An oath to reject violence and uphold democratic values? November 9, 2023
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Now that Sinn Féin believes it is on the verge of being part of government in Dublin it is adjusting many of its more radical policy positions. Is it unreasonable to require the party to address the fundamental matter of its connection with violence?
A continuing feature of the Troubles in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s was the terror and violence and the major role played in it by the republican movement made up of Sinn Féin and the IRA. The two organisations have been linked by labyrinthine administrative structures. During the Troubles, Sinn Féin identified itself as supporting in principle “the legitimate struggles being waged by the IRA”. The late Martin McGuinness put it succinctly when he said: “The IRA freedom fighters and the Sinn Féin freedom fighters are one and the same thing.” Gerry Adams also put it simply when as president of Sinn Féin he said: “We support the IRA.”
He offers his analysis on the history of the conflict arguing that the IRA ‘washed out in a sea of blood the effective work being done by constitutional political parties’. While PIRA didn’t help, to put it at its mildest, that seems a bit of a stretch. What precisely was this ‘effective’ work with a Unionism that for a decade and a half appeared to dismiss the bona fides of the SDLP and the very concept of power sharing much longer.
Anyhow he argues;:
In recent times Sinn Féin has sought to discontinue its association with violence and has joined with the other parties to the Belfast Agreement in affirming its “total and absolute commitment to exclusively democratic and peaceful means of resolving differences on political issues”. However, we don’t know whether the structures linking Sinn Féin and the IRA remain in place. And there have been questions about Sinn Féin’s historic links with major international terrorist organisations and dubious governments.
One would have thought that the first affirmation would cover any requirements with regard to the use of violence. And the issue of ‘structures’ is so open-ended it would seem to be such that one could ask what proof would satisfy those who were suspicious?
Note though that the following ups the ante in each successive sentence:
As Sinn Féin aspires to be in government it would be helpful if the party clarified its position on the use of violence and its connections with organisations associated with violence. Specifically has it broken all links with the IRA and will members use their influence to disband it? Will they also end their continuing glorification of violence by their commemoration of some of the bloody events of the Troubles in which they were involved? In almost every decade since the foundation of the State a century ago the republican movement has, to a greater or lesser extent, resorted to violence. It is time definitively to clarify for ourselves and for the world that violence has no place in our democracy.
He argues the following:
A possible way of achieving this would be for the new Electoral Commission, which is now responsible for registering political parties, to require as a condition of registration that parties reject violence, declare loyalty to the State and undertake faithfully to observe its laws and respect its democratic values. Alternatively or additionally members of the Dáil and Seanad might, before taking their seats, be required to take an oath or make an affirmation with similar wording.
But how would that deal with commemorations? Could it, is it even possible in a Republic to do so given freedom of speech and so on?
What’s curious is though that he appears to be unaware of the fact that already many Sinn Féin representatives have taken a similar oath in Northern Ireland. That for the Assembly is as follows:
- to discharge in good faith all the duties of office;
- commitment to non-violence and exclusively peaceful and democratic means;
- to serve all the people of Northern Ireland equally, and to act in accordance with the general obligations on government to promote equality and prevent discrimination;
- to promote the interests of the whole community represented in the Northern Ireland Assembly towards the goal of a shared future;
- to participate fully in the Executive Committee, the North-South Ministerial Council and the British-Irish Council;
- to observe the joint nature of the offices of First Minister and deputy First Minister;
- to uphold the rule of law based as it is on the fundamental principles of fairness, impartiality and democratic accountability, including support for policing and the courts;
- to participate with colleagues in the preparation of a programme for government;
- to operate within the framework of that programme when agreed within the Executive Committee and endorsed by the Assembly;
- to support, and to act in accordance with, all decisions of the Executive Committee and Assembly;
- to comply with the Ministerial Code of Conduct.
