Fianna Fáil are dead - We must forget about the left alliance and put the boot into Labour NOW or else!!!!

Received the piece below from a contributor in Dublin. Well worth a read.

-----------------------------------------------


At the next elections only about seven people out of every hundred will put a vertical mark beside our candidate. So say the opinion polls. So said the last two elections. Against a backdrop of one in three of our core demographic (under 25s) without a job and a half a million people rotting on the dole queues this situation is calamitous. On top of this we have an electorate thirsty for change like never before in the history of the 26 county-state - who want to find hope from a dismal political landscape and have so far sought refuge in the mirage that is the Labour Party who have hovered up virtually all Fianna Fail’s lost support while the rest of us look on.



Even the gutless Blueshirts have tried to eat their own young as a response to the polls. Where is our reaction?!!


The unprecedented defection of councillors in Dublin did not jerk us from our deep sleep and now neither is the potentially ruinous poll numbers. It seems to me as if we are a/ consciously adopting a careful strategy of non-strategy whereby we let the other party’s discredit themselves and we succeed on election day by default or b/ we have no clear strategy. I suspect b.



A cunning plan…



At this stage in the game, flogging the rotten Fianna Fail carcass isn’t the answer – the voters that will abandon them have already declared for Labour and it is unlikely the deluded dregs of the Fianna Fail vote (22-24 per cent) will abscond now. It follows therefore that we start to lay the boot into Labour and expose the raging populism where they will say and do what ever it takes to get their grubby arses into the back of a ministerial merc. Their Croke Park cop out is a good place to start.



We need to plant the seed in the public mind that a vote for Labour is a vote for Enda Kenny and his fascist policies and that this impending government is looming over them and their communities with a massive knife waiting to cut their incomes and services further. Unfortunately our unwillingness to reject coalition with the two main parties was a mistake that weakens our position a bit in this regard. Hopefully at the next Ard Fheis we will collectively realise this and rebuff them properly.



In discussing this with a fellow Shinner lately he responded that we couldn’t really go after Labour with all our zeal because we ideally want to build an alliance with them. Bollocks. The next government will be Fine Gael-Labour and talk of left alliances are presumptuous and premature. When the sums are right Labour is our best option. But for now we are in a fight with them for our own survival and if we don’t claw back our votes they will have nobody to align with.



Get the simple things right lads…



But as well as a flagging political strategy, the nuts and bolts of the Sinn Féin operation are failing as well. The mechanics of having a party leader based in Belfast dipping in and out of a debate in Dublin does not wash with people. Like others have already mentioned, we need twin leaders, north and south, operating under the party president. This leader has to be elected from the current Dáil deputies at a special meeting of Sinn Féin members. Such a figurehead would take part in leaders’ debates, feature on the ‘satisfaction with party leaders’ polls and act as the visual front for the party in the twenty-six. As pointed out by Ruadhán here previously - by accident of history we are seen as a northern-based party and this crisis of identity is threatening to sink us in this state. It is within our power to set right this imbalance of power but if we are inflexible on it we will continue to pay the price.



The leadership issue is but one element necessary to force us into the debate. It is only half of the equation. We have to get more inventive with our output. With only four TDs, by and large the media ignore us. Entire weeks go by with only a handful of meaningful mentions. It is back to the chicken and the egg. Unless our message gets out we won’t have more TDs and unless we have more TDs we won’t get our message out. Our press team needs to think up creative ways of cracking into the media by making it impossible to ignore us. To supplement the leaflets and community work done on the ground we need the Sinn Féin message coming across the media more than it is.



Cries in the wilderness…



Various people including Toiréasa Ferris have vented their dissatisfaction with Sinn Féin in the south. Still it seems to me that en masse, as a party, we don’t seem to be engaging with the obvious problem of static support in a time of massive political disorder - like a dysfunctional family ignoring the alcoholic father. Even if you scroll down to Ruadhán’s previous article below there is only there is only one comment in response. It is as if we think we are due one good poll result and after we magically get it then everything will be dandy. Or that after we get seven TDs (enough for a technical group in Leinster House and a bit of guaranteed airtime) we’ll be grand. These things are not on the cards as of now – and they won’t be if we trundle on month after month without addressing our problems.



Finally and in conclusion…



At the Ogra Shinn Féin National Congress in Belfast in November, Gerry Adams called for ‘impatient Republicans’ to stand up and be counted. He’s right. A bit more constructive impatience is what will turn it around for us.

