithstanding these temporary breaches of Ulster Unionist hegemony, the state’s existence rested on systematic if informal institutionalised exclusions, discriminations and inequalities. These were not consequences of the state, but fundamental aspects of its very architecture. Its inability to countenance reform – as structurally unthinkable as it was practically impossible, even in the face of massive domestic and international pressure (the detail of which will be discussed in Chapter 4) – was secondary only to the ever-present power of the British state in Westminster. London’s interventions and non-interventions invested the Orange state with a power and security substantially greater than it could accumulate by itself. Thus, these were the two radically altered political contexts in which left republicans found themselves in the immediate postpartition settlement. The British government had withdrawn, believing the Irish Question resolved. The new political elites north and south got on with the business of building their new states. Meanwhile the defeated opposition began to search for new discursive and organisational spaces from which to launch their next political assault. In the northern statelet it would take almost fifty years for the nationalist minority to come to terms with the failure of early twentieth-century nationalism to respond to the new political dispensation, locked as they were in the rigid structures of the increasingly communalised sectarian matrix of the Stormont administration. However, in the south, following a brief period in the political wilderness, anti-Treaty republicanism began to emerge from the Civil War defeat posing a serious challenge to Cumann na nGaedhael in the form of de Valera’s new Fianna Fáil party. The policies of the Cosgrave government, while doing much to ensure institutional stability, were ideologically disinclined to engage in any serious programme of economic expansion or wealth redistribution. Ó Gráda describes the administration’s economic policies as having ‘rejected industrialisation through


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import substitution and monetary experimentation ... [and] placed its main hopes on a dynamic agricultural sector specializing in livestock and dairying’.17 Fiscal and monetary policy was ‘regressive’, while unemployment rose, ensuring significant levels of social discontent. Foster confirms this bleak picture when he describes the social policies of the Cosgrave administration as a form of ‘ruthless government’ which, grappling with the ‘realities of fiscal autonomy’, cut the old-age pension and offered ‘minimal’ unemployment benefits.18 In such a context, the defining features of Fianna Fáil, formed in 1926, were bound to prove popular. A rhetorical commitment to the republicanism of the War of Independence years – ending partition, dismantling the remaining vestiges of British rule in the 26 Counties, and the restoration of Irish language and culture – coupled with a vague but radical social and economic programme were to ensure de Valera a speedy assent to power. That he was able to display a degree of institutional pragmatism for which he was not previously known served to confound his opponents in both Cumann na nGaedhael and Sinn Féin. Bew et al. have correctly described the key themes of the party as ‘an apparently radical, populist nationalism’.19 In contrast to Cosgrave’s themes of security and stability, which dominated the first decade of the Free State, Fianna Fáil held out the allure of change, in the first instance governmental, but also political and economic, thus appealing to all those sections of 26-County society who were excluded from the new state. Dunphy, in charting the rise of the party, argues correctly that from its inception Fianna Fáil fought on the basis of an economic and social programme with specific appeal to broad sections of the electorate. Nationalist rhetoric helped to subdue nascent class themes; but the appeal to nationalism was tied up with concrete policy proposals that enjoyed widespread popularity – for example, economic protectionism with its promise of prosperity for Irish businessmen and employment expansion for workers.20

Where Cumann na nGaedhael were elitist, non-interventionist, ‘anti-national’ and responsible for the economic status quo,

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Fianna Fáil were populist, expansionist, ‘national’ and offering, at a time of economic decline, growing emigration and poverty, the prospect of both national and economic renewal. All of this created a dilemma for left republicans within the broad anti-Treaty movement, the focal point of which was the IRA and its weekly newspaper An Phoblacht. Indeed the rise to prominence of left-wing republicans such as O’Donnell, Price and Gilmore owed much to Fianna Fáil’s success at attracting other progressive republicans away from the IRA and into the new party, typified by figures such as Lemass, O’Malley and Aiken. For those who remained in the IRA, the issue now was what position to take in relation to de Valera’s new party. Clearly, the IRA saw itself as having an important political, if not military function, in the context of ensuring that Fianna Fáil’s rise to power would not be at the expense of their radical republican commitments. Thus the IRA became a self-appointed guardian of the republican ideal, a kind of external political conscience to de Valera’s new party. For the centre of the organisation, personified by chief of staff Moss Twomey, the issue was the republic, and the continuing material and symbolic vestiges of British rule in Ireland. For the republican left, their horizons were set considerably higher. The motivating factor was not simply transforming the Free State into a republic, but the nature and distribution of power and resources within that republic. The adoption of the Saor Éire initiative in 1931, with its radical call for an ‘independent revolutionary leadership of the working class and working farmers towards the overthrow in Ireland of British Imperialism and its ally, Irish capitalism’,21 suggested that the O’Donnellite wing of the IRA were ascendant. However, the fact that it had been rejected by the IRA only a year previously clearly indicated that this ascendancy was not secure. That both tendencies could coexist productively within the IRA was more a function of Twomey’s acceptance of Mellows’ tactical shift to the left, rather than the actual adoption by the IRA of the more radical social republicanism of O’Donnell. A distinction that would have significant consequences after de Valera came to power.


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Coinciding with the formation of Fianna Fáil, Peadar O’Donnell and other left republicans initiated a campaign on the issue of land annuities – payments by Irish farmers to the British exchequer following the pre-Free State land purchase schemes. The campaign was the embodiment of the kind of political direction O’Donnell wanted republicans to travel, simultaneously mobilising the most disenfranchised sections of Irish society around an issue which was national and economic, symbolic and material, and whose outcome would be the instilling of a left-republican consciousness in the mass of Irish poor farmers. English notes that in O’Donnell’s view there existed the potential for the land annuities issue to become ‘transformed into an overwhelming uprising of Republican feeling’. Moreover, ‘the Republic if restored through a struggle on this level, would be a Republic of the poor, achieved by the poor, for the poor’.22

O’Donnell was acutely aware that the annuities campaign even with the support of the IRA – which was itself divided over the issue – did not have sufficient strength to become a political force capable of overturning the defeat of 1921. However, he equally understood that while Fianna Fáil’s support would greatly benefit the campaign, if left to their own devices, ‘they would drift into soft talk of the burden of those payments on the national economy, and of the good use they would make of this money when they got into government’.23 And here was the bind. Left republicans such as O’Donnell understood that even a radicalised IRA had its own limitations, but equally they understood the limited ambitions of Fianna Fáil. Any potential alliance would be fraught with risks and uncertainty. And yet, unable to think beyond the organisational and operational limits of the IRA and without an alliance with a party-political formation such as Fianna Fáil, the annuities campaign would remain a marginal issue at the level of the state itself. Thus the left-republican strategy was to develop the revolutionary potential of the IRA as a vanguard in the classical revolutionary sense of the term – as much Fenian as Leninist – while mobilising the masses to push Fianna Fáil into an ever more left-republican political and economic space.

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For their part Fianna Fáil were cautious of the land annuities issue from the beginning. Following approaches from the party’s principle conduit to the labour movement and republican left, Sean Lemass, Fianna Fáil agreed to join the campaign ‘provided it could do so in such a way that it would not appear to be jeopardising the ownership of property’.24 As the campaign unfolded, what began as an attempt by left republicans to mobilise popular public opinion – in order to shift de Valera to the republican left through a radical demand for non-payment of annuities – became appropriated by Fianna Fáil into a central element of de Valera’s broader electoral strategy. Annuities would not be abolished, but reduced and invested by a future Fianna Fáil government into ‘the promise of employment expansion and greater job security’ and a guaranteed ‘minimum wage for agricultural labourers’.25 While less radical than O’Donnell would have hoped, such policies were still significant from a left-republican point of view. Indeed there is little to suggest that, despite their intuitive scepticism of the party, left republicans could not sincerely believe that the growing Fianna Fáil party would be socially progressive and radically republican, albeit in a more social democratic and gradualist form than the radicals gravitating around An Phoblacht. For their part, Fianna Fáil were developing a political strategy and policy programme that was to prove central for its rise to power by the end of the decade. That such a strategy was often sincere and always organic should not be doubted, despite the scepticism of writers such as Dunphy and Bew et al. De Valera was keen to maintain a close relationship with those sections of the IRA and republican left who had not joined the new party. Their support, and more importantly the need to avoid any serious electoral competition from the republican left, was central to the party’s electoral appeal to small farmers, the urban working class and anti-Treaty republicans. An appeal, it must be said, greatly assisted by divisions and weaknesses within the Labour Party. At the same time, these sections of the southern electorate would not, by themselves, provide Fianna Fáil with sufficient support to propel de Valera into power. He needed, and actively sought, a broader alliance with the emerging urban and rural petit-


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bourgeoisie – the small to medium sized farmer, the shop keeper, the publican, the small businessman – all those sections of the Irish middle class whose social and economic position was made precarious by the conservative and liberal policies of Cumann na nGaedhael. If Lemass was emblematic of the working-class quasisocial democratic wing of the party, Sean MacEntee represented the more economically conservative wing. The genius of Fianna Fáil at the end of the 1920s was in successfully articulating a new form of nationalism, which simultaneously held out the promise of economic expansion and development, mutually beneficial to the working class and small farmers and to the emerging middle classes. The evident contradiction contained in such a project was, however, concealed, though never fully, by the intermeshing of nationalist and economic expansionist demands, as evidenced in Fianna Fáil’s alternative approach to the land annuities. For such a strategy to work, Fianna Fáil would need to co-opt left republicans to their campaign, while simultaneously neutralising their impact on the party and Irish society more generally. On the one hand they ‘quickly realized the political value of a programme of social reforms; pensions and social-welfare assistance were a relatively small price to pay to ensure the adherence of the most desperate social strata’, thus reducing the potential political threat from either the left republicans or the Labour Party. While at the same time, the party clearly prioritised the development of the private sector, accepting ‘the primacy of capitalist leadership of the economy’.26 Dunphy outlines the issue as follows: how far should the party defer to the immediate and unmediated interests of the bourgeoisie, whose consolidation Fianna Fáil aimed at and upon whom it depended for the successful implementation of its development strategy; and how far should it impose sacrifices upon that class, and make concessions to other social forces, in order to secure political and social stability and ensure its own dominance?27

Fianna Fáil’s success in the general elections of 1932 and 1933, secured with support from the IRA and other left forces such as the Communist Party of Ireland, was also the moment of left republicanism’s failure, although few understood it in this way at

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the time. Promises of accelerated land redistribution; a proposed National Housing Council to address the country’s housing crisis with a target of 40,000 new homes; strong opposition to repressive legislation such as the Public Safety Act; support for the land annuities campaign; all combined to secure the support of those political or economically marginalised by the postTreaty dispensation. Once in power Fianna Fáil immediately set about addressing its pre-election commitments. Employment was provided through the expansion of large-scale public works; modest tax increases on high earners and banks were introduced; social welfare payments for those in greatest need were introduced; and IRA political prisoners were released; all solidifying Fianna Fáil’s support among the urban and rural working class, to the detriment of those forces to their left, whether the Labour Party or left republicans in the IRA. Part of Fianna Fáil’s success during this period was secured through keeping ‘the “left-wing of the republican forces” at arms length: not too far to alienate them, not too close to incur any danger’.28 However, it would take left republicans some time before they realised that their tactical alliance with Fianna Fáil, rather than moving the government to the left, served to simultaneously co-opt and marginalise the left themselves. The rightward turn of the government from the mid 1930s onwards exposed the inadequacies of the left-republican approach. Patterson is correct when he argues that the ‘radical element in Fianna Fáil’s appeal in 1932 was heavily influenced by the pressure of social radicalism. The annuities campaign had developed in a way that appeared to vindicate O’Donnell’s line inside the IRA.’29 Indeed, the social radicalism of early Fianna Fáil was as much a product of the successful mobilisation of left republicans during this period as it was of careful strategising by Fianna Fáil to neutralise that pressure. However, Dunphy’s conclusion is also correct. The success in the short term was also the ultimate source of failure, as left-republican activism assisted the electoral growth of Fianna Fáil at the expense of, rather than in support of, longer term left-republican objectives.


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The reproduction of Fianna Fáil centrality in conditions unconducive to the party’s credible promotion of economic growth – the essential common denominator which binds together otherwise fissile social groups – requires the decisive ‘neutralisation’ ... of one of the two fundamental social groups which still form a large part of the party’s support base – the working class and the bourgeoisie.30

The conditions of 1930s Ireland were clearly unconducive to substantial and sustained economic growth, despite the best efforts of the quasi-social democratic wing of Fianna Fáil. That it was the working class and small farmers whose political position and economic well being was ‘neutralised’ was as much a function of the internal balance of power within Fianna Fáil as it was a consequence of left-republican political weakness post 1932. The end result, however, was the same, namely the failure of a conscious attempt by left republicans to hegemonise 26-County Irish nationalism, in the service of an integrated republican socialism, the purpose of which was to further the building of a ‘Republic of the poor, achieved by the poor, for the poor’.

Left-Republican Retreat: the Republican Congress The first years of the new Fianna Fáil government were marked by an approach to government which, in contrast to Cumann na nGaedhael, was progressive if not radical. The release of republican political prisoners and the lifting of the ban on the IRA and An Phoblacht did much to please republicans. Meanwhile the Blueshirt controversy saw, albeit initially, a degree of republican unity at a local level. The 1933 Land Act opened a process of land reform that went some way to addressing the existing inequities of the system inherited after partition. This agrarian progressivism was complemented by a concerted attempt at stateled economic expansion with the launching of state companies such as Aer Lingus, Bord na Mona, Irish Life and the Irish Sugar Company.31 Twelve months after the coming to power of de Valera, left republicans could still maintain the belief that political developments were in their favour.

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However, the economic recession during the early 1930s continued to close off the traditional safety valve of emigration to the United States. Rural discontent remained as the pace and depth of land reform were held in check by Fianna Fáil’s competing allegiances to the rural working and middle classes, which ‘inevitably disappointed many of its small farmer and urban working class supporters’.32 With 500,000 claimants for land and an estimated 720,000 acres available for redistribution it is hard not to conclude, with Bew et al., that, ‘having decided to leave the fundamental structures of Irish agricultural production untouched, the agrarian policy [of Fianna Fáil] increasingly ended up pitting one section of the small and medium peasantry against the other’.33 Similarly, while economic development policies were starting to take root, wages remained low and unemployment high, producing continued levels of industrial unrest, despite the government’s characterisation of such activity as ‘unpatriotic’. Allen notes that while from 1926 to 1930 ‘the number of workdays lost exceeded 100,000 just once, after 1933, it was consistently above that figure’.34 He goes on to argue that the rising levels of industrial discontent and militancy were a direct result of Fianna Fáil’s ‘industrialisation programme’.35 For the first two years of the de Valera administration, the credibility of a left republican–Fianna Fáil alliance appeared to be bearing fruit; O’Donnell admitted as much when he retrospectively reflected that Fianna Fáil ‘could offer so many concessions to the Republican viewpoint that it was bound to blur the issues that still divided us’.36 By 1934, however, left republicans could not but read the growing rural and urban discontent as the logical outcome of the inherent contradictions of the Fianna Fáil project. Equally, the fragility of the left’s influence inside the IRA was increasingly apparent, following the 1933 IRA Army Convention, which represented a clear retreat from the Saor Éire position two years earlier. During the Convention itself, a leftrepublican proposal to develop an alliance with ‘other separatist and radical groups was defeated’.37 In addition O’Donnell and others were censured for their left-wing direction of An Phoblacht. The subsequent Convention Statement, The Constitution and


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Governmental Programme of the Republic of Ireland, ‘promised social reforms, restrictions on wealth, and welfare for the poor, but also stressed the right to private property and provided for the safe guarding of private enterprise’.38 This was a far cry from the revolutionary programme of Saor Éire, and bore much in common, at least rhetorically, with the then platform of de Valera’s government. The ability of the mainstream of the IRA (Twomey, MacBride, etc.) to remain committed, even tactically, to the radical social programme of O’Donnell and others was clearly damaged by the concerted campaign of the Catholic Church in the aftermath of Saor Éire’s launch. Thus the dual strategy of left republicans – to radicalise the IRA internally (Saor Éire) and shift Fianna Fáil to the republican left through external pressure (the land annuities) – had, by 1934, clearly failed. That year’s IRA Army Convention witnessed a final attempt by the left to shift the balance back in their favour. Proposals for the adoption of a Workers Republic as the primary objective of the organisation and a call for the formation of a broad-based Republican Congress with other radical groups to ‘wrest the leadership of the National Struggle from Irish Capitalism’ were both rejected. The left, realising defeat, withdrew formally and permanently from the IRA. Immediately O’Donnell, George Gilmore, Michael Price and Frank Ryan began to mobilise their own Republican Congress. Founded at two events, held in Athlone and Rathmines later in the same year, the Congress brought together a broad range of Irish radical republicans. In addition to the O’Donnellite wing of the IRA, the Communist Party of Ireland and the representatives of 14 trade unions and trades councils, including Irish Transport and General Workers Union vice-president William McMullan, were in attendance.39 Their founding manifesto stated: We believe that a Republic of a united Ireland will never be achieved except through a struggle that uproots capitalism on its way. ‘We cannot conceive of a free Ireland with a subject working class; we cannot conceive of a subject Ireland with a free working class.’ This teaching of Connolly represents the deepest instinct of the oppressed Irish nation.40

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The new project, while remaining faithful to the ideological foundations of Connollyite republican socialism, represented a profound break with the strategic direction of left republicanism from the mid 1920s. The emphasis was no longer on radicalising the existing organs of republicanism – i.e. the IRA – in an attempt to shift Fianna Fáil to the republican left. Rather a new formation was brought into being as a direct challenge to the government party. The manifesto continued by stating: ‘Our policy and Fianna Fáil’s are as far apart as Connolly and Griffith; as irreconcilable as the Dublin workers in 1913 and Martin Murphyism.’41 English argues that the Congress’ aim was ‘not only of displacing, but of cutting in two de Valera’s party’.42 No longer were left republicans attempting to hegemonise Fianna Fáil from without, rather their aim was to split the social basis of Fianna Fáil, detaching its rural and urban working class from their ‘pro-capitalist leadership’, thus ‘displacing Fianna Fáil from its hegemonic perch’.43 That the Congress is estimated to have had, at its height, between 6,000 and 10,000 members suggests that such objectives were not as fanciful then as they may appear in retrospect. Yet, despite such an impressive opening, the Republican Congress never moved past the starting block. Its second major event, held in Rathmines in September 1934, was marked by bitter divisions and a split, whose effect was to end the new movement at the very moment of its birth. Allen describes the split as being primarily a result of differing attitudes within Congress towards Fianna Fáil. He argues that the left of the Congress, centred round Roddy and Nora Connolly and Michael Price, argued for a complete split with the government party and a declaration that ‘they do not stand for de Valera’s sort of Republic but for the definite issue of the Workers Republic’, suggesting the formation of a new, explicitly socialist, political party.44 As indicated above, O’Donnell, Gilmore and Ryan stressed the need for an alternative strategy, the aim of which would be to win a substantial section of Fianna Fáil activists and supporters to a united republican front, breaking the pan-class foundation of de Valera’s hegemonic control of the nationalist movement. English’s


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assessment is clearly more nuanced than Allen’s when he argues that the dispute was a question of tactics. O’Donnell, Gilmore and Ryan adopted a primarily republican emphasis not because they were less socialist than their rivals, but because they felt that republicanism offered the framework and language most appropriate to that particular moment.45

The united-front proposal won the day, though by a small majority, leading to a significant split in the ranks of the fledgling organisation. The O’Donnellite wing of Congress won with crucial support from Sean Murray’s Communist Party of Ireland delegates, who were to become the main organisational basis of subsequent Congress activity. Though weakened, campaign activity continued for two years, including various mobilisations on industrial and political issues, the regular production of their newspaper, and various unsuccessful attempts to secure Fianna Fáil and Labour membership of the Congress. By 1936 leading figures such as Ryan and Gilmore were conceding that the project had failed. Strategic disagreements and splits notwithstanding, it is doubtful that Congress would have ever advanced much beyond a loose collection of the most marginal sections of the Irish republican and socialist left. The unwillingness of the mainstream trade union movement and Labour Party – ideologically and organisationally wedded to their role within the northern and southern states – cut Congress off from an important reservoir of support. Likewise its inability to draw any interest let alone support away from Fianna Fáil’s urban and rural working-class activists or supporters clearly indicates that strategically and organisationally Congress was ill suited for the task. That they underestimated Fianna Fáil’s ability to successfully articulate a political project that successfully integrated the needs and aspirations of large sections of the Irish working and middle class is without doubt. However, a more significant failure was their inability to provide a project, organisational or discursive, which could have mobilised those sections of the rural and urban poor excluded from the networks of benefit – social, economic or political – offered by Fianna Fáil. Once

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the broad-front strategy of Congress had failed to materialise, only a new political party could have served such a purpose. However, after two intense decades of radical political activism, the generation of left-republican leaders, surrounded by failure and defeat, receded from Irish political life into the battlefields of the Spanish Civil War or the more accommodating climate of Irish cultural life. It would be another decade before a new leftrepublican challenge would emerge in the 26 Counties, once again from within the IRA, but without the involvement of those figures whose thinking and activism had dominated since 1916.

A New Departure: Clann na Poblachta It is doubtful whether the political context of the 1930s could have allowed the Republican Congress to become a serious political force, even if unity had been maintained. While its key thinkers understood the contradiction that lay at the heart of the Fianna Fáil project, and the inability of the IRA or Sinn Féin to provide any meaningful challenge to the new government, these facts were not yet apparent to the general public, particularly those whom Congress hoped to win over to a more overtly radical republican position. By the 1940s, however, ten years after Fianna Fáil’s coming to power, the political and economic context was shifting. Ó Gráda notes that the ‘two decades or so between independence and 1945 yielded little worthwhile improvement in the living standards of most Irish people. During the Second World War, Irish wage levels fell considerably behind those in Britain.’46 However, de Valera’s successful articulation of Irish neutrality did much to divert attention from his own government’s responsibility for its failure to tackle a stagnant economy. Ó Gráda argues that there ‘is a good deal of validity in the official portrait of a country united behind a popular policy [non-alignment] and experiencing a sense of satisfaction at sustaining that policy in the face of pressure, real and imaginary, from the old enemy’.47 However, the public solidarity that existed during the years of the Emergency was soon to come under the increasing strain of economic hardship.


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A significant drop in industrial productivity, a significant rise in unemployment, a series of bad harvests and the reintroduction of food rationing combined to create, according to one observer, ‘wartime conditions without a war’.48 The years 1945–47 brought a significant increase in industrial action by laundry workers, farm labourers, teachers and bus and tram drivers. Allen quotes an Irish Times editorial from September 1947, commenting on the rise of industrial unrest, declaring ‘our society is drifting towards anarchy’.49 De Valera’s credibility with the urban working class and rural labourers was being severely tested. Meanwhile, Fianna Fáil’s republican credentials were also under the spotlight. The deaths of IRA prisoners in Mountjoy jail – Tony D’Arcy and Jack McNella in 1940 and chief of staff Sean McCaughey in 1946 – caused widespread public outrage, even amongst those whose support for the IRA had long since waned. A significant body of agitation on the issue of political prisoner conditions and release had been organised by the Republican Prisoners Release Association. However it was not until the intervention by Seán MacBride during the McCaughey inquest that the issue of the treatment of republican political prisoners became a national political issue. MacBride’s forensic questioning of the prison doctor made front-page news, led to sharp exchanges in Leinster House and a protracted debate in the letters pages of the Irish Times between MacBride and Fianna Fáil minister Sean MacEntee. For Fianna Fáil all of this was bad news. Despite having won six consecutive general elections in 14 years, the most recent in 1944, and notwithstanding a weak and divided opposition, it was clear that two of the fundamental pillars upon which Fianna Fáil’s political dominance rested were clearly in danger. In the presidential election of 1945 the independent anti-Treaty republican Patrick McCartan secured 20 per cent of the vote. Backed by Labour, Clann na Talmhan, independent TDs and republicans growing concerned about the failure of Fianna Fáil to deliver on issues such as partition and political prisoners, McCartan’s result shocked many, especially within Fianna Fáil,

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despite their candidate, Sean O’Kelly, winning comfortably with 49.5 per cent of the vote. Labour should have been the principal beneficiary of Fianna Fáil’s difficulties. But despite an initial resurgence, securing 15.7 per cent of the vote in the 1943 general election – its best showing since 1922 – the party split in 1944. The existence of two separate Labour parties would effectively neutralise their ability to mount a serious electoral challenge to Fianna Fáil, ironically at a time when it was most available. However, any complacency in government circles at the lack of credible opposition was quickly put to rest when in July 1946 a new party, Clann na Poblachta, was formed at a public meeting in Barry’s Hotel, Dublin. Initiated by Seán MacBride, Noel Hartnett and Peadar Lehane, the new party was made up of anti-Treaty republicans no longer satisfied with either the IRA or Fianna Fáil. Twenty-two of the party’s twenty-seven strong Provisional Executive were former IRA volunteers. Their founding statement constituted a direct challenge to Fianna Fáil and laid claim to the working- and lower-middle-class republican constituencies so central to Fianna Fáil’s political strength. It read: For many years a large section of republican opinion has felt that republicans should take an active part in the political life of the Nation. It was felt that it would be possible to work for the achievement of republican ideals by purely political means ... Various causes combined to prevent political development. Not least of these was the low standard of political morality set by those who in the name of republicanism secured office. The continual inroads on elementary rights (quite apart from Emergency legislation) also rendered it difficult to instil in republicans confidence in political action ... The nation is being weakened by the forced emigration of its youth. A small section has been enabled to accumulate enormous wealth while unemployment and low wages, coupled with an increased cost of living, are the lot of workers.50

Thus from the outset, and notwithstanding the new party’s decision to leave the formulation of detailed policy until its first Ard Fheis, Clann na Poblachta was articulating a broad-based platform that on the one hand discarded the isolationism, electoral


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abstentionism and militarism of Sinn Féin and the IRA while on the other rejected the corruption and political and economic failure of Fianna Fáil. Partition, underdevelopment, inequality and corruption were to be the central themes of the new party, and de Valera its principle political target. Three by-elections in 1947 enabled Clann na Poblachta to mount its first challenge to Fianna Fáil. The timing could not have been more favourable to the new party, as Fianna Fáil’s republican and labour constituencies were becoming increasingly restless at the failure of the party to deliver on what they believed were fundamental issues. The constituencies of Dublin County, Tipperary and Waterford were to be Clann na Poblachta’s first testing ground. While not all Fianna Fáil seats, taken together the election was a serious test of the government’s strength and credibility. Clann na Poblachta fought the election on a solid economic platform, arguing for a ‘policy of full employment and production based on the development of our natural resources backed by our national credits’.51 ‘In the meantime’, they argued, ‘the cost of living can and must be reduced immediately by temporary remedies; Food subsidies; Price control; Tribunals of Producers and Consumers and free supplies of fertilisers’.52 Clann was arguing for a level of government intervention and a degree of wealth redistribution considerably to the left of any other Irish party. Commenting on the ‘republican and radical’ nature of the new party’s programme MacBride argued that ‘if we get a republic in name it would mean nothing unless it ensured economic and social freedom for all of the people of the country. We have to ensure that no section of the people will be exploited by another section.’53 Having secured its republican and progressive credentials, and backing this up with a surprising level of energy and efficiency within the constituencies, the by-election results were to shock the entire political establishment. MacBride and Patrick Kinnane won the Dublin County and Tipperary seats, with the help of a significant level of transfers from Labour, while Fianna Fáil took Waterford. De Valera, clearly rattled by the surprise victory of the two Clann candidates, responded immediately, announcing an early general election for 1948 in the hope of minimising the ability

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of the new party to develop its organisation across the state. The scene was now set for a major confrontation between two contending forces of Irish republicanism. At its first Ard Fheis, held in November 1947, Clann delegates dealt with a wide range of social and economic issues including unemployment, poverty, poor housing and tuberculosis. The party advocated the establishment of a minimum wage, infrastructural and state employment schemes, substantial expansion of public housing, hydro-electrification, rural regeneration and radical changes to the social security system, including comprehensive social insurance.54 In doing so they broadened the appeal beyond disgruntled anti-Fianna Fáil republicans attracting non-republicans such as Noel Browne into the fold. Buoyed up by a mixture of electoral success, naive enthusiasm and a clear public desire for change, Clann entered the 1948 general election with a hugely inflated expectation of its potential, fielding over 90 candidates. In the end, they secured 13 per cent of the vote state-wide, and 20 per cent in Dublin, taking ten seats, a significant return for a party barely two years old. The level of expectation both inside and outside of the party ensured that the result was viewed more negatively. Crucially, however, Clann had denied Fianna Fáil an overall majority, the government party losing eight seats and almost 10 per cent of its 1944 vote. The question now arose as to who would form the next government. Having campaigned under the slogan ‘Put Them Out’, Clann were not in a position to contemplate a coalition with Fianna Fáil, a proposition equally distasteful to de Valera. Despite its novelty, the business of forming the country’s first multi-party coalition got underway. The end result was a government involving Fine Gael, both Labour parties, the farmers party Clann na Talmhan and Clann na Poblachta. From the outset it was unclear whether such a diverse coalition of ideological and constituency interests could produce a stable let alone coherent government. However 15 years of one-party rule had created an appetite for change, and the space from which such government could emerge. In retrospect, Clann na Poblachta’s 1948 election results were impressive. However, they contained within them a number of


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weaknesses that were to undermine the party from the outset. Whether a small, left-republican party could survive in such a broad-based coalition, when its electorate was so desirous of social and economic change, is doubtful enough. In addition, the fact that Clann had yet to establish a real national organisation, let alone an effective structure connecting its new parliamentary deputies to their constituencies, fatally undermined its ability to sustain its political and electoral momentum. More significantly MacBride’s retrospective assessment that ‘our economic policies [in the 48 election] frightened the people’ meant that despite its initial success Clann would become the most cautious of the coalition partners, further undermining its ability to deliver on its manifesto commitments.55 Nowhere was this more evident than in the debacle over free medical care for mothers and children. Noel Browne typified what was most novel in Clann na Poblachta. With no history of involvement in the IRA or partypolitical republicanism, his attraction to Clann was based on their progressive social and economic policies. Believing that the time had come for a new kind of party in Ireland, Browne was to become as emblematic of Clann’s appeal to a younger generation tired with the established parties as MacBride was emblematic of the disappointment of a revolutionary generation with the failures of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. That MacBride chose Browne as his co-minister in the new coalition government was as shrewd as it was controversial, causing tension with the ex-IRA faction of the party. Browne embraced the Department of Health with the same freshness, radicalism and enthusiasm that was so central to Clann’s electoral success. A firm believer in state medical provision, Browne was instrumental in a number of successful policy initiatives on becoming minister, most importantly in the dramatic reduction in Ireland’s tuberculosis infection rate. Popular and committed, Browne was keen to see the implementation of the 1947 Health Act, which had been shelved by the previous Fianna Fáil government on the basis of objections from both the Catholic hierarchy and the medical profession. The most controversial aspect of the bill was the proposal to provide free medical care to pregnant mothers and

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their children. The medical establishment opposed the proposal fearing it to be the thin end of a public health system wedge, while the Catholic Church feared a weakening of their own influence arising from any increase in state provision of services. Faced with the combined opposition of the Irish Medical Association and the Catholic Church, the majority of coalition parties also withheld support for the controversial proposals. Following a protracted period of negotiations, and the refusal of Browne to withdraw the Bill, Seán MacBride, with the backing of Clann’s national executive, demanded Browne’s resignation as Minister for Health. Browne resigned but not before providing the Irish Times with all correspondence of the affair, the publication of which caused widespread public anger, and substantial damage to Clann na Poblachta’s public image. What is significant here is not the impact of this specific political dispute on the position and credibility of Clann na Poblachta, serious as that was, but rather what it tells us about the party more generally. Clann emerged not only in opposition to Fianna Fáil’s failure to deliver on core republican political and socio-economic objectives, but also on the promise of bringing something new and dynamic to Irish politics. It railed against conservatism, inequality and inaction. While always careful to guard against Fianna Fáil claims of communist infiltration – still powerful amongst a devoutly Catholic population – it nonetheless stood for change, in style and substance. Entering coalition with Fine Gael, the party of the Anglo–Irish treaty and victors in the bitter Civil War, was going to be difficult enough. Thus, Clann’s success was going to be determined by what it actually achieved in government. What the Mother and Child controversy demonstrated was not simply Clann’s numerical weakness – as a small coalition partner – but more importantly its unwillingness to stand up to Fine Gael or other powerful vested interests in pursuit of the change its election manifesto promised. Browne and fellow Clann TD Jack McQuillan left the party and joined Clann-founder Peadar Cowan on the independent benches of Leinster House.56 A bitter and public debate ensued between the two wings of the party further exposing the rift between


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those remaining faithful to the initial mission of the party and those whose focus had shifted to maintaining the unity of the coalition government. Two subsequent general elections, in 1951 and 1954, saw a rapid demise of the party as an electoral force. Of the original ten TDs elected in 1948, four stood against the party in 1951, three as independents and one for Labour. Only MacBride and John Tully retained their seats for Clann. In the 1954 contest they faired somewhat better, winning three seats, but turning down an offer from Fine Gael to participate in the second inter-party coalition, choosing to support it externally instead. That support was short-lived when MacBride tabled a motion of no confidence in Costello’s cabinet, in 1957, leading to the end of the coalition and MacBride’s defeat in the subsequent general election. While Tully retained his seat until 1965, when the party formally disbanded, the ’57 election spelled the effective end of Clann na Poblachta as a meaningful political force in Ireland. Eithne McDermott, in her history of the party, is right to credit Fianna Fáil as partially responsible for Clann’s short political life span. De Valera’s decision to call the snap election in 1948, while bringing an end to his government, served a more valuable longer term function of denying Clann the opportunity to develop at a more ‘natural pace’.57 But she is also correct in placing the majority of the blame on Clann themselves. The decision to enter coalition before the party was ideologically or politically ready placed substantial strains on the party’s differing interests. Moreover, the failure of the party, ostensibly under MacBride’s leadership, to act as the coalition’s most radical pole, fearful as he was of ‘scaring the electorate’ or indeed other centres of established social or political power, meant that the cohesion of the party could never be maintained. Coalition with Fine Gael challenged its republican support base while the Mother and Child debacle challenged its left constituency. The end result was organisational implosion and political suicide. It would be wrong, however, to dismiss Clann na Poblachta on the basis of its failure to produce long-term stability or success. The party was innovative both outside and inside of government. Clann were the first party to utilise modern election techniques

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such as the political broadcast – screened on the side of dance halls from mobile projectors – gramophone record ads and modern newspaper advertising. They were also the first party to contest a post-independence election on a detailed and coherent manifesto outlining economic policies in a wide range of areas. In government their two ministers were amongst the most able, leaving significant legacies that influenced the departments of Foreign Affairs and Health for decades in both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael led governments. Indeed it is doubtful if Costello as Taoiseach would have declared a republic if it had not been for the presence of Clann in government. Likewise, the fact that the first inter-party coalition was the first to seriously embrace economic planning ensured that those inside Fianna Fáil such as Lemass would be strengthened in their advocacy of similar policies. However their failure to successfully understand the social and economic basis of their support, and the scale of the longer-term challenge they presented to Fianna Fáil, led Clann na Poblachta to squander their long-term potential for short-term influence in government. What the consequences would have been for Clann na Poblachta, Fianna Fáil and 26-County politics more generally if Clann had said no to coalition is one of the most interesting counterfactual questions of the time.

Discarding the Republic: From Official Sinn Féin to Democratic Left Clann na Poblachta were the only political party during the first 50 years of the southern state’s existence who seriously challenged Fianna Fáil’s near monopoly on political power. Whether they realised it or not, their powerful mixture of substantive republicanism and egalitarian social and economic interventionism posed a threat to de Valera that no other party could produce. That Fianna Fáil understood this better than anyone else is not only evidenced in their immediate reaction to the 1947 by-elections, but more profoundly in how it affected the party’s development during the 1950s. The long standing battle between the conservative fiscal restraint of MacEntee


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and the semi-Keynesian corporatism of Lemass was effectively ended by the two inter-party coalitions, convincing the Fianna Fáil party that their political and electoral hegemony required a more interventionist and innovative approach to the economy in general and the needs of the urban working class in particular. Lemass’ succession as leader of the party and government in 1959; the capital investments by both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael led governments during the 1950s; the opening up of the economy to foreign investment; and the improving global economic context all combined to produce a level of unprecedented growth in the southern economy.58 The primary political beneficiary of this was, of course, Fianna Fáil, who enjoyed 16 years of unbroken government from 1957 through to 1973. Fianna Fáil’s new approach to the economy rested on three principles; attraction of inward investment; improving the efficiency of indigenous industry; and the introduction of a form of social partnership tying the growing trade union movement and employers into a series of National Agreements. The immediate consequences of Fianna Fáil’s first two Programmes for Economic Expansion (1958 and 1964) were increasing investment, employment, wages and public spending. As a consequence, Lemass’ share of the vote in 1965 increased significantly. As noted by Patterson ‘it was the first time in the party’s history that it gained votes as an incumbent government after a full term of office’.59 Alongside the liberalisation of the economy, southern society was experiencing a period of important cultural and social change. Nineteen-sixty-seven saw Fianna Fáil introduce free secondary education and increase the availability of third level grants. Government legislation brought a relaxation of censorship on books and films. Television brought political and popular cultural events from the wider world into an increasing number of homes across the country, while growing economic prosperity enabled more young people to remain in Ireland, producing a shift in cultural values and political expectations the consequence of which would only become clear by the end of the decade. Lemass’ attempt to redefine his government’s relationship with its counterpart in Belfast, giving de facto recognition to the northern state in 1963

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and visiting Stormont in January 1965, was viewed as indicative of the optimism and fresh thinking of the time. The success of Fianna Fáil during these years owed much to its ability to be seen as agents of these changes, while casting its new economic and political profile within a rearticulated nationalism rather than a simple abandonment of the party’s founding principles. However, increasing prosperity also brought with it greater expectations, as evidenced by the rise of trade union militancy and the growth of the Labour party. Both Allen and Patterson have documented the ‘sharp upturn in industrial conflict’ during these years.60 That workers were seeking a greater share of the benefits of the economic boom was as logical as it was inevitable. However the failure of Lemass’ programmes for economic development to equally ‘lift all boats’ created an opening for a more radical approach to industrial and parliamentary politics. Labour’s new leader Brendan Corish, and a younger generation of activists within the party such as Brendan Halligan, Conor Cruise O’Brien and Justin Keating, brought about a significant shift in the party’s language and positioning typified in the 1969 New Republic election manifesto. While the turn to socialism alienated many among the party’s traditional rural base, the party overtook Fine Gael in Dublin in the 1969 election, taking 23 per cent of the vote. The division that opened up between these two sections of the party would prevent it from further capitalising on the new political context and confirm its position as a minor player in the primary political contest between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. While it would be wrong to overestimate the depth or speed of the changes taking place in Irish society during this time, there is no doubt that change was taking place and forcing the state’s principal political parties to rethink and readjust to the new context. Irish republicans, occupying an absolutely marginal position within Irish society at the time, could not remain immune to these changes. While Clann na Poblachta were trying to articulate a new form of left republicanism in the mid 1950s, the remnants of both the IRA and Sinn Féin remained wedded to older and less relevant ideological and strategic imperatives. Nineteen-fifty-six saw the


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launching of Operation Harvest, a short-lived and unsuccessful attempt to provoke a widespread insurrection across the north through the use of small groups of flying columns operating across the border. The campaign saw eleven republicans and six RUC officers killed in action, and 250 republicans interned. When public support for the armed campaign failed to materialise the IRA brought the campaign to an end. Sinn Féin’s vote in the 1959 Westminster election dropped from its 1955 peak of 152,310 to a mere 36,393. Likewise in the southern general election of 1961 the party lost three of their four TDs elected in 1957. Citing the ‘attitude of the general public’ as their primary motivation, the IRA formally ended their campaign in 1961. The failure of the border campaign to deliver any measurable political or military achievement provoked the IRA to reassess its position and role in Irish society. Cathal Goulding, who was to take up the position of chief of staff in the aftermath of Operation Harvest, actively engaged left-wing opinion outside the republican movement in an attempt to bring Sinn Féin and the IRA into a less marginal and more politically engaged position. The influence of former members of the British-based Connolly Association was key to Goulding’s emerging strategy. At the heart of the reassessment was a desire to move away from the militarism and isolationism that had characterised both the IRA and Sinn Féin since the 1930s. Goulding’s frank assessment, published in a 1970 interview, highlights the extent of the critical re-evaluation taking place: The question was: how could we get the people to support us? The evidence was that the Republican movement had no real policies. Without objectives, we couldn’t develop a proper strategy. Tactics were all that we had employed. The actual fight for freedom had become an end in itself.61

Emerging from a lengthy debate was a series of ideas around which Goulding and his supporters hoped to transform the IRA and Sinn Féin from a closed, secret, armed conspiracy into an open mass revolutionary movement. Central to this shift were proposals for a broad-based National Liberation Front of left-wing antiimperialist groups north and south; for building a civil rights

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movement in the north; for a new focus on agitational single-issue politics on social and economic concerns; and for the ending of abstentionism from electoral politics. An IRA discussion document found by the Garda in 1966 argued for the transformation of the closed clandestine republican movement into a ‘movement [that] will be a political national and social revolutionary organization with an open membership and legal existence’.62 Patterson is correct when he argues that the ‘leadership principle’ of the IRA was ‘being transformed from the military idealism of traditional Fenianism into a semi-Leninist one’.63 In 1968 a Structure Commission was set up to formally develop proposals for the structural and organisational renewal of the broad republican movement. Its work was completed and formally accepted by the IRA in 1969, and was due to be endorsed by the 1970 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis. However, the internal redevelopment of the IRA and Sinn Féin was being overtaken by political events in the north of Ireland. The unionist backlash against the civil rights movement was gathering pace, and northern republicans were frantically trying to respond to events on the ground. As they scrambled for financial and military resources to defend nationalist communities under attack from the unionist state, a growing resentment was coalescing among long-standing republicans who believed that the southern IRA leadership was increasingly detached from the needs and realities of the new situation. A critical mass of anti-leadership volunteers within the IRA was emerging, particularly in Belfast, opposed to Goulding’s strategy. The 1970 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis brought the two camps into the open. Peter Gibbon, in a New Left Review opinion piece sympathetic to the Goulding faction written at the time, argued that the basis of these differences revolved ideologically on competing conceptions of imperialism. The ‘physical force’ tendency regarded imperialism as a formal colonial occupation and exploitation of Northern Ireland by Britain. The ‘agitational’ tendency regarded it as a system of economic, social and ideological domination both sides of the border.