Now I guess the anti-democratic representatives in Sinn Féin might all be in the South and the democratic ones in the North, though given one Gerry Adams and one Martin McGuinness both clearly signed the above Stormont oath and he makes much of their history one wonders how happy he would be to accept those bona fides. Or it could be that Sinn Féin as a whole has indeed accepted the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement and indeed the exclusive primacy of constitutional and democratic and peaceful politics. I know which theory I’d put my money on.
One further thought. It has not been a single unbroken Republican movement involved in violence across that time. There are connections, but also significant ruptures. And as he well knows, Republicans across that time in numbers retreated from armed struggle and never returned to it. We know there are those who do not accept the current dispensation. But it’s also clear that the overwhelming bulk of Provisional Republicans do and have continued to do so to the extent that it is they who are one of the leading voices seeking the return of the devolved power-sharing Assembly and Executive at Stormont. Compared and contrasted with that all the agonising and fretting that characterises this article appears to be almost beside the point.
Why do conservatives dislike the world they mostly made? November 8, 2023
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Alongside the anti-establishment rhetoric and clumsy lurches to the left have come lunges to the right – or the far right: the endless culture wars against minorities, the authoritarian approach to protest and parliament, and the attacks on any institution that frustrates the Tories’ exercise of power. For years now, the Conservatives have given the impression that they don’t like the society or economy they in large part created – and that dislike, together with their deepening unpopularity, has carried the party into a strange place. Ideas previously considered heretical or too extreme are winning converts there. Feelings of anger and electoral dread mingle with feelings of excitement. For the first sustained period since the formative years of Thatcherism in the 1970s, the meaning of Conservatism is up for grabs.
There’s more than an element of truth to this, even if it is modified by various dynamics – the need to run against themselves effectively having held power for so long, the fact that conservatism isn’t a single ideological, philosophical or political strand but composed of many sometimes competing.
The truth is that conservatives often seem profoundly, almost structurally, at odds with the very dynamics they champion. Supposed free markets, individual autonomy and so on. Of course there’s tensions there, as there are on the left(s), but it is striking how much at odds they seem to be now. Fair to point out that this isn’t universal across all the centre right, and one might hesitantly point to Europe where traditional centre right and right wing formations are being flanked to their right. But it is striking looking at the Tories and the US Republicans how those parties have been in some sense captured to a greater or lesser extent by something remarkably close to the far-right.
He riffs on the appearance of Peter Thiel at Oxford – Thiel has famously been a right-wing libertarian, but one who appears unconcerned about dipping into various other noxious tropes. And Beckett argues that he is in a way an embodiment of a ‘new conservatism’.
He’s no genius to judge from his assertions. And this new conservatism appears to be characterised by incoherency rather than structured approaches. At least to judge from the following.
At first, he seems an unlikely public speaker and rightwing kingmaker. Stuttering and restless, he zigzagged in his lecture between predictable attacks on “this woke disease” and more surprising ones on the property market, which he called “the housing racket”. On the Tory idol Margaret Thatcher, he said her deregulation and tax cuts were unrepeatable, “one-time” policies. But then he said he had supported the Tory premier who disastrously tried to extend them: “I was very sympathetic to Liz Truss.”
More confusingly still, he described himself as on “the centre-right”. Yet he criticised Sunak – an increasingly aggressive social conservative and lifelong free-marketeer – as too moderate and essentially the same as Keir Starmer. By the lecture’s climax, Thiel was making assertions with which even some on the right might be uncomfortable, including arguing that fascism was “more innocent” than communism.
Perhaps the fact he feels it beholden upon him to even utter that last tells us much about the ‘new conservatism’ and its willingness to cosy up to authoritarianism and worse.
But then Beckett points to other aspects of this:
But there is more than melodrama to the current rightwing turmoil. Conservatives around the world are belatedly facing up to the inadequacies, and quite possibly outright failure, of the economic model they have supported for half a century, as a mechanism for creating widespread wealth and facilitating social mobility. That free-market capitalism is almost certainly not environmentally sustainable, as well, is a realisation that many rightwingers, including Sunak, are avoiding for as long as they can.
