AN OVERVIEW THAT RETELLS OLD STORIES
Frustrating and offering no real insight, Aoife Moore’s attempt to show the world the real Sinn Féin falls short
In the early days of the 2020 general election campaign, Sinn Féin TD Eoin Ó Broin began canvassing in his Dublin Mid-West constituency and was taken aback by the noticeable uptick in support for Sinn Féin. Returning home after a day on the doorsteps, Ó Broin phoned head office to convey the message that ‘something is going on’. Sinn Féin indeed performed very well in that 2020 election, adding 15 seats and positioning itself as a credible candidate for government.
While many have queried the long-term cohesion of Sinn Féin’s electoral support, there is no denying the quite remarkable growth the party has enjoyed since the 2007 election when it won a mere four seats and languished on about 6% support. What has happened in the interim to give such a boost to Sinn Féin? What was this ‘something’ that was sensed by Ó Broin and others during the 2020 campaign? It is this question and others that Aoife Moore sets out to analyse in her new book The Long Game, Inside Sinn Féin.
Moore sets herself the task of examining who runs Sinn Féin, how it manages its finances, and what we can expect if it enters government. The book seeks to explain how Sinn Féin has gone from being a political pariah to a potential party in government.
Moore’s story begins in January 1990 when a large crowd gathered in Derry to commemorate the 18th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. For reasons known only to themselves, the IRA thought it wise to place inside the Derry city wall a bomb which, upon detonation, killed Charles Love, a young political activist who had travelled to Derry for the day.
Many others were seriously injured. Several months later, the IRA kidnapped Patsy Gillespie, a cook in a nearby British Army barracks, and drove him across the border to Donegal. They then filled a van with 1,200lb of explosives, chained Gillespie to the steering wheel, and forced him to drive the van into the Coshquin barracks. Gillespie and five British soldiers were killed.
It was these and other utterly senseless killings in 1990 that started to shift opinion both inside and outside the IRA on the wisdom and morality of the armed campaign. The IRA had always had a political wing but politics was seen by the self-perceived hard men of the IRA as a cop out. It was, however, a view out of sync with the zeitgeist. The groundswell of revulsion in the late ’80s and early ’90s against manifestly unjustifiable acts of violence forced a rethink among more sober minds within the IRA leadership. Sinn Féin had already started to move towards the political mainstream from the mid-1980s and the feeling was that political agitation must become the focus point of the ‘movement’.
Various abortive ceasefires, interrupted most notably by the docklands bombing in London, ultimately led to the Good Friday Agreement and decommissioning. Moore runs through the narrative in a clear and readable way. The story will, however, be well known to those with more than a passing interest in the North. What emerge more fully from these pages are interesting character sketches of the key figures within Sinn Féin.
Gerry Adams is portrayed as slippery and dishonest. He frequently backtracks on what he’d said and can’t be relied on to keep his word. He leaves meetings on the slightest pretext when he foresees difficult issues coming to a head.
Martin McGuinness, despite an evidently violent past, appears to have redeeming features. He was humane when Sarah Ewart struggled to raise awareness of her traumatic pregnancy when abortion was absolutely prohibited in the North. Gerry Kelly likewise appears to have moments of humanity. In contrast, Mary Lou McDonald is portrayed as an opportunistic poseur who ingratiated herself with senior IRA leadership to gain republican credibility only to cast the associations aside when it became clear the southern electorate had no patience for nostalgia.
More broadly, reading this story reminds me of the popular tales one hears of various obscure religious sects. All have an unquestioned foundational myth. Secrecy is paramount. Members who leave or who speak out against the organisations are treated brutally. Bullying is rife. Members’ finances are controlled by the party. Sexual abuse is covered up. Moore writes movingly of the institutional cover-up of sexual abuse suffered by Áine Adams and Mairia Cahill.
Sinn Féin is also portrayed as slightly nutty. Martin Browne TD suggested on Facebook that a hologram aeroplane was used to fake the 9/11 attacks in New York. He also endorsed a suggestion by Fidel Castro that the US and Israel deliberately created Isis. Séighin Ó Ceallaigh, a Sinn Féin candidate for Limerick in 2020, previously hinted that the moon landing was ‘fake news’ and a ‘much disputed’ event. It makes for entertaining, if slightly alarming, reading.
Overall, alas, the story is one that has been told many times before and I am not sure what new material Moore’s book brings to the debate. Anyone with a general interest in Irish politics will be more than familiar with the Jonathan Dowdall affair, the controversy over the Bobby Storey funeral during Covid, and other matters discussed in this book.
More frustratingly, the book does not truly get under the skin of Sinn Féin. There are multiple references to ‘old IRA men’ who turn up to Sinn Féin constituency meetings, sit menacingly at the back of the room and say little but leave nobody in doubt they remain in charge. Who are these characters and how
‘The groundswell of revulsion in the late ’80s and early ’90s… forced a rethink’
do they exercise power in the party? We are not told. There seems to be no doubt that Michelle O’Neill and Mary Lou McDonald do not have a free hand to set policy, but the internal dynamics are not revealed in this book.
Moreover, the ‘something’ described by Eoin Ó Broin in the early days of the 2020 election remains unexplored. It is clear that frustrations over housing and healthcare are driving enthusiasm for Sinn Féin, but its electoral support is surely a more complex phenomenon. For starters, it cannot be separated from the general tide of populism that is sweeping Western democracies. Its supporters comprise a broad church ranging from orthodox Marxists to those who would feel at home at anti-migration demonstrations. A significant core comes from young people who believe the armed campaign was slightly edgy and something that dovetails nicely with the current vogue for ‘decolonising the public space’. (Many of these young people are attracted to Sinn Féin by its very savvy social media presence, which is overlooked.)
Sinn Féin’s explosive growth is a complex story with multiple driving forces. Moore’s book provides a good overview of the party’s recent history and describes well some alarming episodes. She also writes movingly of the gruesome impact the IRA’s campaign of violence had on families across the North, including the children of Jean McConville.
I finished the book, however, still none the wiser as to who actually runs this multi-headed hydra and how it will govern if it ever gets there.