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He went on to argue that for the anti-Goulding faction ‘routing imperialism was in the first instance a matter for military action, while for others armed struggle was only one of a series of possible tactics’.64 These differences were fought out at the Ard Fheis around motions dealing with the formation of the National Liberation Front and proposing the abolition of abstentionism. While passed by a majority of delegates, the latter did not secure the two-thirds majority required for it to come into force. In response, a Goulding loyalist proposed a vote of confidence in the leadership of the IRA as a means to move forward with the proposals. The vote passed, and the anti-Goulding faction left to form Provisional Sinn Féin. Goulding’s faction – Official Sinn Féin and the Official IRA – no longer hindered by those opposed to their strategy, embarked upon a course that would see the party radically transform itself in the coming years. The transformation was to involve a significant ideological and strategic reorientation north and south. In the 26 Counties the primary focus of activists was to engage in radical grassroots political and economic agitation around ‘tenant struggles, housing action groups, unofficial shop stewards committees and “community control” issues’,65 with the effect of building a social and electoral base of socialist republicanism, aimed at challenging Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael control of the state. In the north Official Sinn Féin opposed the abolition of the Unionist dominated Stormont parliament, arguing for an alliance of nationalist and loyalist workers around a programme of institutional reform. All of this was set in the context of the demand for Irish reunification. Patterson is again correct in stressing that for the Officials, the reforms advocated, ‘whether in the area of civil rights or economic and social conditions, must help to “weaken imperial control ... The need to reunify the nation dominated the immediate horizon. No demand should be formulated without this demand in mind”’.66 Thus, while ending partition remained the primary political objective of the Officials, a new strategic approach was advocated requiring, in chronological order: reforming the northern state; uniting the nationalist and loyalist working classes; uniting northern and

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southern working classes; advance towards socialist revolution and national reunification. However, any meaningful possibility of building a mass movement in the south or cross-community workers’ unity in the north was shattered by the rapid descent into conflict from 1971 onwards. Increasing levels of loyalist, police and British Army violence, the introduction of internment, and the realisation that O’Neill’s Unionist government was either unable or unwilling to countenance significant reform of the northern state further radicalised working-class nationalist communities, leading to a substantial increase in republican armed resistance. That the support base and activists of the Official IRA in the north backed such a radical response created serious problems for Goulding’s strategy. In the increasingly polarised political climate of the early seventies the Officials could either become a protagonist in the military conflict, thus blocking their access to non-republican working-class support north and south, or advocate reform and lose all credibility within working-class nationalist communities in Belfast and Derry heartlands. For a time it did both, focusing on political engagement in the south, such as involvement in the anti-EEC accession campaign of 1972 while simultaneously waging war in the north. On the streets the Officials maintained a sustained military presence, while their southern-edited United Irishman newspaper continued to advocate the reform of Stormont, the politics of civil rights and loyalist engagement. The tension inherent in such an approach was not resolved, despite the Official IRA calling a ceasefire in May 1972. Serious disagreements between those such as Seamus Costello, advocating armed struggle, and those closer to the party ideologue Roy Johnston and United Irishmen editor Eoin Ó Murchu, led to the resignations of senior personnel. However, the significant breakthrough in the 1973 6-County local government elections, winning 80 seats and 10 per cent of the vote in constituencies contested under the Republican Club’s banner, enabled some to believe that the strategy remained on course. The IRA Army Council of the same year ‘passed a resolution committed to transforming the movement into a party, the


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philosophy of which would be Marxist and the organizational principles Leninist’.67A second Structure Committee report outlining options for the resolution of the ongoing tension between the Officials’ military and political strategies recommended a number of options ranging from the immediate abolition of the IRA to a more gradual winding-down of the organisation. Although the majority of the IRA leadership at the timer favoured the first option, they adopted the gradualist approach hoping to prevent a split. By 1974, however, it became clear that the Costello faction was secretly organising to overturn the existing leadership, leading to Costello’s expulsion from both the IRA and Sinn Féin. In December of the same year Costello formed the Irish Republican Socialist Party and the Irish National Liberation Army. A bloody feud in Belfast between the Officials and the INLA resulted in seven deaths and seriously undermined Official Sinn Féin’s election campaign to the new Northern Assembly. The 1977 Ard Fheis voted to change the party’s name to Sinn Féin the Workers Party (SFWP). Behind the move was a significant shift in the primary focus of the party; increasingly preoccupied with industrial analyses and issues in the 26 Counties, the party was actively disengaging from the political turmoil in the north and from republicanism as its foundational ideology. The Irish Industrial Revolution, published in the same year by the Officials’ Department of Economic Affairs, was the most comprehensive reassessment of the traditional left-republican position published to date. Its introduction argued that the national question for this party has nothing to do with the setting up of ‘Independent’ Ulster or the removal of British troops. These are symbols not substance. For us the national question can only be formulated as peace among the divided working class in the two states in Ireland so as to allow a united Irish working class to conduct democratic and militant struggle for the creation of an industrial revolution in all Ireland, and ultimately the construction of an Irish Workers’ republic.68

The document implicitly criticised the traditional left-republican notion of a cross-class alliance between small farmers, the petitbourgeoisie and the working class advocated by Connolly in

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1916, Peadar O’Donnell in the 1930s and Clann na Poblachta in the 1940s. It also argued that Ireland’s political and economic underdevelopment during the course of the twentieth century was the result not of British imperialism, but rather of Irish conservatism, and that the attainment of a Workers’ Republic required the provoking of an Irish industrial revolution. It also argued against outright opposition to multi-national capital and membership of the EEC. Much of the analysis consisted of detailed technical industrial critique and proposals for such a revolution. Its political implications, however, were clear, as both the ideological and strategic underpinnings of left-republican strategy were abandoned in favour of a revisionist Marxist analysis of Irish history and contemporary political realities. While the 1977 Ard Fheis adopted resolutions endorsing much of the thrust of this analysis, it would take the party another decade to fully absorb its implications. Significant figures within the party such as President Tomás MacGiolla and future TD Joe Sherlock would remain ambivalent. While the deepening cycles of conflict in the north appeared unconducive for such a radical revision of republican strategy, in the south the worsening economic climate of the 1970s, coupled with the failure of the Labour Party to fully embrace its 1960s leftward turn, opened up a space for a more radical socialist party, particularly amongst working-class communities in the state’s major cities. That Labour was tied to a conservative Fine Gael coalition from 1973 to 1977 clearly restricted its ability to respond to the growing economic crisis. The 1972 oil crisis witnessed a tenfold increase in oil prices with a devastating impact on the incoming coalition government’s plans for economic recovery. Unemployment was rising, reaching 12 per cent by 1977, while government projections for growth and public spending were failing to materialise. The increasing tax burden on both working- and middle-class employees was generating growing levels of public anxiety, soon to explode in the PAYE revolt of 1978 and ’79. In response, SFWP in the south focused its energies on developing its influence within the trade union movement,


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amongst public sector workers, and in the media, particularly in Radio Telefis Éireann. Increasingly directed by figures such as Eamonn Smullen and Eoghan Harris, both of whom had strong support from Goulding, the party’s weekly paper, the United Irishman, in publication since 1950, was replaced by the Irish People (weekly) and Worker’s Life (monthly) at the end of 1979. From 1980, moves were initiated to remove the Sinn Féin element of the party’s name. An unsuccessful Cumann motion to this effect was defeated at the 1980 Ard Fheis. However by 1982 the same motion was carried unanimously, despite considerable unease from figures such as Sherlock and MacGiolla. Despite these reservations the ‘economic’ section of the party was becoming increasingly influential over those closer to more traditional left republicanism. In the 1981 general election SFWP had their first breakthrough, with Joe Sherlock becoming TD for Cork East, whose vote against Fianna Fáil’s Charles Haughey and abstention on Fine Gael’s Garret FitzGerald was key to the election of the new coalition government. Following the collapse of the short-lived Fine Gael–Labour coalition government, SFWP secured three TDs, including Proinsias de Rossa in Dublin and Paddy Gallagher for Waterford. A second election later the same year saw the party lose a seat, possibly owing to their external support for the highly controversial Haughey-led Fianna Fáil government. Their fortunes recovered, however, winning four seats in the 1987 general election and increasing it to seven by 1989. While electorally the 1980s appeared good for the Workers Party in the south, they were dogged by a series of internal divisions and constant media exposés of the activity of the Official IRA. At an ideological level the party were comfortably becoming a Eurocommunist party similar to counterparts in Spain, Italy, France and the Basque Country. Their adoption of a clear parliamentary route to socialism, rejection of any form of armed struggle and active engagement in the trade union movement accompanied the move away from their republican roots. However, by the middle of the decade the growing distance between the party north and south was becoming apparent. Taking a hard line against Sinn Féin, the SDLP and Fianna Fáil, and a soft line on state violence,

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while supporting an internal settlement to the conflict, was a recipe for electoral disaster. Standing under the name ‘Republican Clubs’ in the 1973 local government elections in the north the party secured eight seats and 3 per cent of the vote. By 1981 their share of the vote had dropped to 1.8 per cent in the local government elections winning them three seats. In 1985 they witnessed a seat increase, to five, despite a marginal drop in their vote, however the pattern was reversed by the end of the decade with four seats and 2.1 per cent of the 1989 local government vote. The differing electoral success of the party north and south was a reflection of the fact that its direction was increasingly orientated by its southern leadership, to the active detriment of the party’s growth in the north. Nowhere was this seen more clearly than on the issue of the party’s relationship to the Official IRA. In 1982, James Flynn, a senior Dublin-based Official IRA volunteer was shot dead by the INLA, who claimed it was in response to the Officials’ shooting dead of INLA leader Seamus Costello during the 1977 feud. The killing confirmed for many the accusations featured in the April edition of Magill magazine. This widely read investigative magazine, edited by prominent journalist Vincent Browne, devoted two editions to the activities of both the Official IRA and the Workers Party. Again in 1986, following the RTÉ current affairs programme, Today Tonight’s exposé detailing the armed activities of the Official IRA, the Workers Party came under fire. Senior figures, including party president Tomás MacGiolla TD and future President Proinsias de Rossa TD, rejected the accusations. By 1992, however, both ideological differences and continued Official IRA activity were making the position of the southern party leadership untenable. By the end of the 1980s it was clear that the parliamentary party section of the party had travelled the same path as their continental Eurocommunist colleagues, gradually abandoning Marxist-Leninism and, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, adopting social democracy. The publication in 1990 of the pamphlet Necessity for Social Democracy, despite opposition from the party leadership, emphasised this trend. Smullen and Harris resigned in 1990 after the party failed to


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formally adopt the social democratic route. There were also rumours that high-profile TDs Pat Rabbitte and Eamonn Gilmore were close to leaving. Responding to the growing crisis, party president Proinsias de Rossa called an extraordinary Ard Fheis in February 1992, in an attempt to reconstitute the party. In a letter to party members he outlined the gravity of the situation, arguing: If opposing views were all that were at issue certainly a compromise, a working relationship could be found. The problems, however, are deep and fundamental. Reconstitution is intended to establish the rights of the general membership and to guarantee that democratic decisions, once made, are implemented.69

De Rossa’s motion sought to effectively stand down the party, allow all members the right to reapply, and to abandon both ‘democratic centralism’ and ‘the concept of revolutionary tactics’. In short, the party would be reconstituted minus the Official IRA, the ideology of Marxist-Leninism, and any existing members who continued to adhere to either of these aspects of the party’s past. The Ard Fheis was bitter and acrimonious, as de Rossa and his parliamentary colleagues were accused of hypocrisy and dishonesty in their denials of Official IRA activity and financing of the party. The reconstitution motion failed to secure the required two-thirds majority and thus fell, forcing de Rossa and five of the party’s seven TDs to leave the Workers Party, and found Democratic Left. MacGiolla, who remained as the Workers Party’s sole TD, lost his seat in the 1997 general election. Democratic Left also fared badly, losing two seats after a brief period in John Bruton’s 1994 Fine Gael led coalition government. While clearly damaged by both the split and involvement in government, the demise of the party was as much a consequence of the absence of any available political space for them to operate within. The growth of the Workers Party during the 1980s was at the expense of the Labour Party and on the basis of a left-wing programme aimed at the larger party’s working-class electorate. By the 1990s Democratic Left’s programme increasingly resembled the more middle-class liberal agenda responsible for both the election of Mary Robinson as

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president in 1991 and the subsequent Spring tide of 1992, giving Labour its largest vote share and seat return in history (19 per cent and 33 seats). By 1999 it was clear that Democratic Left had no future other than merging with Labour, a move which secured the seats of its four sitting TDs but added no extra political or electoral strength to post-merger Labour, who held the same number of seats in 2002. Patterson was correct when he wrote that ‘the new organisation turned out to be less than the sum of its constituent parts, as the smaller party’s more radical, campaigning edge and its commitment to those excluded from the benefits of the Celtic Tiger were absorbed without a trace in Labour’s parliamentarist blandness’.70 A similar path was followed by other Eurocommunist parties across Europe, most notably Euskadiko Ezkerra in the Basque Country, but also in slightly different form by The Party of Democratic Left in Italy and Left Unity in Spain. The Workers Party continues to exist both north and south, without electoral or political support, consigned to the absolute margins of politics in both states. The history of the party, from Official Sinn Féin to Democratic Left, can be characterised primarily as one of a gradual but traumatic ideological transformation from a left-republican formation to a social democratic one. En route the party discarded republicanism as its organising principle; adopted unionist positions on the northern conflict; advocated Marxist-Leninist, then Eurocommunist, then Social Democratic organisational and ideological principles and political strategies; finally ending up as part of a party that throughout its entire political existence it had chastised for conservatism. De Rossa’s desire to reconstitute the party in 1992 effectively brought to an end the political lives of both strands of the party, which by the end of the decade were playing no meaningful or distinctive role in Irish political life north or south. Patterson and Hazelkorn’s assessment, that Democratic Left’s poor performance was a result of ‘the spectacular performance of Labour’ and the difficulties inherent in ‘constructing a viable, radical Left alternative’ is too generous, explaining away the party’s own failures by focusing on external forces.71


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Conclusion Throughout the course of the twentieth century, left republicans made successive attempts to build a coherent and successful political project, aimed at ending partition and transforming the social and economic architecture of Irish society. The republican left inside and outside of Fianna Fáil during the 1920s, the Republican Congress in the 1930s, Clann na Poblachta in the 1940s and 1950s, and the Workers Party in the 1970s and 1980s, all consciously located themselves within an ideological tradition stretching from the United Irish movement through to Connolly and Mellows. All appealed to the sentiment of the 1916 Proclamation and the content of the 1919 Democratic Programme of the First Dáil as the basis of their political and economic project. All articulated social and economic programmes aimed at redistributing the nation’s wealth. And all understood the limits of the nation’s development as originating from an alliance of British imperialism and Irish capitalism. But all of these projects failed. Not only were they unable to build sufficient political momentum to challenge the hegemony of the more conservative forces within the nationalist movement, they also failed to become an effective opposition. Eighty years after the founding of the state, Fianna Fáil remains the dominant political party in the south of Ireland, and Fine Gael the principal opposition. While these two parties were to prove the enduring players of the century, all of the left-republican parties discussed in this chapter lived short and unfruitful political lives, rarely surviving for more than a decade or two, and with little meaningful impact on the political or economic dynamics of their day. Despite containing the potential to seriously challenge the political and economic status quo, left republicanism in its different manifestations clearly failed to realise this potential, and it is to this question I now want to turn. Why is the history of left republicanism characterised by failure? Was the context in which it was operating unconducive to its development and growth? How did left republicanism understand this context, and what were its responses? To what extent were its

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ideological and policy formulations responsible for this failure? What of organisation and strategy, how did these contribute to the various outcomes? Understanding the answers to these questions is essential to assessing the nature of left republicanism’s failure in the twentieth century.

Context The context in which the various political formations discussed above were operating was a constantly changing one. The revolutionary moment from 1916 to 1922, the process of early state formation from 1922 to the 1930s, the political and economic challenges of the 1940s and 1950s, and the post-1970s crisis of both northern and southern states, were all substantially different moments. The extent to which radical republicans could constitute a threat to the stability of the state, and in particular to Fianna Fáil’s hegemony within it, owes as much to the structural forces at play at a given moment as to the actions of left republicans themselves. The marginalisation of left republicanism, feminism and socialism at the end of the revolutionary moment has been dealt with above. From a structural point of view, what is significant about the two decades after partition is that while the context changed radically, from one of conflict and instability to one of state formation, the space for radical politics remained marginal. While the possibility of a challenge to the conservatism of both Cumann na nGaedhael or the Ulster Unionist Party was indeed possible, as the rise of Fianna Fáil demonstrated, any successful challenge would require the combined forces of the political opposition, rather than just its left. Fianna Fáil’s success relied on its ability to mobilise all those different sections of society excluded or disappointed by a decade of Cumann na nGaedhael government. A left-republican or petit-bourgeois challenge alone would not have had sufficient strength. However, by combining the two, a serious hegemonic challenge could be mounted. In some respects the marginalisation of the republican left post 1932, their eventual departure from the IRA, the failure of the


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Republican Congress and the escape to Spain to fight against Franco, were as much a consequence of the absence of any real space for a left-republican project as they were a result of their own miscalculations. However, by the 1940s a much more significant space had opened up, as over a decade of Fianna Fáil government had left those on the republican left of the party disappointed with the lack of progress on social, economic and constitutional issues. The dramatic success of Clann na Poblachta in mounting a serious challenge to Fianna Fáil was a consequence of this opening. That they failed to become a serious long-term challenge to de Valera, or a serious contender for political power, was more to do with their own response to the unfolding political situation. But there is no doubt that the 1940s represented in structural terms the first real opportunity for a left-republican project to seriously challenge conservative nationalism’s hegemony within Irish politics. Left republicans would have to wait another 30 years before such an opening was again available. The crisis of both the southern and northern states, from the end of the 1970s – part of a more general crisis of capitalism and the post-World War social democratic state – contained within it possibly the most significant opportunity for left republicanism since 1916. The development of Sinn Féin in the north will be the subject of the following chapter. However, in the south it was the Workers Party who emerged as the possible contender, much as Clann na Poblachta had done three decades earlier. Again, their failure to capitalise on the opportunities created through the economic and political crises of the time owe more to the weakness of their own interventions. Thus in contextual terms, the twentieth century was not a completely inhospitable place for a political project attempting to combine republican and socialist politics. The failure of both Clann na Poblachta and the Workers Party to successfully capitalise on the opportunities available to them owe more to their own ideological, organisational and strategic failures, to which I will now turn.

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Ideology and Policy There is little doubt that throughout the twentieth century the ideological foundations of left republicanism have been confused and under-theorised. Despite having a significant body of political writings left by Connolly, twentieth-century republicans, in contrast with socialist and communist movements across Europe, by and large avoided serious ideological discussion or critique, with the obvious exception of the Workers Party. The absence of any theoretical tradition within eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury Irish republicanism; the preference for literary and historiographical forms of expression over more philosophical or analytical forms prevalent across Irish political culture; and an emphasis on political or military action often in opposition to debate and ideological argument left twentieth-century Irish republicanism ill equipped to understand, critique and change its own ideological foundations. That the most common form of writing by radical republicans post Connolly is fiction (O’Donnell, Ó Faoláin, Adams, Morrison), or history and biography (Jackson, Greaves, Berresford Ellis), rather than analytical or theoretical investigation, is indicative of this emphasis. Yet despite this almost anti-ideological sentiment, ideology has played a key part in the failure of left republicanism during the century. One of the primary difficulties for left republicanism has been its inability to articulate the distinction and in turn integration of nationalism, republicanism, socialism and feminism as component elements of their ideological foundations. In turn this has led to policy formulations and choices that failed to speak to a significant minority let alone a majority of the population. While Connolly achieved a degree of sophistication in terms of his ideological articulation at the end of the nineteenth century, the unwillingness of subsequent generations of left republicans to interrogate whether his formulations were a key element of the failure of his political project left important lessons unlearned. As suggested in Chapter 2, this failure has meant that Connolly’s main function for subsequent generations of republicans has been superficial and declaratory – offering a reservoir of slogans and justifica-


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tions, rather than providing meaningful ideological tools for understanding and changing society. The great failure at the heart of Connolly’s project was not, contrary to the arguments of the revisionists, that socialism and republicanism are incompatible, but rather that his specific articulations of these ideological projects were unable to speak to the needs, interests and aspirations of the urban and rural working class of his time. That subsequent generations of left republicans failed to recognise this meant they simply repeated his central mistake, ensuring that their political discourse would remain marginal to the concerns of the day. Indeed it was only when left-republican political formulations moved away from Connolly’s unsuccessful ideological articulation of socialism and republicanism –unconscious in the case of Clann na Poblachta and conscious in the case of the Workers Party – that achieving a measure of political success appeared possible. However in both of these cases, what emerged proved ultimately unstable and incapable of providing a secure foundation upon which to build strategic or policy stability – to which I will return below. While Connolly attempted to integrate Second International socialism with nineteenth-century Fenianism, joining the ranks of advanced nationalism after the failure of any independent republican socialist party and the crushing of the 1913 lock-out meant that the nationalist objective of independence came to precede the social and economic objectives of socialism. On this point the revisionists are right. While Mellows’ tactical return to the men of no property appeared to revert to Connolly’s earlier integration, it was in effect based on political expedience rather than ideological consistency. The split in the Republican Congress, and the victory of the O’Donnellite–Communist Party alliance, in some respects represented the return of the ‘Republic First’ formulation. The difficulty was that on the basis of this formulation only an alliance with more conservative nationalists was possible, seeking to advance the democratic demands of independence, a position subsequently advocated by Desmond Greaves and Anthony Coughlan in a different context. That the Nora Connolly faction in the Republican Congress simply

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reverted to the already failed articulation of the ISRP secured their further marginalisation, once again demonstrating the inability of Connolly’s legacy to provide anything other than a starting point for a viable left-republican project. For Clann na Poblachta, their intuitive articulation of national and socio-economic concerns side by side appeared at first to overcome the redundancy of both sides in the Congress dispute. The success of the new party was based on the fact that it appealed simultaneously to republicans concerned with issues of partition, prisoner’s rights and civil liberties at the same time as urban and rural working-class interests who wanted some form of social and economic change. The combined image of Seán MacBride and Noel Browne encapsulated this formula, irrespective of the degree to which the party understood the conditions of its own success. However, as will be discussed below, the party’s organic ideological formulation, unconscious and under-theorised as it was, was unable to withstand the pressures of internal and external political events. From an ideological point of view, Clann na Poblachta’s inability to understand the foundations upon which its success was based meant that when they took decisions, they did so unaware of the consequences they would have, and thus unable to anticipate the negative impact of entering coalition or adopting various policy positions whether from within or beyond those coalitions. Of all the parties discussed in this chapter, only the Workers Party attempted to engage in a serious ideological self-examination and re-articulation, not once but several times in the course of their history. Emerging from the failure of the 1959 border campaign and influenced by radical currents at home and abroad, the party critically assessed the utility of the republican tradition to contemporary Irish society. The consequence was much more than the abandoning of long-cherished tactics such as armed struggle or electoral abstentionism. The transformation from a left-republican ideological formation to one increasingly influenced by Marxist-Leninism led, by 1982, to the effective abandonment of republicanism as an ideological resource, despite the rhetorical claims of many within the party. However the rapid


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replacement of Leninism with Eurocommunism and then social democracy during the 1980s not only created the organisational and personality tensions leading to the implosion of the party in 1992, but also shattered the ideological coherence of the party, making its demise inevitable. While this demise came much earlier in the north than in the south, it nonetheless served to demonstrate that the ideological changes, driven as they were by the emerging political leadership, were located in and responding to the changes taking place in the southern state. Ironically, at the very moment when the party’s political and electoral strength and ideological influence in the south appeared to be strongest, at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, the party’s abandonment of democratic socialism in favour of mainstream European social democracy sealed their fate, and it was only a matter of time before that same political leadership would dissolve into their main political rivals the Irish Labour Party. Throughout the course of the century left republicans have failed to understand in a critical way the ideological foundations of their own projects. In turn they were unable to successfully articulate a political, social or economic policy platform that spoke to a significant proportion of the population. Ideological uncertainty produced policy confusion. Combined, these confusions actively undermined the success of their own projects.

Organisation and Strategy The importance of ideology for political parties is that, irrespective of whether they are conscious of it or not, it provides the intellectual resources from which organisational models, strategic imperatives and policy platforms emerge. A political party’s success does not necessarily depend on understanding this, but the ability of any political formation to respond effectively to its historical moment can only be strengthened by a degree of ideological clarity. Left republicanism’s ideological confusion, from the 1920s through to the 1980s, was mirrored by confusions in the organisational, strategic and policy dimensions of each formation discussed above.

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At an organisational and strategic level, left republicans were deeply suspicious of parliamentary politics and in turn of the political party form itself. They privileged grassroots campaigns, popular mobilisations, and trade union engagement. They were deeply suspicious of building alliances with other political parties, even when actively trying to move them in certain directions or joining coalitions with them. When they did engage with political parties, either externally (land annuities campaign and Republican Congress), or when they formed them (Clann na Poblachta or the Workers Party), they did so reluctantly or in a contradictory and confused manner. Such attitudes were deeply ingrained in the experience and discourse of Irish radical politics, distrustful as it was of the British parliamentary system and knowledgeable of the failure of Irish politicians to successfully engage with that system pre- and post-partition (O’Connell, Parnell, Redmond, Collins, de Valera). Unfortunately, the absence of anything other than an experiential understanding of party politics – and in particular an absence of either a theoretical critique of the party-political form or an understanding of similar debates taking place elsewhere in Europe, particularly among Western European communist parties – meant that left republicans were both unaware of and unable to resolve the contradictions inherent in their approach to political parties. Those reluctant to engage in party politics left the field uncontested, to the benefit of Fianna Fáil and Labour. This was particularly the case both in the role played by left republicans in assisting the coming to power of Fianna Fáil and in the Republican Congress. In both instances the organisational objective was to build a mass movement in order to influence Fianna Fáil, the strategic purpose of which was either to move Fianna Fáil to the republican left or to force a crisis within that party in order to strengthen the mass movement. However the conditions were clearly not conducive to building such a mass movement. While the land annuities campaign came closest, Fianna Fáil was successfully able to neutralise its radical potential once in government. As the southern state stabilised post 1932, and the business of politics became primarily one of parliamentary


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democracy centring on Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael’s hegemonising of state power, left republicans were either unwilling or unable to think of establishing an alternative political party. With a trade union movement accepting its role as representative of labour within the new parliamentary system, and an IRA unsure of its political role or purpose, left republicans in the 1930s and early 1940s simply had no vehicle, ideological or organisational, with which to engage politically. That this fact was understood by those republicans in the late 1940s who formed Clann na Poblachta was not in doubt. However, their organisational difficulties were of a different order. That a radical political project requires a different form of party politics was intuitively understood. The difficulty was how to build and manage such a party while participating in a conservative coalition. The tensions between delivering political, social and economic change while maintaining coalition cohesion and unity were in the end too much for Clann to cope with. Likewise, without a mobilised social force external to the parliamentary party, the strength of the government ministers was determined solely by their electoral strength. The lessons of the War of Independence, in which the strength of a small military offensive led by the IRA and a formally powerless political party – Sinn Féin – and alternative government – the First Dáil – were strengthened by trade union mobilisation, civic society and the general population, played no part in Clann’s organisational strategy once in government. In effect, their political party formation, despite rhetorical appeals to the contrary, quickly came to resemble that of the other parties in government, which alienated its activist and electoral base. The Workers Party is again the clear exception, in that for the first time in twentieth-century left-republican history, there was a concerted attempt to consciously think through the ideological and organisational requirements for achieving their stated political aims. In organisational terms the party moved from the suspicion of parliamentary politics characteristic of other left republicans to an embrace of the democratic centralism of Leninism in the late 1970s and an embrace of the parliamentarism of Eurocommunism in the 1980s. They did this through recourse to developments

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within the Western European communist movement of the time, first through the influence of Irish communists radicalised in the Connolly Association in Britain and then through its knowledge of and engagement with Italian, Spanish and French communist parties of the 1980s. Indeed their ultimate abandonment of democratic centralism as a fundamental organisational principle in the early 1990s owed much to the impact of the fall of Eastern European communism on the Italian Communist Party. However, while conscious of the organisational model being utilised, the difficulty for the Workers Party was twofold. First, many of the organisational changes were imposed on the organisation from above. Neither its activist base nor its wider support base fully understood or supported the changes being proposed. The absence of any organic or democratic process of evolution within the party led to tensions, defections and an absence of internal cohesion. Additionally, each of the organisational changes (from left republican to Marxist-Leninist, to Eurocommunist to social democratic) took the form of an uncritical adoption of organisational forms from other national political and historical contexts, applied with little discussion or understanding of their suitability to the Irish context. Each phase of change secured the support of a small number of ideologically engaged activists, but in the end failed to convince activists or supporters. If the failure of Clann na Poblachta was a consequence of the failure to adequately theorise the ideological basis of their project and in turn to assess the consequences of their organisational model and strategic approach, the Workers Party suffered from the opposite problem – a tendency to over-theorise and shift organisational models and strategic choices at a speed which neither the activists nor indeed the broader political and economic context could support. Despite these limitations and failures, all of the left-republican formations discussed above involved innovative forms of political action. Their concern not to be limited by a narrowly defined parliamentarism and political party model led them to explore different ways of thinking about and making politics. Early left republicans, particularly during the land annuities campaign, returned to the radical democratic example of the eighteenth and


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nineteenth centuries in an attempt to build a mass movement. The aim was not to take power, or to build an alternative base for a new political party, but to force those in power to move in a certain direction, to affect the policies and decisions of existing political parties. For their part, both Clann na Poblachta and the Workers Party sought to radicalise the party political form itself, through a mixture of innovative approaches to campaigning and propaganda in Clann’s case, and through engaging and infiltrating trade unions, the media and civil society in the case of the Workers Party. The Republican Congress sat somewhere between these two models, neither a mass movement nor a political party, but aiming to achieve the objectives of both. If there is a common thread that marks the failure of these different organisational models it is the inability to effectively combine parliamentary political engagement and grassroots community mobilisation in ways that allowed both modes to complement and strengthen each other. In each case these forms ended up jarring or conflicting, to the point that one was chosen over the other, ultimately undermining the viability of the organisational model itself. Without a political party left republicanism was left at the margins of political life; but when fully adopting the bourgeois political party model left republicanism lost its radical campaigning edge and was neutralised within the parliamentary political system.

Exclusions: Gender and Unionists In all of the periods described above left republicans marked themselves out by their commitment to political and economic equality and territorial and social unity. The rhetoric of each organisation placed great store in the egalitarian and antisectarian discourse of the United Irish movement and the 1916 Proclamation. However, with respect to issues of gender equality and engaging with Irish unionism, none of these organisations moved much beyond that rhetoric. At an ideological, organisational and strategic level none of the various left-republican formations discussed in this chapter made

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any serious attempt to think through and act out an understanding of their relationship to gender or nation, in a way that would have opened up new and meaningful relationships with women or unionists, and important constituencies of interest. The existence of a valuable reservoir of thinking and activism on these issues, whether from Connolly, Sheehy Skeffington or Ó Faoláin, makes this failure all the more inexcusable. Despite the formal rhetoric of equality for all and the unity of Protestant, Catholic and dissenter, central to all articulations of left republicanism, a concerted gender blindness and refusal to think critically on issues of identity, culture and nation meant that, for most of the twentieth century, left republicanism would be an inhospitable place for women and unionists. In turn left republicanism would replicate the exclusions and marginalisations of both women and unionists prevalent in mainstream conservative nationalism and Irish society more generally. Once again the Workers Party are an exception in both respects, investing a considerable effort to address the ideological exclusions and organisational disengagements with both constituencies. However while their gender politics were to evolve into a rounded and robust feminism, at least at a theoretical level, their engagement with unionism became, in the end, an adoption of some of the most regressive forms of unionist politics, to the extent that by the late 1980s there was little to distinguish the Workers Party from either northern unionist party on touchstone issues such as partition, policing, sectarianism, equality or Orange parades. The failure of left republicanism to think through issues of gender and nation and to engage with women and unionists was to become a major preoccupation of Sinn Féin from the mid 1980s onwards, with various degrees of success and failure, the detail of which is discussed in the next chapter.

Failure The failure of the various left-republican formations detailed above can be read in two contrasting ways. The first is that as a political


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project any combination of socialism and republicanism, of the desire for national democracy and for socio-economic justice, is doomed to failure. The second is to be found in the failure to successfully articulate, organise, strategise and build specific forms of left republicanism during specific historic moments. At one level the first argument would appear to have some purchase, as each generation of left-wing republicans, attempting to influence or secure political power, organising and mobilising in different ways, one after another, failed to become a sustained political force, let alone successfully challenge for political power. However, despite these failures, left republicanism continued to have a popular appeal, particularly for those excluded or marginalised from the political and economic status quo at any given moment in history. Indeed, left republicanism’s role as a repository of ideas and forms available for those seeking to pursue a radical programme of political and economic change in Ireland has not diminished despite a century of failure. That the most successful left-republican political project of the century, Sinn Féin, lays claim to this position is a clear indication that the failure of other left-republican projects is not necessarily because of some inherent contradiction within left republicanism per se, but a consequence of either an inhospitable political and economic conjuncture or of flawed ideological, organisational or strategic decisions made by left republicans during those moments when their potential was at its greatest. Whether contemporary Sinn Féin is consciously learning the lessons of this history of failure is an open question. However, as will be detailed in the next chapter, they have arrived at a point which no other left-republican formation in the history of modern Ireland has reached before. Whether the context in which they are operating and their engagement with it enables them to significantly challenge the social, economic and political status quo remains also an open question.

4 A CENTURY OF STRUGGLE

The history of Sinn Féin during the course of the twentieth century is more a history of different organisations operating under the same name than it is that of a single continuous political party. While personnel, symbols and at times policies remained constant over defined periods of time, both the detail and form of the party, and its response to the specific historical conjuncture, were more often than not radically different, marking the party’s history more by discontinuity than its opposite. There are in fact several Sinn Féin parties to be found in the century of struggle, from the organisation founded in 1905 to the party that elected Gerry Adams as president in 1983. Understanding contemporary Sinn Féin requires a close reading of this discontinuity. It also demands that we understand the external influences on the party, whether from the IRA, other left-republican political formations, or ideologies, policies, events and actors beyond the party itself.

Arthur Griffith’s Sinn Féin As detailed in Chapters 2 and 3, Irish politics at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth was dominated by the political demand for Home Rule. The Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), led by Charles Stewart Parnell until 1891 and then by John Redmond, was the primary if not sole political voice for nationalist Ireland. Its close relationship with the British Liberal Party, and reliance on parliamentary means to secure its political ends, made it dependent on the political will and strength of politicians in Westminster. Despite attempts by the more radical Irish Republican Brotherhood to infiltrate 174

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the party and move it in a separatist direction, the IPP remained wedded to the objective of securing a limited level of administrative independence from Westminster without challenging the constitutional status quo. However, from the end of the nineteenth century, Ireland, like many of its small European neighbours, was experiencing a significant upsurge of radical nationalist cultural and political ferment. The Czechs, Norwegians, Hungarians, Slovaks, Latvians and Estonians were all rediscovering the cultural nationalism of the earlier revolutionary period of 1848. Demands for cultural revival and political independence became intertwined, producing the seeds of a political movement that would eventually displace the conservatism of the IPP. The Young Ireland Society, founded in 1881, sought to revive the thought and activism of the Young Ireland movement of the 1840s.1 Like the Young Irelanders, the Young Ireland Society was primarily intellectual, focusing on the Irish language, and Irish culture and history. The Gaelic Athletic Association was founded in 1884 to promote Irish sports and culture, and quickly became the single largest social organisation in the country. Conradh na Gaeilge was founded in 1893 to promote Irish culture, language and industry. The Gaelic League, founded in 1898 also sought to revive Irish language and culture, and by the start of the twentieth century it had become a truly national organisation consisting of 200 branches, 100,000 members and an ability to distribute, according to one source, 50,000 Irish language textbooks annually.2 While much of this work was cultural, the outbreak of the Boer War in South Africa in 1899 and the visit of Queen Victoria to Ireland the following year provided a more political focus for separatist and republican sentiment. Quoting W.B. Yeats’ observations on the period, historian Diarmaid Ferriter comments that ‘Ireland would be like “soft wax” for years to come, as it was entering “a new period of political activity”’.3 Ferriter also talks about ‘a new sense of cultural vibrancy ... [where] debate was intense and intellectually challenging’.4 And behind all of these developments – encouraging, promoting, and financing if not completely controlling – was a rejuvenated and

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rapidly expanding Irish Republican Brotherhood, committed to promoting cultural nationalism and political separatism in as many forms as was possible. This emerging advanced nationalist movement had no lead organisation, no political party, and no single spokesperson. Rather it was an organic, plural and diverse collection of political, economic and cultural interests. What bound them together was a belief in the need to restore and promote a sense of Irishness, a sentiment encapsulated in the phrase ‘Sinn Féin’. Meaning ‘ourselves’, Sinn Féin was a slogan used by a range of nationalist speakers and organisations from the end of the nineteenth century. The journal of Conradh na Gaeilge, An Claidheamh Soluis, used it regularly to promote Irish-made goods. In 1902, Sinn Féin: the Oldcastle Monthly Review was launched, with future 1916 rebellion leader, Padraig Pearse, speaking at the launch event. The Review’s first editorial described Sinn Féin as ‘the movement that is at present being carried on by thinking men and women of Ireland to revive our ancient language, music, literature, our National sports and pastimes, our decaying industries, and the cause of Temperance’.5 The Review also assured its readers that ‘while Sinn Féin is in existence it will champion the cause of the oppressed against the oppressor and will be the stern champion of the labouring class’.6 It was from within this very specific historical moment, and surrounded by these radical influences, that Arthur Griffith emerged. A member of the Young Irish Society and the IRB, and an employee of the Irish Independent newspaper during the heady days of the 1880s, Griffith was to become a writer, polemicist and activist of enormous importance. Following his return from the Boer War, Griffith founded his own newspaper, the United Irishman, in 1899, with financial assistance from the IRB, and began to articulate a form of advanced nationalism in direct opposition to the Irish Parliamentary Party. In 1900 he formed a political association, Cumann na nGaedhael, with the aim of ‘cultivating a fraternal spirit amongst Irishmen ... supporting Irish industries ... teaching of Irish history, literature, language ... the discountenancing of anything tending towards the Anglicisation


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of Ireland ... [and] the development of an Irish foreign policy’.7 Griffith was also instrumental in the creation of the National Council, a campaign group opposed to the visit of King Edward VII to Dublin in 1903. Historian Brian Feeney estimates that by this time the United Irishman ‘had a circulation of 30,000 ... [and] as many as 250,000 readers’.8 It was through the pages of his publication that Griffith first explained the detail of a political programme that would transform Sinn Féin from a mere slogan into a political movement. In 1904, over 27 weekly instalments in the United Irishman, Griffith serialised what was to become his key work, ‘The Resurrection of Hungary’. Published in complete form as a pamphlet later the same year it sold 5,000 copies within a matter of hours, and more than 20,000 during the twelve months that followed.9 Describing the pamphlet as ‘seminal’, Ferriter summarises it as an argument promoting the merits of establishing Anglo–Irish relations along the lines of the Austro-Hungarian model of dual monarchy, recommending that Irish MPs should abstain from Westminster, in the same manner that Hungarian deputies had withdrawn from the imperial parliament in Vienna.10

Griffith’s dual-monarchy approach was not born out of any ideological support for monarchy per se, but, according to Feeney, ‘he knew most Irish people were not republican and therefore a dual monarchy was a compromise that he believed would satisfy the majority’.11 Feeney also argues that in this way Griffith hoped to win Irish unionists to his cause.12 Within a year, Griffith had published a second pamphlet entitled ‘The Sinn Féin Policy’. The publication was an attempt to persuade members of the Irish Parliamentary Party, gearing up for the 1906 Westminster election, to adopt an abstentionist position. In addition to the arguments made in ‘The Resurrection of Hungary’, Griffith also issued a detailed economic critique of the impact of the Union with Britain and a comprehensive economic programme based heavily on the German economic nationalist Friedrich List. The pamphlet was another success,

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receiving widespread circulation and impact in Ireland and internationally.13 As a consequence: By spring 1905 ‘Sinn Féin’ had become an all-embracing description for attitudes and behaviour, be they political, social, sporting, educational, cultural or economic, which were separatist or Irish Ireland. It was a movement. It was not yet an organisation. It expressed an attitude of mind and offered an ideology and a political programme to those who wanted to break the connection with England.14

But Griffith was not interested in building a political party. Rather he was primarily interested in ideas, their formulation and dissemination in an attempt to influence the broader nationalist movement. Despite being deeply critical of the IPP in the pages of the United Irishman, Griffith had no desire to create an opposition to the main nationalist party. Rather he hoped that the growing frustration arising from the lack of progress with Home Rule would pressurise IPP members into adopting a more radical path. Griffith’s radicalism, it has to be said, was contradictory – supporting women’s equality through the promotion of women into senior positions within Sinn Féin, while vehemently opposing labour struggles such as the Irish Transport and General Workers (ITGWU) mobilisation against businessman William Martin Murphy in the 1913 lock-out. Despite Griffith’s opposition to the ITGWU, other prominent members and elected representatives of the emerging Sinn Féin movement such as Constance Markievicz, P.T. Daily, William Partridge and Michael O’Lehane were active supporters of organised labour. There were other points of disagreement within advanced nationalist circles. The IRB was strongly opposed to the dualmonarchy idea. Other advanced nationalists felt the time had come to challenge the IPP’s hegemony over the nationalist electorate. At its first convention in November 1905, the National Council agreed to begin the process of building a national political organisation, despite opposition from Griffith. While retaining the name National Council, the new organisation adopted Sinn Féin as their primary slogan. Simultaneously the Dungannon Clubs, an Ulster-based IRB front, took a decision to wrest control


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of the emerging Sinn Féin movement from those supporting Griffith’s line. Those arguing that Sinn Féin should become a political organisation rather than a lobby group were given added momentum when, following the Liberal landslide in the 1906 Westminster election, the IPP’s political influence waned and the prospect of Home Rule receded. In 1907 the Dungannon Clubs and Cumann na nGaedhael, along with other advanced nationalist groups and individuals loosely associated with the Sinn Féin movement, formally merged under the name The Sinn Féin League. Griffith and the National Council remained outside the new organisation for several months, eventually joining in September 1907. The League was committed to the broad policies contained in Griffith’s Sinn Féin Policy, advocating economic nationalism, dual monarchy, non-violent political agitation and electoral abstentionism from Westminster. At a strategic level the League sought to influence IPP policy. All of this suggested that Griffith had won the day; however, the victory was somewhat pyrrhic, as the IRB, while not opposed to the programme, clearly did not intend to actively support it. Rather they saw the united organisation as a temporary ‘instrument for unblocking the route to an Irish republic’.15 Occupying a half-way position between a lobby group and a political party, the League was ambivalent about electoral contests. In 1908 they secured the support of a significant minority of councillors on Dublin Corporation. However it was the resignation of C.J. Dolan MP from his Leitrim North seat that pushed Sinn Féin into its first direct contest with the Irish Parliamentary Party. Dolan resigned in protest against the IPP in order to force a by-election in which he intended to contest his own seat but under the Sinn Féin banner. He polled poorly, receiving only 27 per cent of the vote to the IPP’s 73 per cent. The ideas of Sinn Féin may have been popular amongst advanced nationalists and within intellectual circles in Dublin, but this had not as yet translated into political or electoral support. The 1910 Westminster elections provided an important fillip for the IPP, giving them the balance of power in the British parliament. Redmond’s support for Asquith’s Liberal Party and in particular