As Pat Doherty might say...

What a marvellous win for Sinn Fein in Fermanagh South Tyrone.

But today its more apt to quote Arlene Foster : "This will lift the whole country ". I think you might be right Arlene. You might just be right.

Boy was it close but what a testimony to the hard work of the whole party to stand its ground against the orange order candidate and the rather paltry attempt by the SDLP to aid him.

The republican struggle is not about electoral politcs and is not epitomised by electoral politicals. It is epitomised by the hard work, tenacity and commitment to win through and step by step build the republican project in the 32 counties as demonstrated by Michelle Gildernew and all the Sinn Fein team who supported her.

This not just another electoral result. This is a testimony to the trust that voters in FST and across the 6 counties placed in SF yesterday.

Indeed this was a marvellous win. Fair play to Michelle and all the team. You did us proud.

What would a Lib Dem Government mean for Scottish independence?

Naturally the focus of Republicans these last few weeks of the British election has been the building of strength in the 6 counties in order to further the strategy of removing the last part of Ireland from the union and building a new Ireland.

Only 13 miles east the same project is being pursued in Scotland by the Scottish National Party.

The enjoyable SNP Tactical Voting blog is providing excellent focus on the Scottish elections which have so frequently been lost in the London-centric view of the BBC. Amongst some excellent reviews of the various constituencies and the prospects of SNP candidates in their quest for independence is a consideration of what the strategic implications for Scotland might be if the man of the moment in Britain, Nick Clegg, wins big. A Liberal Democrat victory may actually weaken the Scottish pursuit of independence while perversely as noted in the British Times today a Tory victory may aid it.

However that being said it could be that a Liberal Democrat move to link voting strength to seats won would aid the Scottish nationalists who under such a scheme would presumably come close to tripling their no. of seats.

What ever the results in Scotland, Wales or England our project will continue to build its own momentum independent of that but its nice to know that while we work to end the union here we have friends and allies in the Scottish and Welsh govt. doing the same and helping create a context where London more and more readily focuses on itself rather than other countries.

Tapadh leat SNP Tactical Voting for the following consideration of the Liberal Democrat phenomenon:

"So what would a Lib Dem Government mean for Scotland, whether in its own right or with Labour as the minor partner? And in particular, what effect would this rug-pull from under the SNP’s feet mean for independence?

We could, overnight, move towards a Britain that adopted an aggressively pro-Europe stance, a Britain that had sensible policies on civil liberties, a Britain that was intent on scrapping Trident and a Britain that was significantly more serious than has hitherto been on tackling climate change? I know I should stop myself but it’s so easy to get swept up in the tantalising prospect of the next Government not being Tory or Labour. Clegg may not be the political equivalent of Jedward after all but the full Gary Barlow, the long-haul Lionel Ritchie. He could be the everlasting Diana Ross! Imagine that?

I could honestly see support for independence sink to single figures in such circumstances. It would certainly make Alex Salmond’s job significantly harder than it would have been had he been going up against the hated Tories at Westminster. How can you fight against the feel-good political result of the century?

I could even see Alex Salmond opting to retire in the face of this altered terrain. Fight youth with youth and leave Deputy Leader Nicola Sturgeon to pick up the reins and devise a new strategy to heave independence forwards. Let’s be honest, spitting out ‘Lib Dem cuts’ has even less of an impact than the Tory or Labour variety.

Then again, there is a persuasive theory out there that a Lib Dem/Labour coalition may well be the perfect result for Nationalists in Scotland. Five years of cuts, however necessary they may be, will be painful and there is a chance that Labour, the Lib Dems and the Tories will be seen as three cheeks of the same bahookey, however biologically improbable that may seem. Were the fairy dust of Lib Dems in Government to evaporate quickly, Scotland may take a new look at independence and see it as an attractive option, even through a process of elimination. The Tory years were painful and the Labour years were wasteful, perhaps a separate Scotland really is the bright new dawn that we’re all crying out for.

That said, if the reasons for Scotland being independent are so that we don’t get taken into illegal wars, so that we don’t gorge on nuclear power, so that we aren’t saddled with nuclear weapons and so that we can get involved with the EU more, those arguments will surely be weakened by a Liberal Democrat Government that shares those views. You would have to search pretty hard for a clear dividing line between an independent Scotland and a Clegg-governed UK.