Conservatives are also starting to realise that in many democracies they have lost most young people, and many middle-aged ones as well. Currently, much of the right attributes this loss to the supposedly malign and unnatural spread of liberal and leftwing values – to Thiel’s “woke disease”. Yet the disdainful lack of curiosity about social change in such language suggests that the right’s values counter-revolution is probably not going to prevail.
Well, if conservatism can’t face the realities of the world it exists in and which it has in large part formed and if it has also likely lost support, small wonder the likes of Thiel and others play with anti-democratic tropes. Beckett seems to think that conservatism can refresh itself, perhaps.
Still he has one very good point about all this: “The right is going to need a fresher conservatism, more realistic about the problems and opportunities of the modern world, and about how to govern, if it is going to regain its dominance in Britain and beyond…Until that happens again, non-Tories should seize their chance.”
Election 2025? You bet! November 8, 2023
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So, the big guns are lining up behind this government going for another year and five months.
The Tánaiste has said that he would like to see the Government run to its full term in March 2025.
Micheál Martin was speaking ahead of his party’s 81st Ard Fheis which gets under way in Dublin tomorrow.
The Fianna Fáil leader said that it was important that the Government’s policies had time to “bed down and have impact”, adding that he believed there had been “substantial progress” in a number of areas including housing, health and addressing climate issues.
The two other coalition leaders, Green Party leader Eamon Ryan and Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar, have also indicated that they want to see the Government run its full term.
Where’s the surprise? Currently the government parties could argue that they’re actually doing pretty well. Their polling outstrips that of Sinn Féin and projections suggest they will have significantly more TDs returned. Their paths to government remain much more clear than that of the largest opposition party.
What is in it for them to lose? The longer they can play this out at the current levels the better. They can portray themselves as serious parties of government. They can continue to use the levers of power.
Now, of course there’s an obverse to this – that is a rather stale characterless government. But their argument would be, and is, that they are in government.
Mind you, I think the Tánaiste is being a little disingenuous in the following:
Asked about future coalition prospects with Sinn Féin, Mr Martin said that “our policies do not align with Sinn Féin”.
However, he said that anything can happen “in terms of the fragmented nature of Dáil Éireann”, adding that it was “too early and somewhat premature for pundits to be already trying to form the next government well in advance of a general election”.
Too early? Less than a year and half out is hardly too early. After all it’s not too early for him to state that the government should fill that full term.
Micheál Martin became Taoiseach on 27th of June 2020. He remained in office until 17th December 2022. Then Leo Varadkar took over as Taoiseach and has been in that role since. I’d not worked out the math. But Varadkar will have served slightly less time in the roll if the government goes the full distance. That’s right isn’t it?
What you want to say – 8th November 2023 November 8, 2023
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As always, following on Dr. X’s suggestion, it’s all yours, “announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose”, feel free.
That ‘woke’ government of ours… Huh? November 7, 2023
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Lucinda Creighton made a bold claim in the Business Post this last weekend. Writing about how Sinn Féin’s lead is clear but that the outcome of the next election is much less so – hardly a particularly provocative argument, she offers this:
Among all of the parties listed in the poll, there are clear gaps in the age profile of voters who are willing to vote for the government parties. For example, among 18- to 34-year-olds, 39 per cent would vote for Sinn Féin, while only 12 percent would vote for Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil respectively. The Greens polled 5 per cent in the same demographic. The only age category where Sinn Féin is being outpolled by Fine Gael is in the over-55s.
Thus, it appears that the government parties are desperately struggling to appeal to younger voters. This is particularly interesting as the current government parties have proactively courted young voters in recent years, focusing relentlessly on liberal or ‘woke’ topics that are considered key to younger voters.
This is an intriguing statement. If I were to characterise the government the side that it had a relentless focus on ‘liberal’ or ‘woke’ topics would not be high on the list. In fact bar some chatter around the Minister of Justice being overly woke in her approach, something that I still find unlikely, I’m hard pressed to think of any such focus, relentless or otherwise.