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his 1911 Parliament Act, weakening the power of the House of Lords, was rewarded with a promise of Home Rule legislation. Asquith delivered in 1912 with a Home Rule Bill, which was passed in 1914. Despite having its implementation interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, events seemed to favour the IPP, offering little political space for advanced nationalists to build any credible alternative project. Indeed the entire country was consumed with the politics of Home Rule, following the formation of the Ulster Volunteer Force in 1913 and the Irish Volunteers the same year. The strength of unionist opposition, the threat of partition, and the prospect of some form of self-government, eclipsed all other political issues at the time. Of course, the Irish Republican Brotherhood believed that the Home Rule crisis opened up another possibility, for an armed rebellion against British Rule. But beyond the small secretive circles of the IRB Central Council, the success or failure to secure Home Rule was the political issue of the day. Sinn Féin’s fortunes thus suffered as a consequence of the apparent imminence of Home Rule. In 1909 the party appeared to have less than 50 functioning branches and little organisational strength or influence outside of Dublin. The 1910 Ard Fheis was poorly attended and in 1913 no Ard Fheis took place. Disputes with the IRB members of the League’s executive over how to respond to the Home Rule crisis led the republicans to effectively disengage from the organisation. By 1915 Sinn Féin was unable to pay the rent on its Dublin headquarters. A decade had passed since its foundation, and despite initial signs that it might mount a serious challenge to the IPP, events had conspired to produce a different outcome. One contemporary supporter commented on the state of the party thus: The Sinn Féin organisation, from being a serious threat to the Irish Parliamentary Party in 1907, had dwindled away until, at the time of the insurrection [1916], it was practically confined to one central branch in Dublin; while it survived as a political policy through Mr Griffith’s paper Nationality.16


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On the eve of what was to be the foundational moment of twentieth-century Irish republicanism, the 1916 Rising, Sinn Féin was a small, marginal, isolated group of Dublin-based intellectuals, disconnected from the two primary forces of the broader nationalist movement, the IPP and the IRB. The Irish Parliamentary Party continued to pursue the increasingly plausible possibility of Home Rule via parliamentary representation in Westminster, while the Irish Republican Brotherhood was conspiring to incite armed rebellion to achieve a complete separation from Britain. There was little space for dual monarchy or electoral abstentionism between these two poles of nationalist attraction. Despite more than two decades of effort Griffith had achieved little in terms of political influence. However he had created both a political philosophy and an organisation that, unbeknownst to him, would become a valuable resource in the immediate aftermath of the Rising. Ironically, Sinn Féin in its first phase of existence was not a republican organisation, its egalitarianism was uneven and conditional, and it was neither left-wing nor socialist. It was in essence a cultural and economic nationalist organisation. Indeed Griffith’s nationalism was at times both xenophobic and anti-Semitic. Its strategic approach to politics eschewed both armed confrontation with the British state and party political competition with the IPP. Writing in the Irish Nation in 1909 James Connolly described Sinn Féin thus: Sinn Féin has two sides – its economic teaching and its philosophy of selfreliance. With its economic teaching, as expounded by my friend Arthur Griffith ... Socialists have no sympathy, as it appeals only to those who measure a nation’s prosperity by the volume of wealth produced in a country, instead of by the distribution of that wealth amongst the inhabitants ... But with that part of Sinn Féin which teaches that Ireland must rely upon itself ... with that side of Sinn Féin Socialists may sympathise.17

Sinn Féin After the Rising The period surrounding the IRB Rising of 1916 was one of great flux and uncertainty. Indeed, as discussed in the preceding chapters,

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the events in Ireland were a small part of a much bigger process of state crisis and reformation in Ireland and Britain. Political parties as we understand them today were not the norm, and political and organisational membership and allegiances were fluid and at times contradictory. When John Redmond and his Irish Parliamentary Party called on members of the National Volunteers to join Britain’s war effort in 1914, in the hope of securing political advantage after the war, this caused republicans to split and form the Irish Volunteers, controlled directly by the IRB. Only 12,000 of an estimated 180,000 volunteers left. Eighty thousand volunteers enlisted in the British army within twelve months of Redmond’s call. Griffith and the small circle of Sinn Féin activists actively supported the new anti-Redmond Volunteers, both through his newspaper Sinn Féin and as an active member of the new grouping. However the IRB, including some of its more senior figures such as Michael Collins, remained contemptuous of Sinn Féin. At the heart of this tension lay issues of policy (separatism versus the dual monarchy), strategy (armed confrontation versus political persuasion) and style (younger and more militant separatists versus an older generation of advanced nationalists). Yet the 1916 Rising quickly became known as the Sinn Féin rising, despite the fact that Griffith and Sinn Féin had nothing to do with it. Redmond and sections of the Irish media disparagingly referred to the Rising as such, in an attempt to demonstrate its lack of public support. However, as the Rising emerged from the conspiratorial world of the IRB, the general public and many of those involved in or supportive of it lacked a vocabulary to express what the Rising was about. As Sinn Féin referred more to a set of ideas than a specific organisation, it was the most appropriate vocabulary available and almost unintentionally both opponents and supporters of the Rising came to refer to it as the Sinn Féin Rising. In turn Sinn Féin, the organisation, was to become the vehicle through which the IRB would seek to give political expression to the politics of the Rising in its immediate aftermath. According to Feeney, although the IRB adopted a ‘disparaging attitude to Sinn Féin ... it was the Volunteers who made Sinn Féin the political wing of separatism and shaped it into


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a national political party in 1917, but only after they created it in their own image’.18 The immediate post-Rising climate witnessed a significant shift in public opinion away from the IPP and Home Rule. The execution of 1916 leaders, the diminishing prospect of Home Rule, and the threat of conscription into the British army all combined to open a space for an alternative, more radical nationalist project. As volunteers imprisoned after the Rising were released they joined Sinn Féin and the party experienced a rapid transformation with almost 1,240 branches coming into existence within twelve months of Easter 1916.19 The party started to contest elections, directly challenging Redmond. Its first victory came in February 1917, in a Westminster by-election in Roscommon, taking 3,022 votes to the IPP’s 1,708. This was followed with a second by-election victory in South Longford in May of the same year. The influx of new members and committed republicans gave, according to the Irish Independent, ‘the Shinn Féiners ... remarkable organising powers. Their posters are displayed at every crossroads and village in the constituency and their colours float from the treetops and the roofs of houses. Pamphlets are being handed out by the thousands.’20 The election of recently released 1916 volunteer Eamon de Valera in the East Clare byelection in July proved another boon. That de Valera gained 5,000 votes to the IPP’s 2,000 secured his stature as the emerging leader of the Sinn Féin party. The East Clare victory was shortly followed with the election of future Taoiseach W.T. Cosgrave for Sinn Féin in Kilkenny. The dramatic organisational and electoral growth of Sinn Féin not only placed the IPP under severe political pressure, it also opened up a conflict between the more cautious Griffith wing of the party and the more radical republican wing exemplified by de Valera and supported by the IRB and Volunteer movement, from which the party’s new-found strength came. When it became clear that de Valera was intending to challenge Griffith for the presidency of Sinn Féin at the 1917 Ard Fheis, the party’s founder chose not to stand. However a lengthy series of negotiations between the different factions of the party took place, leading to, in Laffan’s words, ‘a compromise formulae suggested

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by de Valera ... which gave the republicans all they wanted while at the same time conciliating the moderates and enabling them to save face’.21 The new constitution stated ‘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.’ The constitution also stated that the party could use ‘any and every means available to render impotent the power of England to hold Ireland in subjection’. The ‘compromise’ agreement was put to the Ard Fheis in October, at which 1,700 delegates represented 1,000 branches nationwide. Conference unanimously agreed a new party constitution and ‘de Valera’s scheme of organisation for the party’.22 While the moderates were kept on board, the Ard Fheis saw control of the party decisively change hands from its founders to a mixture of de Valera volunteers and IRB republicans. Sinn Féin was now a centralised, national political party, committed to achieving a republic and supportive of the right of the Irish people to use force, if necessary, to achieve that objective. In Laffan’s words, ‘The “Sinn Féin movement”, a sentiment or attitude which was almost as vague as nationalism or separatism, had been transformed into an organised political force.’23 Though early 1918 brought a number of electoral defeats, the anti-conscription campaign gathered momentum and the party’s fortunes started to rise. Sinn Féin continued to grow, unequivocally demonstrating its hegemony within nationalist Ireland in the general election of 1918, the first to be fought following extensive franchise reforms. These reforms increased the size of the electorate from 700,000 to 1.9 million, the overwhelming majority of which – women, the young and the working class – were more in tune with the radical message of Sinn Féin than the IPP. Sinn Féin took 474,859 votes to the IPP’s 220,226 and the unionists’ 289,025. With 73 seats to the unionists’ 26 and the IPP’s 6, Sinn Féin’s victory was overwhelming, though less so in Ulster. Of the country’s 32 counties, 24 returned only Sinn Féin TDs, in an election described by historian Brian Feeney as a victory ‘greater than any achieved by any party before or since’.24


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Having eclipsed both the IPP and the struggle for Home Rule, Sinn Féin had succeeded in mobilising a clear majority of the Irish people in favour of separation from Britain and the establishment of a republic. That it was helped in this by circumstance is without doubt. The ambiguity that lay behind the core demand for independence enabled a broad range of people, particularly younger people, to join and support the party. Gaelic revivalists, those angry at conscription, those disappointed by the failure of the IPP, economic nationalists and protectionists, socialists, trade unionists, suffragettes and agrarian radicals all combined in the struggle for the republic. However, all disagreed profoundly as to the form and content of that republic and on the social and economic order of things that should accompany it. Sinn Féin was less a political party with a detailed and coherent policy programme than an emerging national movement, expressing and legitimising a broad range of grievances and aspirations under the one umbrella. While the struggle was against the British, and in pursuance of a republic, a degree of unity and cohesion could be maintained, however precariously. However, the strategic detail of how to struggle for that republic and the ultimate outcome of that struggle would be determined by the balance of forces between the different ideological and organisational factions which made up the national movement. Beyond the republic, the identity and purpose of Sinn Féin was uncertain.

Sinn Féin During the War of Independence The Ireland from which the new Sinn Féin party emerged was a country in revolt. The five years that followed were to witness an unprecedented period of political, military, social and economic conflict. The transformations that took place during this period established what we understand today as modern Ireland. Sinn Féin was only one protagonist in this process, and one whose role was of diminishing importance as the events of the War of Independence and Civil War unfolded. As the party grew rapidly from 1917 onwards so too did two other organisations whose efforts were central to the process of undermining the British

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administration, namely the Irish Volunteers under the control of the IRB and the trade union movement, with the ITGWU in the vanguard. The labour movement was deeply divided between nationalists, unionists and socialists, leading to its absence from the 1918 Westminster election. However, unable to remain on the sidelines, other than in Belfast, trade unions played an increasingly important part in the national movement. Other currents such as spontaneous acts of agrarian radicalism were also becoming widespread. And all of this was mirrored by an increasingly radicalised unionism centred on the Ulster Unionist Council and Ulster Unionist Labour Association. Sinn Féin moved quickly to assert its newly won political strength and implement its election manifesto. At the end of 1917 it announced a 22 point economic programme arguing that industries should be encouraged; land purchase should be completed and absentee landlordism curtailed; a mercantile marine and a tariff commission should be established; a department of public health should be created; and a distinct Irish currency should assert Ireland’s ‘separate national existence in International Trade and Finance’.25

Its most significant act was the establishment, in January 1919, of the first national parliament, known as the First Dáil. The parliament was open to all MPs elected in the previous year’s election, and during its first sitting the assembled deputies issued a declaration of independence, adopted a republican constitution, agreed a cabinet and issued a Democratic Programme for the new government. While the First Dáil was primarily a symbolic body, defiantly asserting Ireland’s democratically expressed wish for independence, it also set about securing as much actual institutional power as circumstances would allow. Unionist MPs boycotted the new institution, refusing to grant it any political or legal legitimacy. The Declaration of Independence was based on the Proclamation of 1916, and conferred sovereignty on the people of Ireland. The Democratic Programme was a much more innovative document. While also based on the sentiment of the 1916 Proclamation, it


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went further, declaring ‘the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland’ and that ‘our country be ruled in accordance with the principles of Liberty, Equality, and Justice for all’. It stressed that ‘no child shall suffer hunger or cold from lack of food, clothing or shelter’, and promised ‘a sympathetic native scheme for the care of the Nation’s aged and infirm’. The Programme called for the ‘development of the Nation’s resources ... in the interests and for the benefit of the Irish people’ while asserting that ‘it shall be the duty of the Republic to take such measures as will safeguard the health of the people’ and that the Republic would have a duty to ‘adopt all measures necessary for the recreation and invigoration of our industries’. The Programme’s final sentence called on the incoming government ‘to seek the co-operation of the Governments of other countries in determining a standard of Social and Industrial Legislation with a view to a general and lasting improvement in the conditions under which the working classes live and labour’.26 In comparison to any previous republican declaration or programme the Democratic Programme was the most detailed, particularly in terms of social and economic issues, and the most self-consciously left-wing. It argued for a level of state intervention in the economy and resource redistribution through social provision which was well beyond the contemporary European norm. Historians disagree on the motivations and importance of the Programme. Feeney argues that it was ‘extraordinarily left wing in its contents for an Irish political party, [and] was designed to appeal to the Second International’ soon to meet in Berne, Switzerland.27 Laffan, however, suggests that the document was ‘drafted jointly by Séan T. O’Kelly of Sinn Féin and Thomas Johnson of Labour ... [but] the imbalance of power between the two sides ensured that the document was pruned of much of its socialist content, but some of the original radical elements survived’.28 Laffan believes that ‘such sentiments can be seen as a debt of honour to the Labour Party, as a gesture of appreciation for its recent abstention from the general election. They were also, perhaps, an attempt to win over support which Labour might otherwise gain in future.’29 Kostick also comments on the need

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to maintain good relations with the Labour party, particularly on the eve of the Berne Second International conference.30 Whatever its origins, and mindful of Sean Ó Faoláin’s caustic though accurate retrospective commentary quoted in Chapter 3, the Democratic Programme represented both the apex and the limits of the left’s influence within both Sinn Féin and the newly created First Dáil. As Sinn Féin began the process of establishing its authority in the political arena, the Irish Volunteers initiated their military campaign against British rule. What became known as the War of Independence started spontaneously, and almost independently of political events in Dublin. Across the country, semi-autonomous units of the Volunteers commenced a guerrilla campaign. The Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), the British Army, and later the Auxiliaries and Black and Tans, were the focus of the Volunteers’ military actions. In the three years of fighting that followed, 1,400 people were killed, 624 of whom were from the British forces and 752 were Volunteers.31 The military campaign was complemented by a massive and again spontaneous withdrawal of support from the RIC by the local population, through the effective boycotting of its members, particularly in rural areas, forcing them to withdraw into the larger towns and cities. In turn the trade unions exerted significant pressure through a series of strikes by railway workers opposed to the transporting of military goods and personnel, and through a general strike in support of republicans and trade unionists on hunger strike in Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison.32 The existence and activity of the Dáil, the Volunteers’ guerrilla campaign, and trade union and civil society mobilisations against the British military repression, all combined to propel the issue of Ireland to the centre of the British political agenda. Sinn Féin’s political dominance was confirmed during the local government elections of 1920 where the party won 258 of the 263 county council seats in Connaught and Munster while in Leinster they won 26 per cent of the seats.33 In Ulster Sinn Féin won 79 seats to the Unionists’ 81.34 In total Sinn Féin won 550 seats, Unionists 355, while the Nationalists took 238. However, as the War of


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Independence progressed, and the activities of these three forces – political, military, and social – accelerated, the position of Sinn Féin was unclear and its influence was marginal. Suffering under the strain of having to operate as, from November 1919, a banned organisation, party structures found it increasingly difficult to operate. In turn, as the First Dáil began to establish its own administration at a central and local level, Sinn Féin, its structures and activists, simply became the government, with the consequence of draining the party of both its functions and activists. That the party was only able to manage one Ard Fheis between 1917 and 1921 underlines Feeney’s judgement: An illegal organisation, its meetings disrupted, its leaders hunted and concentrating on an intensifying guerrilla war, politics pushed to the side, Sinn Féin went underground, then became a redundant organisation. By August 1921 W.T. Cosgrave talked of ‘the almost complete disappearance of the Sinn Féin organisation’.35

Sinn Féin After the Anglo–Irish Treaty At the height of the War of Independence, Britain had 40,000 troops and 10,000 armed police stationed in Ireland.36 Public opinion in Britain was growing concerned at the nature and extent of the engagement. The British government was also keenly aware of the international consequences of the war, particularly on official opinion in the USA. For their part, the Irish Volunteers were finding it increasingly difficult to regain the military initiative in the face of such a large British military and police presence. Throughout 1920 various attempts to open peace negotiations came to nothing. However a truce was declared in the summer of 1921 and lengthy negotiations took place in London between the British government team headed by Prime Minister Lloyd George and the Irish delegation led by Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins. Signed in December 1921, the Anglo–Irish Treaty outlined the terms for the ending of the War of Independence. The Treaty did not contain the core demand of Sinn Féin, for an Irish republic.

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Indeed its contents fell far short of the principal demands of the various organisations that had pursued the war. It proposed the partition of Ireland, giving the north and south separate parliaments, the north remaining within the United Kingdom and the south becoming a self-governing dominion within the British Commonwealth. Members of both parliaments would have to take an oath of allegiance to the British monarch. The British Army would retain control of key strategic ports along the Irish coast and Ireland would have to pay part of the British war debt. The Irish delegation, having accepted the deal, returned home to a storm of controversy, with de Valera, then President of Dáil Éireann, rejecting it outright. A lengthy Dáil debate in December exposed the deep divisions amongst Sinn Féin TDs. However, in January 1922 the Treaty was ratified. The closeness of the vote, 64 TDs in favour and 57 against, was a clear indication of the broader divisions across the country. De Valera resigned as president to be replaced by Arthur Griffith, who also became president of the new Provisional Government of Ireland as stipulated by the terms of the Treaty. An election was called for June of that year which for all intents and purposes would act as a referendum in the new 26-County state on the Treaty itself. As the country began to come to terms with the consequences of the Treaty, deep divisions and great confusion were evident. Sinn Féin, the Irish Volunteers, and in turn each of the social, political and labour organisations who constituted the broadbased independence movement, all experienced divisions and splits. Two versions of each organisation came into being, two Sinn Féin’s, two guerrilla armies and two parliaments, the Second and Third Dáil, the former mandated by the 1921 general election and the second mandated by the Anglo–Irish Treaty. That the unity of the independence movement was to disintegrate in this way was hardly surprising. As the 1917 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis had clearly demonstrated, the party, and in turn the broader republican movement, contained diverse aspirations, ideologies and political and strategic interests. It would be a mistake to characterise the primary division as being simply between


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conservatives and radicals, as there were social conservatives in equal measure supporting and opposing the Treaty. However there is no doubt that, whether they were motivated by ideological or pragmatic considerations, those who favoured the Treaty were willing to settle for a level of compromise that more radical republicans simply could not countenance. The anti-Treaty side was to be made up of doctrinaire Fenians such as Rory O’Connor or Mary McSweeney, social radicals such as Peadar O’Donnell and Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, and pragmatic conservatives such as de Valera. Each had different conceptions of the content of the republic and the best means of achieving it, but they were united in the realisation that the Anglo–Irish Treaty would not advance any of their aspirations. Once again republicanism was to be united by what it opposed rather than what it supported, albeit in smaller form than in 1917. In the debate that followed leading up to the June election, the British government’s threat of a return to war was ever present in the minds of the public. A Sinn Féin Ard Fheis in February 1922, attended by over 3,000 delegates, ended inconclusively, without a formal vote on the Treaty or a split in the party. Rather both pro- and anti-Treaty factions campaigned separately under the one party banner for the forthcoming elections. The outcome of the election gave the pro-Treaty section of Sinn Féin led by Griffith a clear majority of 58 seats. De Valera’s Sinn Féin took 36 seats, and Labour 17, the Farmers Party securing 7, and 10 going to various independents. As with the outbreak of the War of Independence, events in the arena of party politics were quickly overtaken by the actions of the Irish Volunteers, who split at a convention in March. Outbreaks of anti-Treaty violence soon followed, with occupation of the Four Courts in central Dublin and the assassination of the British military advisor to the newly established government in the north of Ireland, Sir Henry Wilson. The deep political divisions that existed within the independence movement, coupled with the anti-Treaty belief that both the Treaty and the context in which the 1922 election took place were undemocratic, made civil war inevitable. While historians are unclear as to the total

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number of fatalities, with earlier estimates of 4,000 deaths being questioned by contemporary writers, Ferriter suggests that ‘more recent research ... gives the number of national army deaths at about 800 and a republican list of about 400. According to the registrar General’s tabulation, there were about 1,150 homicides, executions and deaths as a result of gunshot in 1922 and 1923.’37 There were approximately 13,000 anti-Treaty republican prisoners at the war’s end. The intensity, disruption and scale of death in the Civil War was a measure of the depth of political division within the country. The primary political victim of the war was de Valera’s united 1917 Sinn Féin, who, according to Michael Laffan, having suffered the loss of many of its most able leaders during the war, ‘died, quietly and almost unnoticed’.38 De Valera and the anti-Treaty republicans suffered the heaviest losses, emerging from the Civil War greatly weakened both politically and militarily. The proTreaty faction, renamed Cumann na nGaedhael and led by W.T. Cosgrave, went about the business of implementing the terms of the Anglo–Irish Treaty and establishing the Free State. The outcome of the Civil War, and the formal departure of the pro-Treaty faction from Sinn Féin, was a mixed blessing. The end of the war and the stabilisation of 26-County political life ensured that republicans dissatisfied with the new state would require a political vehicle to mount a challenge to the legitimacy of that state. As he had done in 1917 de Valera moved quickly to ensure control of the party. However, clear divisions between how post-Treaty Sinn Féin should proceed were evident from the outset. Liam Mellows’ leftward turn, outlined in Chapter 3, was clearly at odds with de Valera, who ‘had no wish to see the emergence of a new republican political party whose policies or rhetoric would further alienate the dominant conservative elements in Irish society’.39 However, that such left-republican impulses were coming from a minority faction within the IRA rather than Sinn Féin meant that there was no challenge to de Valera. The re-established Sinn Féin party, formed at a meeting in Dublin’s Mansion House in June 1923, elected an organising committee to coordinate the upcoming general election campaign.


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The party’s platform included a refusal to recognise the legitimacy of the Third Dáil and new government, and promised to adopt an abstentionist position in relation to the parliament. Despite serious organisational difficulties caused by the continued imprisonment of large numbers of anti-Treaty republicans, Sinn Féin secured 27 per cent of the vote and 44 TDs. However, despite this strong political support, the party had no effective means of impacting on the new political order. A widespread desire amongst the public for stability, after more than a decade of conflict, ensured that the Cumann na nGaedhael government would continue to secure a majority of public support. Sinn Féin’s refusal to enter parliament, take its seats and challenge the government, meant it was effectively outside the mainstream. Organisational and electoral difficulties, coupled with growing tensions with more traditionalist members of the party such as Mary McSweeney, Austin Stack and Fr Michael O’Flanagan, suggested that it was only a matter of time before some kind of split took place. Following the defeat of a proposal that Sinn Féin TDs enter the Dáil subject to the removal of the Oath of Allegiance at the 1926 Ard Fheis, de Valera resigned as president and formed a new party, Fianna Fáil. He took with him many of the most energetic and able of anti-Treaty political activists. Laffan argues that Sinn Féin ‘never recovered from the defection of de Valera ... A mere 200 delegates attended its Ard Fheis later in the year.’40 Of equal significance, a large number of anti-Treaty republicans who did not join the Fianna Fáil party, particularly those who remained in the IRA, also abandoned any idea that Sinn Féin could provide a viable political platform to advance their views. They either focused their energies on trying to shift Fianna Fáil in a more republican or leftward direction, or established new organisations such as Saor Éire (1931) and the Republican Congress (1934). The effective abandonment of the Sinn Féin name and organisation, first by Cumann na nGaedhael, then by Fianna Fáil and finally by the IRA, demonstrated that the party was never more than a platform for competing political interests. Once these interests could no longer secure any utility from the party, they abandoned it and created something new. There was no question of organisa-

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tional loyalty, or strategic fidelity. For those who secured control of Sinn Féin, whether in 1917 or 1922, Sinn Féin was a means to an end, rather then something more substantial in itself. However, for those who remained after the creation of Fianna Fáil, commitment to the party was ideologically rooted. For de Valera’s successors at the helm of Sinn Féin – O’Kelly, O’Higgins, and O’Flanagan – Sinn Féin was not simply a means to an end, it was an end in itself, to be promoted and preserved no matter what the changes occurring in the world around it.

Sinn Féin on the Margins In the 1927 general election Sinn Féin put forward 15 candidates, winning only five seats and just over 40,000 votes. Fianna Fáil took 44, narrowing the gap with Cumann na nGaedhael to three. Although still refusing to enter the Dáil until the Oath of Allegiance was removed, Fianna Fáil had clearly secured a majority of antiTreaty support across the country. The Electoral Amendment Act prevented Sinn Féin contesting the second general election in the same year. However, more significant than the loss of an electoral platform was the increasingly strained relationship between the party and the IRA. An Phoblacht, the IRA’s newspaper, then edited by Frank Ryan, was increasingly critical of the party, arguing that ‘not much can come out of Sinn Féin’.41 Indeed, the party played no part in the land annuities campaign, which was to absorb so much of the political energy of the IRA at the time. Sinn Féin also boycotted the annual commemoration of Wolfe Tone at Bodenstown. The party did not contest the 1933 general election. At the centre of Sinn Féin’s political programme during this period was the belief that they alone could claim to be the government of Ireland, the legitimate heirs to the Second Dáil. However, the party did not have a strategy for asserting this clearly symbolic authority nor for advancing the objective of securing a republic. Neither the IRA nor, from 1933, its women’s organisation Cumann na mBan, could support such an abstract position. Thus, the majority of anti-Treaty energy was focused


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on Fianna Fáil. Even those inside the IRA – whether on its leftwing such as O’Donnell and Gilmore or its centre such as chief of staff Moss Twomey – believed that a critical engagement with Fianna Fáil held out more opportunities for political progress than the splendid isolation of Sinn Féin. It is hard not to agree with Michael Laffan’s conclusion that during the 1930s Sinn Féin ‘retreated into a republican ghetto where its members were free to act in a self-righteous, self-indulgent and self-destructive manner ... it became little more than a society of ageing and quarrelsome idealists’.42 On three separate occasions during the 1930s the IRA or former members launched new political organisations in an attempt to give expression to a republican alternative to Fianna Fáil. Saor Éire in 1931 was an attempt by the republican left of the IRA to build a political movement. Its collapse and the left’s loss of influence inside the IRA resulted in the formation of the Republican Congress. Again in 1936 the IRA launched a new party, Cumann Poblachta na hÉireann, further undermining the political and organisational strength of Sinn Féin. However, as with its predecessors the initiative came to nothing. In 1938 the remaining anti-Treaty members of the Second Dáil handed over ‘power’ to the Army Council of the IRA. Sinn Féin were not informed in advance. As Sinn Féin’s influence within the broader republican movement waned, so too did its organisational fortunes. Feeney estimates that the numbers attending party Ard Feiseanna from 1926 to 1930 dropped from 200 activists to around 40.43 Long-standing republican and member of the Irish Women Workers Union, Margaret Buckley, was elected president in 1937, a position she held until 1950. The first woman leader of an Irish political party, she came to exemplify Sinn Féin during its period of greatest marginalisation. Rigidly refusing to accept the legitimacy of the state, even a decade after Fianna Fáil had dropped its abstentionism and taken over the reigns of power from Cumann na nGaedhael, Sinn Féin receded into political obscurity, arguing over issues such as the legitimacy of its members taking state pensions. In effect Sinn Féin ceased to be a functioning political party and had become a small association of like-minded people, disconnected from the cut

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and thrust of politics whether mainstream or marginal. The most apt description came from the newly formed United Irishman newspaper in 1949, which observed that ‘for years Sinn Féin had been content to pursue its way quietly and unobtrusively, relying on a small band of loyal stalwarts who have kept the organisation going, in good times and bad’.44

Sinn Féin Reorganises As detailed in the previous chapter, the 1940s witnessed a growing disillusionment with Fianna Fáil, particularly among republicans. The dramatic electoral success of Clann na Poblachta was an indication of the existence of a considerable reservoir of republican and radical support, available to any party willing to challenge de Valera. However the republican challenge was not to come from Sinn Féin or the IRA, but from former members of both under the leadership of Seán MacBride. Meanwhile the IRA’s concerns were elsewhere. Under the leadership of a new chief of staff, Sean Russell, they declared war on Britain and embarked on a bombing campaign in 1939. The campaign was shortlived, ineffectual and served only to demonstrate the weakness of the organisation and its distance from the centre of political concerns in the Free State. The onset of the Second World War provided de Valera with a pretext to pass an Offences Against the State Act and Unlawful Organisations Order. IRA members were relentlessly harassed, detained and imprisoned. Feeney estimates that ‘during the war years twenty-six IRA men died one way or another in England and Ireland. Over 500 were interned in the Curragh ... and 600 were jailed ... In December 1944, Charlie Kerins, the IRA chief of staff, was hanged ... By that time there was no GHQ staff or Army Council.’45 The IRA’s dalliance with Nazi Germany during the Second World War ensured that the use of emergency powers north and south caused little public outcry. As a consequence, when the war came to an end in 1945 the IRA had virtually ceased to exist as an organised force. While struggles continued around the treatment of political prisoners and the hunger strikes of its volunteers in Mountjoy prison, it


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was Clann na Poblachta who secured the political benefits of such activity rather than Sinn Féin. The end of the war also saw the release of republican internees, who quickly set about reorganising the movement. Tomás MacCurtáin, Pádraig MacLógaín and Tony Mangan were to become the key driving forces in a revitalised IRA. In addition to rebuilding the moribund organisation, they took the decision to reclaim what was left of Sinn Féin, bringing the party under firm IRA control and providing it with a new wave of members, many who were also members of the IRA. Nineteen-forty-eight saw the launch of a new monthly publication, the United Irishman. In 1950 Margaret Buckley stood down as president of Sinn Féin to be replaced by MacLógaín. A new constitution was agreed reaffirming the party’s objectives as: ‘The complete overthrow of English rule in Ireland ... to bring the Proclamation of the Republic, Easter 1916, into effective operation and to maintain and consolidate the Government of the Republic, representative of the people of all Ireland’.46 While the text of the constitution did not suggest any significant changes in the party’s outlook, it signalled a renewed emphasis on organising, both militarily and politically. IRA activity increased, primarily in the form of raids on army weapons stores, and Sinn Féin started to contest elections again. The new leadership of Sinn Féin and the IRA were devout Catholics and deeply influenced by the social teaching of the Catholic Church. A Social and Economic Programme was drawn up shortly after the new constitution was passed. Feeney highlights the influence of late nineteenth-century Catholic encyclicals on the document, and its focus on the moral consequences of industrialisation and modern economic life. Feeney concluded that ‘the men leading Sinn Féin in the 1950s opposed the Welfare State and believed, along with the Catholic Hierarchy, that a proposal like the Mother and Child Scheme promoted by Noel Browne in 1951 ... weakened moral resolve and induced a dependency culture’.47 The party unsuccessfully contested two seats in the 1954 southern general election, taking less than 3 per cent of the vote in Clare and Louth. The electoral platform advocated national

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unity and independence articulated as ‘complete freedom for the Irish people to work out the life of the nation in all its political, economic, social and cultural and other aspects without interference from any foreign power’.48 It was a narrowly defined political and constitutional nationalism, taking no positions on social and economic issues, and through explicit support for the IRA, indicating that independence could only be achieved through force of arms. Standing in the Six County Westminster elections in 1955, Sinn Féin secured 152,310 votes winning two seats. Two years later in 1957 Sinn Féin secured 65,640 votes (5 per cent) in the southern general election, electing four TDs, including 25-year-old Ruarí Ó Brádaigh, a future president of the party. While continuing to avoid any direct ideological commitment beyond political nationalism, the 1957 election campaign saw the party criticise Fianna Fáil and the Fine Gael led coalition for mismanaging the economy. High emigration, high unemployment and declining standards of living created a large constituency of discontent. The disintegration of Clann na Poblachta and the involvement of Labour in the second interparty coalition ensured that Sinn Féin would benefit from the discontent, despite its failure to propose policy solutions to the country’s economic problems. However, for the new generation of leaders of the IRA and Sinn Féin, harnessing that discontent was not, in the first instance, about mobilising for social or economic change. Rather, their political and electoral engagement was in the first instance about mobilising popular support for the more important stage of their reorganisation, an armed assault against the northern state. December 1956 saw the beginning of Operation Harvest. Over the next six years, the IRA would launch 600 military operations inside the Six Counties, as a result of which twelve republicans lost their lives, as did six RUC men. Internment was introduced resulting in the imprisonment without trial of 200 republican activists and supporters. Two hundred political prisoners were eventually jailed. In total Feeney estimates that the campaign cost the northern state ‘almost £1 million’ with an additional £2 million in security costs.49 While the IRA in the 1920s and


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1930s had focused their activity mainly on the emerging Free State forces, and from the end of the thirties on Britain, this was the first serious armed incursion into the northern state. The IRA hoped that their raids on RUC barracks and other installations, mainly conducted from the southern border region, would provoke a popular uprising. However, not only did the popular rising fail to materialise, but the initial increase in Sinn Féin electoral support quickly evaporated. In the 1959 Westminster election Sinn Féin’s vote dropped by almost 50 per cent to 73,415. A general election in the south in 1961 witnessed a similar result, securing only 36,393 votes and leading to the loss of both Sinn Féin’s TDs. While harassment, internment, banning and censorship undoubtedly played a part, the electoral results can only be seen as a clear rejection of Operation Harvest by what was in the mid 1950s an emerging republican electorate. The IRA admitted as much when, in 1961, it formally ended its campaign stating that ‘foremost among the factors motivating this course of action [ending the campaign] 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’.50 The statement exposed an organisation out of touch with the political realities of the time. While a potential base of political support indeed existed, as evidenced in the 1955 and 1957 elections, that support was for a republican political alternative to the failed policies and governments, north and south, not for an armed insurrection. Indeed it was a similar base of support to that won by Clann na Poblachta only a decade earlier. Feeney is correct in commenting that the decision of the IRA to take control of Sinn Féin at the end of the 1940 undoubtedly ‘saved it from oblivion’.51 However the new leadership of the movement, wedded to ideological and strategic priorities that had no grounding in the political reality of the moment, misunderstood the growth in electoral support. Equally they misread the mood of northern nationalists, launching a military campaign that was neither welcome nor understood. The result was a process of rebuilding both the IRA and Sinn Féin only to undermine the gains of the

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mid 1950s by a rigid adherence to an abstentionist and militarist strategy whose time had clearly passed.

Sinn Féin in the 1960s The limited IRA and Sinn Féin reorganisation from 1948 onwards established a new relationship between the political and military expressions of Irish republicanism. Politically the IRA was in control, determining the programme, strategy and personnel that were to dominate the movement for the coming decade. Following the collapse of Operation Harvest, the IRA and in turn Sinn Féin initiated the most sustained period of internal self-examination and ideological reorientation in its history. The internment of IRA leaders during the armed campaign brought new figures into prominence, such as Ruarí Ó Brádaigh, Sean MacStiofáin, Sean Garland, Tomás MacGiolla and Cathal Goulding, who were younger and less conditioned by the conservative social values of IRA leaders of the 1940s and 1950s. They also understood the failure of the movement’s strategy as pursued since the late forties primarily in political terms. Goulding and MacStiofáin were both exposed to new political and military ideas during their time in jail in England for their part in Operation Harvest. Ideas from German and Cypriot political prisoners such as soviet spy Klaus Fusch and EOKA leader Socrates Loisides exposed them to developing trends in Marxism and National Liberation. In 1962 a short but decisive struggle ensued for control of both sections of the movement. In his detailed study of republicanism during this period, Sean Swan argues that ‘in 1962 the old leadership of the Republican movement, the “Curragh Group”, had lost control of the IRA and had subsequently attempted to gain control of the Sinn Féin’.52 An initial dispute over the ending of the armed campaign brought tensions to the surface, with MacLógaín wanting Sinn Féin to issue a statement stating that it had nothing to do with the ending of Operation Harvest. Ruarí Ó Brádaigh, one of the younger generation of emerging leaders and then IRA chief of staff, objected. The dispute was resolved in the IRA’s favour resulting in the resignations of Mangan and MacLógaín


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from Sinn Féin. Later in the same year Cathal Goulding became the IRA’s new chief of staff while Tomás MacGiolla became the new president of Sinn Féin. Goulding immediately initiated a review of the state of the IRA. Its conclusions identified two key issues to be addressed. Republicans had ‘no solid political base among the people ... [and] no clear-cut ideology which could define for the people what the struggle was all about’.53 In response Goulding decided to open up both Sinn Féin and the IRA to new influences. The bicentenary of the birth of eighteenth-century republican leader Wolfe Tone was to provide an important opportunity: Goulding initiating the Wolfe Tone Societies as ‘a think tank that would be of an educational and agitational nature’.54 Bringing together leftwing republicans from inside and outside the movement, including Republican Congress veteran George Gilmore, Jack Bennett of the Communist Party of Northern Ireland, and Roy Johnston and Anthony Coughlan, formerly of the British Communist Partyinspired Connolly Association, the Wolfe Tone Society created a space for the discussion and cross fertilisation of ideas. Goulding wanted to bring left-wing ideas to bear on the reorganisation of the republican movement, and steer both Sinn Féin and the IRA on a more explicitly socialist course. This new departure was a far cry from the socially conservative, narrowly defined political nationalism of the IRA and Sinn Féin just a decade earlier. After a brief struggle for control of the leadership of Sinn Féin in 1962, Mangan and MacLógaín departed, the latter committing suicide two years later. However, much of the Sinn Féin membership, particularly in the rural south and west of the country, continued to articulate a definition of the movement’s aims closer to that of the recently departed leadership of the 1950s. While the emergence of this new generation of leaders clearly created a division between older political nationalists and a new generation of modernisers, this was not the only line of demarcation. Within the modernisers there were differences of opinion that were to become more pronounced as the decade moved on. Central to this was a difference of emphasis between

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Marxism versus Christian socialism, and between those who continued to believe in the utility of armed struggle and those who believed it no longer served any valuable strategic purpose. Key figures such as Ó Brádaigh and Ó Conaill, while embracing Goulding’s turn to the left, were deeply critical of Communist Party influence, and had a very different interpretation of where the critical assessment should take both Sinn Féin and the IRA. While in the early 1960s it is hard to discern any clearly formed tendencies, a series of issues emerged which formed and reformed opinions during a period of ideological uncertainty and organisational change. By the decade’s end a new alliance of older political nationalists and younger anti-Goulding modernisers had coalesced. The balance of forces between these different tendencies was evenly spread. Goulding and MacGiolla were clearly in control of the IRA, the Wolfe Tone Societies and the United Irishman paper, while those critical of the new departure, or aspects of it, were dominant within the membership if not the Ard Comhairle of Sinn Féin. However, while figures such as Sean MacStiofáin were ideologically closer to the departed leaders, both Ó Brádaigh and Ó Conaill were modernisers, if of a different sort to Goulding, while others such as Seamus Costello straddled both camps. However, much of the base of Sinn Féin was ideologically closer to that of MacStiofáin and Ó Brádaigh than Goulding or MacGiolla. A series of minor debates raged within Sinn Féin during the period focusing on the party’s relationship to the 26-County state. While the key issue was whether or not the party should abandon its traditional position of abstaining from taking seats in the Dublin and Belfast parliaments, much of the early debate focused on more minor levels of engagement, such as relations with courts and the police. Following the introduction by Fianna Fáil Justice Minister Charles Haughey of a Street Collection Bill in 1962, groups wishing to hold street collections would have to apply for permits. Failure to do so would result in prosecution, fines and in cases of non-payment, imprisonment. Republicans initially refused to apply for permits or to pay the fines, resulting in imprisonment,


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and in one case a protracted hunger strike. The issue was carried over into discussions of legal requirements to register for parades and registration of Sinn Féin as a political party in order to contest elections. A growing number of activists were moving to a position of de facto recognition of the state, if only for reasons of political pragmatism. A controversial editorial in the United Irishman in March 1965, urging a more pragmatic approach to the Dublin parliament, provoked a long and acrimonious debate in its letters’ pages, as party members grappled with what had become the political foundation stone – for some, millstone – of the party, namely electoral abstentionism. Only months earlier, at the 1964 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, a motion calling for the party to examine the issue of ‘taking seats when elected to Leinster House, Stormont or Westminster’ was passed. The same Ard Fheis heard, during an IRA statement to conference, that ‘a conference of Republicans would be held in 1965 ... to discuss political tactics, policy and internal organisation and make recommendations for the future’.55 The party also adopted a new Social and Economic Programme with an emphasis on cooperatives, signalling a shift to the left. Local branches were encouraged to start playing an active part in social and economic campaigns, including opposition to the Anglo–Irish Free Trade Agreement and foreign ownership of Irish business. However, for Goulding, advancing this new campaigning leftwing agenda would require a significant shift in the attitude of the party towards the institutions of the state, including electoral and institutional engagement. The newly elected Ard Comhairle prepared a detailed series of proposals to bring to the following year’s Special Ard Fheis, the aim of which was to advance the agenda of the pro-Goulding modernisers. The proposals included establishing a single leadership for Sinn Féin and the IRA; reorganising the party’s political and educational strategies; recognising courts and complying with legal requirements for collections and parades; mounting legal challenges to the Offences Against the State Act; the calling of a broad conference on the National question; and registration as a political party. A long

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discussion at the Ard Comhairle meeting on a proposal for dropping abstentionism resulted in its defeat. The Special Ard Fheis took place in June, and saw the majority of proposals being rejected by the membership. It was a serious blow both to the Ard Comhairle and the Goulding project overall, leading to a number of high-profile resignations. It also created significant tensions between the IRA and Sinn Féin. The pro-Goulding modernisers continued on regardless, as revealed in an internal document seized by the Garda after the arrest of Sean Garland in the spring of 1966. The document talked about transforming the movement into ‘a political and socialrevolutionary organisation’ with a focus on trade union activity and a ‘radical social and economic programme’. The document also talked about replacing military training with political and economic education and ensuring that the IRA structure remained a tight control over all aspects of party activity. The plan, which the IRA later described as a discussion document, reflected the desire of Goulding and others to transform the IRA and Sinn Féin from an underground armed resistance movement into a mass revolutionary socialist party, actively working with the trade union movement and other progressive political forces in pursuance of both national and social revolution. Speaking at the annual Bodenstown Wolfe Tone commemoration in 1966, Seamus Costello emphasised the new direction of the party. He called for Sinn Féin to ‘spearhead the organisation of a virile co-operative movement among the farming community [and] to use your influence as trade unionists to organise a militant trade union movement with a national consciousness’. Costello also outlined policies on land ownership, nationalisation of industries and banks, and progressive taxation, concluding: history shows us that in the final analysis the robber baron must be disestablished by the same methods he used to enrich himself and retain his ill-gotten gains, namely, by force of arms. To this end we must organise, train and maintain a disciplined armed force which will always be able to strike at the opportune moment.56


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While Costello’s remarks clearly indicate the new left-wing direction of the movement, they also highlight a difference of opinion over the issue of armed struggle. Although Costello clearly believed in its future political importance, Goulding and those close to him believed the time for armed struggle had passed. That Costello’s speech contained such a strong commitment to the maintenance of the IRA was as much a function of Goulding’s desire for unity than an indication of support for Costello’s position. Some within the IRA felt that Sinn Féin was clearly not up to playing its role in this revolutionary socialist movement. At the IRA Convention in 1966 a proposal calling on the IRA to abandon Sinn Féin and transform the Wolfe Tone Societies into a new left-republican political party, ‘unless Sinn Féin carries out Army policy’, was defeated.57 At the heart of the dispute was both the extent of engagement with the institutions of the state required to advance the new agenda of the movement and the form and content of that new socialist agenda. The dispute carried over to the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis of the same year with little resolution. The Ard Comhairle returned with a number of the previous year’s resolutions on engaging with the courts, this time with a little more success. However, a motion calling for the Ard Comhairle to establish a committee to examine the issue of electoral abstentionism was not even able to secure a seconder, and thus fell. The dispute found yet another expression following a letter by Goulding ally Roy Johnston in the United Irishman later in the same year, calling for an end to the saying of the rosary at republican commemorations in Catholic cemeteries. The ensuing dispute led to Sean MacStiofáin’s suspension from the IRA for several months for actively blocking the circulation and sale of the United Irishman in objection to the letter. While Johnston, the committed Marxist, and MacStiofáin, the committed Catholic, represented the very opposite ends of the republican movement’s political spectrum, the dispute was indicative of the broader tensions that existed. By 1967 there was no sign of the divisions being healed, despite the fact that that year’s Ard Fheis formally adopted ‘the

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establishment of a workers republic’ as the party’s primary aim. While the movement was increasingly becoming more socialist in its rhetoric, in practice, whether in terms of agitation, building alliances or developing electoral engagement, in many parts of the country very little had actually changed. Indeed in parts of the north, particularly Belfast, Goulding’s new departure had led to a significant number of resignations of leading republicans, such as Joe Cahill. An increasingly frustrated Goulding, speaking at the following year’s Wolfe Tone commemoration at Bodenstown, said republicanism ‘is only a small group in our society. In many areas the movement exists simply as a tradition and sentiment bound body ... by its inactivity [it] blocks the path of revolution and side-tracks those who would serve the needed revolution’.58 Goulding’s remarks were aimed directly at those elements in Sinn Féin who were resisting the ideological and organisational project, as proposed by the Ard Comhairle and the leadership of the IRA. Abstentionism was once again on the agenda at the 1968 Ard Fheis. While a motion calling for the dropping of abstentionism was rejected, an Ard Comhairle amendment proposing a commission to examine the issue and bring forward recommendations to the following year’s conference was successful. Feeney comments that there ‘were high hopes among the pro Goulding modernisers that when the Commission submitted a positive report, as it was confidently expected to do, it would be endorsed by the movement’.59 The motion led to the establishment of the Garland Commission, which Swan describes as ‘less than equal to the task assigned to it’.60 The Commission set about drafting a detailed document dealing with the context of Irish politics and a series of recommendations on the form of political organisation and struggle most appropriate to the specific historical moment. Goulding ally Roy Johnston was given the task of drafting the initial document, and the commission itself was heavily weighted in Goulding’s favour. For Johnston, the primary issue was ‘not abstentionism but acceptance or otherwise of Irish Marxism’.61 In his document he outlined three strategies available to the republican movement, one radical, one reformist and one utopian. The first sought to


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replicate the model first used by the Republican Congress in the 1930s, building a broad-based front of progressive, republican and left organisations. The second was based on the experience of Clann na Poblachta, avoiding association with the radical left, and working to secure a reformist Labour–Republican government. The third option was what Johnston called the ‘militarist utopia’ which was a return to the strategy that underpinned the failed Operation Harvest. The Garland Commission published its findings in March 1969 under the title ‘Ireland Today’. The document proposed two primary options, a national liberation front and the reformist ‘Clann road’ option, with a stated preference for the former. It also proposed a transformation of the IRA from an armed organisation to a ‘special cadre’ of political activists, whose primary aim would be to give political direction and organisational coherence to the movement, and for the IRA and Sinn Féin to be integrated into a single political organisation. The document also proposed removing ‘all embargos on political participation’ and leaving ‘all questions of electoral tactics’ to the leadership.62 Twenty-two regional meetings were held throughout the country to canvass opinions and reactions to the document, during which the obvious divisions and disagreements emerged. In July of that year the Sinn Féin Ard Comhairle discussed the document, making a number of amendments and again displaying deep divisions. An IRA army convention in October and a special convention in December saw a similar result. As the December/ January Sinn Féin Ard Fheis approached, it was clear that while a majority of both the IRA and Sinn Féin supported the recommendations, the Ard Fheis requirement of a 75 per cent majority to amend the party constitution was unlikely to be met. While those who opposed Ireland Today were a minority within the movement, they were a significant minority. The omens for unity and cohesion were not good. Swan’s assessment that the contents of Ireland Today – ‘communism, the subordination of the IRA, and the dropping of abstentionism’ – must have ‘made a split seem not only possible but inevitable’ is without doubt correct.63

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The 1970 Ard Fheis took place on January 11 and 12 at the Inter-Continental Hotel, Dublin. After lengthy debates the 257 delegates voted. The constitutional amendment on abstentionism required 172 votes to pass, however only 153 supported it, 19 short. The Ard Fheis saw Tomás MacGiolla, a Goulding ally, challenged for the presidency of the party by Eamon MacTomáis, a leading opponent of Ireland Today. While MacGiolla won, MacTomáis secured 93 votes, indicating significant support. Amid some confusion and much acrimony, a pro-Goulding delegate proposed a motion of confidence in the IRA leadership, who only weeks before had supported the Ireland Today recommendations. The motion was carried and MacStiofáin, who had opposed the proposals at the Army Council, called on delegates to support the creation of an alternative Provisional Army Council, and then walked from the hall, taking up to 100 supporters with him. Provisional Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA were born.