So, if the unthinkable happens and Nick Clegg is carried over the line on a wave of gregarious goodwill and British bonhomie, there is a real risk (if you choose to see it that way) that Scotland will sink into the warm fuzz of a Liberal Democrat United Kingdom and not look back."

A view from 2007 about what was going to happen to Sinn Féin- Was it accurate?

Below is a comment and an article I received to the Post "Can Sinn Féin change from within?"  Once again I felt the contribution was too valuable to leave as a comment so I've posted it as an article.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I came across the article below and it was printed in the Socialist Voice in July 2007. This paper is the mouth piece of the Communist Party and I feel the article should be dusted down and looked at again today.

The article more or less predicted what was going to happen to Sinn Féin following the results of the 2007 election. It predicted that we would be squeezed out of the media and our strategy of over reliance on electoral success, and our elected representatives, would lead to decline or stagnation.

We are all aware of the debate going on at present within the party and personally I think we need to look at things in terms of what works and what doesn't. Radicalism reformism, it's all a load of bolox! The objective is a 32 county socialist republic and that essentially means the destruction of two corrupt states and helping to create a new Europe. Therefore our intent is clearly radical. The means of how we get to that object is however not clear at all.

However, the article below is written by somebody from outside the party and its analysis of what would happen to Sinn Féin should be looked at by all those people interested in advancing the ideals of Sinn Féin and helping us get to the creation of a 32 county socialist republic.

Remember this was written in 2007

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Republicanism tripped up by the national question

The fall-out from the failure of Sinn Féin to make an electoral breakthrough and the loss of an important Dáil seat in the Dublin area continues to rumble on and to cause much debate within the republican movement.

Sinn Féin had hoped to capitalise on the momentum following its success in the Northern Assembly elections and the re-establishment of the Executive. The peace process provided Sinn Féin with great photo opportunities for leading individuals, particularly Southern personalities. They had easy access to the Taoiseach’s office, as well as to Downing Street and the White House.

They now find themselves in a situation where the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive continue to take root and are bedded down, leading to fewer political crises that could propel them into the limelight and give them the opportunity to appear to be central to any solution.

Their strength in Dáil Éireann is reduced, and the technical group that gave them a platform in the last Dáil is now obsolete. Fianna Fáil was clever enough to mop up the independents to make sure that minority parties will have little or no say.

Sinn Féin will now have to operate in a more hostile corporate media environment, with photo opportunities becoming few and far between and with less access to the Taoiseach’s office and Downing Street. There is the likelihood of becoming just another small party, receiving little publicity and with invitations to appear on television beginning to dry up.

As we have pointed out many times in Socialist Voice, the political establishment, both in Ireland and Britain, was not unduly concerned about republican weapons and their decommissioning but was more concerned about securing the decommissioning of radical republican politics.

The comment reportedly made by Pat Doherty, that there was “too much ideology” in Sinn Féin, will come as a surprise to many within that party. The leadership are clearly attempting to circumscribe the nature and the extent of the debate allowed and the conclusions and lessons to be learnt from the debate now under way.

Judging by some statements by leading republicans, they would have settled for a similar deal to that secured by the Green Party, with a “green paper” on Irish unity thrown in. In the majority of constituencies where Sinn Féin did badly, left-wing independents polled well. Many working people were not impressed by talk of being “ready for government.” They have had the experience of the Labour Party being ready for government for years, promising everything and delivering little.

People understand politics from their own immediate experience and demands. What may be a priority for one person or group or a particular section of the population may not automatically translate itself throughout the Irish countryside. Nor can one political strategy cross over where there is a different set of problems and demands that require a different political strategy. The national question is more than just partition, and progressive forces need to take a much broader approach to its resolution.

Simply having a strategy for getting into and staying in government, regardless of what you stand for or do while in government, will lead only to growing opportunism, demoralisation, and defeat. The left has to get back to radical street politics, with the mobilisation of working people, uniting them on clear demands and goals.

Republicanism is a limited ideology if it is not connected to the transforming of society and the empowering of working people. It is empty if it does not address both political and economic democracy. Fianna Fáil can call itself a “republican party,” but we know that there is little of republicanism within its ideology.

Republicans are faced with a dilemma. You can’t be in government in the Northern Executive implementing conservative policies while in the South be engaged in making radical demands and taking radical political actions. Is not the point of being in government fighting for and, more importantly, implementing people-centred policies, providing the means to broaden out the struggle and building the potential forces for progress? It is not less ideology that we need but a deeper understanding of the nature and course of the struggle.