I think a more persuasive argument is that the government is oddly like a caretaker administration, and a tired one at that, expressing no clear interest in using the levers of state to impact on issues such as housing or health. Hands-off technocratic seems as good a way as any to put it.
Even more curiously Creighton doesn’t offer any examples of the supposed wokism of the government. Instead she goes on from diagnosing the disorder without offering any sign of symptoms to offering the cure as she sees it:
This begs the question whether they can or even should attempt to compete with left-wing opposition parties on these topics, where the space is crowded, and rather would be better served by relentlessly focusing on solving problems that matter to the day-to-day lives of voters, such as housing, enterprise and the spiralling cost of living.
Huh? Now, I’m no defender of the government, bar some good rhetoric from them on Gaza/Israel, but whatever about solving those problems one couldn’t fault them with discussing them. Relentlessly, if to no great effect. Again, their aversion to interfering in markets continues to see them attack the problems with all the enthusiasm and energy of a person who finds themselves pushed into the middle of a fight they’ve no great stake in with both hands tied behind their back.
It’s almost as if Creighton is discussing something else entirely. But what and why?
The new divide in Irish politics? Populist vs… November 6, 2023
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Never fond of indulging the framing of the ‘centre’ right in this state as regards to politics, but notable, isn’t it how the next election is being cast as Fine Gael (and Fianna Fáil presumably) against the ‘populists’, as was evidenced by this contribution last week.
Of course politics is framed by class and other areas and this is, to some degree, fluff, and self-serving fluff at that as Fine Gael and others attempt to build a more favourable narrative around which to contest the election. And yet, the thought struck me, how long does all this work in the long term? I’m of the view that the most likely outcome of the next election – not the inevitable outcome, events may change this calculation, is the return of the current crew in some shape or form.
But how can Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael cast in perpetuity themselves agin the rest – those crazed populists in the Social Democrats for example. Sure, we know who Fine Gael really consider the ‘populists’ but that’s the logical implication of their argument. And this is an old story. It is entertaining reminding some people that the detente between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil is a remarkably recent development. The former party wasn’t averse to reminding people about a certain election in 1977 and who was then ‘populist’ as they saw it, until relatively recently in political terms. The hostility of then likely remains in submerged and subdued form – perhaps the political equivalent of keeping the powder dry in the hope that the status quo ante where the two parties faced off against one another more or less in isolation returns.
But that’s the problem. If Fianna Fáil was ‘populist’ then, and presumably through much of the Haughey era and after (though how to factor in the coalitions with the PDs?), albeit increasingly preaching a right of centre political approach – and see how that’s helped us with respect to housing and health, then where does that leave Sinn Féin who arguably present a platform not radically different from, say, that of the British Labour Party which few would argue was a hotbed of red revolution, let alone populism. This isn’t to criticise Sinn Féin, building support in a polity like this which has never seen a left-wing government across the decades the state has been in existence is quite some achievement. However much I might wish it was more left-wing, I’m amazed it is doing so relatively well even as it stands. Of course having the other two parties in diminished forms is no harm. And even still SF may not make it.
But perhaps the plan is to hope that somehow, in some way, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael grab back support from where it departed. That at the next election the Sinn Féin threat is blunted to the point that thereafter they are able to somehow work both together and build support and somehow also diverge in such a way that they can return to that contest between themselves.
Writing all that makes me wonder because that’s an almost impossible challenge isn’t it? Particularly when one factors in the demographics of Sinn Féin support which is as Lucinda Creighton noted in the Business Post this last weekend, concentrated on the 18 to 34 year old demographic. 39% of that demographic, as against 12 %% FG and Fianna Fáil respectively. Where does that vote go? Hardly at all back to those two parties.
Which raises a range of different questions. If Sinn Féin was blunted, a big if, could that vote go in a different direction entirely? And what if some real populists emerge?
‘Undermining Britain’ November 6, 2023
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UK GOVERNMENT officials have reportedly drawn up proposals to broaden the definition of “extremism” to include anyone who “undermines” Britain and its institutions – raising fears independence campaigners could be criminalised.