Unionist Hegemony and State Crisis While the energy and passion of internal republican debate during the 1960s may have appeared of enormous significance to its protagonists, it was of little consequence for the world outside. Sinn Féin and the IRA were small organisations, with little political support or impact. Indeed, as Ireland Today admitted, in Dublin Sinn Féin was no bigger than the tiny Irish Workers Party, and sales of the United Irishman were similar to the communist Irish Socialist paper.64 The theoretical and strategic discussions about national liberation fronts, electoral participation and armed struggle would have remained a marginal and inconsequential affair were it not for events in the north of Ireland, which from 1966 was to dramatically alter both the context in which Irish republicanism was operating and its relevance to a growing section of the population. While the north of Ireland remained a focal point for the energies of Sinn Féin and the IRA during the 1950s and 1960s, Operation Harvest demonstrated the great distance that existed between ordinary nationalists in the north and the republican


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movement. It also highlighted the lack of understanding among political leaders based in and primarily preoccupied with the politics of the south. Goulding’s reassessment, while farreaching and profound in many respects, failed to narrow this gap in understanding. Indeed it simply replaced one set of naive assumptions about the political dynamics and aspirations of northern nationalists and working-class unionists with another. Thus, as Ireland Today demonstrated, while Goulding and his supporters displayed a degree of ideological and theoretical sophistication in terms of the positioning of Sinn Féin in the south, it had no conception of the nature of the northern state and the crisis that was fast engulfing it. Part of the difficulty was that the northern state was in many respects an exception. Despite having the formal characteristics of a liberal democracy, its conception, structure, dynamics and limits were of a different nature to that of the south, Britain or indeed the continental European norm. At the heart of the northern state was the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), who dominated its government from 1922 through to its collapse in 1972. The UUP was a broad-based coalition of working-class, middle-class and landed unionism, spanning social and regional boundaries. Its hegemony rested on its ability to maintain this cross-class alliance. Its primary tools were discrimination and sectarianism, the exclusion of nationalists from political and economic power and social and cultural equality, and the promotion of a culture of superiority and separation. However, unlike formally undemocratic, authoritarian or apartheid states of the time, such as Spain, Portugal, or South Africa, the operation of unionist discrimination and sectarianism was more informal and localised, giving the appearance of liberal democratic normality, while producing many of the effects of an authoritarian or apartheid state. Discrimination was primarily a function of informal practices at local government level or within the private sector, encouraged if not formally legislated for by the Unionist administration at Stormont. Culturally and socially such practices were ideologically reinforced by a culture of sectarianism mediated through the Loyal Orders, trade unions and the Ulster Unionist Labour Association.

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Since the 1970s there has been a significant volume of analysis of the relationship between the form of unionist hegemony and the character of the northern state. Bew et al. have challenged the traditional Marxist and nationalist readings of this relationship. In particular their focus on the relationship between the divisions within the unionist camp and the form of the state is important, demonstrating that unionism and the northern state should not be viewed as unchanging monoliths. Likewise Gibbon provides us with a more sophisticated reading of the loyalist working classes and their complex and conditional support for the Unionist Party and its middle-class leadership. However, none of these revisionist readings have adequately addressed the importance of sectarianism as the organising dynamic of institutionalised discrimination and as the cement of cross-class unionist hegemony. Bew et al., while right in rejecting the traditional Marxist and nationalist reading of the role and motivation of the British state in the formation of the northern state, commit an equally serious mistake of disregarding the interests, motivations and effects of the British state on the form and development of the northern state. As detailed in previous chapters, the creation of the northern state was as much a consequence of the actions and non-actions of political elites in Westminster as it was a consequence of the internal dynamics and interplay of Irish nationalism and unionism. While the formal and institutional role of the British state in the affairs of the north of Ireland began to recede during the 1930s, the limits of the northern state were always circumscribed by the interests and attitudes of political elites in Westminster. The most physical display of this fact was the arming of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and its semi-paramilitary special constabulary during the 1920s.65 The strict enforcement of the Westminster Convention, which forbade the discussion of matters within the competence of Stormont from being discussed in Westminster, had a similar if less obvious effect. And crucially the financial underwriting of the northern state by the British exchequer, while often contested, was never seriously challenged. Unionist hegemony, and in turn the stability of the northern state, required both the external support of the British state


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and the internal operation of institutional discrimination and informal sectarianism. This hegemony was formally facilitated and informally supported by the policies and non-policies of successive British governments. Managing the tensions that always existed between the different elements of the unionist bloc required different strategies at different times. The overt sectarianism of the north’s first prime minister, Sir James Craig, and the reforming ‘liberalism’ of Terence O’Neill, can thus be seen, not as different political projects, but rather as the same project utilising different strategic options, in different political and economic circumstances, to achieve the same political end, namely the continued hegemony of the Ulster Unionist Party through the maintenance of a cross-class unionist bloc. Bew et al. also have much to offer in term of understanding the crisis of the unionist state that emerged during the 1950s and 1960s. The initial focus for Ulster Unionism was the rise of the Northern Ireland Labour Party. O’Neill’s unionist administration, attempting to secure its position, responded with a modernising economic programme backed up by appeals to unionist unity and warnings of labour, republican and communist conspiracies to destroy the northern state itself. However, the fact that in the 1960s nationalist expectations were also rising, meant that O’Neill’s strategy of on the one hand mobilising Keynesian planning and sectarianism distribution of resources to counteract the rise of labourism among the loyalist working class while simultaneously mobilising Keynesian planning and the promise of civil rights reform in response to the demands of working- and middle-class nationalists, was unsustainable. At some point these two different tactics would clash. Sectarianism and discrimination were not only the foundations upon which the northern state rested, but, in a different context, were to prove the Achilles heel from which it would eventually collapse. The problem and ultimate cause of failure for O’Neill was that he came up against the limits of his own political and ideological project, namely the inseparability of sectarianism, discrimination and unionist hegemony. However it is important not to view the crisis of the northern state as an exceptional or isolated affair. While its dynamics and

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forms were at times region specific, the crisis itself was part of a more general crisis of the post-Second World War settlements in Britain and Europe. In their path-breaking analysis of this crisis, Stuart Hall and Martin Jacques et al. have argued that the foundations of postwar British society rested on a number of ‘settlements’ around which the competing interests of the prewar social order were temporarily resolved. The experience of the great Depression and war, the emergence of popular democracy and the rise of organised labour, led to a series of compromises that underpinned the economic and political stability and growth of Western Europe in the 1950s and 1960s. A social democratic consensus emerged producing a ‘modernising capitalism and a labour and democratic movement intent on social and economic reform’.66 Hall et al. argue that this settlement ‘created a framework to meet both companies’ demands for profitable markets and popular desires for rising living standards’.67 Although contradictions and conflicts continued to exist, the nature of the settlement ensured that they were contained ‘within manageable limits’.68 While the primary axis of this social democratic settlement was industrial and economic, supported by a broad political consensus at Westminster, there were a series of additional settlements along lines of gender, race and nationality, which, while subordinating the needs of women, ethnic minorities and Britain’s regions, ensured a degree of political stability through economic expansion and limited social inclusion. Hall et al. acknowledge that ‘the situation in Northern Ireland ... constituted the most intractable problem facing all British governments’, making the maintenance of this particular national settlement less stable than the others.69 However the bipartisan approach adopted by both Labour and the Conservatives, and their rigid adherence to the Westminster Convention and to financial underpinning of the Unionist government at Stormont ensured that Ireland would not disrupt the broader consensus. However, by the end of the 1960s the economic and industrial axis of the social democratic settlement was under increasing strain. Hall et al. argue that ‘rising unemployment and inflation, falling productivity and profitability, threw into doubt the ability


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of Keynesian economic policies to keep the economy at full employment’.70 This economic uncertainty arrived at a time of rising expectations from a generation that did not experience the Depression or the war and expected the promise of the 1960s to be delivered. It also ran alongside the growing demands for independence from European colonial interests in Africa and Asia. The oil shocks of the early 1970s and the subsequent global recession created a profound crisis of the state, not only in Britain but also across Europe. The economic crisis was accompanied by a political crisis, as political parties and trade unions seemed unable to respond. Culturally, the collapse of the last remnants of Empire and the emergence of racial tensions within the metropolis compounded the economic and political crisis with a profound cultural crisis. The social democratic settlements ‘began to break apart, provoking a tumultuous economic, social and political crisis at the end of the decade’.71 As the more traditional political and social formations appeared unable to respond effectively to the emerging politics of gender, race, culture and rights, new forms of politics, ideological and organisational, emerged to challenge the hegemony of trade unions, and social democratic or nationalist parties, for leadership of those constituencies seeking change. These new forms included citizens’ movements in Germany, student movements in France and the USA, national liberation movements in Algeria and Vietnam, and in civil rights movements in the USA and Ireland. It is impossible to understand the crisis of the northern state and the conflict that followed outside this more general crisis of the postwar British and European state. Like Britain, the north of Ireland experienced both internal and external pressures for change from the start of the 1960s. These pressures included rising expectations from both the unionist working classes and the nationalist middle classes, changing international economic circumstances, new policy influences at Westminster following the arrival of Wilson’s Labour government, a more pragmatic Fianna Fáil government in Dublin, and, importantly, the arrival of television leading to a greater public awareness of events in the wider world. All of these changes combined to put Ulster

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unionism’s sectarian and discriminatory state under severe pressure. Embracing Keynesianism, albeit at a slower pace and with less enthusiasm than its counterparts in Westminster, meant that Stormont had less of an economic dividend on which to build the social and national settlements. More crucially, sectarianism and institutionalised discrimination stood in the way of the degree of compromise required to meet both unionist working-class and nationalist middle-class aspirations. By the middle of the 1960s unionism had a clear choice to make: reform the state to meet middle-class nationalist demands while risking the basis of Ulster Unionist hegemony, or maintain the cross-class basis of political control irrespective of the cost to the state itself. O’Neill’s resignation in 1969 represented the victory of unionist hegemony over state reform, and sectarianism and discrimination over equality and democracy. From 1970 onwards, Britain and other European states established the parameters of a new series of settlements, referred to by Hall et al. as ‘regressive modernisation’, on which state stability would be re-founded. However, in the north of Ireland the complete collapse of the state rather than its reconstruction led to a protracted period of instability and armed conflict.

Civil Rights and Conflict Why was the northern state unable to restructure in the manner of its European neighbours? Was the collapse of the state and descent into crisis inevitable? Once again the north’s exceptionalism explains its radically different course of development. From the 1970s onwards other Western state projects were in a process of dissolution and reconstruction, replacing the postwar social democratic consensus with a new-right neo-liberal project. Even Europe’s non-democratic states, such as Spain, underwent a significant period of state restructuring during the 1970s, leading eventually to democratisation in the 1980s. What marked the northern state as different from the more general crisis was the refusal of the state, and its political elite, to reform. In Europe’s democratic and non-democratic states alike, reform ensured that


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the state itself was never called into question. The question was always one of the specific modalities of its operation, its forms of governance, its distribution of resources and its relationship with civic society. The refusal of unionism to produce any viable process of state restructuring, despite the broad base of support for the introduction of basic liberal democratic norms, meant that the state itself became fatally de-legitimised. That the British government was unwilling to take the necessary institutional action to force such reform, until it was already too late, meant that when conflict emerged its dynamics were of a different order from the protest movements in Britain, France, Germany or the USA. The brief history of the civil rights movement is in essence a history of a moderate demand for state reform becoming transformed into a radical demand for state overthrow, as a consequence of the state’s refusal to offer any meaningful resolution of the legitimate demands of those seeking reform. That the northern state was characterised by systematic discrimination in the distribution of political and economic power and allocation of public office, public service provision and employment is well documented.72 The institutionalised abuse of civil liberties and liberal democratic norms in order to maintain such discrimination is also well documented. The collapse of the civil rights movement by 1970 and its rapid deterioration into an armed conflict was not a consequence of the unleashing of historic ethnic or communal divisions between nationalists and unionists. Those who, like Simon Prince and Paul Dixon, argue that the actions of the radical wing of the civil rights movement actively undermined the reforming project of Terence O’Neill and unwittingly created communal polarisation and ethnic conflict misunderstand the nature of the northern state itself, the inability of unionism to countenance meaningful reform, and the impact of unionist and British state violence on the civil rights movement.73 Rather, the mobilisation of formal and informal violence by the state, both in Stormont and Westminster from 1968 onwards, in response to the non-violent strategies of the civil rights movement, undermined the central claim of the civil rights movement, that the state

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could be reformed. Police violence during peaceful civil rights mobilisations in 1968 and ’69, loyalist counter-demonstrations and violence during the same period, the Falls Curfew in 1970, the Ballymurphy massacre of 1971, the introduction of internment in 1971, and Bloody Sunday in 1972 all combined to radicalise a significant section of the movement, pushing it in the direction of violent confrontation. Understanding the IRA and Sinn Féin in the 1970s and 1980s, and the rapidly growing constituency of support that emerged out of the collapse of the civil rights movement, requires a closer examination of the Sinn Féin that helped create that movement, and how its divisions and subsequent development were shaped by the growth and collapse of the movement through the response of the British government and Unionist administration in Belfast. Formally inaugurated in January 1967, the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) was a broad-based coalition of communists, nationalists, republicans and liberals with diverse aims, strategies and intentions, both on the issue of civil rights as well as on broader economic and political matters. The dramatic rise of the movement, mobilising numbers far in excess of the support of any of its constituent parts, was a consequence both of the rising expectations of the nationalist community and of the impact of movements for change in other parts of the world. That this mobilisation was based on an organisational model and a political discourse substantially different from any of its constituent parts was an indication of the failure of the ideologies and organisations of traditional nationalism, republicanism and labourism in the preceding decades. These three political tendencies, while remaining crucial elements of the broader movement, were by themselves unable to respond to the experiences or aspirations of their constituencies in the rapidly changing context of the late 1950s and early 1960s. In turn, their individual failures brought to the surface tensions and disagreements within each element of the civil rights movement, ensuring that its divisions were not only between each part of the broader movement, but within each of the constituent elements themselves.


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The divisions within Sinn Féin and the IRA discussed above were matched by conflicts between the old guard of the Nationalist Party led by Eddie McAteer and a younger generation of emerging leaders such as Ivan Cooper, John Hume and Austin Currie. Likewise within the broader labour movement there were competing tendencies between British and Irish communists, and the left and centre of the Labour movement, broadly defined. Running through each of these divisions was a conflict between aims, means and strategies, the apex of which was the level and form of change required from, and the degree of confrontation with, the northern state itself. At different moments the balance of forces between any one faction or coalition of factions was fluid, meaning that NICRA and the broader civil rights movement were never under the control of any one organisation or ideology. And while republicans and communists were instrumental in founding NICRA, their influence waned as its numbers grew. Even in the best of circumstances, such a diverse coalition would prove difficult to control and brittle under pressure. But in the pressure-cooker environment that was the north of Ireland in 1968 and 1969, the fact that the Association lasted as long as it did is in itself remarkable. Sinn Féin’s role in the establishment of NICRA, and in turn the impact of the civil rights movement on the divisions and ultimate split within republicanism in 1969, is of crucial importance in understanding both the split that occurred at the party’s 1970 Ard Fheis and the separate development of what became known as the Official and Provisional republican movements. A key element of the Goulding project was an attempt to rebuild the unity of the eighteenth-century United Irish movement through a campaign for the reform of the northern state as a first step in a process that would lead to uniting the working-class north and south which in turn would lead to the economic and political reunification of Ireland. It was Goulding’s hope that the Wolfe Tone Society in the north would attract radicals from within the broader unionist community into common cause with their republican and socialist counterparts, driving a wedge between the unionist middle and

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working classes, thus disrupting the foundation of Ulster Unionist Party hegemony. A convention of Wolfe Tone Society local branches met in Maghera, County Derry in the summer of 1966 to discuss a detailed paper prepared by Anthony Coughlan and Roy Johnston on the issue of civil rights. The core of the paper was an argument for the creation of a campaign for civil rights in the north, bringing together trade unionists, republicans, nationalists, communists and liberal unionists. The meeting agreed to host a seminar on the issue of civil rights, to which all prospective allies were to be invited. The seminar was to become the inaugural meeting of NICRA in January 1967. While the event that brought together the formal civil rights movement emerged from within Sinn Féin and the IRA, the existence of a large number of campaigns and organisations dealing with the issues of civil rights – including the Westminsterbased Campaign for Democracy in Ulster, Con and Majella McCloskey’s Campaign for Social Justice based in Dungannon, the new nationalist expressions such as the National Democratic Party, the various left and Labour groups centred in Derry and Belfast, and individuals such as Gerry Fitt and John Hume – meant that an informal movement on the issue of civil rights was already coming into existence. In this sense, the movement can be said to legitimately have had a broad-based and popular character, rather than existing as a front for any one group or set of interests. The subsequent history of that movement is well documented elsewhere by Farrell, Purdie, Ó Dochartaigh and Prince. What was clear from the outset, however, was that notwithstanding the support of some liberal unionists and unionist working-class elements of the Communist Party, NICRA was unable to connect with or mobilise even a minority element within the unionist working classes. The fact that the trade unions and the Northern Ireland Labour Party played no part was indicative of this failure. That Betty Sinclair and the Communist Party were always uncomfortable participants, simply served to demonstrate the point.


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For Sinn Féin there were a number of important consequences, both of the analysis of Goulding, Coughlan and Johnston, and of the development of NICRA itself. First, the politics of civil rights represented a dramatic departure from earlier republican analyses and strategies. It replaced the approach of working for a nationalist alliance that had dominated republican thinking and action for a century with an attempt to build a radical alliance of republican, labour and communist parties. More significantly, it sought to use such an alliance as a means of building unity between the nationalist and unionist working classes. While the ultimate objective of the new strategy was to undermine partition and reunify the country in a democratic socialist republic, the method was no longer armed confrontation with the northern state securing its collapse from without, but building political alliances and mobilising popular opinion in order to secure its erosion and collapse from within. At an ideological level, while the discourse continued to be anti-imperialist, it was shifting from the form of a nationalist popular front to a Marxist classbased front, with people power rather than armed struggle at its cutting edge. The republican Marxist discourse of Goulding and Coughlan sat easily alongside the more moderate wings of the civil rights movement, whether that of Betty Sinclair and the Communist Party, or the nationalist middle-class representatives of Hume and Cooper, in that it advocated unity, restraint and non-violence. However as the civil rights movement gathered momentum, and state violence, whether loyalist, unionist or British government, became more widespread, the Marxist discourse jarred with republicans unconvinced by the possibility of class unity and concerned with how best to defend nationalist communities. The emergence of local defence committees in response to the violence of the state saw leading 1950s republicans such as Joe Cahill, Billy McKee and John Kelly return to the political stage, creating additional resistance to the Goulding approach to civil rights. The dominant civil rights strategy also jarred with the more radical left elements of the movement, such as those led by Eamon McCann, Bernadette Devlin or Michael Farrell, who wanted a

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more provocative approach in order to force the pace of change irrespective of the consequence for social order or state stability. The central weakness of the Goulding strategy lay in its inability to understand the depth and strength of unionist working-class attachment to the northern state, and the strength of the cross-class alliance that underpinned unionist hegemony. Patterson is right when he comments that the ‘serious commitment [of Goulding and Coughlan] to winning Protestants through a process of political reform, and the stated opposition to Catholic sectarianism and any resort to violence, could not compensate for the unreconstructed assumptions that survived from the traditional nationalist project’.74 The assumption that working-class unionists were the victims of their middle-class political masters, whose mobilisation of cultural sectarianism concealed the fact that the state could never act in their real class interests, underestimated both the material – economic and cultural – benefits which the state conferred on working-class unionists, and their historic and contemporary role as protagonists in the creation and maintenance of that state. That the unionist working class would mobilise in force to protect the northern state was both rational and logical. Goulding and Coughlan’s strategy also had another fundamental flaw. Their belief that the British state would, under pressure from Irish, British and international opinion sympathetic to the civil rights movement, exert pressure on the unionist administration in Stormont to implement serious reforms, proved unfounded. The minimalist approach of Harold Wilson’s Labour government, demonstrated by his acceptance of the 1968 reform proposals emerging from O’Neill’s cabinet, demonstrated that, despite significant warnings of the impending collapse from the Campaign for Democracy in Ulster, the Nationalist Party and Gerry Fitt MP, among others, London’s unwillingness to intervene was always stronger than its support for reform. Stripped of two of the central points of their civil rights strategy, and keen to avoid an escalation into violence, Goulding’s civil rights strategy came unstuck on the rocks of unionist hegemony and its support in Westminster. As state violence accelerated during 1969, and the legitimacy of the state was increasingly


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brought into question, Sinn Féin, the IRA and indeed the broader civil rights movement were faced with two options: accept the minimalist proposals of O’Neill and demobilise the civil rights movement, or, maintain political pressure on the streets and meet violence with violence to destroy the state itself. The formation of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and the emergence of Provisional Republicanism, both in 1970, marked the effective end of the civil rights movement, as it split along the divergent paths offered by these two options. The other constituent parts of the civil rights movement – communists, Trotskyites, human rights activists, etc. – either receded from the political landscape, or in one form or another aligned themselves with these two formations. The SDLP believed that while O’Neill’s proposed reforms were insufficient, the threat to social order must be averted, and opted for demobilisation and entry into the institutions of the state in an attempt to continue their pursuit of state reform. The Provisionals rejected both the civil rights strategy of Goulding and the Official Republican Movement, and the position of the SDLP. Instead, a coalition of republican political nationalists such as MacStiofáin, 1950s Belfast republicans such as Joe Cahill and Billy McKee, southern modernisers such as Ó Conaill and Ó Brádaigh, and crucially a new and radicalised generation of republicans such as Brian Keenan, Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams, sought to combine the traditional belief in the utility of armed struggle with the radical left-wing politics of the civil rights movement, in what was to become a new republicanism, whose appeal was much broader than the IRA or Sinn Féin only a few years earlier.

Provisional Sinn Féin In the months preceding the Sinn Féin split the political situation in the north of Ireland had deteriorated considerably. A series of loyalist bombings destabilised O’Neill’s limited reform plan, leading to his resignation in April 1969 and the deployment of British troops on the streets of Belfast and Derry that August. Civil rights demonstrations were rapidly being replaced by street con-

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frontations. As the violence accelerated, more than 1,800 families, 1,500 of them nationalists, were forced to flee their homes. One source estimates that 30 per cent of Belfast’s nationalist population was displaced. Working-class nationalist communities were the victim of the majority of the violence, whether at the hands of the RUC, unionist paramilitaries or the British Army. While the violence of the state and its paramilitary allies was neither coordinated nor systematic, it served to undermine the support for reform within the nationalist working class and pushed them into seeking a more radical solution to the situation in which they found themselves. If the republicans in 1968 and 1969 were unprepared organisationally or ideologically to provide any meaningful response, the emergence of the Provisionals provided a new source of political leadership for a rapidly growing section of the nationalist working class. Although the British Army enjoyed a honeymoon period in the north during the initial months, the situation soon changed as confrontations with nationalists and republicans became more commonplace. The Falls Curfew in July 1970, the introduction of internment and the Ballymurphy Massacre in August 1971, and Bloody Sunday in 1972 laid bare the function of the British Army, namely to support the unionist state. The impact of these events on the consciousness of the broader nationalist community was profound. Within the space of six months the political situation was shifting from civil conflict over state reform to low-intensity war. Michael Farrell in his history of the period argues that: A subtle political change had taken place ... Up to this, mass support in the Northern Catholic population had been for civil rights and for reform within the northern state, with Irish unity following gradually. Now most Northern Catholics felt that the Northern State was unreformable, and that they would only get civil rights in a united Ireland. Their objective was no longer to reform Northern Ireland but to destroy it.75

This was the context in which the newly formed Provisional IRA and Sinn Féin were to find themselves. Immediately after the 1969 Ard Fheis split, the Provisional Army Council of the IRA met to formulate their political and military


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response to the enveloping crisis. While the most pressing concern was the defence of nationalist areas from unionist violence, key leaders such as Sean MacStiofáin believed that the deployment of British troops provided republicans with an opportunity to move from a defensive position to a political and military offensive, which would demonstrate the imperialist character of British rule in Ireland. The approach of the Provisional Army Council was to resource and reorganise the IRA, particularly within the most conflict-ridden areas of the north, Belfast and Derry, to provide defence for nationalist communities where required, and when appropriate to launch an offensive against British military, political and economic interests across the north. By making the state ungovernable through an intensive armed campaign, the IRA hoped to militarily force the British state out of Ireland. IRA activity and membership, which had been initially limited, expanded rapidly after the introduction of internment. Farrell comments that by ‘the end of August there had been a total of 100 explosions in the month, and 35 people had been killed; one more than in the previous months altogether’.76 The two forces that dominated the political context for the preceding decade, namely the Unionist government and the civil rights movement, were replaced by the British government and the IRA. In the new context of a developing low-intensity war, Sinn Féin was clearly relegated to a secondary role within the broader republican movement. The fact that the party was illegal further hampered its development. Initially much of the party’s work was reactive, acting as a campaigning and publicity vehicle for the IRA. As the party began to develop its own organisational structure it engaged in campaigns against British Army and RUC violence and in support of the growing number of political prisoners. The party was also responsible for formulating press and policy responses to the developing situation and the distribution of the movement’s two newspapers, An Phoblacht in the south and Republican News in the north, for which they claimed sales of 15,000 per month by June 1970. The party also rigidly adhered to the position of opposition to any form of electoral participation.

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In February 1970 An Phoblacht ran a detailed analysis of the nature of the December 1969 split and an outline of the political and economic programme of the party. The article listed five key reasons which underlay the split: the Goulding leadership’s recognition of Westminster, Stormont and Leinster House; their support for ‘extreme Socialism’ and ‘totalitarian dictatorship’; the IRA’s failure to protect northern nationalists in August 1969; the Goulding leadership’s support for the retention of Stormont and opposition to direct rule from Westminster; and the deployment of undemocratic methods throughout the 1960s within the republican movement against opponents of the new departure. The article went on to say that Sinn Féin ‘will continue to play our part in the struggle for civil rights in the Six Counties’ and that the party would ‘build an alternative 32County State structure which will draw support from the existing British-imposed partition system’. The article rejected the claim that the Provisionals were ‘militarists’ and ‘traditionalists’ and advocated ‘a Socialism based on the native tradition of Comhar na gComarsan which is founded on the right of worker-ownership and on our Irish and Christian values’.77 The following month an An Phoblacht editorial outlined the party’s aims: ‘to end foreign rule in Ireland, to establish a 32County Democratic Socialist republic based on the Proclamation of 1916, to restore the Irish language and culture to a position of strength and to promote a social order based on justice and Christian principles which will give everyone a just share of the nation’s wealth’.78 The editorial argued that ‘our movement must be based on the common working people of Ireland, North and South, Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter’, and asserted that to achieve a broadly based movement it will be necessary to wage a struggle not just at the national level but at the local level also. This involves organising people in their own interests and in defence of their rights. Demands for civil rights, better housing, division of large estates, restoration of fishing rights, setting up of credit unions and worker-owner co-operatives ... are all elements in the building of a movement of the people.79


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The finer print of Sinn Féin’s democratic socialism was detailed in a series of lengthier articles over the following months on issues such as land redistribution, agricultural cooperatives, banking, industrial development and forestry. These articles argued for a nationally planned economy in which the economic organisation of the country would be vertically built in pyramid fashion on the cooperative units large and small. In each region, industrial councils composed of representatives of the various industries would iron out difficulties between them ... A central economic council would, on the national level, co-ordinate the whole economic structure.80

In his presidential address to the first post-split Ard Fheis, Ruarí Ó Brádaigh sought to combine a number of themes that would become central to Sinn Féin’s political discourse in the coming years: support for nationalist civil rights and the dismantling of Stormont, criticism of southern Irish political leaders for betraying the north and selling Irish sovereignty to the EEC. Ó Brádaigh commended ‘the great re-awakening in British occupied Ireland’ and criticised political parties in the south for allowing the ‘foreign take over of Irish land, industry and distributive trade’ via the Anglo–Irish Free Trade agreement. In conclusion he argued: ‘After fifty years ... the settlement of 1921 is breaking up and the realisation is growing that the Government of Ireland Act which set up both Stormont and Leinster House must be dismantled. While Stormont totters, the EEC threatens our very existence.’81 Sinn Féin’s alternative was outlined in two sets of proposals released in 1971. Éire Nua was the most detailed articulation of the political proposals and strategy that underlay the new Sinn Féin. The 56-page document outlined the party’s alternative economic and political proposals to the partitionist settlement contained in the 1921 Government of Ireland Act. In addition to outlining proposals for a bill of rights and a new social and economic programme, in line with the ideas developed in the pages of An Phoblacht in the preceding months, it also proposed the replacement of Leinster House and Stormont parliaments with four provincial parliaments under the control of a single federal all-Ireland parliament. It also included proposals for increased

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local government powers. While Éire Nua was subsequently criticised for being abstract or aspirational, for its authors it provided a practical series of positions and proposals around which Sinn Féin hoped to undermine partition and build a new all-Ireland political framework. Sinn Féin also released a five-point programme of ‘interim proposals’ detailing the measures thought necessary by the party to ‘bring immediate peace’. The proposals included an immediate British cessation, the abolition of Stormont, an election to establish a nine-county parliament, the release of all political prisoners, and a guarantee of compensation for all those affected by British state violence. On 9 November 1972, 147 delegates met in County Monaghan to begin the implementation of Éire Nua, by formally adopting the constitution of a new 9-County Ulster Parliament. While the event was in effect a symbolic gesture by republicans, the detail of the constitution adopted was practical. It agreed governmental structures with ministries and departmental responsibilities covering all areas of government including economic affairs, welfare and relief, education and community justice. Speaking at the 1971 Ard Fheis, Ó Brádaigh claimed that since its release Éire Nua had been selling 1,000 copies per month. In his presidential address he argued that in seeking the abolition of Stormont, ‘it is not sufficient to create a political vacuum’.82 Rejecting any internal 6-County settlement, he argued that the newly established Ulster parliament ‘will build an administration among people on the ground level, which will in time and with hard work ... grow into a full deliberative assembly of Ulster’.83 Ó Brádaigh argued that the actions of Stormont prime minister Chichester-Clarke and Taoiseach Jack Lynch had resulted in ‘an erosion of confidence in the institutions of government ... both North and South’.84 While the focus in the south of Ireland was to be engagement in campaigns against EEC membership, and economic resistance to the impact of the 1965 Anglo–Irish Free Trade Agreement, the party’s strategic focus in the north was more detailed. Ó Brádaigh stated that:


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With regard to the North the approach must be three-pronged: physical defence of the people is the responsibility of the Irish Republican Army; we must continue to give leadership at ground level in the civil resistance campaign, civil disobedience and non-cooperation which strengthens the people’s will and eats away at the very foundations of Stormont and British rule: we must work to build the alternative structure – both administrations and assembly – in the form of Dáil Uladh.85

Sinn Féin’s strategy was thus threefold. To defend nationalist communities from state violence; to undermine Stormont through a widespread campaign of non-cooperation and civil disobedience; and to put in place its replacement through the active building of new republican state institutions, such as Dáil Uladh. However, in reality the republican objective of bringing down Stormont by ‘making the area ungovernable’ was in the first instance going to be achieved through an offensive military campaign that went well beyond the defence of nationalist communities. IRA chief of staff Sean MacStiofáin, addressing the 1971 Ard Fheis, made this clear when he told the assembled Sinn Féin delegates: ‘On the military front, our campaign has changed from a defensive role to defence and retaliation and then eventually to an offensive campaign of resistance in all parts of the occupied area.’ While MacStiofáin stressed the ‘need for a strong Republican civil and political wing ... to organise mass support’, the reality on the ground was that the armed campaign was the priority both in organisational and strategic terms.86 Feeney is wrong when he says that ‘it was to be some years before Provisional Sinn Féin developed any political thinking. During the height of the violence, from 1971 to 1973, the party appeared to be simply a notice board for the IRA’, and that the party had no ‘distinct Sinn Féin message’.87 Sinn Féin had both a clear political message, distinct from its Official Sinn Féin counterpart, or that of the SDLP and Fianna Fáil. Equally the establishment of Dáil Uladh and the promotion of Éire Nua indicate that the party was serious in its endeavours. However, what is also clear is that within the broader republican movement, both among the IRA leaders setting the pace of developments on

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the streets in Belfast or Derry, and among the younger generation of activists joining the IRA post-internment and Bloody Sunday, the message and work of Sinn Féin was either less important or irrelevant to what were viewed as the more pressing day-to-day concerns of the armed struggle. When former IRA volunteer and senior Sinn Féin member Jim Gibney retrospectively described the left-wing political grouping, People’s Democracy, as ‘dominating the scene politically from 1970 to about 1975’ and as ‘the political leadership of what we loosely called the anti-imperialist movement’ in Belfast, he was admitting not the absence of a distinct Sinn Féin message or programme of activity, but rather at best the absence and at worst the irrelevance of that message from the centres of conflict in the North.88 Gibney’s comments also highlight a political gap, between the 1960s’ generation of Ó Brádaigh, Ó Conaill and MacStiofáin and the younger generation of republicans emerging from within the civil rights movement, of which Gibney was one. Christian socialism, federalism and the building of alternative state institutions had less purchase for those seeking to play an active part in the activity of the IRA, or for those more attuned to the radical political message of People’s Democracy. The suspension of Stormont in March 1972 and its abolition in 1973 was seen by Sinn Féin and the IRA as both a major victory and a vindication of their political and military strategy. The Ard Feiseanna of those years were characterised by a belief that the course of events was going in the republican movement’s favour. The military objective of securing a British withdrawal and the political objective of building alternative state institutions were repeated. In their 1972 Ard Fheis statement the IRA emphasised that ‘the Army Council wishes to reiterate that we have no desire for an armed confrontation with our protestant fellow country men, we hope that even yet the leaders of the UDA/UVF will realise that there is nothing to be gained from a civil war between nationalist and unionist’.89 A motion passed from the floor of the Ard Fheis from Jack McCabe Cumann, Dublin, inviting ‘members of the loyalist organisations to discussions on the subject of how


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best we can both serve Ireland and the Irish people’, echoed the position of the IRA.90 That An Phoblacht announced ‘Victory Ours For Taking’ in October 1973 and ‘Ever Closer To Victory’ in October 1974 highlighted a level of optimism and certainty that was not borne out by the facts on the ground. In the five years since the formation of the Provisional Sinn Féin and IRA, the number of casualties in the conflict had risen dramatically. Nineteen-sixty-nine saw a total of 19 conflict-related deaths, two at the hands of the IRA, while 1970 saw these figures increase to 29 and 18 respectively. However from 1971 to 1974, 1,244 people were killed, of which the IRA was responsible for 576. While the IRA campaign continued to focus attention on the British Army, increasing attacks on commercial and economic targets brought with it a significant rise in civilian casualties. Politically Sinn Féin was coming under increasing strain from state repression north and south. However, more significantly, the twin strategies of building alternative state institutions as envisioned in Éire Nua while engaging with the unionist and loyalist community was clearly failing. Sinn Féin opposed the attempts by Ulster Unionist leader Brian Faulkner and British Secretary of State Merlyn Rees to secure a return to devolution during the Sunningdale talks in 1974, and read the collapse of the tentative agreement as yet another sign of the state’s weakness. However, the strength of unionist opposition to the limited power sharing and all-Ireland dimensions of the agreement, as evidenced in the Ulster Workers Council Strike, and the unwillingness of Harold Wilson’s government to face down the strikers, highlighted two fatal flaws in Sinn Féin’s analysis. The party failed to understand working-class unionist investments in and attachments to the northern state and the extent to which they would mobilise politically and militarily in its support. Equally the party misunderstood the extent to which the British government, would, in the last instance, support unionism and provide it, however grudgingly, with the political and military backing it required to secure the maintenance of the northern state. Alongside these two central strategic problems ran the inability of

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republicans to understand the impact of their armed campaign on the broad unionist community and their misinterpretation of the economic recession affecting Britain at the time as some kind of indication of the beginnings of an economic disengagement, to be followed by a possible political and military withdrawal. Following the legalisation of Sinn Féin by the British government in 1974, and a series of secret meetings between party officials and NIO civil servants, the IRA called a suspension of military activities in February 1975. This was the second such ceasefire since the descent into conflict, the first being in 1972. Additional meetings between senior republicans and British government officials took place, but nothing of substance emerged. If Sinn Féin and IRA leaders believed that the British government was preparing to withdraw, according to historian Richard English ‘it seems that Britain used the 1975 ceasefire to improve intelligence and to try to split the movement through drawing some of its members into constitutional politics’.91 By the summer of 1975 violence was increasing, and by September the ceasefire had clearly collapsed. In October the IRA indicated that they would not meet with the British government unless the purpose of the meeting would be to devise ‘structures of disengagement from Ireland’.92 Speaking at the 1976 Ard Fheis Ó Brádaigh told delegates that ‘talks between the representatives of Her Majesty’s government and of the republican movement continued into early 1976’. He also insisted that even though the truce had broken down, ‘We are prepared to meet them.’93 However the lack of political progress, escalating loyalist and state violence and the death of republican political prisoner Frank Stagg while on hunger strike in Wakefield Prison, England, ensured that within the republican movement the focus was once again on the war effort. A position replicated within the British government, who were clearly not interested in seeking a political accommodation. The collapse of the 1975 ceasefire had a number of important consequences, both for the British government and for Sinn Féin and the IRA. Announced by Merlyn Rees at the end of 1975, the government started to introduce a new strategy from 1976, mobilising what became known as Ulsterisation and criminalisa-