The national question, as the CPI has argued for decades, requires a more sophisticated political strategy, centred on the interests of working people. This will require the unity of all progressive forces, united in joint action. It will take time and patient political coalition-building.

The over-emphasis on electoralism fosters a false sense of politics and in many instances disempowers people and reduces them to mere election fodder. Republicans need to address the nature of opportunism and what gives rise to it.

The problem with Sinn Féin in the South - It's not just about our presentation, it's about our vision!

Below is a piece received from Ban Sidhe and it was meant to be a comment in response to a piece from 17th July entitled "Establishing A Political Narrative".

However, when I read this piece I felt that it was too good to be left as a comment and deserved to be posted as a separate piece. For me it is the best analysis I have read concerning the failure of Sinn Féin to have grown in power and influences in the South, in the manner we would have hoped. It also covers what we need to do to move Sinn Féin forward to achieve the goals we have for the party.

This is quite a long piece, but I feel it is really worth reading.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------





Let me apologise in advance for the length of this post, but it is a complicated subject and I want to cover it all. I never get to talk about Irish politics due to my blog being about Palestine:)

The debate on Sinn Féin’s narrative and the counter-narrative is fascinating as we all try to deal with the fact that the only alternative to the current government parties that has any prospect of achieving electoral success was not embraced by an electorate facing a disastrous economic crisis.

That economic crisis is hitting us harder than many other countries because as we can see the money was salted away by corrupt bankers, property speculators and assorted scallywags who were the darling of a fawning media and establishment politicians who help them us as exemplars and denounced anyone who questions this as economic illiterates.

In these circumstances people did turn to alternatives but they did not turn to the only one that had any reasonable chance of exercising power so they elected Joe Higgins in Dublin, and an assortment of Trotskyites across Dublin. They did not turn to Sinn Féin and we are wondering why.

The answers tell us about honest Joe, about the lack of community work about the need to be relevant to the 26 etc etc etc but the first thing we need to recognise if we are to earn the votes of the electorate is to recognise that they had the chance to vote for us and they rejected us in favour of others.

The last thing we want to do is think of this as merely a presentational matter, or tinker with our message, retreat from serious political work or retreat into clientelism. That is not to say that we should not consider our presentation, that we should not tinker with our message, question the type of serious political work we are engaged in or work hard for our local communities and constituents. We need to do all of these things but doing these alone or more importantly doing all of these in the absence of a diagnosis of our recent electoral malaise will not help and could even make things worse.

Joe Higgins was not elected because he had an army of community based councillors behind him delivering constituency services. He was not seen as less economically illiterate as Mary Lou – he was much more vulnerable to that criticism than Sinn Fein. His rhetoric was not some sophisticated newspeak that hid the socialist message behind clever choices of words. Yet he won – he attracted the votes that Sinn Féin failed to and we need to wonder why – more than that we need to find out why!

The reason I am so hostile to seeking to deal with this at the level of message and image (and I repeat these things are important and do need to be worked on) but the reason I do not want to start from these points is that I think they avoid the major problem we have.

In the previous election when Sinn Féin failed to break through at Leinster House. This was pre economic crisis and pre the bail out of the bakers so we could understand that the electorate would find the status quo relatively attractive but we all heard the media pundits and some Republicans muttering about Sinn Féin’s irrelevance and our “economic illiteracy”.

Then we had a range of people telling us that we had to move with the times- the 6 counties is either sorted, or stable, or stagnant and Sinn Féin as a party of the North was irrelevant to the south and we needed to place ourselves in the centre in the south, with realistic policies and southern leaders.

The recession led a to a half-hearted fightback as we old fashioned Rebels with our Che t-shirts laughed at the cheek of the thieving bankers who got us into this mess turning to the governing parties to bail them out by cutting our social welfare budgets while foreclosing on small businesses and driving us out of work. The revolution was still on – we were right all along and could smugly puff on our best havanas.

But there was no analysis of what type of country we actually sought to build and how we intended to get into a position to do so. This election would be our election – the big parties had let everyone down and we had tidied ourselves up and would not throw any hostages to fortune and we were keeping everyone strictly on message.

After this election we scratch our heads and wonder what we have to do to win elections in the 26 counties – and we again look at our image and our message and we do not examine our basic and economic paradigm.

