Can change in Sinn Féin come from within?

As I stated in my first ever post on this site I am simply an ordinary Sinn Féin member in the South and I just want to know why some people seem to feel we are so undemocratic and that it is impossible to change the party from within?

From my experience of my cumann I am allowed to say what I want and at the Ard Fheis I have attended people line up to speak and are allowed to voice their opinion as they wish. So, given this why is it said that Sinn Féin cannot be changed from within?

We all know there have been a number of councillors who have left the party recently. One of the reasons given by Cllr Louise Melihan for leaving the party were:

"Sinn Féin is taking the wrong position on a whole range of national, social and economic issues, resulting in that party becoming largely irrelevant to working class Irish people.For years I voiced my disquiet within Sinn Féin about the direction that party was headed, in the vain hope that radical politics might triumph over reformism. Like thousands of other republicans before me, I have come to the conclusion that the battle for the heart of Sinn Féin is lost. While wishing those many genuine activists who remain within Sinn Féin well in the future, I believe that many of them will sooner or later come to the same conclusion that I now have."


Now I am not aware of Louise making any great attempt to change party policy and neither does Mick Carthy, her long term friend and Sinn Féin councillor in Maonaghan. To see his take on her resignation go to http://mattcarthy.blogspot.com/2009/07/louise-minihan-leaves-sinn-fein.html

However, if this defection was in isolation then it could possibly be ignored. The problem is though that we have also lost Christy Burke and John Dwyer all in a very small time period.

Now I know John and Louise have both said they left because they felt that the party had moved to the right politically, so why did they do this.

One person that left the party recently contacted this site and said "the leadership is prepared to abandon its stated left objective so as to hasten the arrival of a united Ireland. They genuinely believe that they can achieve that objective if they move towards populist politics as espoused by FF. Be all things to all men has become the mantra."

This statement may well be true and this may well be the approach the leadership have tried to follow. However, given our results at the last southern election, such an approach is coming increasingly into question. Recent articles in An Phoblacht from Ferris and Ó Broin are talking about the need for us to define what we are and to target our message.

My take on this debate is that we need to clearly define ourselves as a socialist/left wing party who recognise and commit to fight against the unequal distribution of power, wealth and opportunities within society. We also recognise the injustices created on this Ireland by the British presence in the North and the continued existence of the Border and we must commit to reuniting Ireland.
In terms of us targeting our message I feel that will come once we clearly define who we are. Namely we will target it at meeting the needs of the weakest members of society.

So where do we go from here?

An e-mailI received from Bryan stated the following:

"We need to organise the Left within Sinn Fein in light of these recent resignations so that we can actually stop what I see as the parties move towards the Centre and reactionary politics.I think we can both agree that there is no room within the Irish political landscape for "Fianna Fail Lite" which is what Sinn Fein seems to be becoming. Leftists within the party need to organise and to influence party policy. Even a loose organisation, through a mailing list or online forum would allow ideas to be exhanged and could allow for motions to be put down on various structures across the 32 Counties on the same day."

So will people on the left of the party try and do this? Or will we allow good people leave without trying something like this first.