Go the Shinners!
At a time of fresh demoralisation and disarray for the left — to replace the last bout of demoralisation and disarray — there is a bit of good news with the victory in the Irish election of (*checks notes*) the former political wing of an urban guerilla/terrorist group.
Yes, in the Republic of Ireland election, Sinn Féin (“We Ourselves”) edged ahead of major parties Fianna Fáil (“right-wing pricks” — actually “Soldiers of Destiny”) and Fine Gael (“right wing pricks” — actually “Tribe of The Irish”) in the overall vote, with 24.5% to their rivals’ 22% and 20%.
The Shinners had been on track to do well over the last weeks, but no one thought they would come out on top. Least of all the Shinners, who fielded only 42 candidates in the 39, multi-member (three to five each) constituencies, and have thus ended up with 37 seats to Fianna Fáil’s 38.
That’s pretty extraordinary really. You’d think a party whose military wing spent 30 years setting timed bombs would know how to count.
That creates a primo constitutional fandango. Sinn Féin has the legitimacy of plurality, but Fianna Fáil the numbers — both narrowly. Who gets first go at forming government?
Sinn Féin may not want it anyway. The vote-split makes building an 80+ seat coalition a nightmare. Of the minor parties, the Greens have 11 seats, Labour six, breakaway Social Democrats five, the Marxist Solidarity-People Before Profit five, and there will be at least 19 independents.
Even a five-party left coalition led by Sinn Féin with all the minors falls at least 10 seats short. The independents are a wild and whacky bunch, right across the spectrum.
Sinn Féin’s leadership would want to be in the strongest possible coalition, which would be a hook up with Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael-Greens, with either Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil forming the opposition.
In the transactional politics of Ireland, that’s possible. Fáil and Gael have been the only two parties to lead government for nearly a century. People say they’re both centre-right, but there’s differences: Fianna Fáil is socially conservative and corporatist, stitching up deals with different social groups.
Fine Gael is a modernising party: social market/left neoliberal, socially progressive, as exemplified by their gay, Indian-descended, technocratic leader Leo Varadkar. (It’s not so different from our Coalition v Labor set up, actually).
Politically, Fine Gael is a better fit with Sinn Féin, which is probably why it has refused to entertain the possibility of such a coalition (“Sorry, no, its heritage of violence, dirty hands, etc. Couldn’t possibly consider… at least till next Tuesday”).
Fianna Fáil is more amenable, and could hook up a loose coalition on the basis of shared nationalist sentiment etc, but that would dismay many of Sinn Féin’s new, young supporters who were attracted to the party’s left campaign on housing, social services, wage exploitation and so on.
That is a dilemma for Sinn Féin, since its purpose is a reunification of Ireland (as a socialist republic).
This version of the party emerged from the Provisional IRA in 1970 (provisional because it replaced the official IRA, whose Marxist leadership had refused to undertake armed defence of besieged Catholic neighbourhoods in Belfast and Derry).
Influenced by Vietnam, Che and Marighella, the Provos thought a quick, brutal two- or three-year armed struggle would get the Brits out, with Sinn Féin used as a legal front for pressers, etc.
By the late 1970s, Gerry Adams and other members of the Prov… uh, of Sinn Féin, had decided on a dual political/military strategy and, by the ’90s, on politics alone.
The project was to turn Sinn Féin into a “social-nationalist” party, becoming full representatives of the poor and workers on both sides of the border, rise to political dominance in Stormont and the Dáil, and thus make a dual reunification vote reappear as a necessary consequence of their electoral success.
And by god, with a bit of help from Brexit (and a lot of reading Gramsci in prison in the ’70s), they’ve bloody gone and got there.
With Sinn Féin having replaced the non-abstentionist Social Democratic and Labour Party as the Catholic party in Stormont, and now that it’s the plurality choice in the Dáil, refusal of a both-sides-of-border reunification vote now becomes, what — a piece of active imperialist resistance to democracy, residual colonialism, British bastardry exposed?
But, on the flip side, for a new generation in a globalised era it also becomes, simply, obvious and efficient. Suddenly it becomes: of course there shouldn’t be a border cutting through an island because of a series of forgotten British military imperatives.
Brexit would be enough to have Sinn Féin’s cultural Catholic leadership believing in actual God. For now, for the first time, there will be a chunk of the UK Conservative and Unionist party in favour of losing Northern Ireland, for the simple reason that reunification removes most of the problems between the EU and the UK over customs deals and border security.
With one stroke, the UK is Great Britain again, and can control trade and entry through its ports. As an added bonus, it will fuck up the DUP, and how they must be longing to do that!
One doubts that Boris’ Svengali Dominic Cummins is a staunch unionist, and his policy director is Munira Mirza, an ex-Revolutionary Communist Party (i.e. Spiked) member, a group so committed to the republican struggle that they backed the IRA’s mainland bombing campaign in the 1980s.