The basic problem for Sinn Féin is that we need to have a clear vision right now for this country. The war in the north is over and we are moving into a period of nation building – where we are seeking to reconcile with unionists and bring them into our nation. In the south we have a partitioned economy that has squandered one of the fastest periods of growth that any country has experienced in many decades and is now in the depths of recession. We are trying to become relevant and electable by being “leaderly”, by being “respectable”, by being a “safe pair of hands to mind the shop” at the same time as talking about workers rights and an Ireland of equals.

Why should people vote for Sinn Féin if we are just like the big parties only with a social conscience? They already have the Labour Party for that. And now they have the Greens. There are other parties that will crawl into coalition with the big parties for a seat at the big table and then abandon everything that made them distinct when they sat in opposition. What makes Sinn Féin any different – why should people believe that we would do any different?

Clearly whilst we do not want to appear to be looney lefties, and we do want to place ourselves in the political mainstream so that we can influence politics and government, that does not mean we have to abandon left wing positions. The electorate in the past elected Tony Gregory, and in this election elected his successor and then Joe Higgins, as well as an assortment of “People Before Profits” SWP’ers. They have voted for Sinn Féin in significant numbers at various times and in this election in other parts of the country, so they are willing to vote for change but they need to believe that they will get change or at least someone who will fight for change. I do not think they believe that Sinn Féin is sufficiently different from the other parties or that we will deliver change if we are elected.

We have had an MEP in Dublin and the socialist paradise did not arrive. Joe Higgins will not deliver it either, but if he plays the left maverick, the people’s champion he may well hold onto the seat. We can’t just set ourselves the goal of being the leftist mavericks, a party of Irish Dennis Skinners, Sinn Féin is more ambitious than the Joe Higgins’ of this world – and we need to be.

Sinn Féin is not seeking to be a good opposition – we are seeking to be in government and that is much harder and requires clear thinking and clear strategies.

This is where our debate needs to concentrate – what do we want to do with the electoral strength that we are seeking? If we are seeking electoral strength to be in government but have no clear vision of what we intend to do in government then we are worse than useless. We would be better being a solid opposition than a weak and dithering government – or junior partner in a coalition with a right wing party.

One difficulty we face (that our competitors on the left can evade) is that we are a party of government in part of this country already. We are the second largest party in the Northern Assembly and that means that we are in government there – along with the DUP.

So we can be tested on our achievements or lack of them in the north. Allegations that the north is stagnant damage us in the 26 counties. The fact that the northern assembly has only limited powers and is still within the UK economic system limits the choices that we can make and the fact that we are in coalition with a right wing party (the DUP) limits them even more. We are vulnerable to accusations that we are merely in government for the sake of being in government for the “mercs and percs” as its called in the south.

In the north it is vital that Sinn Féin continues to lead from the front in government. It is vital that we exercise power to benefit our communities and seek more power to benefit our communities even more. But in doing this we face serious challenges.

The British Government economic policies and the insistence on Public Private Partnerships create major problems for us. We have to deliver investment to our communities and have to work within certain realities. But we have to ensure that we don’t start to believe that when we do the best we can that that means we are doing the best there is. We need to be good in government whilst challenging the restrictions that bind us.

We could look at the devolved parliament in Scotland and see how the SNP under Salmond is succeeding in exercising power within the UK imposed restrictions whilst at the same time pointing out what could be achieved if the restrictions were not there. The SNP seem to manage the trick of taking credit for every positive action and at the same time blaming Westminster for every failing.

Sinn Féin is seeking to develop a clear view of where we want to take things in the North. MLA’s like Martina Anderson are challenging the old ways of doing things, stretching the Civil Service and forcing them to act in new ways. Whilst we have also been outflanked on occasions but we are getting better at it and this has translated into continued electoral growth.

Our problem in the south is that we need a clear vision. We are seeking to be in government but that will not happen in the same way as in the north. The coalition in the north is based on proportional representation. Despite its limitations our vote gave us access to limited power in the first Assembly election and greater power with our result in the last elections. It has its downsides and the dual vetoes that were necessary to prevent DUP sabotage can create problems for us too. It allows them to hold us back on occasions – most obviously in the case of the abolition of the 11+. But our access to power and the benefits we have been able to deliver have allowed us to continue to build our support.

In the south we are a small party and even if we grow to 15% or 20% we will at best be eligible to entry into a coalition government and up until now these coalitions have been with one or other of the two major parties. We will not have access to government as of right, like in the north, and so we will have to look at such coalitions very differently.