The definition has been prepared by civil servants working for Michael Gove and has raised concerns among officials it is too broad and could lead to the beliefs and activities of mainstream groups becoming illegal, reports The Observer.
One Whitehall official told the paper: “The concern is that this is a crackdown on freedom of speech. The definition is too broad and will capture legitimate organisations and individuals.”
And:
Gove’s Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities started a review of non-violent extremism earlier in the year and is expected to publish a national cohesion and counter-extremism plan including the new definition of extremism shortly.
The new definition reads: “Extremism is the promotion or advancement of any ideology which aims to overturn or undermine the UK’s system of parliamentary democracy, its institutions and values.”
There are concerns this could encompass Scottish independence campaigners and activists for Welsh independence and Irish reunification, among others.
A document seen by The Observer in which Whitehall officials raised concerns about the new definition also claimed that the Muslim Council of Britain, Palestine Action and Muslim Engagement and Development could be considered extremists under the new wording.
That latest poll November 6, 2023
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Fine Gael has gained two points to 21% while Fianna Fáil is up one point to 18%.
The third coalition party, the Greens, are unchanged at 4%.
Sinn Féin support has slipped by four points but it remains the party with the most support at 31%.
The poll indicates that Social Democrats and the Labour Party are unchanged at 5% and 3% respectively.
Aontú is unchanged at 3% while People Before Profit-Solidarity gained two points at 4%.
Independents and others are up one point at 11%.
Could it be that the Gaza/Israel issue is inflecting this? If so why is it that the Social Democrats and Sinn Féin haven’t benefited given their very clear position on the issue? Indeed Sinn Féin has fallen. Would one expect the government parties who have articulated a good line on the conflict to have benefited more?PBP-SOL see increased support but again a fairly minor increase.
Or is it that the party conferences/think-ins, call them what one will, have brought the government parties to greater prominence? Or something else again?
Now, if all this was sustained in the next poll or sees further changes in the directions above, then that might suggest something happening. But as it is the changes remain so small, bar the SF fall, that it sits well within general polling to date and even with regard to SF that’s not unprecedented and it too remains within its general band of support. Here’s the graph.
Left Archive: An Phoblacht/Republican News, Volume 9, No. 19, 14th of May, 1987, Sinn Féin November 6, 2023
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To download the above please click on the following link.
Please click here to go the Left Archive.
Many thanks to the person who forwarded this to the Archive.
This edition of An Phoblacht/Republican News joins others in the Archive, but is of particular interest since it reports on the death of the Active Service Unit led by Jim Lynagh at Loughgall in May 1987. At twenty-four pages it is these events which dominate the content.
The Loughgall ambush took place on 8 May 1987 in the village of Loughgall, County Armagh, Northern Ireland. An eight-man unit of the Provisional Irish Republican Army(IRA) launched an attack on the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) base in the village. An IRA member drove a digger with a bomb in its bucket through the perimeter fence, while the rest of the unit arrived in a van and fired on the building. The bomb exploded and destroyed almost half of the base. Soldiers from the British Army‘s Special Air Service(SAS) then returned fire both from within the base and from hidden positions around it in a pre-planned ambush, killing all of the attackers.[1] Two of them were subsequently found to have been unarmed when they were killed.[1][5]
A civilian was also killed and another wounded by the SAS after unwittingly driving into the ambush zone and being mistaken for IRA attackers.[1]
The joint British Army/RUC operation was codenamed Operation Judy.[6][7] It was the IRA’s biggest loss of life in a single incident during the Troubles.[8]
There is a broader context in which the ambush took place where Lynagh and others sought to press home a strategy of the destruction of British army and RUC bases and obstructing their rebuilding in order to ultimately prise away the grip of the security forces on more extensive areas.
Various articles offer individual portraits of the dead Volunteers and there are photographs from their funerals.
The headline is notable – entitled Loughgall Martyrs, with a subheading ‘Fuair siad bás ar son mhuintir na Éireann’.