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tion. Ulsterisation would see the government reduce the level of direct military engagement by the British Army, and foreground the local Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Ulster Defence Regiment. In Feeney’s words, ‘this would remove the appearance of a colonial problem with British troops patrolling large parts of the North of Ireland. It would also reduce casualties among expensively trained troops’, minimising the political impact in Britain.94 Ulsterisation had the added benefit of refocusing the conflict away from a republican–British state confrontation, to an internal conflict between republicans and unionists, no longer a political issue, but rather a communal one. Criminalisation, as a strategy, was to complement Ulsterisation by further transforming the conflict from a political issue into one of criminality and law and order. From March 1976 newly sentenced combatants were to be denied political status, and treated in the same manner as social prisoners. In parallel the British government would initiate a new discourse describing Sinn Féin and the IRA as terrorists, godfathers and criminals in an attempt to de-legitimise the republican struggle, internationally, throughout Ireland, and within nationalist and republican communities in the north. Alongside the introduction of the government’s new strategy, profound changes were taking place within the republican movement. The collapse of the 1975 ceasefire led an emerging cadre of activists to question not only the existing leadership of Sinn Féin and the IRA, but more importantly the credibility of the movement’s strategy. From within the internment camps of Long Kesh, younger republican leaders such as Gerry Adams, and a number of activists working in Republican News and the Republican Publicity Bureau, such as Danny Morrison and Tom Hartley, questioned the movement’s reading of the British government, and its alleged intentions to withdraw. Their view, vindicated by subsequent events, was that the British government was intent on remaining involved in the north indefinitely and shoring up unionist political control in one form or another. In addition, the younger generation was critical of the secondary role being given to Sinn Féin and the community and campaigning dimension of the movement’s strategy. They also had concerns

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with the politics of Éire Nua. Influenced more by the radicalism of the civil rights movement and the socialism of People’s Democracy, this group were seeking both a more long-term military strategy combined with a more community focused and socially radical political strategy. Through the pages of Republican News, Adams, Morrison and others began to develop an alternative to the strategy of then IRA chief of staff Seamus Twomey and Sinn Féin president Ruarí Ó Brádaigh. This new emerging leadership were returning to the writings and activism of left-wing republicans such as Liam Mellows and James Connolly as well as theories of decolonisation associated with Franz Fanon and the politics of the 1970s’ New Left. The growing influence of this emerging leadership was demonstrated when republican veteran Jimmy Drumm delivered a keynote speech written by Adams and Morrison at the annual Wolfe Tone Commemoration in 1976. In addition to emphasising the need to become involved in ‘economic issues and on every day struggles of the people’, Drumm outlined what was to become the cornerstone of a key shift in republican strategy: The British government is not withdrawing from the Six Counties and the substantial pull out and closing down of factories in 1975 and 1976 were due to world economic recession though mistakenly attributed to symptoms of withdrawal. Indeed the British government is committed to establishing the Six Counties and is pouring in vast sums of money to improve the area and to assure loyalists, and secure from loyalists, support for a long haul against the Irish Republican Army. So sectarianism is maintained and increased repression of the Nationalist population with the aid and backing of the Free State administration are what lie ahead.95

Drumm’s speech was an indication of the increasing influence of the younger activists, a shift towards a more long-term military strategy and an increasing emphasis on party political activity. The arrest of Seamus Twomey in Dublin the same year revealed an internal republican report outlining the IRA’s intention to invest more personnel and resources into the party. While these shifts were not evident in the pages of An Phoblacht during 1977 and 1978 or Ó Brádaigh’s presidential addresses at the


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annual Ard Feiseanna, it is clear that both the position of the first generation of post-split leaders and their political strategy was slowly being challenged and replaced. The election of Gerry Adams as vice president of Sinn Féin at the 1978 Ard Fheis, and the amalgamation of the Belfast-based Republican News and the Dublin based An Phoblacht, were clear signs of the shifting balance of power. Gerry Adams’ speech to the 1979 Wolfe Tone Commemoration marked a clear, if subtle shift in both the political position and future direction of the party. Indicating a clear need to reassess the movement’s strategy and tactics ten years on from its foundation, Adams said: ‘we need to be continually analysing our weaknesses and building upon our strong points. Our movement needs constructive and thoughtful self-criticism.’96 Of particular concern to the Sinn Féin vice president was ‘our failure to develop revolutionary politics and to build a strong political alternative ... No amount of rhetoric can hide that fact nor the fact that such a development will come only through a serious commitment to our objectives, strong discipline and the proper application of correct policies.’97 Adams’ criticisms were thus not only of the failure of Sinn Féin to build a substantial political base, but also, more fundamentally, of the party’s not having adequate policies with which to engage potential support bases. Significantly, Adams was clearly challenging the predominant military thinking of the older generation of IRA leaders such as Twomey and MacStiofáin when he argued that ‘the reestablishment of the Republic we seek needs more than a military alternative to the establishment’.98 The 1979 speech was also significant because of the shift in ideological orientation, with a stronger and more radical socialist articulation than that of the Christian socialism of the older generation of republican leaders. Adams talked about securing ‘the means of production, distribution and exchange’ and ‘the need for the building of an agitational struggle in the twenty-six counties, an economic resistance movement, linking up republicans with other sections of the working class’.99 In an important section of

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the speech, Adams departed from the language more characteristic of Ó Brádaigh, arguing: As Republicans we stand with the Have-nots against the Haves. We stand with the under-privileged, the young, the unemployed, the workers – the people of no property. We are for the ownership of Ireland by the people of Ireland and we believe that national freedom entails economic and cultural independence and that one without the other is useless ... We stand opposed to all forms of imperialism and capitalism. We stand for an Ireland free, united, socialist and Gaelic.100

This new language marked a departure from co-operativist socialism in favour of a clearly anti-capitalist discourse. Equally significantly it appealed not only to the Irish people as a whole, but recognised the different social and economic interests that defined people’s experience and position in society. The Irish people were no longer viewed as a single constituency of interest, but rather as having divergent economic and social interests. At a strategic level this required developing new approaches to engaging and mobilising these sections of society. Adams made a specific appeal to ‘encourage the independent mobilisation of workers’ emphasising that ‘we must ensure that the cause of Ireland becomes the cause of labour, a task neglected since Connolly’s time’.101 Thus Adams’ speech clearly indicates three key shifts around which future changes within Sinn Féin would emerge. First an invitation to reassess and self-criticise, clearly implying that there was a need and a cause for change; second a criticism of the failure of Sinn Féin to act on its previously declared social radicalism and commitment to community engagement; and third the articulation of a more nuanced and radical socialism, with specific appeals to workers, trade unions and other social constituencies to ‘educate, agitate and organise ... North and South [to] mobilise our people on all fronts against the establishment’.102 Commentators, then and subsequently, were quick to suggest that the new approach articulated by Adams represented some form of left–right split within the movement, or some challenge to traditionalist or militarist thinking within the leadership. There is little evidence to support either of these characterisations. The shift, while significant, is clearly an evolution of Sinn Féin’s


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socialism, an attempt to find more effective ways of activating the party’s stated political programme, and an attempt to rebalance the political and military elements of the overall republican struggle. Adams was quick to dismiss any notion of a left–right division within the broader republican movement. In an interview with Hibernia Magazine in November 1979, Adams rejected such claims as ‘complete nonsense’.103 However while playing down any ideological divisions within the movement, arguing that the party’s commitment to republican socialism had been consistent during the previous decade, Adams was clearly outlining the real nature of the internal disagreements within the movement when he said ‘We have always had these policies but what is happening now is the realisation that it’s not enough just to have policies.’ He went on to say that when Sinn Féin emerged from the split in 1969, key leaders were ‘cagey about getting involved in social issues because previously the movement had got totally immersed in social issues and had neglected national issues’.104 The interview was also notable for Adams’ response to a question regarding his support for Éire Nua, the cornerstone of Sinn Féin’s political and economic strategy. The Sinn Féin vice president studiously avoided either supporting or rejecting the document, saying any revision was ‘purely a matter for the Ard Comhairle’. However he went on to say: ‘Éire Nua has been on the market for seven years and the situation has changed in seven years and over the last eighteen months [a] review has been going on. If the review is finished in time [its conclusions] will go before the Ard Fheis to decide. But there will be no change to basic republican principles.’105 Clearly Éire Nua’s days were numbered, and its replacement would become the key battleground upon which the emerging political leadership of Adams, Morrison and Derry republican Martin McGuinness would challenge the older generation of Ó Brádaigh and Ó Conaill.

Political Expansion While Sinn Féin was refining and evolving its political strategy and policy profile, events on the ground were to provide both obstacles

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and opportunities for the approach advocated by Adams. The removal of political status from newly sentenced republican prisoners in 1976 saw the emergence of a new political front in the broader conflict centring on the rights of political prisoners to be recognised as such. Until 1976 Sinn Féin campaigned against the arrest and torture of IRA volunteers, but such campaigns were often reactive and focused on specific incidents. However, by making political prisoners the key battleground for their criminalisation policy, the British government unintentionally created a new focus for republican political mobilisation. Inside the newly built H-Blocks of Long Kesh, republican prisoners refused to conform to the new prison regime. They refused to wear prison uniforms or undertake prison work. Thus, the blanket protest began, and a growing number of prisoners were confined to their cells 24 hours a day, with only a blanket to wear and a bible to read. Between 1976 and 1978 the confrontation between the prisoners and the prison regime escalated as prisoners were denied access to toilet facilities. Prisoners responded by launching the no-wash protest. At its height the blanket and no-wash protest involved more than 400 prisoners. Outside the jail, Sinn Féin was attempting to put Adams’ new political strategy into operation. In 1979 two major party conferences set about the task of reorganising and refocusing the party. In October a Sinn Féin conference on organisation in Athlone provided activists with the opportunity for ‘a serious self-examination’ during which ‘a frank and forceful discussion ... involving many aspects’ of the party’s work took place.106 The following month, a less successful women’s conference was held in an attempt to give greater emphasis to women’s issues and women activists within the party.107 However, the rapidly deteriorating situation in Long Kesh, and in the women’s prison in Armagh, ensured that the focus of party work from 1978 onwards would be the struggle for the reintroduction of political status. While this singular focus would make the broadening of Sinn Féin’s agitational politics difficult, in terms of addressing social and economic issues, the development of a broad-based political campaign in support of the prisoners gave Sinn Féin both the


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space and the motivation to put the basic principles of Adams’ new strategic approach into action. A National H Block-Armagh Campaign was established, with Sinn Féin and the prisoners’ relatives, mobilised into Relatives’ Action Committees, driving the campaign. However it also involved a broad range of radical left-wing organisations and individuals and sections of the trade union movement. This was Sinn Féin’s first experience of building broad-based political action since the collapse of the civil rights movement a decade earlier. Knowing that a broad-based movement could not be centred on the demand for IRA prisoners to be formally accorded political status, the campaign focused instead on what became known as the five demands: the right not to wear a prison uniform or do prison work; the right of prisoners to free association and to organise their own educational and recreational facilities; and the right to one visit, one letter and one parcel per week. By 1980, despite a level of political engagement and organisation not seen since the end of the 1960s, the campaign was making little headway in terms of securing its demands, while the situation inside the jails, and in particular the morale of prisoners, on protest now for four years, was declining. Despite widespread opposition from both Sinn Féin and the IRA leadership outside the jails, the prisoners embarked on two hunger strikes, in 1980 and 1981, in an attempt to resolve the question of status. The history of the hunger strikes is well documented elsewhere, particularly by David Beresford (1987) and Campbell and McKeown et al. (2006). For Sinn Féin, the impact of the years from 1979 to the ending of the 1981 hunger strike in November, following the death of Bobby Sands and nine other republicans, was profound. As the campaign for political status was transformed into a campaign in support of the hunger strikers during 1980 and 1981, the level of political mobilisation was intense. So too was the level of political outreach in an attempt to secure the support of a broader section of public opinion. The decision by civil rights campaigner Bernadette McAliskey to contest the 1979 European election on a political status ticket, despite strong opposition from the IRA and Sinn Féin, and her credible result of 40,000 votes,

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reopened the question of electoral participation, even for purely symbolic political ends, in the republican movement. The death of independent nationalist MP Frank McGuire in March 1981, only days after the start of the second hunger strike, forced the question of prisoner candidates onto the republican movement’s agenda. Bobby Sands was eventually selected to stand for the Fermanagh–South Tyrone by-election, and with 30,492 votes and 51 per cent of the vote, beat his Unionist rival, Harry West. The British government immediately moved to have the prisoners’ campaign stripped of this important political victory, introducing legislation denying convicted felons, including political prisoners, from standing in elections. The subsequent by-election took place after Sands had died following 66 days on hunger strike. Sands’ election agent, Sinn Féin member Eoghan Carron, secured 31,278 votes and held the seat. Political status for prisoners was reintroduced in the period after the formal ending of the hunger strike in October 1981. Most commentators have focused on the impact of the hunger strike on Sinn Féin’s attitude to electoralism. However, the impact of the political status campaign from 1978 through to 1981 was much more significant than this. These years saw a dramatic expansion of Sinn Féin’s political activity. The party mobilised an increasing number of supporters from within its own core support base, while at the same time politicising a new generation of republicans north and south. The campaign also brought republican re-engagement with political forces and constituencies beyond its own core support. All of this experience significantly developed the organisational, campaign and communication skills of Sinn Féin activists at both a grassroots and leadership level. The hunger strike also enabled Sinn Féin to internationalise the party’s solidarity network beyond the contacts built up among European stateless nations, such as Basques and Bretons, which had already been established during the 1970s. The success of Sands and Carron, and Paddy Agnew and Kieran Doherty, in the 26-County general election later the same year demonstrated the utility of contesting elections, if not participation in the political institutions themselves, and opened the door for a more substantial


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electoral engagement in the years ahead. All of this provided the emerging Adams-led leadership group with the political context and practical experience to advance their own strategic agenda within Sinn Féin. However, one of the key lessons of this period, which became apparent only some years later, was the shift in the strategic approach to achieving change. Prior to the ending of the hunger strike, the approach of the republican movement both inside and outside the jail was one of head-on confrontation with the state, refusal to recognise its legitimacy, and the utilisation of every means available to smash the state apparatus. However, both during and immediately after the hunger strike, republicans within the jail began to develop more sophisticated strategies, mixing confrontation with the prison administration with entry into its regimes in order to secure additional changes from within, complementing the more general campaign outside, as documented in McKeown (2001). This new mixture of external confrontation and internal reform was not only vital to the securing of political status by 1983, but taught the emerging leadership of Sinn Féin and the IRA a series of important political lessons which they would bring to bear on the overall strategy of the movement in later years. During this period, the battle for control of Sinn Féin continued to be played out. While there were no clear signs of division or internal struggle, there was nonetheless a clear attempt to continue the shift in political strategy and focus first articulated in both Jimmy Drumm’s 1977 and Gerry Adams’ 1979 Bodenstown speeches. At the centre of the developing contest between the section of the party represented by Ó Brádaigh and that of Adams was the issue of Éire Nua. The policy had been the focus of an internal review from 1978, and the Ard Comhairle brought forward to the 1980 Ard Fheis what An Phoblacht/Republican News called ‘a radical update’ of the document. Alongside the leadership proposal were motions from local Cumann in support of the standing policy and calling for its complete revision.108 While there was little noticeable difference in the content of Ó Brádaigh’s presidential address, the debate on Éire Nua revealed

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a different picture. Although an Ard Comhairle motion calling for Éire Nua to ‘be promoted and publicised in the coming year’ was passed, federalism was described by one Belfast delegate as ‘a sop to loyalism’ that ‘was perhaps over hastily adopted to fill a gap when there was a lack of policy’.109 However, the substantive debate was on the Ard Comhairle document, ‘Éire Nua: The Social Dimension’. Both Ó Brádaigh and Adams spoke in favour, the former stating that its proposals were ‘unashamedly democratic and socialist in character’, with Adams stressing its ‘radical republican character’.110 Indeed, it contained the most radical series of proposals on social and economic policy to be brought forward to an Ard Fheis since the 1960s. In addition to supporting the public control and democratic administration of ‘all the means of production, distribution and exchange’, the document advocated widespread public ownership of the county’s land, resources and industry.111 It declared that ‘private enterprise will have no place in key industries and State incentives will favour co-operative projects as the most socially desirable ... Small local business will be permissible provided no exploitation occurs ... [and] There would be an upper limit to the size of any private enterprise.’112 The Social Dimension also promised universal access to health, education, housing and the protection of civil rights for all. In addition to measures aimed at promoting the Irish language the document also opposed Irish membership of NATO, the EEC and the Warsaw Pact, calling instead for an independent foreign policy. Much of the debate from the floor of the Ard Fheis focused on the definition of socialism, with a proposed amendment seeking to insert a more Christian socialist vocabulary into the document being defeated, on the basis of the need to develop a secular socialism advocating the full separation of church and state. Other delegates attempted to have the sections dealing with farming cooperatives removed for fear of alienating family farms, however this was also defeated. Indeed one delegate from County Meath, supporting the proposed deletion of the sections on land and industry, described The Social Dimension as ‘the thin end of a trend in left-wing socialism that will alienate us from the


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people’.113 However, despite such reservations the document was agreed by a substantial majority of delegates. The remainder of the Ard Fheis dealt with discussions on electoral strategy, with a motion calling for the party to contest local elections in the north being referred to the incoming Ard Comhairle. A debate on women’s rights mandated the incoming Ard Comhairle to develop a new policy on gender equality to be brought forward to the 1981 Ard Fheis. There was also significant international representation with delegations from revolutionary movements in Portugal, the Basque Country, France, Germany, Spain, Denmark and Brittany. International solidarity greetings were also received from SWAPO in Namibia, the FSLN in Nicaragua, FRETELIN in East Timor, the Chilean Socialist Party and a number of European socialist and progressive nationalist political parties. While the 1980 Ard Fheis brought significant changes both in the definition and detail of the party’s socialism and economic programme, the 1981 Ard Fheis, described by An Phoblacht/ Republican News as ‘the liveliest, if not the most controversial in years’, brought even more far-reaching changes.114 Following a two-hour debate calling for the removal of the proposed federal governmental structures from Éire Nua, delegates voted to drop what had been a key element in the party’s political strategy for over a decade. Proposing the deletion Gerry Adams told delegates: ‘The Ulster provincial structure was offered as an olive branch to unionists – it is essentially a sop to unionism, loyalism and Orangism.’115 Both Ó Brádaigh and Daithi Ó Conaill argued against the motion, highlighting the absence of an alternative from Adams. The vote saw 190 of the total 294 delegates support the Adams proposal. While a second amendment seeking to remove references to federalism from the party’s constitution failed to get the two-thirds majority required, it was clear that federalism no longer held any place in Sinn Féin’s political project. Of equal significance was the decision to leave future decisions on participation in 6-County local elections to the incoming Ard Comhairle. Up to this point Sinn Féin only contested local government elections in the south of Ireland, continuing to reject

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the legitimacy of the 6-County local government system, and both parliaments in Dublin and London. However as declared on the front page of An Phoblacht/Republican News in its post-Ard Fheis decision: ‘The clear position of Sinn Féin is that it will in future contest local government seats in the North.’116 An indication of the party’s attempts to broaden its organisational and ideological base was evident in the reports from the various departments and proposed policy documents including a draft trade union policy ‘on the republican attitude to work in the unions’ which was debated and amended. International participation was once again high on the agenda with more than 40 delegations, including from the PLO, the Sandinistas and the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front, the Argentinean Worker’s Revolutionary Party and EIA from the Basque Country. Solidarity greetings were also sent from Italian MEP Mario Capanna, and from radical parties in Germany, Holland, Denmark and solidarity groups in Britain, Quebec, Canada and the USA. The tone of the Ard Fheis was concisely summed up when the key Adams ally, Danny Morrison, director of publicity and editor of An Phoblacht/Republican News, famously declared, ‘Who here really believes we can win the war through the ballot box? But will anyone here object if, with the ballot paper in one hand and the Armalite in the other, we take power in Ireland?’ A fundamental shift had taken place, not just in policy terms, but also in the balance of power within the party, the repercussions of which were to be demonstrated internally and externally in the years that followed.117 The following year’s Ard Fheis signalled the consolidation of power over Sinn Féin by the new generation of leaders. Coming in the immediate aftermath of the northern Assembly elections it brought to a conclusion debates on federalism and electoral participation that had been running since the start of the decade. Delegates agreed the abolition of the constitutional reference to federalism and the strengthening of the radical left-wing social and economic agenda. The party also placed greater focus on the development of the Women’s Department and emerging youth participation. Delegates also agreed a detailed agricultural policy,


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based on the principles outlined in The Social Dimension. The international section of the conference saw debates on Palestine and Poland, with the Ard Fheis expressing its strong support for Solidarity. From 1982 Sinn Féin contested a series of elections north and south investing a level of political and material resources not seen in decades. The results of the polls in the north were to strengthen the hand of the new generation of leaders and, more crucially, destabilise the criminalisation strategy of the British government and their allies in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. In October 1982 elections were held to a proposed Assembly in Belfast as part of British Secretary of State Jim Prior’s attempt to restore devolution in the north. Sinn Féin secured 64,000 votes electing Adams, Morrison, Carron, and Jim Allister in South Armagh, and Martin McGuinness in Derry. The result was significant in a number of respects. With 10 per cent of the electorate, 2 per cent more than during the hunger strikers, it demonstrated that Sinn Féin could mobilise significant electoral support outside the emotive context of the hunger strike. That 10 per cent of the electorate, or 40 per cent of the nationalist electorate, voted for Sinn Féin, not only damaged the British government’s argument that republicans were criminals with no public support, but in doing so fatally undermined their overall strategy in the north. It also created significant difficulties for both the SDLP and the Irish government. Interestingly, while the SDLP lost seats from the previous Assembly election, its total vote actually increased, indicating that Sinn Féin’s success was not strictly at the larger nationalist party’s loss. Feeney’s assessment that ‘the biggest constituency of support [for Sinn Féin] was among urban working-class, particularly first-time voters and young men in working-class areas, a category of people who normally do not vote in similar constituencies elsewhere in the western world’, was undoubtedly correct.118 This initial electoral success was repeated in both the British general election of June 1983 and the northern local government elections in 1985. The general election saw the party’s vote increase to 102,000 votes or 13.4 per cent, with Gerry Adams taking the West Belfast seat from Gerry Fitt, and Danny Morrison coming

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within 78 votes of taking Mid Ulster. In the local elections Sinn Féin predicted taking 40 seats, and secured 59 seats with 75,000 votes and 11 per cent of the vote. While Sinn Féin refused to take its seats either in Westminster or the Assembly, its electoral strength and its presence across the north’s local authorities created a political crisis of significant proportions. Sinn Féin’s electoral fortunes in the south, however, were of a different order, demonstrating the underdevelopment if not irrelevance of the party to the southern electorate. In the February 1982 Leinster House election, Sinn Féin secured only half the vote of the hunger strike candidates of the previous year, and when a snap election was called in November of the same year the party chose not to contest any seats. The combined effect of the dropping of federalism, the engagement with electoralism, the strengthening of the party’s broad-based radical policy and organisational programme, and the electoral advance in 1983 brought the formal end to Ruarí Ó Brádaigh and Daithi Ó Conaill’s leadership of Sinn Féin. Both men, key figures in the formation and development of Sinn Féin from the early 1960s, and particularly after the 1970 split, did not contest their respective positions of president and joint vice president. For Ó Brádaigh, the ‘defeat of policies which I wholeheartedly believed in and had publicly espoused over a long period’ made his position untenable.119 For Ó Conaill the dropping of abstentionism was ‘a mistake’, and that while ‘the office of Vice-President was regarded by some as one of a titular nature’, he was not ‘a titular head, figurehead or yes-man’.120 Both men knew that their role and the positions they espoused were increasingly marginalised, and that the changing political circumstances and growth of the organisation had fatally undermined their positions. In his final presidential speech Ó Brádaigh was graceful in defeat, telling delegates that ‘we hand over the great Sinn Féin organisation to a new generation, more vigorous and more successful at the polls than any time since 1918’.121 However, he also warned against the dangers of Sinn Féin’s slipping into constitutional politics. The election of Gerry Adams as the new president of Sinn Féin, and of his key allies Phil Flynn and John Joe McGirl, representing


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two different generations of southern republicans, as joint vice presidents, brought to an end a period of transition within the party that began with the collapse of the 1975 ceasefire. Adam’s first Ard Fheis presidential address laid out a number of key themes that would dominate party thinking and activity for the remainder of the decade. While clearly stating that he had no intention of advocating a change to the party’s abstentionist position in relation to Leinster House, he emphasised that ‘for many reasons ... anti-imperialist politics and the struggle for Irish independence had become, to a large extent, isolated and restricted to its activist base’.122 Warning of the danger of people ‘unconsciously slipping into spectator politics’ as a consequence of ‘manifestations of mass struggle [being] pushed to the sidelines’, the newly elected Sinn Féin president was making a clear call for a return to both street and electoral politics in order to secure increased political strength. He argued that as Sinn Féin developed ‘alternatives to the social, political economic and cultural aspects of British rule in the six counties’, the party benefited both in terms of ‘our electoral successes over the past year and in the high morale of our supporters’. Adams also made an appeal to the Protestant working class, stating that as a democrat and a separatist, I am opposed to the so-called unionist veto, but there is a clear distinction between the alleged ‘right’ of Northern loyalists to the union with Britain and the right, with the rest of us, to shape the new society which would replace the partitionist statelets into which this island is unjustifiably and forcibly divided at present.123

The speech also argued that Sinn Féin has, to a great extent, been isolated in the 26 counties, and because of our almost exclusive concentration on the national question, we have failed to develop the social and economic momentum which our party began during the 1960s. Other parties who have abandoned the central question of partition [namely Sinn Féin: The Workers Party] have been able to make political capital on those issues.124

The fact that the southern electorate had accepted the institutions of the 26 Counties while Sinn Féin maintained an abstentionist

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position was identified by Adams as a problem, as was the failure of the party to bring its policies to the people ‘to explain them and gain support for them’.125 With this problem in mind Adams dealt at some length with industrial, agricultural and women’s rights issues. The speech concluded with both a reaffirmation of the party’s support for the legitimacy of armed struggle as ‘a necessary and morally correct form of resistance in the six counties against a government whose presence is rejected by the vast majority of the Irish people’ and of the party’s democratic socialism and the ‘need for republicans, socialists and progressive nationalists to find unity on democratic republican demands’.126 However, Adams concluded by cautioning delegates that ‘while our struggle has a major social and economic content the securing of Irish independence is a pre-requisite for the advance to a socialist republican society’.127 As Sinn Féin was emerging as a serious political force posthunger strikes, with increasing organisational and electoral strength, its ideological and strategic orientation was clear: commitment to an equally balanced political and military struggle, in support of prioritised national democratic goals, while building for the ultimate goal of democratic socialism; a recognition of the need to challenge the SDLP in the north while building support in the south on the basis of radical social and economic policies as well as the issue of partition and national independence; and a clear engagement with Irish society plurally defined, as workers, farmers, women or young people, rather than just the Irish people as a whole. And while Adams’ appeal to working-class unionists was superficial and couched in more traditional republican thinking, it indicated the beginning of a process of realising that republican objectives could not be achieved without some form of engagement with political and social unionism.

Changing Dynamics From the onset of the conflict in 1970 and 1971 the dynamics at play were primarily military. The escalating confrontation between


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the IRA and the British government and its unionist allies, while always containing a political dimension, was dominated by the belief in the utility of violence and the possibility of military defeat. All three key political protagonists shared this view. From the mid 1970s the dominance of militarism was beginning to give way to strategies, on both the British and republican side, that sought to augment military confrontation with political confrontation. The battle over political status, and in particular the hunger strikes of 1980 and 1981 saw both the British government and Irish republicans adapt their respective strategies to complement militarism with political strategies aimed at mobilising public opinion and popular support. While the British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary could argue that by 1982 they had started to contain IRA violence, they would soon admit – first privately, then publicly – that defeat of the IRA was not ultimately possible. For republicans the logic of the Long War – the idea of a protracted military and political struggle – indicated a similar frame of mind. The granting of political status in the aftermath of the 1981 hunger strike and Sinn Féin’s electoral successes in the north from 1982 onwards dealt a fatal blow to the British government’s strategy of criminalisation. Whether consciously or not, by the mid 1980s both the British state and republicans were shifting the focus of their strategies away from military confrontation supplemented by political mobilisation, and towards a primarily political confrontation. For the British state the logic of marginalisation through the building of political alliances with both the SDLP and the Irish government came to dominate though not replace criminalisation. In turn republicans increasingly sought to build and demonstrate political support and strength, both to counter British government attempts to marginalise republicans and, as the decade progressed, to force the British government into a negotiated settlement to the conflict. The collapse of the Sunningdale negotiations in 1974 left a political vacuum in its wake. It was not until 1979 that the newly elected Conservative government, through its secretary of State Humphrey Atkins, attempted to reopen talks with the SDLP and Ulster Unionist Party in an attempt to secure some form of

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political agreement. However, the failure of the Atkins talks to reach agreement on power sharing and devolution led Thatcher to engage directly with the Fianna Fáil government of Charles Haughey in Dublin. Despite an up-beat start, Thatcher’s lack of flexibility, Haughey’s political opportunism, and the 1981 hunger strikes blocked any advancement of the British government’s plans. Thatcher’s second Secretary of State Jim Prior launched a new initiative in 1982, in which he offered a process of rolling devolution whereby powers would be gradually returned to Stormont if it could demonstrate its ability to secure unionist and nationalist support. However, rather than isolate Sinn Féin, the Assembly elections incorporated in Prior’s plans provided republicans with the opportunity to demonstrate a credible level of political support. Once again Thatcher’s ideological support for unionism led to a weakening of the all-Ireland dimension of the Prior proposals. Under increasing electoral threat from Sinn Féin, the SDLP joined republicans in a boycott of the Assembly effectively ending the initiative. Thatcher’s re-election in 1983 was complemented by a new Fine Gael–Labour coalition in Dublin led by Garret FitzGerald. The Irish government was seriously concerned by the potential impact of the growth of Sinn Féin on the stability of the southern state. The FitzGerald government launched its own political initiative, the New Ireland Forum, in an attempt to secure consensus amongst nationalist Ireland on its future relationship with the north. Sinn Féin was excluded and Haughey’s Fianna Fáil, in opposition, rejected any shift from its rhetorical support for reunification, while Thatcher rejected all of the proposed solutions, including reunification, a federal state and joint authority. Once again it appeared that the political initiatives of both governments were floundering. However, ongoing contacts between officials from both the Irish and British governments led, in November 1985, to the Anglo–Irish Agreement. Patterson describes the Agreement as ‘a major shift in policy which would radically change the political context’.128 The core elements of the Agreement were the formation of a British–Irish Intergovernmental Conference, within which


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the Irish government would have a consultative role on northern affairs, notionally to represent northern nationalist interests. The Conference would also address issues such as cross-border security as well as economic, social and cultural cooperation between both governments. The Agreement held out the promise of devolution and created an International Fund for Ireland to provide financial support for economic development. For the Irish government, the value of the Agreement was primarily political, assisting it in its task of bolstering support for the SDLP and marginalising Sinn Féin. For the British government this political agenda was complemented by a desire for greater assistance from the Irish government in counter-insurgency measures against the IRA, particularly in terms of extradition, police cooperation and border security. After a decade of failed political initiatives by the British government, the Anglo–Irish Agreement was perceived as a significant breakthrough. The purpose of the Agreement was not to resolve the causes of the conflict, but rather to contribute to the political and military defeat of Sinn Féin and the IRA. The political dimension of the Agreement was complemented by renewed judicial and military measures, including the intensification of the use of no-jury Diplock Courts and ‘supergrass’ informers, and a concerted campaign of assassinations of IRA volunteers by the SAS, and of Sinn Féin activists by loyalist paramilitaries working in collusion with the British military intelligence. The high-profile assassinations of IRA volunteers in Loughall Co. Tyrone in 1987 and Gibraltar in 1988, and of Sinn Féin councillor Sean Davey in 1989, were all key markers of this shift in British military strategy. To this end the British Intelligence agency MI5 oversaw the illegal importation and distribution to unionist paramilitaries of a substantial shipment of arms from the Apartheid regime in South Africa. In addition to weapons, MI5 and the RUC provided loyalist paramilitaries with information and logistical assistance as part of their campaign against Sinn Féin personnel. More than 300 people were killed as a result of collusion, including Sinn Féin activists and elected representatives, IRA volunteers, human rights lawyers and civilians, between 1989 and 1997.

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While the British government’s pursuance of a covert campaign of state killings created tensions with both the SDLP and the Irish government, the opposition of all shades of unionism to the Agreement deepened the levels of political instability and witnessed a significant escalation of UDA and UVF violence beyond that desired by M15 and the RUC. Up to 200,000 unionists mobilised against the Agreement in Belfast during November 1985 and again on its first anniversary in 1986. Conflict between unionism and the state, whether through boycotts of British government ministers or street confrontations with the Army and police became a feature of life until the end of the decade. Meanwhile the number and frequency of loyalist killings increased dramatically. The Anglo–Irish Agreement, while clearly blocking Sinn Féin’s electoral advance, was not having as dramatic an impact as its authors hoped. The 1987 Westminster election saw a drop in the party’s vote, from 102,000 to 83,000 votes, but still retaining more than the initial 10 per cent secured in 1983. While the SDLP’s vote in the same election increased 3 per cent, it could hardly have been interpreted as a victory by either the British or Irish governments when placed alongside the depth of unionist reaction and the rapidly deteriorating security situation. Sinn Féin was acutely aware of the evolving political context in the years surrounding the Agreement. The organisational, ideological and electoral development of the party from 1984 to 1987 continued to focus on building and expanding the party’s support base and alternative agenda. However this agenda was continually constrained by Sinn Féin’s attempts to counter the British and Irish government’s strategy of marginalisation and isolation. The 1984 Ard Fheis saw a further expansion of the party’s policy profile with support for the 35-hour week, opposition to the ‘slavish adherence of the monetarist policies’ of the Fine Gael–Labour coalition in Dublin, and additional positions on landownership and agricultural, drugs and social welfare reform.129 There was also a lively debate on a resolution which argued that Sinn Féin had ‘singularly failed to come to terms with youth’ issues.130 A debate on whether the party should develop a


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National Youth Committee or fully-fledged Youth Department ensued, with the former proposal becoming policy. The Ard Fheis also adopted a revised version of the 1980 Women in Ireland policy document. The detailed position paper argued that ‘there is now a consciousness in Sinn Féin that the liberation of women is not just desirable but vitally necessary if true freedom is to be realised’.131 The radical socialist-feminist document outlined issues of economic discrimination, physical and sexual violence against women, the right to contraception, divorce and childcare, and committed Sinn Féin to ‘fight to defend the rights that women have won so far’ and to play an active role in ongoing and future struggles for women’s equality. However, on the subject of abortion, delegates overwhelming adopted an anti-choice position. A modest proposal supporting a woman’s right to choose terminations ‘under certain medical circumstances’ was rejected in favour of a motion that declared ‘we are opposed to abortion as a form of birth control’.132 Adams’ presidential speech was important in a number of respects. Much of the content was given over to issues of women’s rights and participation in political life, social and economic policy and international issues, particularly concerning Africa, Ethiopia and Central America. Adams told delegates that the Dublin Forum was established ‘only because the establishment parties realised, mostly through the promptings of John Hume, that by their failure to do anything about the national question they had surrendered the high ground of Irish nationalism to Sinn Féin’.133 ‘What emerged’, said Adams, commenting of the Forum’s deliberations, ‘was not a blue-print for a united, independent and peaceful Irish society but an Irish establishment alternative to the policies of Sinn Féin’. The presidential speech also dealt with the issue of the EEC and the European parliamentary elections of that year. Sinn Féin’s combined vote north and south was 146,148. Campaigning on a manifesto calling for Ireland to withdraw from the EEC, Sinn Féin argued for the negotiation of trading Agreements with [the EEC] and an alternative based on a radical socialist programme.

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Adams returned to all of these themes at the following year’s Ard Fheis. Support for the anti-Apartheid struggle in South Africa opened his address, as he called on the ANC to ‘fight on’. Adams was also unsurprisingly critical of the ongoing talks between the British and Irish governments. ‘The dangers of the present talks’, he told delegates, ‘lie not in the conclusions that they may or may not reach ... but in their intention of putting a diplomatic veneer on British rule and injecting a credibility to constitutional nationalism so that British rule and its interests can be stabilised in the long term.’ Amid stinging attacks against the SDLP for its failure to provide adequate representation for the northern nationalist community, Adams argued that ‘the talks and any subsequent agreement are about creating a political climate in which this party can be isolated through a mixture of repression and appeasement’.134 The Ard Fheis itself continued to deal with similar themes to the year previous, with workers’ rights, youth participation and women’s equality generating considerable debate. Alan Curran, chair of the new Sinn Féin National Youth Committee, criticised the party’s failure to address youth concerns adequately. Of particular note was the heated debate on abortion, and the decision by delegates to adopt two pro-choice motions, one from the Ard Comhairle that accepted ‘the need for abortion where a woman’s life is at risk or in grave danger’ and another from the floor that simply stated, ‘we recognise that women have the right to choose’.135 However the most contentious debate was in the section on electoral strategy. A motion from Dublin Sinn Féin, while supporting the current position with regard to Leinster House, proposed that such abstentionism ‘be viewed as a tactic and not a principle’. The motion was clearly the opening salvo in an attempt by sections of the party, including the Adams’ leadership, to pave the way to participation in Leinster House. It also struck at one of the fundamental issues that had provoked the 1969–70 split, and was the last remaining policy difference between the older generation of activists and those that had emerged during the seventies and eighties. The motion was defeated by 20 votes,


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despite support from Danny Morrison and others close to Adams. An Phoblacht/Republican News coverage of the debate clearly indicated that this particular battle was not over, stating that ‘closing the session, delegates agreed that the incoming Ard Comhairle should investigate the implications for Sinn Féin registering as a political party and should circulate the information to cummain prior to the next Ard Fheis’.136 Nineteen-eighty-six was clearly going to be a decisive year for the development of Sinn Féin’s electoral strategy. Historian Brian Feeney has argued that the Sinn Féin leaderships had been working towards an end to abstentionism since 1982. While the defeat of the Dublin Sinn Féin motion at the 1985 Ard Fheis indicated that the time had not yet come, one year later the prospects for change were greater. The IRA, at an Army Convention in September 1986, dropped its own support for abstentionism, while An Phoblacht/Republican News had been the focus of a 12month-long political debate. Five hours had been allocated on the Ard Fheis agenda to discuss motion 162 containing three specific constitutional amendments. Success would require a two-thirds majority of delegates. In all, 54 speakers took part in the debate, with an even number on each side. Senior republican leaders such as John Joe McGirl and Joe Cahill of the older generation, and Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Pat Doherty, all argued that the ‘millstone’ and ‘handicap’ of abstentionism had to be dropped. All of the speakers supporting the Ard Comhairle proposal called for unity and for all sides to respect the democratic decision of the Ard Fheis. Former president Ruarí Ó Brádaigh received a standing ovation, and appealed to delegates not to ‘enmesh’ Sinn Féin in constitutionalism. Instead, he urged delegates to support motion 184, which called for the convening of a new all-Ireland parliament when the party was ‘strong enough’. In the end 429 of the 638 delegates present supported the Ard Comhairle motion, providing the majority required. Ó Brádaigh led a walk out with a small group of delegates and supporters to form the breakaway Republican Sinn Féin.137 The significance of the abstentionist debate was evident in the fact that Adams devoted almost his entire presidential address to

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this single issue. While acknowledging the ‘deep and justifiably strong feelings’ of delegates, Adams appealed for unity, ‘not a conditional unity or a qualified unity but a total commitment to unified acceptance of the democratic mandate of this Ard Fheis’.138 Describing the possibility of entering Leinster House as ‘opening up another front’, he argued that ‘as the political conditions change so must republican strategy change. Therefore present political conditions continue to be the dominant factor in producing a republican response to those conditions ... we are often successful when we have a flexible approach. We are at our weakest when we are forced into a static political position.’139 Indeed, the requirements of ‘interpreting and applying republicanism to changing and changed political conditions’ was a feature of a speech the focus of which was ‘the development of strategies which can succeed’.140 The 1986 Ard Fheis also witnessed the reversal of the previous year’s pro-choice position, with the adoption of an Ard Comhairle motion stating that Sinn Féin was ‘opposed to the attitudes and forces in society which compel women to have abortions. We are opposed to abortion as a means of birth control but we accept the need for abortion where a woman’s life is at risk or in grave danger, for example entopic pregnancy and all forms of cancer.’141 In the immediate aftermath of the historic 1986 Ard Fheis, Sinn Féin contested two elections, the Leinster House elections in February 1987 and Westminster in June of that year. Despite the dropping of abstentionism and fielding candidates in 29 of the state’s 41 constituencies the party secured only 1.6 per cent of the vote and lost 20 deposits. The Westminster poll witnessed a drop of 2 per cent from 102,000 in 1983 to 83,000. With the exception of a slight vote increase for Gerry Adams in West Belfast, the party experienced no other vote increases. Alongside the stalling of Sinn Féin’s electoral advance, the IRA was experiencing a series of significant organisational and political setbacks. The SAS assassination of eight key IRA volunteers in Loughall in May, and the interception of a massive shipment of Libyan arms by French police in October, were serious blows to its organisation’s capacity and morale. The killing of eleven civilians at the Remembrance


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Day Parade in Enniskillen that November caused widespread political and public revulsion. RTÉ held a minute’s silence on Irish national television and more than 50,000 people signed a book of condolence in the Lord Mayor’s residence in central Dublin. Feeney quotes a ‘senior IRA’ activist who commenting afterwards admitted that 1987 had been ‘the worst year the IRA had had for five years’ and that the Enniskillen bombing had ‘totally devastated’ republican support beyond its central core.142 The combined effect of the Anglo–Irish Agreement, the British government’s security offensive against the IRA, the failure to secure an electoral breakthrough and the impact of the IRA’s armed campaign combined had, in Gerry Adams own words, ‘dealt a body blow’ to efforts to build Sinn Féin into a major allIreland political and electoral force.