This means that we have to decide why we want to be elected, and how we intend to achieve that if elected, and then we need to set about selling that to the electorate.

So what we need to do is to develop a set of strategic objectives – for the whole country taking into account the different set ups north and south. We will be in government in the north and in partnership with the government in the south, whilst in opposition to that government within the 26 counties.

We are a left-wing Republican party and we are seeking to change the nature of this country’s relationship with Britain and the internal politics and economics of Ireland. That means people need to have a real say in how their communities are governed and how their economies are developed and that bankers and other vested interests are never again allowed to distort development to suit their short-term and self-centred aims.

That to me is socialism, but if that word is a problem then ditch it. Bring on the imaging consultants and the message manipulators to get our message across but first of all let’s decide on the message.

Establishing a political narrative

This is an article i have recently received from a Sinn Féin supporter. It is clearly part of the ongoing debate that is going on in the party at the present time. For me this debate is crucial and will decide what the future holds for Sinn Féin.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There has been much discussion about the political direction Sinn Fein should follow. Those discussions have been renewed following the recent elections. This site is itself a forum for such debate and there have been posts on the need to be more left wing, to remove ourselves from centrist govt. etc. Over on other sites more hostile posters have questioned whether the party has lost its connection with the working class to more radical left groupings.

How do we answer such a question. One possible answer is we tack left to meet the challenge from that quarter. However to my mind there is also different aspect to the question. Its an aspect that would remain the same whether we were to tack left of PBP/SWP and the SP; it would remain the same even if we went straight to the center. I am talking about the word connection. The connection with the voters is that set of beliefs, assumptions, that sense of trust they have for and awareness of our party.

Connection might as easily be described as whats our message, whats our story or narrative, what are we communicating to the voters and whats their set of assumptions about us. That’s not a left wing right wing thing. It cant be answered with we need to be more left wing or more right wing but its a question of how successful are we in making voters understand our political vision and representing their wishes.

I believe that the recent elections have demonstrated that we have not yet communicated our vision to the voters successfully but rather have allowed others to instead paint a picture in the mind of voters of who Sinn Fein are. I believe that as a party we have not yet challenged that perception aggressively enough.


Before I focus on Sinn Fein’s narrative I’d like to briefly discuss other narratives which might give an idea of what I am concentrating on.

Obama - His campaign was built about the narrative of change and captured the desires of Americans for a step change in society. It also neutered his critics who tried to paint him as inexperienced. Similar to

Gordon Brown - he tried to position himself as the man who was orchestrating the global response to the depression.

The Tories say they are change, willing to make the cuts and do what needs doing

The Liberal Democrats counter that narrative by saying that Labour and the Tories are the same and only the Liberals are free of the political corruption scandals. Only they can reform westminister.

Here in the south of Ireland each party has a narrative or story its trying to communicate to voters and a counter story being told by its opponents or just something that’s associated with the party. Sometimes a counter story is told by the party against its own interests- think of John Gormley standing fastly with Fianna Fail in photo ops but then saying the greens are doing their own thing. Think of Fianna Fail’s message in 2007 that they were the only safe pair of hands and how successful that message was. Also think of how the opposition failed to counter that story and lost (luckily)

Stories and counter-stories.

No matter how just, right or good a message is it generally wont sell itself. It might do if it were the only show in town but its not. There are alternative viewpoints that its competing with and everyone else is explaining why your viewpoint is wrong and theirs is right. Some people even misread your view point and label you incorrectly. So having a clear message or political narrative with which can explain who you are and what you are about is important.

A voter needs to be able to sum your party up in a few words and you need to ensure those few words are positive, actually true, and really speak to a segment in society that has a genuine need. I think its necessary to stress this is not talking about spin - the art of lying. Its rather about ensuring you get to tell people who you are and what you are about and what your opponents are about rather than having them do it for you.

At this point in time the party is pretty much painted into a box in the mind of the southern electorate as a pre-dominantly northern ran and orientated republican party that's pro-workers but that has no decent economic policy or understanding of economic policy and who are electorally stalled and irrelevant to the debate. All the points I marked as counter-stories put out about Sinn Fein in the above table are the most commonly held beliefs about the party. Although about 7-8% of the electorate is hearing our message and connecting with it etc we are seeing, again unfortunately, that we are failing to connect with the next 7-8% of the voters that we need to be at 15% (which is not at all beyond possibility in the medium term).