The IRA actually mortar-bombed Number 10 in the 1990s. It’s a funny old world, to be sure.
Still, it won’t be an easy road to reunification, and the prospects of Sinn Féin being ambushed are high (the ironies just keep on coming). Neither Fianna Fáil nor Fine Gael really want reunification; they, especially Fianna Fáil, have run the republic as a crony fiefdom for decades.
They could try and combine in a grand coalition, but they would fall short of a majority; Sinn Féin and four minors would combine for a new election, and that would be the end of both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, one would reckon.
They know that the Shinner surge occurred at the collapse of the old political settlement. To a degree, Sinn Féin are the fortunate beneficiaries of that collapse. But in the old Boston Irish saying, they were willing to be lucky, and prepared for the moment when it came.
And crucial to their victory was an underlying nationalism, which was, at the same time, progressive in form, thus removing the contradictions between the two positions.
It’s another message to the left: success will be found in an understanding of the deep need for community that a progressive nationalism can provide. A genuine, concrete one, not a pissy “progressive patriotism”, empty progressivism by other means, hack ex-student pollies taking the pledge like a bunch of toggled-up flabby scout leaders.
Not easy, but a lot easier than throwing off the Brits and starting the unravelling of the British empire in 1916.
And so, for all the troubles ahead, and the darker Troubles behind, I say go the Shinners!
Forming some sort of government now becomes imperative. Clock’s ticking.
Reunification certainly seems logical, and circumstances seem positive. I said this to a visiting Ulsterman last month and his comment was ‘never’. It might be possible to just get a majority to vote for it in the north. However the view was positions are still too entrenched in the north and there are enough protestants prepared to stage an insurgency (rather ironic it would be for them to switch roles with the IRA) to make it impossible for a workable approach. The assumption seems to be that a few more generations of extremists dying out is needed.
There has always been an economic argument as well, which is that the south cannot afford to subsidise Northern Ireland in the same way the UK has done. But then maybe they can get the EU to help with the tab as a ‘gesture’ to Brexit Britain.
I suspect no-one outside of Ireland has a clue what will happen – and things may be not much clearer inside Ireland.
You make a good point on often misunderstood aspect of reunification – the unwillingness of some economic, and law’n’order, interests in the South to take on the burden of the pampered Prods still squealing for Britannia’s teat.
Largesse from Brussels would be a good way to make the transition easier, if only to piss off the Brexit brigade.
I wonder how soon the English will start asset stripping Belfast prior to the flight from their first and last colony.
If the results are now finished, FF 38, SF 37 & FG 35 I wonder if there will any thought given to the size of the turnout – <63%, lower than the last, which was 65%- and its nature ie the demographic.
If it's true that a lot of young people registered for the SSM/abortion polls it suggests that this might be an important factor in the SF popular vote, despite an actual fall in the turnout total.
Who did NOT get to the polls?
The oldies, tired of the duopoly of the Reel & Jig two step, or the otherwise disenfranchised?
How many who left the country after the GFC for Euroland who could not vote?
If it turns out that the young, as a proportion, not only voted but in greater numbers and for – or 'against' – the established order, the question arises as to how that will be factored into daily politics.
The sad history of the water protests and PeopleBeforeProfit et al does not bode well for stability.
Hello from Ireland, Guy, I think you’ve overestimated the importance of the so-called “progressive nationalism”. If anything, Sinn Fein’s nationalism and connection with IRA thuggery (it’s surprisingly how anti-IRA huge sections of the Republic’s population are) have counted against them, the big issues here have been housing, homelessness, health and other basic social justice issues. The Irish have a strong sense of national identity that is mostly positive / progressive, which is somewhat unsullied by the dark side of nationalism in current/former imperial societies or settler societies, based as it is (at least according to the national mythology) in throwing of the yoke of centuries of foreign oppression. If anything, that generally accepted identity has prevented people seeing the class and other economic divides that have kept large numbers of people poor and relatively powerless for generations. There are a number of possible explanations for a change, but the experience of the GFC and its aftermath was pretty devastating for huge numbers of people and also pretty illuminating as to who was getting the cream.
Until this election result – which was truly unexpected – I’ve been a bit despairing of the Irish electorate’s dogged support of the status quo parties.
Bob the Builder’s on the money with his comment that SF success was built on the key issues of homelessness and health. The idea that this pathbreaking election is a prelude to either a unified Ireland or a socialist paradise files in the face of political and historical realities. SF decided strategically that they wouldn’t run too many candidates after they performed very poorly in local government elections last year. Proportional representation has been successful in diminishing winner takes all politics in Ireland – the country has got used to the messy politics of coalition building and decay. And Sinn Fein’s triumph will be short lived if they become part of a government they cannot control.