Adapting to Changing Political Conditions The political strategy of Gerry Adams and the post-Ó Brádaigh leadership of Sinn Féin was based on two key propositions. The first was a belief that the armed campaign of the IRA would undermine the British government’s willingness to remain in Ireland. The second was that a radical republican socialist political party, mobilising the most marginalised sections of Irish society north and south, could build mass support for an agenda of profound constitutional, political, social and economic change. Sinn Féin’s electoral strategy was complemented by attempts to expand the party’s policy platform, widen the organisation’s campaigning reach, and build alliances with communities and other progressive social forces. While based on the radical republican thinking and activism of Connolly, Mellows and Gilmore, it also drew inspiration from contemporary left-wing national liberation movements in Palestine, South Africa, Nicaragua, El Salvador and East Timor. The success of these international allies of Irish republicanism rested on their ability to mobilise mass support through a combination of effective armed resistance with radical democratic socialist politics. These were national movements with the support of the majority of their countries’ citizens. The strategy

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of organisations such as the ANC or FSLN was aimed at militarily and politically overthrowing oppressive regimes, and building new democratic states with popular democratic support. Sinn Féin, and the context in which the broader republican movement was operating, was different in a number of important respects. While the combined effect of the Anglo–Irish Agreement and the day-to-day reality of the conflict served to limit Sinn Féin’s political and electoral advance, Sinn Féin’s support base, particularly in the South, would have been limited to a minority of the population even without these factors. Additionally, while the IRA initially believed that it had the military capacity to defeat the British Army, by the end of the 1980s this proposition was increasingly untenable, and accepted by key figures both in its own leadership and that of Sinn Féin. The fact that Sinn Féin sought to overthrow only one of the two states on the island, while seeking to reform the other, also posed strategic and political challenges. Crucially the international context was also shifting. The ending of the second Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union led to the retreat of the European and international left, unable to respond effectively to the collapse of ‘actually existing socialism’, the changing global political and economic context, and the rise to dominance of neo-liberalism. These international and regional changes were not only altering the domestic context, but pushing some of Sinn Féin’s key international allies, such as the ANC in South Africa, into a process of ‘interpreting and applying’ their own principles ‘to changing and changed political conditions’. The revolutionary socialist and national liberation discourses, whether in Europe, Africa, Latin America or the Middle East, were giving way to a new discourse of dialogue, settlement, compromise and economic stability. In this changing context, and given the already existing limitations on Irish republicans’ political and military strategy, Sinn Féin would sooner or later be forced to re-evaluate the utility of their decade-old strategy, which though producing significant political results, was nonetheless reaching its limits. While the end of the 1980s were clearly difficult years for Sinn Féin and the IRA, they provided significant political opportunities


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as well as offering a repertoire of ideas and political positions to be adopted and developed from international allies. Henry Patterson perceptively points out that the ‘failure of the Anglo–Irish Agreement ... the unlikelihood of any internal accommodation between constitutional nationalism and Unionism and the increasing allIreland flavour of Fianna Fáil–SDLP discussions’ provided the Sinn Féin leadership with hope for political progress.143 The challenge for Sinn Féin was how best to evolve their strategy, taking into account the changing domestic and international circumstances and the opportunities that existed, in order both to counter the British and Irish governments’ strategy of marginalisation and repression while at the same time advancing the party’s political and economic agenda. The response found expression through a number of party documents and books authored by Gerry Adams. The Politics of Irish Freedom was published in 1986 and represented the most detailed outline of Sinn Féin’s ideological orientation and strategic direction to date. The following year Sinn Féin released its first set of peace proposals in a document entitled A Scenario for Peace, in an attempt to engage the British and Irish governments, other political parties and the general public. Five years later Sinn Féin released a more detailed series of proposals entitled Towards A Lasting Peace, which represented both the outcome of six years of internal discussion within the broad republican constituency and a limited engagement with other, primarily nationalist political forces, in Ireland. The Politics of Irish Freedom was Adams’ first full-length book and his most comprehensive articulation of contemporary republican thinking. It represented the accumulation of ten years of political and strategic development. The book dealt with all those themes which had become the feature of Adams’ Ard Fheis speeches, including the origins of the conflict, the rise of the IRA, Sinn Féin’s attitude to armed struggle, unionism and the SDLP. It also outlined the party’s understanding of republicanism and socialism and the centrality of ending British rule as a prerequisite for building an independent republic and the advancement of democratic socialism. Ending British rule and the ‘pro-imperialist

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policies of the Dublin government’ required, according to Adams, the ‘mobilisation of all progressive forces and all of those denied political, economic, social or cultural freedom, the demand for British withdrawal and Irish national self-determination’.144 The book’s conclusion, titled ‘Peace in Ireland?’, asserted that by ‘removing the source of division and bitterness we will ensure the beginning of the process for the transformation of our country’.145 However, Adams was also clear that this ‘transformation will not be accomplished by establishment or sectarian party politicians, by establishment figures, by Church leaders, or by British warlords’, clearly indicating that neither the British nor Irish governments, nor the other political parties, had any meaningful role in the transformation. Rather, ‘ordinary people uniting to build a new society in Ireland’, presumably with Sinn Féin as one of its key political leaders, would provide the primary engine for change.146 Scenario for Peace – launched in May 1987 after the significant electoral setback in the southern elections in February and in advance of that year’s Westminster election – represented both an extension of and a departure from the strategy developed by the party since the early 1980s. The centrepiece of the document was the demand for the British government to ‘adopt a strategy for decolonisation’ as a prerequisite for a Constitutional Conference in which negotiations between all sections of Irish society would seek to agree ‘constitutional, economic, social and political arrangements for an Irish State’.147 While this demand was in strict terms nothing new, it amounted to recognition that military victory by the IRA was unattainable, and that some form of negotiated process would be required. For Sinn Féin the difficulty was that without increased political and electoral support or the prospect of an IRA military victory, why would the British government shift its current position of support for the union, and strategy of seeking to defeat Sinn Féin and the IRA, rather than addressing the underlying causes of the conflict? Scenario for Peace contained no answers to these questions. It also exposed the absolute lack of any understanding or knowledge of unionism, containing crass proposals for assisting the repatriation to Britain of those


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unionists unhappy with a post-partition settlement. Whatever the limitations of Scenario for Peace, at the time of its publication – in the aftermath of a poor Westminster election, and following the public reaction to the Enniskillen bombing and the falling morale within republican circles after the Libyan arms find and Loughall – the strategic status quo within Sinn Féin clearly could not be maintained. The SAS assassination of three senior IRA volunteers in Gibraltar in March 1988 started a month-long spiral of violence. UDA member and British agent Michael Stone attacked one of the Gibraltar funerals, killing three mourners. At the funeral of one of Stone’s victims two British Army corporals were killed. In the immediate aftermath, the republican community of West Belfast, where the funerals had taken place and to which Adams was elected MP, was subjected to a campaign of media vilification and demonisation. For Feeney, ‘the horrendous catalogue of events in the first three weeks of March 1988 ... marked for many people the lowest point of the Troubles’.148 The events of that month were to become, particularly for republicans, a key turning point whose significance was only understood years later. It was during this period that the SDLP finally agreed to meet Sinn Féin to discuss a longer, revised version of Scenario for Peace. The meetings, the first of their kind, provided Sinn Féin and the SDLP with an opportunity to discuss their respective analyses of the conflict and proposals for its resolution. Sinn Féin had initiated the talks in an attempt to ‘explore whether there could be agreement on an overall nationalist political strategy for justice and peace’.149 The SDLP were presented with the revised version of Scenario, entitled Towards a Strategy for Peace. The talks ended six months later, in September 1988, without agreement. Gerry Adams in his final communication with SDLP leader John Hume said that ‘it remains obvious that the SDLP remains to be persuaded that it is the British occupation which is the central problem and the first hurdle to be overcome’.150 Adams also outlined three key issues – the role of the British government, the unionist veto, and improvements in the social and economic conditions of northern nationalists – which needed to be addressed

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if agreement with the SDLP could be reached. Despite the fact that no concrete outcome emerged from the talks, they were to prove an important development in the further refinement of what was becoming Sinn Féin’s peace strategy. The Sinn Féin statement released after the conclusion of the talks witnessed a shift not only in language, but also in Sinn Féin’s strategic approach both to the SDLP and the Irish government. While restating the party’s position regarding both the British government and Irish unionism, the statement argued that achieving national self-determination required ‘the securing of maximum political unity in Ireland’, the ‘launching of a concerted campaign internationally, using Dublin government diplomatic resources to win international support for Irish demands’, and ‘the mobilising of support in Britain itself which would create conditions in which the right to self-determination can be exercised’.151 Gone was Adams’ reliance on a people’s movement as outlined in The Politics of Irish Freedom, replaced now by the building of a nationalist alliance with the SDLP and Irish government, and the mobilisation of political forces not only in Ireland, but via ‘diplomatic resources’ in Britain and internationally. This shift was the subject of one of the key debates at the 1989 Ard Fheis. An Ard Comhairle proposal for the building of an ‘all Ireland anti-imperialist alliance’ was the subject of heated debate. Speaking in favour of the motion Ard Comhairle member Martin McGuinness told delegates that we must allow everyone who thinks as we do on the national question the opportunity to take part in this struggle. A broad anti-imperialist front offers them the opportunity to so. Participation in such an anti-imperialist front does not imply total or absolute agreement on all aspects of that struggle. What is required is a genuine commitment to restore to the Irish nation the right to national self-determination.152

Dublin activist Ann Speed argued that the popular-front alliance between progressive nationalists, socialists and liberals in Nicaragua provided ‘proof of the potential of such a strategy’.153 However, some delegates argued that forming alliances with parties such as Fianna Fáil or the SDLP would ‘dilute’ the party’s socialism and


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result in Sinn Féin being ‘submerged in establishment politics’.154 The motion was carried with an overwhelming majority. Adams’ presidential address to the Ard Fheis marked a significant shift from earlier speeches. While support for the IRA’s armed campaign was unequivocal, he spent a considerable amount of time calling on the IRA to ‘continuously address their tactics and strategies’ telling them that ‘IRA mistakes are welcomed by the British establishment’.155 Likewise, while asserting that ‘the ruling clique in Ireland uphold above all else the interests of the British and multi-national capitalism in Ireland’, the alternative was described not as a nationally planned economy or democratic socialism but as ‘a system of liberty, equality and fraternity’.156 Adams also devoted significant space to the issue of republicans’ attitude to unionists and northern Protestants, and again, while the fundamental republican position had not changed, he called on delegates to ‘understand the perceptions and fears of this section of our citizens’ saying that their views of Sinn Féin were ‘sincere and that we have to see ourselves from their point of view’.157 Crucially, Adams concluded by stating that ‘an alternative has yet to emerge’ to the establishment politics north and south, and with a clear reference to the decision to build an anti-imperialist alliance around the issue of self-determination he said that ‘Sinn Féin has a crucial role in helping to bring these different democratic forces together.’158 These four themes – modifying the nature of the armed struggle; building alliances on the issue of self-determination; engaging with the northern unionist and Protestant community; developing a new articulation of republican socialism – were to become the key points around which the Sinn Féin leadership sought to adapt and apply republican principles to changing and changed political conditions.

Towards a Lasting Peace The national anti-imperialist movement that Sinn Féin set about initiating in 1989 was to elude them, as was a broad-based British campaign in support of Irish self-determination. The party’s

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electoral fortunes also remained static into the early 1990s. The party’s poor performance in the 1989 European election was followed by equally weak showings in the 1992 Leinster House and northern local government election, which despite the refinement of the party’s political discourse failed to produce any advance. However, the April 1992 Westminster election provided an even bigger setback, as the party’s percentage share and total vote dropped, with party president Gerry Adams losing his West Belfast seat. While republicans sought to blame unionist tactical voting for the devastating blow in West Belfast, the overall electoral picture clearly indicated a more fundamental set of problems. Increasingly the IRA’s armed campaign was seen as the key impediment to Sinn Féin’s political development, and while censorship and harassment north and south, and the ongoing exclusion of Sinn Féin from the political process, were also part of the problem, Sinn Féin’s appeal to the electorate, particularly in the south, would always be severely held back while the conflict continued. Patterson was correct when he argued that the difficulty of building broader alliances as long as IRA violence continues is obvious. The northern editor of the Irish Times had commented on an earlier call by Adams for a ‘national consensus’ that, ‘The logic of his demand for a broad nationalist front, including most political parties in the Republic, is the abandonment of violence by the IRA.’159

However, the 1990s were to bring significant political developments from another source. Secret discussions between republicans and the British government, the Irish government and the SDLP laid the groundwork for political progress, culminating in the IRA’s 1994 ceasefire. The first indication of these developments came in November 1989 when the then Secretary of State Peter Brooke indicated that if ‘terrorists were to decide that the moment had come to withdraw from their activities, then I think the government would need to be imaginative’.160 The following year Brooke once again caused controversy when he said that ‘the British government had no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland: our role is to help, enable and encourage. Britain’s purpose is not to occupy, oppress or exploit, but to


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ensure democratic debate and free decision.’161 Clearly aimed at republicans, these statements demonstrate that in the aftermath of the failure of the Anglo–Irish Agreement to secure the political and military defeat of Sinn Féin and the IRA, the British government was searching for a new approach to the conflict. Significantly they held out the possibility, at least rhetorically, that in the context of negotiations all options, including self-determination and national reunification, could be on the table. While Brooke had launched a new series of political talks in 1991, excluding Sinn Féin, the real political engagement was happening behind the scenes, with Hume, Fianna Fáil Taoiseach Charles Haughey and the British government engaging in a series of discussions. Sinn Féin launched a substantially revised set of proposals in February 1992 called Towards A Lasting Peace in Ireland. Feeney argues that the new document ‘marked in black and white the huge sea change that had taken place in republican thinking’.162 It argued that peace required ‘a British government which makes the ending of partition its political objective’, a ‘Dublin government which has the same end’, and ‘cooperation between the British and Irish governments to bring about in the shortest possible time the reunification of the country’. The document also acknowledged that reunification could only be achieved ‘in consultation with the representatives of the Irish minority – the Northern Unionists – as well as with the representatives of the Northern Nationalists. It effects a process of national reconciliation.’163 Feeney quotes senior Sinn Féin strategist Jim Gibney, who speaking at the 1992 Wolfe Tone Commemoration said: ‘We know and accept that the British government’s departure must be preceded by a sustained period of peace and will arise out of negotiations involving the different shades of Irish nationalism and unionism.’164 Patterson, who described the appearance of ‘a new fluidity’ in republican thinking quotes another key party strategist, Richard McAuley, who told journalists: ‘We’re not going to realise our full potential as long as the war is going on in the North and as long as Sinn Féin is presented the way it is with regard to armed struggle and violence.’165

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While both Feeney and Patterson are right in recognising the shifts taking place within Sinn Féin’s approach to armed struggle, the issue for republicans was much broader than the limits of IRA activity on the party’s electoral development. Nineteen-ninety marked 20 years of the IRA’s campaign. During the same period Sinn Féin had undergone three significant shifts – in 1975, 1983 and 1988 – in strategy and policy. Yet in the opening years of the conflict’s third decade, neither a sustained IRA campaign, nor a decade of intensive party building, had brought republicans closer to achieving their medium or long-term objectives. While both Sinn Féin and the IRA had held in check all attempts to defeat the republican project and stabilise the northern state, advancing the republican movement’s aims of national independence and democratic socialism was going to require something more than just survival. The four key themes in Gerry Adams’ 1989 Ard Fheis speech – modifying the nature of the armed struggle; building alliances on the issue of self-determination; engaging with the northern unionist and Protestant community; developing a new articulation of republican socialism – were going to require profound change if republicanism was to have greater purchase on and impact in the final decade of the century. Throughout the first years of the 1990s a clear shift in Sinn Féin’s political focus was taking place. Ard Feiseanna from 1990 to 1993 continued ongoing policy debates on issues of workers’ and women’s rights, anti-nationalist discrimination in the north of Ireland, opposition to government repression and censorship, support for the growing number of political prisoners (numbering between 700 and 800), revival of the Irish language and a strong international dimension, increasingly focusing on both South Africa and the Basque Country. However Gerry Adams’ presidential addresses, while continuing to engage in the need for a radical social and economic alternative to the failed right-wing policies in Dublin and London, was increasingly foregrounding issues of dialogue, political settlement and peace. Responding to Peter Brooke’s remarks that there could be no military defeat of the IRA, Adams told delegates attending the 1990 Ard Fheis that ‘this is a pressing and compelling reason for them [the British


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government] to stop fighting now in order that the conditions for justice and peace in Ireland can be agreed ... Serious observers of the conflict in Ireland, including the British government, know that talks with Sinn Féin are inevitable.’166 The following year he used the occasion of moves towards peace and democracy in South Africa and Eastern Europe, and criticism of the Gulf War, to declare: ‘There should be no war in the Gulf. There should be no war in Ireland. There should be a political settlement.’167 Responding to media speculation regarding the possibility of a peace initiative, Adams told delegates that ‘Sinn Féin is interested and Sinn Féin will continue to be interested and involved in seeking ways and means to bring peace out of the chaos and division created by British occupation ... That is one of the central reasons for our existence.’168 The Sinn Féin president again called on Peter Brooke to ‘abandon his government’s undemocratic practice of refusing to recognise the rights of our electorate’ and to end its ‘refusal to meet Sinn Féin’.169 Following the release of Towards A Lasting Peace at the 1992 Ard Fheis, Adams told delegates: ‘It is time for a new initiative, a new realism.’170 Calling for a ‘democratic resolution’ to the conflict, he argued that ‘as a first step, a peace process with inclusive dialogue is required’ and that ‘Sinn Féin is prepared to talk to anyone without preconditions.’171 In response to the British government’s public position of refusing to engage with republicans, Adams reminded delegates that ‘the British government has talked to republicans in the past. It will do so, it is my confident belief, again. The only thing in question is when and under what circumstances such dialogue will take place.’172 Adams also responded to those who argued that Sinn Féin’s call for peace was contradicted by the IRA’s ongoing armed campaign. While reaffirming the Irish people’s ‘right to use armed struggle in the context of seeking Irish independence and in the conditions of British occupation in the six counties’, he argued that ‘Sinn Féin does not advocate violence. Our party is committed to dealing with the central issues, to challenging the causes of conflict in Ireland and by doing so to create the real conditions in which real and lasting peace can be achieved.’173

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Adams returned to the same themes again at the February 1993 Ard Fheis, telling delegates that ‘there can be no solution that denies the existence of any protagonist to the conflict. Dialogue will require courage, perhaps a leap of faith, certainly an imaginative empathy so sadly lacking in Anglo–Irish affairs and undoubtedly also, democratic compromise.’ Crucially, he told the Ard Fheis that ‘a peace process, if it is to be meaningful and genuine, must address the political problem which has been a part of our history for generations [i.e. partition]. Such a policy shift by the British would meet with a positive response from republicans and usher in a new era.’174 Such a positive response could only mean a cessation of the IRA’s armed campaign. However the IRA killing of two children in Warrington a month after the 1993 Ard Fheis provoked a massive political backlash against Sinn Féin. Twenty-thousand people marched in Dublin, officially for peace, but in reality for an end to IRA violence. The march, which had the support of all the main southern political parties, was the site of ugly scenes as stewards prevented the participation of a delegation of families whose relatives had been killed by the British Army, RUC and unionist paramilitaries. The death of nine civilians on Belfast’s Shankill Road in October 1993, following an IRA bomb targeting a UDA meeting in the floor above, further consolidated public opinion north and south, in opposition to Sinn Féin’s call for dialogue. However, John Hume resumed his contact with Gerry Adams in April 1993, and following a period of secret dialogue, the Hume–Adams initiative was launched. In a joint statement that June the two leaders stated that: Everyone has a solemn duty to change the political climate away from conflict and towards a process of national reconciliation which sees the peaceful accommodation of the differences between the people of Britain and Ireland and the Irish peoples themselves ... we accept that an internal settlement is not a solution ... we accept that the Irish people as a whole have a right to national self-determination ... The exercise of selfdetermination is a matter for agreement between the people of Ireland.


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It is the search for that agreement and the means of achieving it on which we will be concentrating.175

The Hume–Adams dialogue also involved the Irish government, through intermediaries representing both sides. In November Sinn Féin released a list of the contacts that had taken place between republicans and the British government since 1990. The Sinn Féin document said: In the early part of 1993, the British government proposed a series of meetings with Sinn Féin, arguing that an intensive round of such meetings would result in Irish republicans being convinced that armed struggle was no longer necessary. They requested a two to three week undeclared suspension of operations by the Irish Republican Army to facilitate this. Sinn Féin sought and gained such a commitment from the IRA. This was communicated to the British government on 10 May 1993. There was no positive response.176

However, political progress was being made behind the scenes, with the circulation of a text between the Irish and British governments, and Sinn Féin and the SDLP. The announcement of the Downing Street Declaration, by Irish Taoiseach Albert Reynolds and Conservative Prime Minister John Major, in December 1993, proved to be an important turning point. Key issues in the document, including a British recognition of Irish selfdetermination subject to agreement from northern unionists and the possibility of the Irish government weakening its constitutional claim to the north of Ireland, caused substantial concerns within republican ranks. However the Declaration also held out the prospect of dialogue involving all political parties in the context of ceasefires being called. Sinn Féin called for clarification and after some months accepted the document as a starting point for progress despite serious reservations about its content. The scene was set for the announcement in August 1994 of ‘a complete cessation of military operations’ by the IRA. The armed group called for ‘inclusive negotiations’ and for ‘everyone to approach this new situation with energy, determination and patience’.177

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Between 1986 and 1994 Sinn Féin’s political strategy had undergone substantial revision. The party remained committed to a 32-County democratic socialist republic; in both its rhetoric and organisational activity it worked hard to implement its agreed broad-front approach, combining national democratic objectives – British withdrawal and reunification – with a radical social and economic agenda. It also continued to attack the SDLP and the southern political parties for their political and economic failures. However, increasingly, the focus of the party, and particularly of its leadership, was the initiation of a peace process. While from Scenario for Peace through to 1990 the party’s approach was one of securing a declaration of intent from the British government to withdraw from Ireland, followed by negotiations between Irish political parties, by 1994 the party had recognised that in fact negotiations and agreement would be followed by a period of political stability and peace from within which issues of withdrawal and reunification could be addressed. The party had also come to the view that armed struggle would have to end before such talks took place. The new approach would cause significant strains within both Sinn Féin and the broader republican constituency. Whether the party fully understood it or not, the logic of an inclusive peace process, involving reconciliation, compromise and agreement, would draw Sinn Féin closer to those conservative nationalist forces that it had campaigned against for two decades, namely Fianna Fáil and the SDLP. It would also require the party to seriously engage with the northern unionist and Protestant communities, in order to both understand and eventually reach accommodation with them. Importantly, it would also mean that the party’s radical social and economic agenda would increasingly recede, as the requirements of the peace process would take precedence. And of course it would mean an end to the IRA’s armed campaign, without securing its primary strategic objective, namely a date for the British state’s withdrawal from Ireland. These changes, in strategy and emphasis, would mean that Sinn Féin would have to manage significant concerns and disagreements within both the party and the wider republican community.


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The Peace Process Gerry Adams’ 1994 Ard Fheis speech, delivered five months before the IRA ceasefire, dealt entirely with the emerging peace process. For the first time in his presidential address he commented directly on victims of IRA violence, indicating Sinn Féin’s ‘disapproval’ of IRA operations such as those at Warrington and the Shankill Road. The speech also contained a lengthy section appealing to unionism. Strongly critical of the failure of unionist political leaders to respond positively to the changing political context, Adams said: ‘It is time that the Protestant people heard the voice of reason and sanity from their leaders. They need a de Klerk to lead them and us into the next century.’178 In a further reference to South Africa, Adams called on republicans and nationalists to develop an Irish Freedom Charter, modelled on the ANC’s Freedom Charter. The purpose of the document would be to provide a ‘political focus’ around which nationalists, republicans, grassroots members of Fianna Fáil and Labour could ‘advance the basic national demands in the new conditions and possibilities opening up’.179 Adams proposed that the first article of the ANC’s charter should be appropriated into its Irish counterpart, reading, ‘Ireland belongs to all who live in it.’180 The call for a Freedom Charter was a public manifestation of Sinn Féin’s evolving peace strategy. In the context of an IRA cessation of military activity, Sinn Féin believed that a process of all-party talks could lead to a political settlement. The question for republicans was how to maximise their strength in such a process in order to secure the optimal outcome. Drawing heavily on their knowledge of the ANC’s experience in the preceding years, Sinn Féin’s strategy revolved around a number of key strategic objectives. The first was to build the maximum degree of nationalist unity, both at grassroots and leadership level. A Freedom Charter was seen as an essential tool for securing widespread popular support for a minimum position in any negotiations. Such grassroots support would also solidify the nationalist consensus emerging from the ongoing talks with Gerry Adams, John Hume and Fianna Fáil Taoiseach Albert Reynolds.

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There would also need to be significant international support for these demands, which required Sinn Féin to significantly expand its international activity, and supplement its solidarity work with other movements in struggle, with a new diplomatic engagement in London, Washington and Brussels. Sinn Féin would have to increase their focus on political prisoners, to ensure that any future negotiation would include an agreement on their release. There would also need to be a much more serious engagement with unionism. While successive Ard Feiseanna involved debates on or presidential speech references to the unionist community, the party would need to move beyond rhetoric, and develop a strategy for engaging directly with all sections of the unionist and Protestant communities. In light of these requirements Sinn Féin began to adapt its organisational structure and campaigning focus to ensure the party would have the capacity to meet the challenges of the forthcoming negotiations. All of this implied a serious reallocation of resources and political focus, in what republicans would increasingly term ‘a new phase of struggle’. Gerry Adams acknowledged the impact that such changes would have on the membership of Sinn Féin and the wider republican base, describing it as ‘unsettling, difficult and traumatic’.181 However, despite the 1994 IRA cessation, John Major’s Conservative government appeared unwilling to respond positively. Despite a Sinn Féin expectation that all-party talks would commence in early 1995, there was little sign of movement from the British government. By February 1996 – with John Major dependent on Unionist MPs in Westminster to maintain his parliamentary majority, a hostile Fine Gael-led coalition in government in Dublin, unionist political parties refusing to meet Sinn Féin, and no sign of negotiations – republican patience ran out. The IRA ended their cessation with a massive 1,000lb bomb attack in London’s Canary Wharf, killing two workers and causing over £85 million worth of damage. The breakdown of the ceasefire was followed by elections to a Belfast-based Forum and a significant breakthrough for Sinn Féin, with the party receiving 15.5 per cent of the total poll, its highest vote to date.


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Sinn Féin’s increasing political profile and the positive results of the Forum elections appeared to vindicate the party’s strategy. South African MP Ian Phillips, speaking at the 1996 Ard Fheis, told delegates that the South African experience showed the vital need ‘to overcome the ability of some players to believe that unilaterally they can determine the agenda for change’.182 The Ard Fheis also saw the British Labour Party represented for the first time when MP John Austin Walker addressed conference stating that ‘there can be no justification for excluding Sinn Féin or any other party that has a mandate from all party talks’.183 While delegates overwhelmingly endorsed two Ard Comhairle emergency motions, reaffirming the party’s peace strategy and committing Sinn Féin to continued dialogue with the unionist community, there was clearly unease among some delegates. Aengus Ó Snodaigh, representing the Dublin organisation, told the Ard Fheis that ‘the strategy had pushed the Movement forward but at the cost of its basic demands of Brits Out and a united Ireland’.184 While the remainder of 1996 was marked by political impasse, widespread frustration and a deteriorating situation on the ground, particularly during the Orange marching season, 1997 was to provide two key breakthroughs that led to the reinstatement of the IRA ceasefire and the opening of inclusive negotiations. In the Westminster election Sinn Féin’s vote increased again, securing 126,921 votes, 16 per cent of the vote and two MPs, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, while in London Tony Blair’s Labour landslide removed the block on negotiations. The following month Sinn Féin secured its first significant breakthrough in the southern general elections securing its first TD, Caoimhín Ó Caolain in Cavan/Monaghan. Crucially John Bruton’s Fine Gael-led coalition also fell at the polls, bringing Fianna Fáil back into government under its new leader Bertie Ahern. The IRA formally declared a second ceasefire on 20 July and the new Labour Secretary of State Mo Mowlam announced the commencement of all-party negotiations for September. The opening of all-party talks at Stormont Castle in September 1997 was clearly a vindication of both the Hume–Adams Peace

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Initiative and the Sinn Féin peace strategy. While Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) refused to participate in the negotiations, the fact that the British and Irish governments, along with David Trimble’s Ulster Unionist Party, Hume’s SDLP, and a number of smaller parties including the Progressive Unionist Party representing the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force, were sitting down with Sinn Féin to discuss the underlying causes of conflict and to put together a blueprint for resolving those causes, was truly historic. However, with all-party talks came the potential of agreement and with it compromise. Thus, while Sinn Féin had experienced a difficult number of years since 1994, particularly in terms of maintaining the internal cohesion of the party and broader constituency, the years ahead were to prove even more challenging.

Agreement The Agreement that emerged from the 1997–98 negotiations did not represent the end of the conflict, but rather the beginning of the process of conflict resolution. In addition to proposing new institutions of governance – a power-sharing Assembly for the north, an all-Ireland ministerial council linking the executives north and south, and a council of the isles bringing together the parliaments of London, Dublin, Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff – it also included Commissions on Human Rights and Equality, an agreement on the release of political prisoners, mechanisms for the demilitarisation of the army, police and illegal armed groups, and commitments on equality and economic development. The Agreement, known both as the Belfast and Good Friday Agreement, was endorsed in May 1988 by simultaneous referenda north and south, with 676,966 or 71 per cent supporting it in the north and 1,442,583 or 94 per cent supporting it in the south. However, despite these clear democratic mandates, the fact that the DUP remained outside the Agreement process and an estimated 50 per cent of unionists voted against it in the northern referendum ensured that difficulties would remain both inside and outside the process. Equally, Sinn Féin’s concessions on the


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amendment of Articles 2 and 3 of the southern Irish constitution, participation in the Stormont Assembly, and the tacit acceptance of the idea of unionist consent, would make the Belfast Agreement a step too far for a small but significant number of Sinn Féin and IRA activists. It was to take a decade before the process of implementation of the Agreement was finally underway. Substantial political deadlocks over IRA weapons, police reform and the functioning of the new political institutions were to dog the process from the outset. There were also significant concerns over the operation of the Human Rights and Equality Commissions. Political violence from loyalists, republicans and the state was also to take its toll at various junctures, as did external political events such as the ongoing Orange Order protests at Drumcree, the unionist blockade of Holy Cross Catholic girls’ school in 2001, British government collusion with loyalist paramilitaries, the killing of Robert McCartney in 2004, the trial and imprisonment of three republicans in Colombia, and the Northern Bank robbery in 2005. The decade between 1998 and 2008 was to see successive rounds of negotiations at Stormont Castle (1999), Weston Park (2001), Leeds Castle (2004), and St Andrews (2007), in an attempt to secure a stable basis for implementation of all aspects of the Agreement. The Belfast-based Assembly and power-sharing executive was established three separate times, collapsing under the strain of the process in 1999, twice in 2001, and again in 2002, the last time for four and a half years. Finally, in October 2007, the British and Irish governments launched the St Andrews Agreement, following detailed negotiations involving Sinn Féin and the DUP. The power-sharing executive was established in May 2008, and at the time of writing the institutions are up and running with participation from all political parties. For Sinn Féin the nature of the Agreement, and indeed the peace process as a whole, was fundamentally different than for the other protagonists. In some senses two distinct models of conflict resolution were at play simultaneously. For Irish unionists and the British government the peace process was essentially a process of stabilisation. If the conflict was primarily a problem

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of ‘terrorism’ and paramilitary violence, then ending the conflict was conceived in terms of bringing an end to violence. The British government’s strategy from Sunningdale in 1974 to the Anglo–Irish Agreement in 1985 was predicated on the logic of counter-insurgency, aimed at politically and militarily defeating republicans. The failure of the Anglo–Irish Agreement provoked a strategic shift away from exclusion and marginalisation and towards accommodation and ultimately neutralisation. For the British government, and in turn Irish unionists, the equation to be solved post Anglo–Irish Agreement was how to give the minimum level of reform in return for the maximum degree of stability, while always holding out the possibility for further change from within the political process. Unionism eventually bought into this proposition, albeit slowly and begrudgingly. For Sinn Féin, and to a lesser extent the SDLP, conflict resolution was about change, identifying the social, economic, political and cultural causes of conflict and, through collective agreement and action, resolving these causes. The Irish government shifted between both of these models, depending on the specific moment and its particular strategic and electoral interests. Thus the Belfast Agreement was viewed in different ways by its key signatories. For the British government and unionism it was a process of weaning ‘terrorists’ off violence, teaching republicans how to be democrats, bringing the men of violence in from the margins. For Sinn Féin and again to a lesser extent the SDLP, the process required an acknowledgement from all sides of their specific political responsibility in the conflict, and a commitment to work together as equals to resolve the causes of violence. Nationalists and republicans sought the maximum degree of change while Irish unionists and the British government sought to minimise and at times actively resist change. That said, Sinn Féin was in direct electoral competition with both the SDLP and Fianna Fáil in the south, as was the DUP with the UUP. Such electoral competition always ran the danger of interfering with the smooth implementation of the Agreement, as parties jostling for political space and public support would place individual electoral needs above the broader requirements of the peace process.


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Sinn Féin also had to manage this process of change internally. And while the ten years from 1998 to 2008 were to bring significant political and electoral gains, they also stretched party activists and supporters to their limits, and brought challenges and risks in equal measure to the opportunities and benefits. Before signing up to the Belfast Agreement, Sinn Féin held two extraordinary Ard Feiseanna in April and May 1998, at which delegates debated, in full view of the media, their respective views on the substance of the Agreement. Sinn Féin was the only party to allow its membership to decide the party’s position on the Agreement. At the heart of the debate at the two Ard Feiseanna was whether the Agreement would block the realisation of Sinn Féin’s objectives of Irish unity and democratic socialism, or whether it would enable the opponents of republicanism to block meaningful political progress and neutralise republicans through participation in the political and constitutional status quo. Newly elected TD Caoimhín Ó Caolain outlined the key issues for consideration at the April Ard Fheis. He told delegates that ‘Sinn Féin does not regard the Good Friday document as a settlement. But we do believe that the new political scenario can provide a basis for advancement.’185 He went on to highlight issues such as disbandment of the RUC and the need for a new police service, the release of all political prisoners, the withdrawal of the British army, ‘the ending of sectarian discrimination in employment, the repeal of repressive legislation and full and equal status for the Irish language’ as the key republicans concerns, which any Agreement must address.186 Ó Caolain expressed the concerns of many activists with the proposed amending of Articles 2 and 3 of the southern Irish constitution, however he also told delegates that ‘the government of Ireland act has been repealed and it can be argued that the overall effect of the [Agreement] is to weaken the union’.187 On the crucial issue of reunification, the Cavan/Monaghan TD argued that ‘partition remains but the all Ireland structures have the potential to build a new reality’.188 The debate that followed demonstrated a deep level of disquiet among activists from across the country. The possibility of Sinn Féin entering a northern Assembly at Stormont, one of the Agreement’s key provisions, evoked memories of the pre-1972

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unionist parliament. That Sinn Féin had campaigned under the slogan ‘no return to Stormont rule’ during the negotiations made the compromise all the more difficult. Likewise with Articles 2 and 3, which many republicans believed to provide a legal basis for the territorial integrity of the nation, the defence of which had been the focus of party activity during 1996 and 1997. Speaking to the Ard Fheis, Dublin delegate John Murtagh described the Agreement as ‘pretty bad’, saying that ‘it does not hold out any hope for those seeking to tackle the root causes of the conflict’.189 James McBarron from Cork was more strident in his opposition, urging delegates ‘not to become associated with a deal that is bound to fail’.190 Belfast delegate and Ard Comhairle member Martina McIlkenny argued that ‘going into Stormont would be one step forward and two steps back’, and that if the all-Ireland dimension had been stronger, it would have made her assess the document more positively.191 However a significant number of delegates urged the Ard Fheis to approach the Agreement with an open mind. Glen Brady from Dublin argued that ‘for unionists this is as good as it gets, for nationalists it’s just a start’.192 Sinn Féin vice president Pat Doherty argued that ‘although there were manifest dangers within it, there were also significant gains’.193 One of the most important contributions came from Belfast activist, and one of the key figures involved in the formation of the Provisional IRA, Joe Cahill. Cahill told delegates not to ‘be afraid of change ... Whatever changes may come in the future I guarantee they will not cause us any problems.’194 One of the most important keynote contributions to the Ard Fheis was the speech given by ANC General Secretary and former Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) commander Thenjiwe Mtintso. Mtintso had been a commander of more than 10,000 MK soldiers when, following talks with the white South African regime, the ANC decided to abandon their plans for an armed insurrection against the apartheid regime in favour of a negotiated settlement. She told delegates: Our leadership inside the country in South Africa had decided to go to negotiations and we cadres in Umkhonto we Sizwe ... were saying that we


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should have the insurrection that we had been working on for all these years ... we thought our leadership had sold out ... And then two years down the line I was also part of the negotiating team ... and at that time many of our comrades thought MK had sold out.195

She told delegates how she adapted her military training to the new arena of struggle that was negotiations: we talked about liberated zones. You liberate one zone and it is yours and from that zone you advance. You prepare your forces to advance and at some stage you retreat but you have safe zones to retreat to. Negotiation is about one territory that we could surge forward from. ... the fact that they [the South African government] allowed us into the country, they allowed our prisoners out, they legalised the ANC, they talked to us – that was a liberated territory.196

When the Ard Fheis reconvened in May the Ard Comhairle proposals of endorsing the Belfast Agreement and removing the party’s constitutional ban on entering the Stormont Assembly were overwhelming passed. Speaking after the vote, Adams urged delegates to reinforce the party’s negotiators and elected representatives with a strategy wedded to mobilisations, street activism and the international dimension ... the struggle has to be where the activists are at and it has to be social and economic as well as political. It has to be about ending poverty, about building an economic democracy, about treating all the children of the nation equally, as well as about ending British rule.197

Adams concluded his speech telling delegates: ‘Today is an important day for us ... [but] it is not as important as tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that, with all the challenges they will bring. Today we cleared the way for the future. Tomorrow we start to build the future.’198

Building the Future Sinn Féin’s endorsement of the Belfast Agreement was to have profound implications both for the party’s political future and for

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its evolving political strategy. In addition to providing the party with significant opportunities for political and electoral advancement, efforts to secure its full implementation would absorb the vast majority of the party’s resources for a decade, often restricting Sinn Féin ability to develop other areas of struggle. In particular the overwhelming dominance of peace process negotiations, while unavoidable, was to shape much of the party’s political profile and discourse. The Agreement and the political battles surrounding its implementation would also condition Sinn Féin’s relations with Fianna Fáil, the SDLP and unionism in new, unexpected and often contradictory ways. However, the party’s success both in terms of electoral advancement and furthering left-republican objectives was considerable. The decade brought considerable electoral expansion for Sinn Féin with increases in votes and percentages in every single election from 1997 to 2007. In the 1997 Leinster House election Sinn Féin’s share of the poll was 2.5 per cent. However, in the Cavan/Monaghan constituency the party secured 20 per cent of the vote and its first TD Caoimhín Ó Caolain. In Kerry North, Martin Ferris narrowly missed a seat despite taking 16 per cent of the vote. After decades of stagnation Sinn Féin’s electoral fortunes in the south were changing. The following year brought elections to the new Stormont Assembly, the European Parliament and 26-County local government. In all three Sinn Féin secured its highest votes to date, with 17 per cent in Assembly and 6-County European Constituency, and 3 per cent in the local government and 6 per cent in the European elections in the south. In 2001 the party surged forward in the Westminster elections taking 21.7 per cent of the vote and overtaking the SDLP in votes and seats for the first time. This success was replicated in the 6-County local government elections of the same year. At the 2002 Leinster House election Sinn Féin doubled its 1997 performance taking 6.5 per cent and five seats, with Aengus Ó Snodaigh and Sean Crowe in Dublin, Ferris in Kerry, and Ó Caolain topping the poll in Cavan/Monaghan. The following year the second election to the northern Assembly saw Sinn Féin extend its lead on the SDLP by taking 23.5 per cent to their 17 per cent. The southern


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local government elections in 2004, held on the same day as the European parliamentary elections, brought the party’s southern vote to 8 per cent and 11 per cent respectively, with Mary Lou McDonald taking the party’s first MEP seat in the south. Bairbre de Brún replicated the victory in the north taking 26.3 per cent of the poll and the SDLP’s seat in Brussels. Sinn Féin held its advantage over its main northern rival in the 2005 Westminster election with 24.5 per cent, two points up from 2001. Once again Sinn Féin consolidated its position as the largest nationalist party in the north in the 2007 Assembly elections, held in the aftermath of the St Andrews Agreement, securing 26 per cent and 24 seats to the SDLP’s 15 per cent and 18 seats. However in the southern general elections of the same year, and amid widespread speculation that Sinn Féin would double both its vote and seat numbers, and possibly enter government, the party’s vote stagnated at 6 per cent, resulting in the loss of one of the party’s TDs. The loss of Sean Crow in Dublin was somewhat counterbalanced with the election of Donegal-based Pearse Doherty to the Senate. Sinn Féin’s dramatic electoral success from 1997 onwards was based on a number of aspects of the party’s evolving strategy. Despite reservations amongst some activists, the party’s peace strategy was seen to pay real dividends, not only in terms of concrete gains, such as the release of prisoners, demilitarisation and – eventually – police reform, but also in opening up avenues for advancing longer-term concerns such as human rights and equality issues and crucially all-Ireland integration through the allIreland ministerial council and implementation bodies contained in the Belfast Agreement. Alongside this macro process, Sinn Féin’s assertive advocacy on behalf of its electorate – the most economically marginalised in both states – combined with an active commitment to community-based organisation and empowerment, meant that the party was embedded in and an essential part of the community it represented. Sinn Féin, particularly in the north, was seen as both responsive to the needs of those who elected it and as successfully delivering real political and social gains. The party’s left republicanism combined democratic socialist communitarian practices with a radical democratic egalitarian politics focused on

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both the local and the national, winning it a growing electorate of working- and lower-middle-class voters as well as a significant youth vote. However, the party’s inability to attract significant number of women voters would continue to provoke internal debate and external criticism, particularly in the south. That Sinn Féin’s strategy provided for greater political advancement in the north owed much to the fact that the strategy itself emerged from within the north and in response to its very specific conditions. However the party believed that taking the same approach in the south should reap similar dividends, and on the basis of the 2002 general elections and 2004 local and European elections, such a view appeared justified. But the 2007 electoral setback highlighted a fundamental problem, which while more apparent in the south, would have a relevance for the north, if not as immediately visible. The conclusion of the Belfast Agreement effectively brought to an end a phase of political life in the North – that had opened up at the end of the 1960s – and offered up the prospect of a post-conflict politics. The decade-long delay in the implementation of the Agreement meant that 2007 rather than 1998 would be the date marking the opening of this new period. While it is far too early to provide any balanced assessment of this new period and Sinn Féin’s place in it, at a strategic level the party’s approach was to become dominated by two intertwined logics around which the party’s day-to-day political work was organised. On the one hand the party needed to build a solid and permanent working relationship with unionism, and particularly the DUP. The function of this relationship was not only to ensure the stability of the Stormont Assembly, but also to begin the process of working unionism towards greater all-Ireland cooperation, integration and eventual reunification. At the same time the party was committed to a radical if at times vaguely defined social, economic and political programme, seeking to address inequality, discrimination, poverty and underdevelopment. National reunification and the equality agenda were the slogans through which the party articulated these two logics. While scope clearly existed for these two imperatives to progress in parallel,


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they nonetheless contained a contradiction which would require at crucial moments the prioritising of one logic over the other, with inevitable consequences. Securing significant movement on equality issues would always run the risk of jeopardising the stability of the executive, as evidenced in the rows over issues such as the Irish Language Act and the reform of education. That the DUP’s broader policy agenda was socially regressive and fiscally conservative added to this contradiction. For Sinn Féin, getting the balance right between institutional stability and delivery of change would be the most demanding of tasks in the post-St Andrews context. But for the overwhelming majority of people in the north, republican or otherwise, the stability of the new Assembly and Executive would be the political priority in the short term. The electorate’s willingness to postpone expectations on broader socioeconomic issues until after the new administration was clearly bedded down would give all parties, and especially Sinn Féin, a breathing space from within which to manage if not resolve the potential contradictions. For the party’s broader reunification strategy to work Sinn Féin not only needed to be in government in the north but also in the south. Participation as a smaller partner in coalition provided the only possible route in the short to medium term. Thus for different reasons, but with the same effect, Sinn Féin in the south was seeking a potential coalition relationship with Fianna Fáil while at the same time advocating a social and economic manifesto considerably to Fianna Fáil’s left. As the potential moment of coalition approached, during the 2007 Leinster House election, the inevitable contradiction emerged – remain wedded to a radical left-republican social and economic programme and forego the possibility of coalition in the short term or move to the centre in the hope of securing a place in government, from which to accelerate all-Ireland integration through the all-Ireland Ministerial Council. The second option would require the party to forego, even temporarily, its commitment to meaningful social and economic change, as a ‘necessary’ sacrifice to secure a seat at the government table.