Making that connection

So why aren’t we at 15% at the moment. Well surely several reasons but I believe that a key one is Sinn Fein’s inability to phrase, or word, its message so that a larger segment of regular people associate with the Sinn Fein message and feel that it represents them and their concerns in a way that they themselves might express it ie it makes a connection with them in the words of ordinary people.

No party can entirely control its message because of the prevalence of others pushing counter stories. To that end the behaviour of certain media outlets etc. who attack Sinn Fein has to be accepted as a fact and cannot be used as a reason for our loss of momentum.

We have been strongly focussed on refuting the counter stories about us by proving our economic/policy credentials via proposals and submissions and via thoughtful and weighted contributions on the Lisbon debate . We have established our southern relevance with a strong cadre of southern based party figures. We have demonstrated our ability to do the real work in govt. by constructively working in the Dail.

However such was the weight of negative propaganda that all we have succeeded in doing is standing still. Now we need to reevaluate the message so that we can grow to 15%.

I believe that Sinn Fein needs to:

(a) go back to basics as Toireasa Ferris said re community work.

(b) Continue to prove our economic/policy credibility with good work but push the message in a more insistant fashion, and in a more passionate manner. I have noted that some SF reps doing TV work are very sober and serious, getting across the message that we are a serious party with a firm grasp of the issue. That’s good but does that mean we don’t make any emotional connection with the voters.

c) We need to start taking some harder, more controversial positions. I don’t mean populist or jam for everybody positions but rather lets push the boat out a bit with costed and economically proofed proposals. People don’t know what our positions are on issues. Lets change that. The Fgers have the health reform, labour their no vote last sept etc. Whats our angle? Dail reform became a big theme for a few days. Can we be the party of reform - god knows people want institutional reform in this state.

(d) What ever words or ideas become central to our message lets not develop that message for our own consumption. This is 2009 and if our way of expressing ourselves is not the way ordinary working class people are expressing themselves then lets stop trying to change the people and instead change how we express ourselves. Our principles remain the same but we instead talk using the language of the office and the factory and the dole queue, not in language drawn from books and journals.

(e) People who are members, or like myself, only supporters, should be conscious that we can play a key part in advancing the SF message. We, with the leadership, are the key players in convincing a broader segment of society that we are capable, competent and relevant to their needs.

f) Finally once we establish a message we should not deviate from it over the short term. Don’t side track but repeat it and keep on it and then repeat it until it’s established.

IS SINN FÉIN BLOWING THE ELECTION?

I would like to know what is going on with our election campaign in the South.


Many Sinn Féin members have been out leafleting and knocking on doors for months now trying to build the Sinn Féin vote in our areas. We have done our best to get the message out locally, but I'm getting the feeling we have no real NATIONAL strategy for victory.



Sinn Féin are clearly not getting the national coverage our policies deserve. Since the beginning of this crisis we have known that the cut and tax policies of this government were a mistake. We knew what the solutions were and we released good documents on how it should be tackled and what the route forward is.



Documents like our Getting Ireland back to work one and our emergency budget submission were excellent.



I also feel we have excellent people standing for election. Mary Lou is working like crazy and the more I see of her the more I respect her hardwork, dedication and analysis. People such as Paul Donnelly, Larry O'Toole and Dessie Eillis are tireless in their work locally and are making progress. The efforts of these people are reflected across the country.



So in my opinion we are saying many of the right things and we have good people saying them.


So why are we not getting masses of people enthusiastically supporting our candidates?


To me the simple answer is;

THAT PEOPLE DON'T KNOW ABOUT OUR POLICIES AND THEY DON'T KNOW WHO OUR CANDIDATES ARE!





Why is that?





Well, to me it is clear the media have decided that they will not give much coverage to Sinn Féin. I don't wish here to get into a debate on the reasons for this, but the southern media have never liked republican politics. This means that we will not get much media coverage between now and election day.





But this should be no surprise to anybody and 44 Parnell Square should have known this was going to happen and planned an election campaign accordingly. We need an election campaign that is better than other parties. It needs to be more adventurous, more dynamic and more relevant to real people's lives. We need a campaign that will get people talking about the issues and include Sinn Féin in those discussions.





Instead what have we done?
































We've done what everybody else has done. We've got our candidates to smile at a camera and we've spent days sticking up bloody posters of them over over the place.