The Opinion column argues:
ON FRIDAY EVENING, May 8th, a group of IRA Volunteers set out to attack the RUC barracks at Loughgall, County Armagh. They went with courage and skill and, above all, with comradeship and a firm belief in the correctness of their action. They went as republican soldiers who had carefully planned and hoped to successfully inflict a maJor blow against part of the British war machine which occupies six counties of our country.
And:
They did so because they were politicised and highlymotivated republicans committed to the armed struggle which is the only means by which the British government can be forced to break its stranglehold on political progress and peace.
The strength of that stranglehold was epitomised by the ambush at Loughgall. The IRA Volunteers were greatly outnumbered and outarmed by an occupying army with a vast array of military equipment and surveillance technology at its disposal. The Volunteers could have been arrested but it was never in the minds of the SAS to arrest them. They planned to take no prisoners and they took none, murdering an uninvolved civilian in the process.
Republicans do not complain about the way in which the British forces carried out their operation. Centuries of British terror have taught us to expect it.
The piece concludes:
The memory of the Loughgall Martyrs will be in the minds of republicans as we bring forward our struggle to victory. It will be in the mi”nds of the political activists of Sinn Fein as they take the war to the ground for so long occupied by those politicians who have made their peace with the war-mongers who carried out the Loughgall massacre. It will be in the minds of their comrade Volunteers of the Irish Republican Army, the army of our country, as they take the war to the heart of the enemy and inflict mounting defeats on it until it has no option but to go, and go for good. The Loughgall Martyrs did not live to see the Ireland they fought for. Let us ensure that we in this generation fight on ever harder, ever stronger until we achieve the democratic socialist republic. Only then can we say that we have lived up to their memory and won their victory.
There is also a small piece on the civilian killed in the attack – Anthony Hughes.
The last page shows an IRA colour party firing shots in the air and is captioned: Loughgall will become a tombstone for British policy in Ireland and a bloody milestone in the struggle for freedom, justice and peace.
Sunday and other stupid statements from this week November 5, 2023
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All contributions welcome.
The Business Post editorial offers interesting logic in the following paragraph this morning:
The world needs to reduce its penchant for flying to meet essential climate mitigation goals. But doing so must be a coordinated global effort. As an island nation on the periphery of Europe, maintaining a limit on the number of flights to and from Ireland merely to keep passenger numbers below an arbitrary ceiling would be an act of self-harm. The cap should be lifted.
Stephen Collins in fine form this week in the Irish Times:
The Government parties in the Republic also have a role to play in helping to assuage unionist fears that they are being manoeuvred into a united Ireland. The constant stoking of those fears by politicians who can’t resist beating the united Ireland drum is no help at all to hopes of genuine reconciliation. At a more basic level, the endless repetition of the cliche about 700 years of British oppression in popular culture is not only a travesty of history but serves to perpetuate the ideology of those who believe that killing people is a legitimate way to achieve political ends.
Polly Toynbee in the Guardian argues for British Labour to say and do… nothing.
Decent people call for a “ceasefire” because the bombing is unbearable, including MPs representing some with Palestinian families in mortal peril. But among those Labour people who inflicted the shame of antisemitism on the party, watch out for disingenuous “ceasefire” calls failing to damn Hamas. That’s the dividing line, says Labour’s leadership: there’s leeway for frontbenchers to call for an end to the horror, if their language stays within the broad framework of Labour policy. It’s a linguistic tightrope. For Labour’s mayors and Scottish leader, without foreign policy responsibilities, “ceasefire” is an easy choice.
What an irony if Labour damages its election chances by falling apart over something an opposition can’t influence. Because no one can influence these events, it’s easier to land the moral blame closer to home – so Labour is the useful punch bag for the Gaza tragedy. All 20 of the parliamentary constituencies with the highest proportion of Muslim voters are held by Labour. In addition, in blue wall marginals a few defecting Muslim voters could also prevent Labour winning seats.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 