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While the 2007 election involved many other problems for Sinn Féin – organisational as well as political – failure to articulate a credible alternative economic policy to that of Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael meant that the party was relegated, along with Labour and the Greens, to the minor contest of potential junior coalition partners. Despite starting the campaign with a solid critique of the outgoing government’s failure to address growing inequalities and their unwillingness to invest in quality public services, a last minute U-turn on fiscal policy left many voters wondering how Sinn Féin would pay for the public services it promoted. For other voters the absence of any meaningful job creation or public finance policies raised a more fundamental doubt about Sinn Féin’s economic competence. In an attempt to allay such concerns, while keeping open the possibility of participation in a Fianna Fáil-led coalition, Sinn Féin abandoned long-standing redistributive tax policies a week before polling day. In the end the move alienated left-wing voters concerned that Sinn Féin was moving to the centre at the same time as unnerving unaligned voters unsure of what the party stood for and what it would do if and when in government. Voters in the north may be willing to take a more wait and see approach to the macroeconomic policy of the Assembly, but in the south, failure on the economy leads to failure at the polls. Writing in An Phoblacht in the aftermath of the 2007 election I argued that: The centre ground is a crowded political place. Sinn Féin does not belong there and should not be in the business of trading fundamental redistributive policies in the hope of short-term electoral gain. That’s a kind of politics that we should leave to Fianna Fáil. If we want to build an Ireland of equals, we need to be able and willing to explain to the electorate exactly how much this will cost and where the money will come from, including those instances when increased taxes are the most appropriate course of action... To those activists who thought that a shift to the centre would benefit us in this election, I would say that you were proved wrong. Avoiding and then abandoning sound policies in the mouth of an election is bad politics.


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Sinn Féin should continue to develop and defend our platform as a radical, left-wing republican party, building Irish unity and an Ireland of equals. Fianna Fáil’s success in this election was made in spite of growing public discontent at the quality of public services. The absence of a clear and meaningful alternative was Fine Gael and Labour’s weakness. That is the space where Sinn Féin belongs and where our future growth is to be found.199

The electoral setback provoked a brief period of introspection and debate. Explanations for the poor election result were varied. However the outcome of an internal review left many of the more fundamental issues – ideological and strategic – unaddressed. The party’s post-election relaunch in September 2007, under the heading Engaging Modern Ireland, contained a mixture of commonsense and political spin, but again avoided engagement with the more substantive issues that lay behind the electoral disappointment. The Lisbon Treaty referendum campaign in the first half of 2008 provided the party with an opportunity to demonstrate whether it had learned the lessons of the previous year’s election. Writing in advance of the referendum campaign I argued that Sinn Féin needed to provide intelligent, informed and honest leadership about where the EU is heading, what this means for Ireland and what other paths are available. In doing so we can redefine Sinn Féin as both the credible and radical alternative to the failed politics and policies of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. We can utilise the campaign to build a southern layer of party leadership, competent, fluent and sharp in public debate and able to take on anything the other parties have to offer. We can also use the campaign to energise our activists and supporters while at the same time engaging that progressive section of the electorate who continue to choose Fianna Fáil, Labour and Greens despite the failure of those parties to provide meaningful solutions to so many of Ireland’s social and economic problems.200

The referendum campaign provided Sinn Féin with an opportunity to clearly differentiate itself from the establishment parties providing the freedom to take a more radical position. The

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consequences were not only to be seen in the overall referendum result – 53 per cent voting against – but in a stabilisation of Sinn Féin’s opinion-poll rating back to the pre-2007 high point of 10 per cent. Again writing in An Phoblacht, in the aftermath of the No campaign victory I argued that: The lessons for Sinn Féin are clear. A large section of the voting base of both Fianna Fáil and Labour chose not to follow their usual voting patterns in the referendum. These same people are those most vulnerable from the economic downturn. Rising unemployment, rising costs of living and pending public spending cuts have opened up a clear space for a credible and radical left alternative to the status quo. Many of those Fianna Fáil and Labour voters who rejected the Lisbon Treaty have taken one step closer to Sinn Féin. Now we must turn them into Sinn Féin supporters. If we can convince them that a better deal is possible in Europe then we can do the same at home. As with our Lisbon campaign we need to offer a distinct, radical and credible alternative, and convince an increasing number of people that a better deal is possible. One that promotes sustainable economic growth, workers’ rights, public services and greater equality for all.201

Adopting such an approach in the context of European parliament or local government elections – both due in 2009 – would undoubtedly provide a sound basis for political and electoral advancement. However, integrating this approach into the party’s longer-term Assembly, Leinster House and all-Ireland strategies would require a more fundamental rethink of key elements of the party’s overall ideology, strategy and policy. While such a rethink may be difficult, serious political and electoral advancement will not be possible without it. Of course ‘building the future’ will require more than a renewal of electoral growth for Sinn Féin. It will require the tangible delivery of the party’s core strategic objectives, namely national reunification and democratic socialism. The last decade has seen significant advancement towards these objectives. Indeed left republicanism in the form of Sinn Féin is stronger and more successful than at any other time in its history. Central to this success has been the ability of the party to adapt to changing


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circumstances with flexibility and imagination. The emerging postconflict political space – while still constrained by the unresolved residue of Belfast Agreement issues such as the devolution of policing and justice powers – is once again challenging Sinn Féin to develop new and creative strategic approaches. That this new phase of struggle contains both risks and opportunities is not in doubt. The question is whether Sinn Féin will rise to the challenge and take the decisions required to build on the progress made to date. It is too early to tell how this question will be answered, leaving the future of Sinn Féin and its left-republican politics very much open.

Conclusion The history of Sinn Féin from 1905 can be divided into twelve distinct periods. Griffith’s Sinn Féin from 1905; de Valera’s two Sinn Féin’s in 1917 and 1922; Flanagan and Buckley’s Sinn Féin from 1926; MacLógaín’s Sinn Féin from 1950; Goulding and MacGiolla’s Sinn Féin from 1962, Ó Brádaigh’s Sinn Féin from 1970; a transition between Ó Brádaigh and Adams from 1975 to 1983, and four distinct periods of Sinn Féin under Gerry Adams’ leadership, from 1983 to 1986, from 1987 to 1994, from 1994 to 1998, and from 1999 to the present. During these periods, the ideology, strategies, policies, form and impact of the party have been at times radically different. These differences are party explained by the radically shifting contexts of the revolutionary period post-1916, the separate periods of state formation north and south from 1922, the conflict in the north from 1968, and the peace process and Celtic Tiger since the early 1990s. In turn the future of the party will be shaped by the post-conflict, post-Celtic Tiger context in which it now finds itself. Of course Sinn Féin’s development during all of this period was equally determined by the conscious agency of its leadership, activists and supporters, and how they understood and engaged with these shifting contexts. In ideological terms Sinn Féin can be said to have had four distinct periods. From its foundation through to the formation of Fianna Fáil the party served as a vehicle for advanced nationalist

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and then political republican goals. While strategic and policy differences existed between Griffith and de Valera, the underlying objectives were similar. Indeed, part of the difficulty for Sinn Féin from 1926 through to 1950 was that it adhered to the same programme, style and strategy as that developed in very different circumstances. Sinn Féin’s second ideological period is marked by the reorganisation from the 1950s onwards, and characterised by social conservatism and a narrowly defined political nationalism. The failure of Operation Harvest demonstrated the inescapable fact that such an approach, both in political and military terms, had little meaning or purchase among the general population north and south. The rise of modernisers such as Goulding, Ó Brádaigh and others in the 1960s represents the third distinct phase, in which Sinn Féin attempted to reinvent itself through a re-engagement with radical agitational politics. Goulding’s move to the Marxist left, abandonment of armed struggle and desire to engage with the institutions of the state was to provoke a split within the broader republican movement. The formation of Provisional Sinn Féin in 1970 saw the combination of republicanism’s traditional goal – ending partition and the reunification of Ireland – with a series of attempts to redefine the meaning and content of the party’s socialism, from Christian to Democratic to Egalitarian. Indeed while the party today remains committed to these twin goals – reunification and democratic socialism – the process of reassessment and redefinition continues. The form of Sinn Féin has also changed dramatically during its century of struggle, from Griffith’s campaigning think tank, to de Valera’s nationalist umbrella movement, to the marginalised association of like-minded individuals in the 1930s and 1940s, to adjutant to the IRA in the 1950s, and political party in its own right, albeit with a changing relationship to the IRA, from the 1960s to the present. However, the party has never seen itself as a party in the classical sense, but rather as part of a movement, not only including the IRA, but also communities and other social forces such as trade unions, campaign groups and NGOs. That the reality of this movement has always been less significant than Sinn Féin desires, outside of republican strongholds such as West


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Belfast and Derry, does not belie the fact that Sinn Féin does not consider itself a traditional political party. Decades of adherence to institutional and electoral abstentionism are part of the reason. But more important, and particularly since the 1960s and 1970s, is the belief that politics should not be reduced to the institutions of representative democracy. Contemporary Sinn Féin views politics as a popular process of engagement, empowerment and participation, of which the formal party structure is only a part. That Sinn Féin continues to refuse the privileging of elected representatives over non-elected activists is one manifestation of this. Through the century the themes of class, gender and nation have troubled republicans. For Griffith nationalist unity came before all else, including support for labour. For de Valera the imperative of nationalist unity was paramount, to the ultimate detriment of both gender equality and social and economic justice. Much of his social conservatism continued to influence Sinn Féin right through to the 1960s. However in different ways the three phases of post-1950s leadership represented by Goulding, Ó Brádaigh and Adams have attempted to grapple with these issues, with varying responses and degrees of success. For Goulding Marxism provided the basis for addressing all three. For Ó Brádaigh, federalism and Christian socialism provided the foundation. Since the 1980s Sinn Féin has evolved increasingly sophisticated discourses and mechanisms to address each in turn, although with less success that it clearly desired, to which I will return in the conclusion. Finally, in terms of impact, Sinn Féin is arguably the most important political organisation in modern Irish political history. The two major southern political parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, trace their origins to Griffith’s Sinn Féin, and the first 30 years of the southern state were based in large part on the political and economic policies of Griffith and de Valera. In the north, while Sinn Féin has only recently displaced the more conservative nationalism of the Irish Nationalist Party and the Social Democratic and Labour Party, it still had a profound impact on the nature of the state from its foundation, though not always in ways that reflected the reality of the party’s position or strength. As Sinn Féin’s importance and impact on southern politics started

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to wane its influence in the north increased. Today Sinn Féin is the third largest political party on the island. While the balance of influence is still weighed overwhelmingly in the north, the scope for expansion in the south is enormous, particularly in the context of the changing economic and social circumstances, post-Celtic Tiger. Whatever the assessment of others, Sinn Féin clearly believes that its political and electoral growth has not yet peaked. Closing his presidential address to the 2008 Ard Fheis, Gerry Adams told delegates that ‘if we are disciplined and hard working, if we promote intelligent policies, if we are dedicated to our vision for Ireland, then the women and men of Sinn Féin can meet the challenges ahead and make the big changes. We have come a long way and there is still a road to go.’202

CONCLUSION

The History Lesson Robert Ballagh’s 1989 painting entitled ‘The History Lesson’ is a self-portrait of the artist sitting between two of the towering figures of modern Irish politics, Pádraig Pearse and James Connolly. Painted at the height of the revisionist controversy and two years before the 75th anniversary of the 1916 rising, it represents Ballagh’s ongoing conversation with the founding moment of modern Ireland and two of its key protagonists. Pearse the cultural nationalist, language activist and poet of the 1916 rebellion, represents the spirit of Irish cultural and political nationalism, rooted in the romantic traditions of the nineteenth-century Young Ireland movement. Connolly, the Marxist, trade unionist, self-taught political theorist and leader of Europe’s first workers’ militia, the Irish Citizens Army, represents the participation of the working class in Ireland’s struggle for independence, and more significantly the attempt to combine political nationalism with democratic socialism. The artist, the third point in the triangle, his head shifting restlessly between both men, represents the contemporary left republican, attempting to make sense of the overlapping ideological and political legacies of two of the founding figures of both twentieth-century Ireland and modern republicanism. Ballagh, one of Ireland’s most important contemporary artists, has been involved in radical left-republican politics for more than four decades, and continues to play an active role in campaigns against the war in Iraq and in Euro-critical organisations such as The People’s Movement. For Ballagh, ‘The History Lesson’ is an attempt to capture his own engagement with Irish political history. However, the painting also encapsulates an ideological and strategic dilemma that has been the subject of a century-long 289

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conversation among those of us whose political project straddles two of the great political aspirations of our time: for full national independence and for a society founded on principles of equality and solidarity. At the heart of this conversation has been an attempt to reconcile the competing ideological, organisational and strategic requirements of nationalism and socialism. Successive generations of left republicans have argued that these two aspects of our political project represent ‘two sides of the same coin’. For James Connolly this meant that: ‘The cause of Labour is the cause of Ireland. The cause of Ireland is the cause of Labour.’1 Half a century later, Gerry Adams argued that: ‘If you want to talk about socialism in the Irish context you cannot divorce the socialist aspiration from the aspiration of national independence.’2 However, in reality, from Connolly through to Adams this relationship has been problematic and often a source of tension, as activists are faced with competing ideological, strategic and tactical choices, depending on which side of the coin they opt for at any given moment. Nationalism traditionally prioritises the nation as the primary subject of political change and seeks to unify the different and almost always antagonistic social classes that exist in the actual nation. Socialism historically seeks to mobilise the working classes in opposition to the powers of capital at a national and international level, actively eschewing national unity in favour of class unity. If articulated in this rigid way, nationalism and socialism are ideologically and strategically incompatible. However, nationalism, like all political ideologies, does not consist of a single articulation. There are different nationalisms, in different historical contexts, with different political and strategic investments and consequences. Classical imperial forms of nationalism, rooted in the traditions of eighteenth-century German romanticism, rest on the mobilisation of cultural or biological exclusivity, superiority or racism. Antagonisms such as class, gender or cultural difference are not only denied, but are presented as foreign to the essence of the nation itself, the discussion of which demonstrates disloyalty. This articulation

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of nationalism formed the ideological foundation of Empires, dictatorships and genocides. Anti-imperial nationalisms mobilising the Enlightenment traditions of the French Revolution rest on fundamentally different foundations. Here the nation is conceived, not in essentialist cultural terms, but as a civic democratic space in which liberty, equality and solidarity are the organising principles around which the nation constitutes itself. The republic, rather than denying antagonism and difference, seeks to resolve them through an appeal to a universalistic discourse of citizens’ rights. Unlike its imperial counterpart, national unity is never essential, but always tactical, a requirement at specific moments in the struggle for political independence, delaying but never negating the possibility of social and economic emancipation. Anti-imperialist nationalism is, at its best, republican, but the extent of the social and economic emancipation it can offer is not contained within its republicanism. Rather, civic republicanism must always be supplemented with something else to provide the social and economic content to what is primarily a political and procedural ideological resource. Ireland may have been the first region in the world to witness the emergence of an anti-imperial nationalism, combining civic republicanism with democratic socialism. Connolly’s Irish Socialist Republican Party combined the civic republicanism of the United Irish movement, the cultural nationalism of Young Ireland, the agrarian radicalism of Lalor and Davitt, and the democratic socialism of the Second International. In doing so it provided a powerful ideological and strategic resource. However, as this book has attempted to demonstrate, the failure of left republicanism to become the dominant hegemonic force within the broader nationalist movement from Connolly’s time through to the present represents a history of failure that we ignore at our peril. In his history of socialist republicanism in the 1920s and 1930s, historian Richard English argues that ‘the republican socialist argument was fundamentally incoherent. The contradictory, and intellectually inadequate analysis which characterized the republican left during these years explains their political failure.’3 English concludes by arguing that left republicans’ understanding

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of ‘history, of the relation between class and nation, of the mechanisms of political power, of land, of religion, of political violence, and of Irish unionism have all reflected their incapacity to deal successfully with actual Irish experience’.4 At the core of English’s argument, and that of revisionist writers such as Bew et al. (1979), Morgan (1988) and Patterson (1997), is a belief in the ideological incompatibility of nationalism and socialism, which, from Connolly (Morgan) to the Republican Congress (English) and contemporary Sinn Féin (Patterson), always undermines the possibility of building and sustaining a coherent political and economic project. In one sense, this revisionist critique of left republicanism is correct. Our history is one of failure. We have failed to achieve our political objectives, failed to become the dominant force in Irish politics, and failed to become the hegemonic force within the broader nationalist movement. But the revisionists are wrong to argue that this history of failure is the consequence of an ideological incompatibility between nationalism and socialism. Ideological articulations are never fixed or closed, but, subject to the forces of history and the influences of human agency, are always open to revision. However, we should not dismiss the revisionist critique completely, as has been the response of left republicans to date. They pose important questions and reveal uncomfortable truths about our own history that demand a response. Indeed we should use their critique of our history as a starting point, and ask ourselves; why has our history been marked by failure? Why have we never secured political power? What is it about the way in which our predecessors articulated and implemented their left republicanism that led to these failures? George Gilmore, one of the less well-known figures of twentieth-century left republicanism, reflecting on the failure of the Republican Congress, offered a glimpse of how we might answer the revisionists’ questions, in a way that strengthens left republicanism rather than forcing us to cede to the revisionists’ conclusions. In his pamphlet, The Irish Republican Congress, Gilmore argued that although the struggle against national

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subjection and social oppression in a subject nation were integral, ‘the failure to make the essential oneness a basis for political action has been the great weakness in the republican movements of the nineteenth century and right down to our own day’.5 And here is the kernel of the dilemma, the two central, and interrelated questions we must ask ourselves. First, how have left republicans articulated this essential oneness? How have we combined the republican and socialist dimensions of our struggle? This is an ideological question. Second, how have we implemented that ideological formulation? What are the ways, means and modalities through which we have sought to build support for our critique of contemporary Irish society, our agenda for change, and our vision for the future? This is a question of strategy. Taking our cue from Gilmore, it could be argued that the past failures of left republicanism have been essentially ideological and strategic failures. At an ideological level, we have failed to articulate a coherent and durable left republicanism. In turn, at the strategic level, this ideological incoherence has prevented us from building a sustainable basis for political action. For Connolly the ideological limitations were twofold. First, his Marxism was not only ill-suited to specific Irish social and economic realities, such as rural Ireland and the unionist working class, but, like social democracy across Europe, was also unable to make a meaningful intervention into the politics of Empire or war. The immediate realities of the demand for Home Rule at the end of the nineteenth century, or the demand for a republic in the lead up to 1916, left Connolly’s socialist republicanism on the margins of the period’s key political fault line. At an ideological level, his role in the politics of the republican rising was limited to that of a supporter of the advanced nationalism of the IRB. This is not to deny the ideological consequences of his involvement, demonstrated by the radical content of the 1916 Proclamation, nor the valuable legacy that his involvement represents for subsequent generations of left republicans. Rather, it is an acknowledgement of the political reality of the day. Strategically, Connolly had few options. The failure of the ISRP at the end of the nineteenth century, the defeat of the workers in the 1913 lock-

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out, the dominance of both political nationalism and unionism among the Irish working class, and the collapse of the Second International after 1914, meant that his only option was to join the IRB rebellion, if only to ensure that it would have a socialist republican component. This decision was not, as the revisionists claim, an abandonment of his socialism to the politics of bourgeois nationalism. Rather it was an admission of his failure to build an alternative left-republican project with any credible level of political or electoral support. However, despite subsequent generations of left republicans locating their ideological and strategic projects with reference to the ideas and activism of James Connolly, the reality is that their actual foundations lay elsewhere, namely in the 1916 Proclamation, the Democratic Programme of the First Dáil, and, crucially, Liam Mellows’ prison writings. Mellows, IRA volunteer, anti-Treaty leader, and author of the hugely influential Jail Notes, published shortly before his execution in 1922, is in many respects a far more important figure in the history of twentieth-century left republicanism than is often understood. Mellows’ political writings were to have a profound influence on the left of the IRA into the 1930s, before O’Donnell, Gilmore and Price split to form the Republican Congress. While this generation of left republicans claimed continuity between Connolly and Mellows, the reality is somewhat different. Connolly, as a Marxist, was committed to socialist revolution. Operating in the context of a British colony, Connolly understood the interrelationship between imperialism and capitalism, and thus the coincidence, in an Irish context, of the struggles for national independence and social democracy. However, national independence was a means to an end, namely socialist revolution. He was, in the first and final instance, a Marxist. Mellows on the other hand was in the first instance a republican, who had endorsed the broad-front strategy of de Valera post1917. His radicalisation did not come from an understanding of the relationship between capitalism and Empire, from readings of socialist literature or involvement in working-class struggles, but from the disappointment at the outcome of the Anglo–Irish

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Treaty. What became clear to Mellows, while in jail, was that when the independence movement split, it split as much on class lines as on anything else. His response was to encourage the mobilisation of the country’s dispossessed to the cause of the republic. For Mellows, socialism was a means to an end, namely nationalist revolution. That this was a tactical shift, rather than an ideological one, is of crucial importance in understanding not only the difference between Connolly and Mellows, but the subsequent development of left republicanism to the present day. Connolly tried and failed to articulate a coherent socialist republican political discourse, and in turn was unable to build a successful socialist republican political project. Mellows, however, was neither interested in nor capable of succeeding where Connolly failed. His was a completely different proposition. Rather than seek a project that integrated republicanism and socialism – Gilmore’s essential oneness – Mellows sought to put the social and economic struggle in the service of the national democratic struggle. At an ideological level this meant subordinating the socialist or left component of the project to its republican objectives, and articulating the social and economic content in what Patterson terms an ‘ambiguous populist egalitarianism’.6 That Mellows was to provide a ‘potent resource’ for those who sought to ‘rework republicanism’ is clearly correct.7 The Republican Congress, Clann na Poblachta and post-1962 Sinn Féin all in different ways sought to mobilise the dispossessed and marginalised to the cause of the republic, with different but equally fruitless consequences. Congress’ failure to agree on this crucial question forced a split. Clann’s intuitive recourse to the prioritising of the national over the social, albeit in order to maintain government unity, led to implosion. Goulding’s new departure was a conscious attempt to work through the limitations of the social conservatism and militarism of the 1940s and 1950s, but also, though less consciously, the limitations of Mellows’ legacy, again leading to a split and the eventual abandonment of republicanism in favour of Marxist Leninism. The politics of contemporary Sinn Féin, and particularly the Gerry Adams generation of leaders, are in large part based

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on a return to the writings of Mellows, mediated through the writings of Peadar O’Donnell and British communist Desmond Greaves. Crucially, Greaves, in his biographies of both Mellows and Connolly, reinforced, albeit for different reasons to Mellows, the prioritisation of the national over the social when articulating his stages theory of political change in Ireland, which argued that completing the national revolution was an a priori requirement of any social and economic revolution. The power of Greaves and O’Donnell’s ideological formulations for the post-1970s generation of republicans was that they coincided with the political needs of the moment, as dictated by the conflict in the north. Equally, as republicans, Mellows and O’Donnell offered a more accessible point of entry into the world of social and economic radicalism than did Connolly and Marx. Much of Sinn Féin’s political development from the end of the 1970s onwards is rooted in the ideological underpinnings and strategic implications of Mellows’ formulations in the Jail Notes. Following the failure of the initial political and military strategy of post-split Sinn Féin and the IRA, Adams and others sought to mobilise those excluded from the social and economic status quo, linking their disenchantment with the conservative establishment of both partitionist states in an attempt to secure the republic and then to build a democratic socialist state. The solution to poverty, inequality and exclusion was to be found in a new all-Ireland, democratic socialist republic. The national struggle was defined as Sinn Féin’s ‘primary objective’, with democratic socialism relegated to the status of an ‘ultimate objective’. While none of this precluded campaigns to secure specific reforms in the short term, the priority of the national over the social was always embedded in the party’s ideology and strategy. As Adams argued in The Politics of Irish Freedom, ‘Real national independence is the pre-requisite of socialism ... You cannot have socialism in a British colony, such as exists in the 6 counties or in a neo-colony such as exists in the 26 counties. You must have your own national government with the power to institute the political and economic changes which constitute socialism.’8 As a consequence, the depth of Sinn Féin’s socialism, relegated to a future point in the struggle, would always

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be underdeveloped, as the more immediate needs of the national struggle took precedence. In turn, Sinn Féin’s socialism during the 1980s was rhetorical and declaratory rather than based on a serious critique of Irish, European or global capitalism. In turn, the economic alternatives proposed were poorly understood and only loosely connected to the actual lived experience of the people Sinn Féin sought to mobilise. By the end of the 1980s it was increasingly clear that the domestic and international context was unconducive to Sinn Féin’s assertive democratic socialism. The failure of Sinn Féin to mobilise the working classes, particularly in the south, combined with the global retreat of the left post-1989, undermined much of what constituted the party’s economic policy, namely, centrally planned statism, limitations on private property, and industrial and agricultural collectivism. The onset of the peace process, with its requirement for nationalist unity and unionist engagement, meant that at a strategic level the party had little time, space or inclination to engage in the broader global debate on the failures and futures of the left. As the requirements of the peace process increased, so did Sinn Féin’s distance from the international left – as did its awareness of the shifting nature of left-wing political and economic discourse at a European or global level. That all this occurred at the high point of neo-liberal political and electoral hegemony in Europe, and at a time of rising economic prosperity in the south of Ireland, meant that there was little motivation for re-engaging with the left in any serious way. This is the context in which Sinn Féin moved away from the more strident and statist democratic socialist demands of the 1980s. However, unlike the social democratic left across Europe, Sinn Féin did not buy into the ideology of neo-liberalism. Rather, the party turned to its own historical and experiential resources in an attempt to articulate its socialist commitment, in what were changing political and economic circumstances. In the two decades that followed the party developed a more communitarian socialism, promoting community empowerment, redistribution of wealth and defence of public services in an egalitarian republican labour discourse. At a European and international level the party

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focused on issues of poverty, inequality and unfair distribution of wealth, rather than on developing a critique of and alternative to neo-liberalism. However, while the articulation of the party’s democratic socialism clearly changed, the priority of the national continued, with the demands of the peace process replacing the demands of the conflict. Thus, as Sinn Féin’s socialism of the 1980s was underdeveloped, so it remained in the 1990s. That the party experienced an unprecedented period of political and electoral growth from the mid 1990s onwards meant that there was little reason to question the ideological or strategic basis of the project. Indeed, for the first time in Irish history, a political party articulating a radical left-republican political discourse was building a significant left-republican constituency of support and impacting on the centre of political developments across the island. From the beginning of the twenty-first century, as detailed in Chapter 4, Sinn Féin was clearly devoting more time and energy to developing, articulating and campaigning on the social and economic dimensions of the struggle. As the party grew in the south, the electoral and political dividends of that growth provided it with the necessary resources and motivation to expand on what kind of society it wanted to develop and how that society might be built. However, this renewed focus on the party’s alternative social and economic agenda continued to be subject to Mellows’ proposition, as the handling of the 2007 general election, particularly on issues such as taxation and coalition with Fianna Fáil, clearly indicate. The post-St Andrews imperative of stabilising a working relationship with the DUP at Stormont, and the party’s strategic desire to participate in a coalition government in Leinster House, have the potential to once again eclipse the party’s radical social and economic dimension in favour of the strategic requirements of the national. The onset of the new century has brought about a series of changes, at the global, regional and national levels, which are both challenging the prioritising of the nation over the social dimension of the republican struggle, and forcing Sinn Féin

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intuitively if not consciously to re-examine the ideological and strategic utility of Mellows. At a global level the hegemony of neo-liberal globalisation has entered a period of crisis. How long, how deep and with what consequences are not yet clear. However, the onset of global recession, the ever increasing pressures on national economies to increase competitiveness at the cost of social cohesion and environmental sustainability, and the growing first-world debt crisis, have provoked a crisis of legitimacy in the neo-liberal economic project. At the level of the EU, the dramatic shift to the right, in policy and electoral terms, since 1999, has produced widespread political dissatisfaction, which culminated in the French and Dutch rejections of the EU Constitution in 2005 and the Irish rejection of the Lisbon Treaty in 2008. That the social democratic parties and trade unions at an EU level have accepted the fundamentals of the neo-liberal project is without doubt. But the inability of political forces to the left of social democracy – whether green, democratic socialist or progressive nationalist – to articulate a credible economic and political alternative has meant that the configuration of parliamentary politics remains, as yet, unchanged by the growing crisis of legitimacy. In Ireland, this crisis manifests itself in a number of ways. In the south, public dissatisfaction with the inequalities and mismanagement of the Celtic Tiger, particularly with respect to the inadequate provision of public services such as health care, education, child care, housing and public transport, is generating a large potential constituency for change. The dramatic onset of recession in the latter half of 2008 has undermined people’s confidence, not only in Fianna Fáil’s economic credibility, but in the Celtic Tiger model of economic development itself. Before the arrival of recession most public and opposition attention focused not on the model itself but on the local political management of that model. Until very recently all the state’s main political parties bought into a political discourse that saw the Celtic Tiger as in itself a good thing, attributing its inequalities to bad political and economic management. There was a widespread belief that a recalibration of the model would be sufficient to address primarily

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middle-class concerns over public services and other quality and cost of life issues. Despite widespread public concern at the legal and illegal corruption endemic within the Fianna Fáil party, and their disastrous record on public service and cost of living issues, the absence of any clear political or electoral alternative led voters, in the 2007 general election, to vote defensively in order to maintain their economic gains of the last decade, rather than for change. The key determinant was the absence of any credible alternative, particularly in the context of parties to the left – such as Sinn Féin, Labour and the Greens – accepting, explicitly or implicitly, that their role was as junior coalition partners in Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael led coalitions. Faced with a choice between Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael, the electorate chose the devil they knew, despite widespread reservations. However, the dramatic deterioration of the economy since that election has created a new space in southern Irish society. It is now possible to advance and secure support for a radical critique of the Celtic Tiger, not on the basis of mitigating its inequalities with better management, but by seeking to replace it with a new model of economic development that would seek to address its structural inequalities, vulnerabilities and unsustainable consequences. In the north, a decade of political crisis, which focused primarily on the macro issues of conflict – such as violence, victims/survivors, demilitarisation, human rights and governance – has finally given way to the implementation of the 1998 Belfast Agreement. Public opinion supports the Agreement and the new power-sharing Assembly in Belfast, and wants the crises of the previous decade to be replaced with good governance and social and economic progress. Questions of social and economic policy are only now seriously entering mainstream political and public discourse, on their own terms, rather than as secondary contestations of the primary political issues of the war and conflict resolution. While potential disagreements over the implementation of the Agreement – such as the transfer of policing and justice powers from Westminster to Stormont, or the Bill of Rights, or conflicts over issues such as an Irish Language Act or

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development proposals for the former prison at Long Kesh – have the potential to significantly disrupt progress, it appears at the time of writing that the institutions will survive. Thus, as political stability evolves, albeit tentatively, public expectations will rise, and political parties will be expected to deliver on issues such as economic growth, job creation and provision of public services. Proximity to the Celtic Tiger has meant that, to date, the primary focus of economic policy from all the political parties in the Assembly, including Sinn Féin, has been on the harmonisation of corporation tax with the south in order to attract greater levels of inward investment. How the benefits of the projected economic growth are to be distributed is where the parties diverge, with Sinn Féin focusing on issues of poverty, inequality and disadvantage, but crucially within the same economic consensus on generating growth as the other parties. However, the ability of such a strategy to succeed, in the context of the global recession, is clearly questionable. Thus, as the economic prospects for the north of Ireland are in some respects worse than those of the south, the emergence of a constituency for change on social and economic issues, in addition to the already existing republican constituency for change, is significant. The success of the peace process and the changing economic circumstances create both enormous opportunities and challenges for Sinn Féin. The social and economic benefits of allIreland economic integration, and the post-conflict opportunities for increasing popular support for reunification, north and south, are significant. Equally, the crisis of legitimacy facing neoliberalism, the local crisis of southern political elites, the obvious need for a different strategy for economic and social progress in the north, and the changing economic circumstances and social priorities of the population north and south, have the potential to create a significant body of support, both working class and middle class, for an alternative political and economic project. Sinn Féin is well placed both to initiate this alternative project, and to build the necessary social and political alliances for its advancement. However in order to do so we need to make a simple choice. Do we continue to base our future political development on

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the prioritisation of the national over the social, or do we for the first time in left-republican history depart from our ideological and strategic roots, and articulate a left republicanism that integrates as equals the two key aspects of our project, building a leftrepublican project capable of overcoming both the limitations of our own history and the present political and economic moment? Prioritisation of the national demands a relegation of the radical social and economic policies that both our political project and the present economic moment requires. It also closes us off from a broad range of constituencies who want and need meaningful social and economic change. If we fail to address this question, or if we opt for continuity with our past rather than change, we will be forced to repeat that past. However, if we embrace the path of change, a path already opened up by the developments in our party during its most successful years in a century, then, despite not promising any guarantees, it at least holds out the possibility of success. It is time for left republicans to depart from Mellows’ tactical engagement with the social and embrace Gilmore’s essential oneness, and in doing so develop a new ideological and strategic foundation upon which to advance the next phase of our struggle. The following eight theses on the future of Sinn Féin are my tentative responses to the central question: If we are to abandon Mellows’ prioritisation of the national over the social, with what can we replace it? What must we discard from our present ideological and strategic repertoire? What must we strengthen, what must we add?

Eight Theses on the Future of Sinn Féin Thesis One: Context One of contemporary Sinn Féin’s great strengths has been our ability to adapt to the changing political context within which we find ourselves. Unlike previous generations of republicans or much of the European left, the party’s ability to reflect critically on the limitations of current policies and strategies and to develop

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new and innovative responses has ensured that the party has been able to develop and grow, irrespective of the obstacles presented by the specific political context or the strategies of our opponents. Some critics have argued that this strategic flexibility amounts to a surrender of republican principles. Others suggest that despite its merits it has led to a process of neutralisation and institutionalisation. Such arguments have neither intellectual merit nor empirical support. The context in which we are operating is once again changing. Equally, our understandable focus on the demands of the peace process over the last decade has led us to be at times disconnected from the broader European and Global context in which we are operating. The crises of legitimacy facing neo-liberalism – domestically, in the EU and globally – must be analysed, understood and responded to. Political apathy and cynicism are more often than not the response of those disenfranchised by the status quo. However this status quo is increasingly fragile and open to new opportunities for change beyond the immediately apparent limits of the neoliberal consensus. Some of these trends are more long term, and inevitably, focused as we are on the short-term requirements of elections and negotiations, we often loose sight of these longerterm developments. Sinn Féin needs to develop a deeper and more critical understanding of the domestic, European and global context in which we find ourselves, in order to better develop our longterm strategies and avail ourselves of the opportunities which will emerge in the short to medium term.

Thesis Two: Ideology Sinn Féin needs to abandon the key ideological formulation that has underpinned left republicanism since Mellows. We need to end the hierarchy of objectives implied in the party’s ideology, policy and strategy, and develop a new articulation of left republicanism that fully integrates the national and socioeconomic aspects of our struggle. Failure to do so will ensure that

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our commitment to social and economic change will also take second place and function as a subordinate strategic imperative to that of political and constitutional change. The proposition that national reunification is a prerequisite for the advancement of democratic socialism is not only mistaken but falsely holds out the hope of advancement of the national agenda in the short term. In recent years an intuitive shift has started to take place within Sinn Féin towards integrating both aspects of our struggle, however the prioritisation remains, particularly when these two elements come into conflict. The potential for the political to eclipse the social dimensions of our struggle is the single biggest danger facing the left-republican project today.

Thesis Three: Organisation Sinn Féin’s ideological and organisational history, and the experience of 70 years of state repression and 30 years of armed conflict have all combined to create an organisation which is both highly centralised in its distribution of power and vertical in its structure of command. Discipline and loyalty are often more highly valued than critical debate and internal democracy. While many of these characteristics are shared with other political parties of the left, the particular combination of circumstances that make up our specific history exacerbate this reality. The advent of the peace process has created a degree of flexibility within the party. However, if we are to continue to expand and respond effectively to the changing political circumstances in which we find ourselves, we need to strive towards a more decentralised and horizontal party structure. We need to equip activists with the ability and space for ongoing constructive critical reflection, and to give real and meaningful ownership of the key political and strategic decisions to the activist base. Sinn Féin is too small to carry out the tasks we have set ourselves, and as an organisation we need to grow, in terms of activists, supporters and voters. This growth can only take place if we loosen our structures and decision-making procedures, ensuring

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that Sinn Féin is truly a democratic, collective organisation of empowered activists working together for change.

Thesis Four: Strategy Sinn Féin’s strategies have always been of a hybrid nature, combining radical republican and socialist conceptions alongside more traditional liberal and social democratic models. The intermingling of revolutionary and reformist strategies has marked republicanism since the eighteenth century. The dominance in the 1970s of a revolutionary model for the overthrow of the state was a consequence of the logics of both militarism and revolutionary socialism. However, the prison struggles of the late 1970s and early 1980s once again introduced hybrid models of change into our political thinking and practice. Much of Sinn Féin’s strategic thinking in the past two decades has been orientated towards building a peace process and in turn towards the logics of reform, eschewing earlier logics of confrontation. The success of this process is in large measure attributable to our party’s ability to overcome obstacles, build political strength and respond to the needs of our emerging partners in the process. Our strategic relationships to the Irish government, the SDLP, unionism and indeed the international community have all been shaped by the requirements of the peace process. However, as the political institutions of the Belfast Agreement stabilise and the detail of the Agreement is implemented, Sinn Féin and Irish society more generally is entering a new phase in our history. It is not clear whether Sinn Féin has a strategy for engaging with this new reality, north or south. How can we deliver real and meaningful social and economic change while working in coalition with the DUP, whose policy agenda is significantly to the right of ours? How will we manage the inevitable tensions between participation in government in Stormont and an empowered and mobilised community base? How will we overcome the electoral impasse experienced in 2007? What kind of relationships do we want to build with Fianna Fáil, Labour and the other political and social forces in the south? To what extent does the strategic

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logic of reform need to be supplemented by a new approach to that of confrontation, revolution and transformation. These are key strategic challenges that we need to address, in the context of a better understanding of the contextual and ideological changes and challenges discussed above.

Thesis Five: Alliances At the centre of these challenges is the question of securing state power. Sinn Féin’s political strategy rests on securing power in both parliaments on the island of Ireland, in conjunction with popular movements for social, economic and political change, in order to deliver a far-reaching transformation of the social, economic, political and cultural status quo. In the north, limited state power has been secured, and under the terms of the Agreement, a voluntary coalition with the DUP, SDLP and UUP forms the basis of the party’s engagement with government. In the south, however, the options are both more open and more complex. At present Sinn Féin, like all the smaller parties in the state, and all progressive republican parties before it, does not advocate any pre-electoral pact or political or social coalition, but rather campaigns on the basis of its own manifesto. However, as the party does not expect to secure an overall majority in the future, the only option for entering government is via coalition. Since the foundation of the state such coalitions have been led primarily by Fianna Fáil and, less frequently, by Fine Gael. In turn, smaller parties, whether on the left or right, attempt to tip the balance of power in order to secure involvement in government and inclusion of key policies in any programme for government. Without exception, the experience of smaller parties in such coalitions since the 1940s has been negative, both in terms of impact on government and subsequent electoral performances. As a consequence both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael continue to monopolise state power, while all other parties are relegated to the status of secondary players. Sinn Féin’s current position – that it will negotiate with any interested partner after a general election on the basis of its

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election manifesto commitments – is the same as that adopted by Clann na Poblachta, the Workers Party and the Labour Party. In real terms, this can only mean a future alliance with Fianna Fáil, in a centre-right coalition. Such a coalition may allow Sinn Féin to advance aspects of the all-Ireland agenda through the All Ireland Ministerial Council, and may even enable Sinn Féin to drive the Fianna Fáil party into more focused action in this regard. However it would be at the expense both of the party’s democratic socialism and the party’s electoral fortunes. An alternative does exist, admittedly tentative and untried. The combined electoral strength of Sinn Féin, Labour and the Greens can be as much as 30 per cent of the electorate. If these three parties were to build a social and electoral coalition, with trade unions, non-governmental organisations, human rights and trade-justice groups, it could energise a growing section of the population around a real agenda for change, displacing Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and opening the way for serious social, economic and political transformation. Such a strategy would be risky, without any guarantee of success, but by taking the lead in advocating a progress agenda for change, Sinn Féin would be placing itself in the lead of what could be a truly historical realignment in Irish politics.

Thesis Six: Irish Unity Sinn Féin’s strategy for reunification is based on a parallel process of mobilising the institutions of governance north and south, and the All Ireland Ministerial Council, in conjunction with building popular support for reunification in communities, sectoral organisations and local government. The logic is to build communities for reunification on the basis of the real social and economic benefits that would follow. Sinn Féin in government in the north, and at a future date in the south, would place the party in key positions of institutional power from which to drive the agenda for reunification. Sinn Féin also believes that elements of the EU integration project could assist in this regard. The establishment of the party’s All Ireland Unit in 2004 was an attempt to drive this

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process forward. However, the disbandment of the Unit in 2007 and its subsequent replacement with a high-level party task force in 2008, the aim of which is to give this arena of struggle a greater focus, is an indication that, good rhetoric notwithstanding, the party has yet to develop a clear and practical strategy upon which activists can build reunification from the ground up. The newly established task force needs to critically examine the failure of the All Ireland Unit as an instrument, as a first step in bringing forward a new approach based on active engagement at a local, national, regional and international level, with as broad a constituency as possible, in order to build effective and committed communities for reunification. In addition, the party’s long-standing engagement with the broad unionist and Protestant communities across the island needs to take on a new emphasis and energy if the vision of the Irish Freedom Charter, that Ireland belongs to all who live in it, is to have any meaning or force.