Don't get me wrong., I like Daithi. he's a great guy with a lovely smile, but come on can we not do better than this? This doesn't make us stand out from the others, it simply shows us to be just like the others.

We should not just conform to what the other parties are doing, we should be different. The media won't let us talk to the people, so let's use our posters. We must not be about smiles and shirts and ties, we must be about issues.

Why is Dublin not covered with posters such as


1) The govt must
.
Spend to save jobs
.
Not to keep people
on the dole
.
To save jobs
Vote Sinn Féin

2)
We said no to Lisbon
.
We need an MEP who
RESPECTS that
.
Vote Mary Lou
Vote Sinn Féin

3)
TAX THOSE THAT
CAUSED THIS MESS
.
NOT WORKING PEOPLE
.
VOTE SINN FÉIN

4.
No to cuts in

Welfare benefit

Vote Sinn Féin

ETC

It's not too late for 44 Parnell Square to change the strategy, but it will be soon. If we don't start being more creative in our national campaign we will not make the gains we could have.

In the meantime though there is nothing to stop individual members taking things in their own hands and doing something creative. Go on, do it!

I TELL YA, SINN FÉIN IS NOT YOUR ONLY CHOICE

OK folks what have you been doing with your weekends this year? Well, if you're like me you've been out every one since January delivering leaflets, knocking on doors and going to fundraisers. OK not every weekend, but it feels that way.

However, now we're told is the time to really get out to work and not just be doing it at weekends, but 7 days a week. Just dropping leaflets is no longer enough and this needs to be replaced by actually knocking on people's doors every single night. We need to disturb people in their homes, who mostly don't want to be disturbed. We have to smile at some people who can be pretty obnoxious. We have to attempt to get our message over again and again and again and again. We have to convince the people to vote Sinn Féin, or do we?

I would like you to ask yourself why you will be out on the doorsteps doing all this work? Why are you giving up time with your family and friends? Why are you doing stuff that most people would never do in a million years? And once you've done that then decide what you will be saying to the people at their doors.

The two main reasons I will be out each night over the next five weeks are:

1) I believe in the value of Irish reunification and the creation of a 32 county republic and I support the only major 32 county political party that is trying to achieve that.

2) I'm not prepared to sit back and wait for the 32 county republic before tackling what is wrong in this country. The working class of the 26 counties are being crucified by Fianna Fáil and people should be able to vote for a party that will fight for the rights of working people now. These rights include the right to a job, the right to decent welfare benefits, the right to a decent health care and education and the right to a decent pension.

For me, at this time, the most important of these reasons is the second. Unemployment in the South has reached 380,000 and increased by over 180,000 in the past year alone. This figure is expected to pass half a million within the next twelve months. The government response is not to try and prevent this catastrophe by fighting to save jobs. No, they choose to attack working people. They failed to protect jobs at SR Techics, Waterford Crystal and Dublin Bus. They fail to have any meaningful policies to help struggling companies get over the crisis without making any of their workers redundant. They cut welfare benefits at Christmas. They tax the workers, whilst allowing the rich to avoid tax. I could go on, but the list is too long. They simply have no real job creation policies! No real job protection policies! No real retraining policies!

So, given the above what am I going to do? Well, I'll do what I think is right. I'll do what I have been doing since Christmas. I will ask people to vote Sinn Féin, but also Labour and Socialist and I'll tell any party official that tries to get me to stop to fxck off!

I will put forward our policies (which are good ones), I'll talk about the qualities of our local candidate and our European one (both really good too) and I'll ask them to vote Sinn Féin. What I will add is that they should also vote for any party that will attempt to tackle the crisis in a positive manner. I will ask them to vote for any party that puts the interests of working people first.

Yes, I know labour and the socialists etc are not perfect, but hey nor are we. However, we are all a lot better that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. This is for me the bottom line. The people of this country cannot afford to be governed by the right wing ideas of the big two parties. The left need to win the argument. we need to convince people there is a way out of the mess created by a free market, deregulated, greed is good economy.

Most of what I hear form Joan Burton I agree with. Most of what I hear from Joe Higgins I agree with. So what if at the moment they don't want anything to do with us. To me the overriding factor must be the interests of the Irish working class.  Therefore, when your speaking with local people consider asking them not just to vote Sinn Féin, but ask them to vote in the interests of all working people.

Ask them to VOTE LEFT whoever that may be.