Thesis Seven: Democratic Socialism The harsh reality of Sinn Féin’s socialism is that it has never been much more than the rhetorical expression of a demand for a more equal society. Whether in its early Christian socialist formulation, in the command economy of the mid 1980s, or in the communitarian and egalitarian formulations of the 1990s, the party’s socialism has been ambiguous, underdeveloped and at times contradictory. At present it is based on a strong commitment to participative democracy and community empowerment, an equally strong commitment to combating poverty and social exclusion, and a significantly expanded policy portfolio dealing primarily with public service provision, including health care, education and child care. However, in terms of the two key problems of any economic policy, how to generate wealth and how to distribute it, Sinn Féin is clearly lacking. While part of this underdevelopment has been due to the requirements of the peace process limiting party resources, it is also a consequence of a reluctance to move beyond general policy statements. The party does not have a clear and distinct analysis of the Celtic Tiger or

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of neo-liberalism more generally, seeing the growing inequalities of the late 1990s and 2000s as a consequence of mismanagement of economic growth rather than a prerequisite of it. While the weakness of Sinn Féin’s socialism is shared by much of the European left, many of whom continue to trade on outdated Leninist dogmas or equally outdated Keynesian welfareism, the danger is that without adequate engagement Sinn Féin will drift towards the centre of the political and economic spectrum, in much the same way as did the ANC during the 1990s. Sinn Féin needs to fully enter the global debate about what it means to be socialist in the twenty-first century, and in turn develop practical political and policy responses that are grounded in our democratic socialist ideology while capable of securing significant electoral support. At the core of this challenge is the need to define a clear, coherent and practical alternative to the free-market neo-liberal economic policy consensus which dominates Irish, European and global affairs. That this economic model is entering a period of crisis is not in doubt, but the capitalist fundamentals remain, as ever, unchallenged. Whether the left has a credible alternative programme to put in its place is not yet certain, but Sinn Féin needs to be part of the global movement seeking to develop and define that alternative.

Thesis Eight: Beyond the Nation While international solidarity with other peoples and movements in struggle has always been a key element of Sinn Féin’s worldview, our engagement with both the European Union and the broader international community has always been based on pragmatic and utilitarian considerations. Our key calculation, Ard Fheis rhetoric not with standing, has always been how the European or international communities can assist the development of Sinn Féin’s domestic political agenda. While this narrow approach is logical and at times necessary, Sinn Féin needs to move beyond it, both in order to build our political strength at home and to play a fuller part in the shaping of both the EU and the ever-globalising world. In order to do this Sinn Féin needs to further refine and

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develop its approach to the EU. Like much of the European left our position has evolved from outright opposition to European integration in the 1970s and 1980s, to one of critical engagement in the 1990s and 2000s. However we need to go further, and define our own radical vision for the future of the EU. While progress was made in this regard during the 2008 Lisbon Treaty referendum campaign, much work needs to be done. We remain too oppositional, and have yet to outline credible proposals for institutional reform, for an alternative social and economic agenda, and for a more radical approach to the EU’s place in the wider world. We also need to extend these developments beyond the EU, and develop our own engagement with issues of global governance, including more robust critiques of the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO, and a radical, accessible and supportable programme for reform of the UN. In developing this agenda we need to build stronger links with the emerging political leaders of the radical left such as the Socialist parties in Finland, Norway and the Netherlands, and other left-green movements in Scandinavia and the continent. We need to become a fully fledged part of the emerging new European left. In turn we also need to become a fully fledged member of the emerging global left, whether political, social or intellectual, which is seeking, and in the case of the Latin American left is implementing, new agendas for social and economic justice and political and cultural empowerment.

2016: The Prospects and Risks of Success 2016 marks the centenary of the 1916 Rising. This event was not an isolated Irish affair, but part of a much greater global process of modernisation and democratisation, of which the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the World War of 1914 and the Russian Revolution of 1917 were a part. As we approach the centenary of this foundational moment of modern Irish republicanism, we need to do more than simply commemorate it in order to legitimise our current position. We need to critically assess our century of struggle in order to learn from the mistakes made by

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our predecessors, and to strengthen our political capacity in the present and future. We must also always remember that the future, both of our party and of our struggle, is open. However, to this writer, it appears that Sinn Féin has two possible futures in the decade to come. The first is predicated on the party’s current ideological and strategic orientation, prioritising the national over the social and economic, building for coalition with Fianna Fáil in the south, and attempting to mobilise two coalitions north and south to build reunification from above, at the expense of any meaningful social or economic change. The alternative is to rethink the ideological basis of our struggle, build a more radical organisation, and develop more ambitious strategies aimed at implementing more radical policies in order better to achieve the central objective of our party: an independent, democratic socialist Ireland, playing a central part in the ongoing struggles for a more democratic Europe and a more socially and economically just world. Which of these futures comes to pass depends on all sorts of factors beyond our control; however, in the first instance, it depends on the choices we make in the years ahead. Again, as Gerry Adams said, ‘if we are disciplined and hard working, if we promote intelligent policies, if we are dedicated to our vision for Ireland, then the women and men of Sinn Féin can make the big changes. We have come a long way and there is still a road to go.’

NOTES

Introduction 1. ‘Revisionists’ refers to a school of historical scholarship that came to dominate Irish historiography during the 1980s. Roy Foster’s Modern Ireland (1989) was emblematic of this approach which challenged the tradition nationalist and unionist historical narratives. 2. Sinn Féin Constitution and Rules, p. 2. 3. Gerry Adams’ Ard Fheis speech 2004, available at http://sinnfein. ie/news/detail/3574 4. Star on Sunday, 8 March 2004. 5. Ibid. 6. McGarry (2003), p. 1. 7. Ibid., pp. 2, 3. 8. Ibid., p. 3. 9. Ibid., p. 3. 10. While clearly this is a view also held by some doctrinaire republicans, such as Ruarí Ó Brádaigh, it does not characterise the mainstream of republican self-definition throughout most of the twentieth century. 11. O’Malley (2006). 12. Both Daniel O’Connell and Parnell had a complex and ambivalent relationship to agrarian and political violence. While always condemning it and never implicated in it they nonetheless sought to capitalise on it and, especially in the case of Parnell, often created the conditions in which it spread. Their ideological opposition to armed insurrection or widespread agrarian revolt was based more on their desire to preserve their own political and social interests and that of their primary support base, the emerging rural middle classes, rather than any ethical or principled opposition to violence. Likewise with the nationalists at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. Redmond’s opposition to the physical-force Fenianism of the emerging separatist movement and his opposition to the use of violence in Ireland stands in stark contrast to his role in the creation of the Volunteers and his support for the British in the First World War, and to his prominent role in the British Army’s recruitment drive 312

NOTES

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

McGarry (2003), p. 9. Ibid., p. 10. English (2003), p. xxii. Patterson (1997), p. 9. Newsinger (1994), p. 1. Ibid. Unger (2004), p. 65.

1 The Origins of Left Republicanism 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

Hobsbawm (2002). Hill (1989), p. 265. Ibid., pp. 161–4. Berresford Ellis (1996), p. 54. Foster (1989), p. 196. Ibid., p. 207, 215. Hyam (2002), p. 166. Foster (1989), p. 231. Quoted in Jackson (1970), p. 116. Curtin (1998), p. 24. Ibid., pp. 24–5. Ibid., p. 44. Quoted in Curtin (1998), p. 45. Jackson (1970), p. 123. Curtin (1998), p. 58. Ibid., p. 62. Ibid., p. 89. Quoted in ibid., p. 89. Foster (1989), p. 280. Ibid., p. 281. Quoted in Metscher (1986), p. 54. Ibid., p. 55. Berresford Ellis (1996), p. 72. Ibid., p. 73. Ibid., pp. 57–8. Curtin (1998), p. 144. Hobsbawm (2002), p. 83. Curtin (1998), p. 267. Ibid., p. 285. Whelan (1996), p. 63. See Keogh and Furlong (1998). Berresford Ellis (1996), p. 80. Whelan (1996), p. 119.

313

314

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76.


Ibid., p. 115. Ibid., p. 124. Curtin (1998), p. 284. Whelan (1996), p. 128. Hobsbawm (2001), p. 103. Hyam (2002), p. 166. Berresford Ellis (1996), p. 96. Foster (1989), p. 302. Ibid. Ibid. Foster (1989), p. 309. O’Connor (1992), p. 26. Ibid., p. 25. Hobsbawm (2002), p. 164. Ibid., p. 165. Quoted in Jackson (1991), p. 247. Sloan (1997), p. 116. Foster (1989), p. 324. Jackson (1992), p. 235. O’Connor (1992), p. 27. Ibid., p. 28. Lyons (1975), p. 107. Jackson (1991), p. 262. Lee (1989), p. 55. Foster (1989), p. 384. Lee (1989), p. 54. Ibid., p. 55. Ibid., pp. 57–8. Metscher (1986), p. 95. Davis (1987), Chapter 8. Ibid., pp. 202–11 and Metscher (1986), p. 104. Quoted in Luddy (1995), p. 232. Luddy in Hayes ed. (2001), p. 31 Ibid. Davis (1987), p. 216. As in the case of Foster (1989), pp. 311–12. Lane (1997), p. 22. Jackson (1991), p. 293. Hobsbawm (2001), p. 115. Newsinger (1994), p. 32. Hobsbawm (2001), p. 114. Ibid., p. 115. Ibid., p. 116.

NOTES

77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101.

315

Newsinger (1994), p. 32. Ibid., p. 36. Elliot (2001), pp. 291–2. Luddy in Hayes ed. (2001), p. 31. Ibid. Hobsbawm (2002), pp. 245–6. O’Connor (1992), p. 2. Ibid., p. 4. Wood (1982), p. 70. Ibid., p. 11. O’Connor (1992), p. 21. Ibid., p. 24. Ibid., p. 28. Ibid., p. 38. Ibid., pp. 37–8. Ibid., p. 42. Ibid., p. 44. Wood (1982), pp. 363–4. O’Connor (1992), p. 55. Lane (1997), p. 3. Ibid., pp. 127–31. Ibid., p. 150. Ibid., p. 151. Lee (1989), pp. 97–9. Lane (1997), p. 206.

2 The Arrival of Left Republicanism 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

Hyam (2002), p. 202. Sloan (1997), p. 121. Hyam (2002), p. 201. Various sources, quoted in Hyam (2002), p. 191. See Langan and Schwarz (1985) for a broader discussion of the issues involved, and Wilson’s essay in the same volume for a specific treatment of Ireland. Wood (1982), p. 363. Ibid. Hyam (2002), p. 191. Wilson in Langan and Schwarz (1985), p. 152. Quoted in ibid., p. 156. Lane (1997), p. 3. Berresford Ellis (1996), p. 174. Workers Republic, August 1898.

316

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

3


Lane (1997), p. 216. Lynch (2005), pp. 87–91. Quoted in Lynch, p. 120. Lane (1997), p. 223. O’Connor (1992), p. 67. Lee (1989), pp. 152–3. Ibid., p. 154. Ibid., p. 155. Greaves (1986), p. 425. Morgan (1988), p. 199. For a more detailed discussion of this see Allen (1990), pp. xi–xii. Lane (1997), p. 44. Quoted in Lane (1997), p. 57. Sassoon (1997), p. xxii. Ibid. Ibid., p. 6. Lee (1989), p. 151. Morgan (1988), p. 198. See Metscher (2002), p. 4 Allen (1990), p. 34. Ibid. Ibid., p. 32. The Harp, 1908. Ibid. Workers Republic, 8 April 1916. Lane (1997), p. 227. See Bew et al. (1979), pp. 2–11. Patterson (1997), p. 14. Walker (1985), p. 18. Forward, 10 June 1911. See Metscher (2002), p. 115. Anderson (1994), p. 16. As quoted in Metscher (2002), p. 156. Connolly (1972), p. 45. Ibid., p. 41. As quoted in Anderson (1994), p. 19.

Left-Republican Interventions 1. Hyam (2002), p. 333. 2. Langan and Schwarz (1985), p. 9. 3. Ibid.

NOTES

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

317

Wilson, in Langan and Schwarz (1985), p. 152. Kostick (1996); Ward (1995). Kostick (1996). See Ward (1995), Chapters 1 to 4. Ibid., p. 251. Quoted in Hopkinson (2004), p. 46. Ibid. Patterson (1997), p. 36. As quoted in Greaves (2004), p. 364. Ibid., p. 358. Ibid., p. 265. Ibid., p. 369. Patterson (1997), pp. 36, 37. Ó Gráda (1997), p. 4. Foster (1989), p. 519. Bew et al. (1989), p. 26. Dunphy (1995), p. 8. Patterson (1997), p. 57. English (1994), p. 90. Ibid., p. 91. Dunphy (1995), p. 97. Ibid., p. 97. Ibid., p. 99. Ibid., p. 109. Ibid., p. 138. Patterson (1997), p. 50. Dunphy (1995), p. 320. For more detail see Allen (1997), pp. 36–42, and Bew et al. (1989), Chapter 2. Bew et al. (1989), p. 77. Ibid. Allen (1997), p. 48. Ibid. Patterson (1997), p. 63. English (1994), p. 181. Patterson (1997) p62. Allen (1997), p. 50. Quoted in English (1994), p. 188. Ibid., p. 193. Ibid., p. 194. Ibid., p. 195. Allen (1997), p. 50. English (1994), p. 218.

318

46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71.


Ó Gráda (1997), p. 22 Ibid., p. 29. Keogh (1994), p. 164. Allen (1997), p. 92. Keane (2006), p. 18. MacDermott (1998), p. 49. Ibid. McCullagh (1998), p. 11. Keogh (1994), p. 175. Quoted in MacDermott (1998), p. 63. Cowan was expelled from Clann in 1948 following a public disagreement during a Dáil debate with party leader Seán MacBride over the details of the Marshall Plan accepted by the government. MacDermott (1998), p. 164. See Ó Gráda (1997), p. 29, for a brief discussion of the different explanations for the economic recovery. Patterson (2002), p. 154. Ibid., p. 162. New Left Review 64 (1970), p. 52. Quoted in Patterson (1997), p. 106. Ibid. New Left Review 64 (1970), p. 50. Ibid., p. 51. Patterson (1997), p. 146. Patterson (1997), p. 162. Sinn Féin: The Workers Party (1977), p. ii. Workers Party (1992), p. 23. Patterson (2002), p. 304. New Left Review 207 (1994), p. 68.

4 A Century of Struggle 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Feeney (2002), p. 22. Ibid., p. 26. Ferriter (2005), pp. 30, 31. Ibid., p. 31. MacDonncha (2005), p. 12. Ibid. Quoted in Feeney (2002), p. 29. Ibid., p. 31. Ibid., p. 33. Ferriter (2005), p. 81.

NOTES

319

11. Feeney (2002), p. 31. 12. Ibid. 13. Feeney notes that it was translated into several languages ‘including some Indian languages’ (Feeney [2002] p. 39). 14. Ibid., p. 38. 15. Ibid., p. 43. 16. O’Hegarty (1998), p. 4. 17. Quoted in MacDonncha (2005), pp. 21, 22. 18. Ibid., p. 61. 19. Rafter (2005), p. 49. 20. Quoted in Laffan (1999), p. 100. 21. Ibid., p. 118. 22. Ibid., p. 119. 23. Ibid., p. 121. 24. Feeney (2002), p. 112. 25. Laffan (1999), p. 256. 26. All quoted from the Democratic Programme taken from MacDonncha (2005), pp. 71, 72. 27. Feeney (2002), p. 117. 28. Laffan (1999), p. 259. 29. Ibid. 30. Kostick (1996), p. 47. 31. Rafter (2005), p. 59. 32. Kostick (1996), pp. 120–35. 33. Feeney (2002), p. 130. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid., p. 124. 36. Ferriter (2005), p. 235. 37. Ibid., p. 258. 38. Laffan (1999), p. 417. 39. Ibid., p. 423. 40. Ibid., p. 334. 41. Quoted in Hanley (2002), p. 93. 42. Laffan (1999), p. 444. 43. Feeney (2002), p. 171. 44. Quoted in Rafter (2005), p. 77. 45. Feeney (2002), p. 188. 46. Ibid., p. 82. 47. Ibid., pp. 215, 216. 48. MacDonncha (2005), p. 110. 49. Feeney (2002), p. 208. 50. Quoted in MacDonncha (2005), p. 118. 51. Feeney (2002), p. 208.

320

52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

73.

74. 75. 76. 77. 78.


Swan (2007), p. 81. Quoted in ibid., p. 87. Ibid., p. 105. Ibid., p. 135. MacDonncha (2005), p. 126. Ibid., pp. 110, 111. Quoted in Swan (2007), pp. 192, 193. Feeney (2002), p. 244. Swan (2007), p. 224. Ibid., p. 225. Ibid., p. 242. Ibid., p. 227. Quoted in Patterson (1997), p. 118. For a detailed account of this see Farrell (1980). Hall et al. (1989), p. 25. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 27. Ibid., p. 29. Ibid., p. 30. See Farrell (1980) for details of discrimination in allocation of public services and resources, public office and electoral representation Prince (2007), pp. 210–17. Prince is the latest in a series of commentators who have sought to explain the descent of conflict in the north of Ireland as a consequence of the impact of the radical right of unionism and the radical left of the civil rights movement undermining the reform project of Terence O’Neill. In particular the continuing demands and mobilisations of the civil rights movement in the aftermath of O’Neill’s Crossroads speech were seen as provocative, unleashing the communal tensions which underlay the foundations of northern society. Once unleashed these almost primordial forces were uncontrollable and saw the rise to prominence of political and military irredentist nationalist (Sinn Féin and the IRA) and unionist (DUP and UVF/UDA) fundamentalism. What followed, according to these authors, was an irrational ethnic conflict being fought over abstract ideas of territory and identity. Patterson (1997), p. 112. Farrell (1980), p. 284. Ibid. An Phoblacht, February 1970, p. 5. An Phoblacht, March 1970, p. 8.

NOTES

79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118.

321

Ibid. An Phoblacht, August 1970, p. 5. An Phoblacht, November 1970, p. 7 An Phoblacht, November 1971, ‘Our Duty and Privilege’, Ard Fheis address by Ruarí Ó Brádaigh. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. MacStiofáin (1975), p. 1. Feeney (2002), pp. 272, 273. Gibney quoted in Feeney (2002), p. 273. An Phoblacht, 12 November 1972, p. 5. Ibid., p. 4. English (2003), p. 179. White (2006), p. 245. Ibid. Feeney (2002), p. 278. MacDonncha (2005), p. 160. An Phoblacht/Republican News, 23 June 1981, p. 7. Ibid. Ibid., p. 6 Ibid., p. 7 Ibid., p. 6 Ibid., p. 7 Ibid. Hibernia Interview, reprinted in An Phoblacht/Republican News, 3 November 1970, pp. 10–11. Ibid. Ibid. An Phoblacht/Republican News, 20 October 1979, p. 9. An Phoblacht/Republican News, 17 November 1979, p. 10. An Phoblacht/Republican News, Ard Fheis Supplement, February 1980. Ibid., p. ii. Ibid. Ibid., p. iv. Ibid. Ibid. An Phoblacht/Republican News, 29 October 1981, p. 10. Ibid. An Phoblacht/Republican News, 5 November 1981, p. 1. Quoted in Feeney (2002), p. 303. Ibid., p. 312.

322


119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146. 147.

An Phoblacht/Republican News, 17 November 1983, p. 7. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 8. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 9. Ibid. Ibid. Patterson (1997), p. 196. An Phoblacht/Republican News, 8 November 1984, pp. 5–7. Ibid., p. 6. Ibid., p. 11. Ibid. Ibid., p. 9. An Phoblacht/Republican News, November 1985, p. 9. Ibid., p. 14. Ibid. An Phoblacht/Republican News, 6 November 1986, pp. 12, 13. Ibid., p. 8. Ibid. Ibid., p. 9. Ibid., p. 12. Feeney (2002), pp. 413, 414. Patterson (1997), p. 209. Adams (1986), p. 168. Ibid. Ibid. Scenario for Peace, quoted in MacDonncha (2005), pp. 196, 197. Feeney (2002), p. 353. An Phoblacht/Republican News, 22 September 1988, p. 8. Ibid., p. 10. MacDonncha (2005), p. 203. An Phoblacht/Republican News, 2 February 1989, p. 6. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 8. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Patterson (1997), p. 251. Quoted in Feeney (2002), p. 372.

148. 149. 150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155. 156. 157. 158. 159. 160.

NOTES

161. 162. 163. 164. 165. 166. 167. 168. 169. 170. 171. 172. 173. 174. 175. 176. 177. 178. 179. 180. 181. 182. 183. 184. 185. 186. 187. 188. 189. 190. 191. 192. 193. 194. 195. 196. 197. 198. 199. 200. 201. 202.

Ibid., p. 373. Ibid., p. 378. Sinn Féin (1992). Feeney (2002), p. 379. Patterson (1997), p. 239 An Phoblacht/Republican News, 8 February 1990, p. 9. An Phoblacht/Republican News, 7 February 1991, p. 9. Ibid., p. 9. Ibid., p. 10. An Phoblacht/Republican News, 27 February 1992, p. 8. Ibid., p. 9. Ibid. Ibid. An Phoblacht/Republican News, 25 February 1993, p. 9. Quoted in MacDonncha (2005), p. 216. Ibid., p. 218. Ibid., p. 220. An Phoblacht/Republican News, March 1994, p. 7. Ibid., p. 10. Ibid. An Phoblacht/Republican News, 2 March 1995, p. 2. An Phoblacht/Republican News, 28 March 1996, p. 8. Ibid., p. 8. Ibid., p. 9. An Phoblacht, 23 April 1998, p. 6. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. An Phoblacht/Republican News, 23 April 1998, p. 8. Ibid. Ibid., p. 9. Ibid., p. 8. Ibid., p. 9. Ibid. Ibid., p. 10. Ibid., p. 11. An Phoblacht/Republican News, 14 May 1998. Ibid. An Phoblacht, 7 June 2008. An Phoblacht, 23 August 2007. An Phoblacht, 20 June 2008. See http://www.ardfheis.com/news/7421

323

324


Conclusion 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Quoted in Berresford Ellis (1996), p. 226. Adams (1986), p. 128. English (1994), preface. Ibid., p. 275. Gilmore (1974), p. 9. Patterson (1997), p. 28. Ibid. Adams (1986), p. 128.

APPENDIX 1

Sinn Féin Election Results 1982–2007 Year

Body

Votes

1982 Feb Leinster House

Percentage

Seats

>1%

0

1982

Assembly

64,191

10%

5

1983

Westminster

102,701

13%

1

1984

European Parliament

6 Co – 91,476 6 Co – 13% 26 Co – 54,672 26 Co – 5%

1985

26-County local government

N/A

N/A

10

1985


75,686

12%

59

1987

Leinster House

32,366

2%

0

1987

Westminster

83,389

11%

1

1989

Leinster House

19,998

1%

0

1989

European Parliament

6 Co – 48,914 6 Co – 9% 26 Co – 34,226 26 Co – 2.3%

1989


69,032

11%

43

1991


N/A

N/A

7

1992

Leinster House

27,396

2%

0

1992

Westminster

78,291

10%

0

1993


77,600

12%

51

1994

European Parliament

6 Co – 55,215 6 Co – 10% 26 Co – 33,823 26 Co – 3%

1996

Forum

116,377

15%

1997

Leinster House

45,614

2.5%

0 0

0 0

0 0 17 1 continued

325

326


Year

Body

Votes

Percentage

1997

Westminster

126,921

16%

Seats 2

1997


106,934

17%

74

1998

Assembly Elections 142,858

18%

18

1999


N/A

3.5%

21

1999

European Parliament

6 Co – 117,643 6 Co – 17% 26 Co – 88,165 26 Co – 6.3%

2001

Westminster

175,392

22%

4

2001


163,269

21%

108

2002

Leinster House

121,000

6.5%

5

2003

Assembly

162,758

24%

24

2004


146,901

8%

54

2004

European Parliament

6 Co – 144,541 6 Co – 26% 26 Co – 197,715 26 Co – 11%

2005


163,205

23%

126

2005

Westminster

174,530

24%

5

2007

Assembly

180,573

26%

28

2007

Leinster House

142,000

6.9%

4

0 0

1 1

Sources: MacDonncha (2005): http://www.ark.ac.uk, http://www.electionsireland.org; http:// www.irishtimes.ie, http://www.anphoblacht.com

APPENDIX 2

Sinn Féin Policy Documents Economic Policy Documents • • • • • • • • •

Putting People First – 1998 Building a Just Economy – 2002 No Right Turn – 2003 Public–Private Partnership and Private Finance Initiative – 2003 Submission to the Consultation on the Reform of Water and Sewerage Services – 2003 Eliminating Poverty: A 21st Century Goal – 2004 A Strong Economy for an Ireland of Equals – All-Ireland Enterprise and Job Creation Policy – 2006 A Strong Economy Sustainable into the Future – 2007 Workers’ Rights in an Ireland of Equals – 2007

Education Policy Documents • Educate That You May Be Free – 2003 • Education and Childcare: Reaching Our Full Potential – 2007

Environment Policy Documents • The Way Forward (Waste Management) – 2001 • Towards Zero Waste – 2004

Equality Policy Documents • Moving On (LGBT Policy) – 1996 • Many Voices, One Country: Cherishing all the Children of the Nation Equally (Anti-Racism Policy) – 2001 • Women in an Ireland of Equals – 2002, 2004, 2007 editions • A Charter for Senior Citizens – 2002, 2004 editions • Campaigning for Full Equality – 2004 • Submission to the Oireachtas All-Party Committee on the Constitution on the Family and Children’s Rights – 2005 • Submission to the Oireachtas Committee on Child Protection: Cherishing Childhood – 2006 327

328


Health Policy Documents • • • •

Health for All – 2001 Statement of Drugs Policy Principles – 2005 Healthcare in an Ireland of Equals – 2006 Healthcare is a Right (mini-manifesto) – 2007

Housing Policy Documents • Housing for All: A Basic Right – 2001 • Submission to the Oireachtas All-Party Committee on the Constitution on Private Property and Housing – 2003 • Housing is a Right – 2007

International/EU Affairs Policy Documents • Sinn Féin and the European Union – 2003 • For an Independent Ireland in a Europe of Equals: Summary of Sinn Féin Concerns on Draft EU Constitution and Recommendations for Treaty Negotiation Outcomes – 2003 • Prioritising Global Social Justice: 15 Recommendations for a Positive Irish EU Presidency – 2004 • Positive Neutrality in Action – 2004 • Where Now for the EU Constitution? – 2005 • Paper on Peace III Programme – 2006 • EU Support for Irish Reunification – 2006 • Putting Democracy at the Heart of the European Union – 2006

Irish Language and Culture Policy Documents • Arts, Culture and Leisure: A Policy Review Paper – 2001 • Ag cur Gaeilge ar ais i mbheal an phobail – 2007 • Irish Language Manifesto – 2007

Irish Unity Policy Documents • National Self Determination – 1997 • Submission to the Oireachtas All-Party Committee on the Constitution: Six County Representation in the Oireachtas – 1998 • Reunification through Planned Integration – 2003 • Truth: A Sinn Féin Discussion Document – 2003

APPENDIX 2

329

• Rights for All – 2004 • Green Paper on Irish Unity – 2005 • Charter for Unionist Engagement – 2007

Justice Policy Documents • Empowering Communities: A Sinn Féin Response to the Drugs Epidemic – 1996 • A Policing Service for a New Future: Submission to the Commission on Policing – 1998 • Template for Interface Intervention – 2004 • Policing for the People: Garda Reform Policy– 2004 • All-Ireland Justice Policy Principles – 2006 • Justice, Community Safety and Drugs Platform – 2007 • Policing with the Community in 2008

Governance Policy Documents • Local Power: A National Right – 1999 • Proposals for an Inclusive Seanad – 2003

Rural Policy Documents • Breaking the Cycle: Securing a Future for Farming and Rural Ireland – 2001 • Submission on CAP Reform – 2003 • Campaigning for Farming and Fishing Communities – 2004 • The Case for Keeping an Irish Sugar Industry – 2006 • Equality for Rural Communities – 2007

Election Manifestos Assembly • Programme for Government – 1999 • Agenda for Government – 2003 • Delivering for Ireland’s Future – 2007

Leinster House • Building an Ireland of Equals – 2002 • Others Promise, We Deliver – 2007

330


Local Government • Delivering Real Change – 2004 • Building Peace, Building Unity – 2005

European Union • Peace in Ireland: A European Issue – 1994 • Peace and Independence in Europe – 1999 • An Ireland of Equals in a Europe of Equals – 2004

RECOMMENDED READING

The following brief list contains the author’s recommendations for further reading on the areas indicated. Full details of all publications are included in Bibliography.

Eighteenth Century United Irishmen: The three best books on this period are by Kevin Whelan, Nancy J. Curtin and Dáire Keogh and Nicholas Furlong (eds.). Curtin offers the most detailed archival account. Her revisionism is compensated for in Whelan’s more analytical study, while Keogh and Furlong attempt to return women’s participation in the movement to its proper place.

Nineteenth Century Young Ireland: Very little has been published on the Young Ireland movement. Richard Davis’ account, while poor from an analytical point of view, is the only full-length chronology of the movement. Fenians: John Newsinger’s and Owen McGee’s accounts of the Fenian Movement are excellent from both an analytical and chronological point of view. Early socialism: A good body of detailed archival histories of early Irish socialism has been published in recent years including works by Boyle, Lane and O’Connor. Donald Sassoon’s authoritative history of western European socialism is a good accompaniment to the Irishfocused books.

Twentieth Century Connolly: There are a large number of books in print about Connolly, but the best place to start (and end) is with Connolly’s own two-volume Collected Works, published by New Books in Dublin.

331

332


Revolutionary era: Michael Hopkinson’s two-volume history of the Irish War of Independence and Civil War remains the best historical account of the period. Post-revolutionary era: There continues to be a dearth of good studies of the period from 1930 through to the 1960s. However, Richard Dunphy’s history of Fianna Fáil during this period is exceptional. Other valuable books include MacDermott’s history of Clann na Poblachta and Niamh Puirséil’s history of the Irish Labour Party. Post-1958: Again there continues to be a low volume of research and publication on this period. Bew, Patterson and Hazelkorn’s The Dynamics of Irish Politics still has value, as do the later chapters of both Ferriter and Lee (1989). Northern Conflict: The large number of works on the conflict can make it difficult to choose. Farrell’s Northern Ireland: The Orange State and Bew et al.’s The State in Northern Ireland remain classics worthy of close attention. More recent works of value include those by Niall Ó Dochartaigh and Peter Rose. Republicanism: Works by Patterson, Foley, English, Hanley, MacDermott and Swan provide a good chronology of the different moments of twentieth-century Irish republicanism. Sinn Féin: While there has been a significant increase in books focusing on Sinn Féin in recent years, only Feeney and Maillot are worth reading. Feeney’s book is better for the history of Sinn Féin through to the 1950s, while Maillot’s account of Sinn Féin since the 1980s contains many valuable insights and critical reflections.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Hopkinson, Michael (2004), Green Against Green: The Irish Civil War. Gill and Macmillan. Hyam, Ronald (2002), Britain’s Imperial Century, 1815–1914: A Study of Empire and Expansion. Palgrave Macmillan. Jackson, T.A. (1970), Ireland Her Own. Lawrence and Wishart. Keane, Elizabeth (2006), An Irish Statesman and Revolutionary: The Nationalist and Internationalist Politics of Seán MacBride. I.B. Tauris. Kearney, Richard (1997), Postnationalist Ireland: Politics, Culture, Philosophy. Routledge. Keogh, Dáire and Nicholas Furlong (eds.) (1998), The Women of 1798. Four Courts Press. Keogh, Dermot (1994), Twentieth-Century Ireland: Nation and State. Gill and Macmillan. Kostick, Conor (1996), Revolution in Ireland: Popular Militancy 1917–1923. Pluto. Laffan, Michael (1999), The Resurrection of Ireland: The Sinn Féin party, 1916–1923. Cambridge University Press. Laffan, Michael (2004), The Partition of Ireland. Historical Association of Ireland. Lane, Fintan (1997), The Origins of Irish Socialism, 1881–1896. Cork University Press. Langan, Mary and Bill Schwarz (1985), Crises in the British State 1880–1930. CCCS/Hutchinson and Co. Larkin, Emmet (1968), James Larkin, Irish Labour Leader 1876–1947. Pluto. Lee, Joseph (1973), The Modernisation of Irish Society 1848–1918. Gill and Macmillan. Lee, Joseph (1989), Ireland 1912–1985: Politics and Society. Cambridge University Press. Lee, Joseph (ed.) (1979), Ireland, 1945–70. Gill and Macmillan. Lefebre, Georges (2002), The French Revolution. Routledge. Litton, Frank (1982), Unequal Achievement: The Irish Experience 1957–1982. Institute of Public Administration. Lyder, André (2005), Pushers Out: The Inside Story of Dublin’s Antidrugs Movement. Trafford. Lynch, David (2005), Radical Politics in Modern Ireland: The Irish Socialist Republican Party, 1896–1904. Irish Academic Press. Lyons, F.S.L. (1975), Ireland Since the Famine. Fontana. McCann, Eamonn (1993), War and an Irish Town. Pluto. McCullagh, David (1998), A Makeshift Majority: The First Interparty Government, 1948–51. Institute of Public Administration. MacDonncha, Mícheál (2005), Sinn Féin: A Century of Struggle. Sinn Féin.

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index

Abstensionism 5, 143, 152, 153, 166, 179, 181, 195, 204, 205–8, 244, 252–4, 287 Adams, Gerry 6, 9, 96, 174, 221, 231, 233, 239, 241, 243, 244, 253–5, 257, 259, 262, 264, 269, 270, 271, 285, 288, 290, 295, 311 African National Congress 252, 256, 269, 276, 277, 309 Ahern, Bertie 271 Aiken, Frank 130 An Claidheamh Soluis 176 An Phoblacht 135, 223, 224, 225, 229, 232, 282 Anglo–Irish Agreement 248, 249, 250, 255, 256, 257, 263, 266, 274 Anglo–Irish Free Trade Agreement 203, 225, 226 Asquith, Herbert Henry 179, 180 Belfast Agreement 273, 274, 275, 277, 279, 280, 285, 305 Berresford Ellis, Peter 12, 13, 20, 28, 33, 39, 56, 95, 164 Bew, Paul 95, 105, 106, 129, 132, 136, 210, 211, 292, 316, 317 Blair, Tony 271 British Army 182, 183, 188, 190, 222, 223, 229, 231, 256, 259, 266 Browne, Noel 144, 145, 146, 158, 166, 197 Cahil, Joe 206, 221, 253, 276

Catholic Church 45, 50, 51, 52, 137, 146, 197 Catholic Committee 24, 27, 77 Chamberlain, Joseph 83, 116 Chartists 42, 43, 47, 49, 54, 57, 59, 60, 65 Chichester-Clarke, James 226 Clann na Poblachta 3, 140–50, 156, 161, 163, 166, 168–71, 196, 197, 199, 207, 295, 307 Clann na Talmhan 141, 144 Collins, Michael 182, 189 Connolly, James 3, 9, 18, 28, 69–72, 85, 112, 181, 232, 289, 290, 294 Conservative Party 83, 116 Communitarian 116, 279, 297, 308 Cosgrave, W.T. 126–9, 183, 189, 192 Craig, James 126, 127, 211 Cultural Nationalism 31, 42, 75, 105, 107, 175, 176, 291 Cumann na mBan 118, 194 Cumann Poblachta na hÉireann, 195 Davitt, Michael 46, 62, 65, 68, 102, 291 Davis, Thomas 48, 49 Defenders 25, 34, 77, 96, 112 Democratic Left 148, 159, 160, 297 Democratic Unionist Party 272–4, 280, 281, 298, 305, 306 De Rossa, Proinsias 157–60

340

index 341

De Valera, Eamon 116, 120, 123, 129, 130, 132, 136, 138, 141, 143, 144, 147, 148, 163, 168, 183, 184, 190–6, 285–7, 294 Devoy, John 50 Downing Street Declaration 267 Drumm, Jimmy 232, 239 Dungannon Clubs 179 Easter Rising 11, 13, 46, 92 101, 104, 113, 115, 119, 181, 182, 289, 310 Eire Nua 225–7, 229, 232, 235, 239, 240, 241 English, Richard 10, 291, 230 European Union, 309 Fanon, Franz 232 Fianna Fáil 3, 116, 123, 126–50, 153, 157, 161–3, 168, 169, 193–6, 198, 202, 213, 227, 243, 248, 257, 260, 263, 269, 271, 274, 278, 281–5, 287, 298, 299, 300, 305, 307, 311 Fine Gael, 144–50, 153, 157, 161, 169, 198, 243, 248, 250, 270, 271, 282, 283, 300, 306, 307 FitzGerald, Garret 157, 248 French Revolution 21, 23, 36, 43, 60, 291 Gaelic Athletic Association 46, 175 Gaelic League 175 Garland, Sean 200, 204, 206, 207 Gibney, Jim 228, 263, 321 Gilmore, George 137–9, 195, 201, 255, 292–5 Gladstone, William 53, 81, 83, 116 Goulding, Cathal 151–4, 157, 200–9, 219–24, 285–7, 295

Griffith, Arthur 176, 177, 180, 189 Harris, Eoghan 157 Hartley, Tom 231 Haughey, Charles 157, 202, 248, 263 Hobsbawm, Eric 18, 30, 35–7, 41, 50–5, 57 Home Rule 46, 53, 54, 60–73, 78, 80–106, 113–17, 174, 178–83, 293 Hume, John 217–19, 251, 259, 263, 266, 267, 269, 271, 272 Hunger Strike 11, 188, 196, 203, 230, 237–9, 243, 244, 246, 247 Inghinidhe na hÉireann 118 Irish Independent 176, 183 Irish Republican Army 6, 10, 118, 123, 126, 130–74, 182, 185, 190, 191, 193–211, 214, 216–18, 221–40, 247, 249, 251, 253–73, 276, 286, 289, 290, 294, 296 Irish Republican Brotherhood 44, 46, 49, 52, 62, 75–7, 88, 90–4, 102, 176, 178, 179–84, 186, 293, 294 Irish National Liberation Army 155, 158, 310 Irish Parliamentary Party 83, 90, 176, 177, 181 Irish Socialist Republican Party 3, 13, 18, 72, 85–108, 124, 166, 293 Irish Times 141, 262 Irish Transport and General Workers Union 90, 178, 186 Irish Volunteers 46, 91, 92, 115, 180, 182, 186, 188–91 Johnston, Roy 154, 201, 205, 205, 218

342 sinn féin and the politics of left republicanism

Kelly, John 219 Kelly, Mary Eva 48 Keynesian 149, 211, 213, 214, 232, 276, 309 Lalor, James Fintan 13, 42, 47, 86, 101–4, 291 Labour Party (Belfast) 67 Labour Party (Independent) 65, 89, 109 Labour Party (Irish) 96, 119, 128, 133, 134, 167 Land League 46, 50, 71, 101 Larkin, Jim 71, 89, 90, 92, 118 Lemass, Sean 116, 130, 132, 133, 148–50 Lloyd George, David 189 Loyalist 153, 154, 210, 211, 216, 219, 221, 228–32, 245, 249, 250, 273 MacBride, Seán 3, 9, 141, 146, 166, 196 MacCurtáin, Tomás 197 MacLógaín, Pádraig 197, 200, 201, 285 MacStiofáin, Seán 200, 202, 205, 208, 221, 223, 227, 228, 233 MacTomáis, Eamon 208 McAteer, Eddie 217 McAuley, Richard 263 McGuinness, Martin 221, 235, 243, 253, 260, 271 McKee, Billy 219, 221 Major, John 267, 270 Markievicz, Constance 95, 178 Marxism 97, 100, 104, 105, 111, 200, 202, 206, 287, 293 Mazzini, Giuseppe 50, 51 Mellows, Liam 121, 124–6, 130, 161, 165, 192, 232, 294–6, 298, 299, 302, 303 Midgley, Harry 106

Morrison, Danny 164, 231, 232, 235, 242, 243, 253 Murphy, Martin 138, 178 Nationalism 31, 36–8, 46–55, 61–75, 78, 84, 88–107, 110–19, 121, 122, 126, 128–30, 133, 135, 150, 163–5, 172, 175–9, 181, 184, 198, 201, 210, 216, 251, 252, 257, 263, 286–94 National Liberation Front 151, 207, 208 New Ireland Forum 248 Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association 216–19 Northern Ireland Labour Party 211, 218 Ó Brádaigh, Ruarí 198, 200, 202, 221, 225–8, 230, 232, 234, 235, 239, 240, 241, 244, 253, 255, 285, 287 Ó Caolain, Caoimhín 271, 275, 278 Ó Conaill, Daithi 202, 221, 228, 235, 241, 244 O’Connell, Daniel 39–41, 47, 48, 60, 62, 68, 102, 168 Ó Faoláin, Sean 121, 164, 172, 188 O’Malley, Ernie 130 O’Neill, Terence 154, 211, 214, 215, 220, 221 Orange Order 33, 35, 53, 105, 273 Paine, Tom 22, 23, 32, 77 Paisley, Ian 272 Parnell, Charles Stewart 46, 60, 62, 68, 75, 78, 83, 168, 174

index 343

Peace Process, 7, 8, 265–9, 273, 274, 278, 285, 297, 298, 301, 304, 305, 308 Pearse, Padraig 176, 279, 289 People’s Democracy 228, 232 Progressive Democrats 7 Redmond, John 83, 91, 92, 113, 168, 174, 179, 182, 183 Republican News 223, 231, 232, 233 Republican Clubs 158 Republican Congress 3, 135, 137, 140, 161, 163, 165, 171, 193, 195, 201, 207, 292, 294, 295 Republican Sinn Féin 253 Reynolds, Albert 267, 269 Russell, Sean 196 Saor Éire 130, 136, 137, 193, 195 St Andrews Agreement 273, 279, 298 Sands, Bobby 237, 238 Scenario for Peace 257–9, 268 SDLP 157, 221, 227, 243, 246–50, 252, 257, 259–62, 267, 268, 272, 274, 278, 279, 305, 306 Sheehy Skeffington, Hanna 121, 172, 191 Socialism 2, 27, 31, 37, 56, 66–70, 74, 75–9, 89, 93, 95–105, 109, 111, 112, 120, 125, 126, 135, 138, 150, 157, 162, 164, 165, 167, 173, 202, 224, 225, 228, 232–5, 240,

241, 246, 257, 260, 261, 264, 275, 284, 286, 287, 289–98, 304–9 Sunningdale Agreement 229, 247, 274 Thatcher, Margaret 248 Thompson, William 78 Towards a Lasting Peace 261, 263, 265 Trimble, David 272 Twomey, Moss 130, 137, 195 Twomey, Seamus 232, 233 UDA, 228, 250, 259, 266 Ulster Unionist Party 83, 91, 105, 113, 116, 119, 123, 126–8, 162, 186, 209, 211, 214, 218, 247, 272 United Irishmen 13, 19, 22, 23, 25, 28–35, 49–51, 54, 55, 59, 76, 87, 161, 171, 217 UVF 228, 250 Walker, William 62, 64, 67, 69, 90, 93, 101, 107 Wolfe Tone, Theobald 13, 23, 24, 27, 30, 53, 81, 83, 86, 116, 125, 172, 194, 217, 218, 232, 233, 235, 242, 253, 259, 263 Wolfe Tone Societies 201, 202, 205 Workers Party 3, 96, 155, 157–61, 163–5, 168–72, 245, 307 Young Ireland 40–60, 72, 73, 75, 77, 102, 175, 289, 291

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