Irish Political News

I noted the other day that “Perhaps not coincidentally we’re now also being treated to the memoirs of Jonathan Powell”. The latest revelations on the Powell front came yesterday with the news that:

Powell reveals in his memoirs that 10 years later the DUP established its own secret channel to Sinn Féin when Paisley’s party won the elections to the Northern Ireland assembly of 2003. The channel was kept secret because the DUP refused to meet Sinn Féin at the time on the grounds that the IRA was still active. Powell says: “They [the DUP] were no different from the British government at the time of John Major or Margaret Thatcher saying they never had contacts with the IRA - but actually [they were] doing so as well. It did play an important role in making possible that extraordinary meeting between Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams. They had never met, they had never spoken until they sat down for that photo-opportunity in March 2007. If you hadn’t had that back channel building confidence over time, it would have been difficult.”

How convenient that this should appear, legitimised by the former Prime Ministers advisor no less, just at the point that Sinn Féin appear to be suggesting that the PIRA Army Council will disband in the case that the DUP are willing to see policing devolved to the Assembly.

Is this an instance where pressure is now being put on the DUP, perhaps even implicitly pointing to the idea that further revelations might follow along the same lines from other sources if they don’t play ball? How very interesting.

On the other hand, reading this mornings Guardian perhaps a certain parity of … well, something or another creeps in, because we are told regarding the Bloody Sunday Inquiry that:

The inquiry cost the taxpayer around £200m that could have been spent on other things. It has still not reported as of the time of writing. And it has failed to give satisfaction to either side. The nadir for me was when Martin McGuinness said to me in a private conversation some years later that he didn’t know why we had done it: he thought an apology would have been quite sufficient. The aim had been to demonstrate to nationalists and republicans that we were even-handed and that the British government no longer had anything to hide. It had that impact in the short term. But we repented at leisure.

Accurate? Who knows. Helpful? Perhaps not.

According to the Guardian :

The IRA will disband its army council as part of a deal to secure the devolution of policing in Northern Ireland, a senior republican has suggested.

Pat Doherty, vice-president of Sinn Féin, said he thought that all of the outstanding issues between unionists and republicans – including the disbanding of the IRA army council – could be resolved.

Devolution of policing and justice in Northern Ireland is supposed to be completed by May. But the Democratic Unionists and the Ulster Unionists are resisting that deadline, saying that more time needs to be allowed to build up public confidence.

Which get us to the crux of the matter.

Both parties have called for the IRA’s army council to be disbanded before the devolved administration takes control of policing and justice.

A problem? Well, seemingly not, for…

In an interview with the Guardian, Doherty suggested that the IRA would disband its army council as part of an overall settlement of this issue.

“I have no doubt, given all of the issues that we have resolved from the very beginning, all of the issues that you may have thought were insurmountable, … on the British side … the unionist side and the republican side, if we are serious about moving this whole process forward … then we can deal with any issue,” Doherty said.

Doherty said he thought the republicans and the DUP were both serious about taking the process forward.

And then says much the same thing again.

“If you look at any of what were perceived as insurmountable issues some time back, all of them were resolved. I have no doubt that issues can be resolved if there is dialogue.”

In a process which has been so heavily choreographed it is difficult to tell whether this is yet another pre-arranged step or whether this time Republicans are throwing some meat out to mute the baying of the DUP. Because surely this step has to be the most meaningless of any taken thus far. We’re moving into semi-theological territory. The inner council of an organisation which has, if the reports are to be taken at face value from the Independent Monitoring Commission, essentially suspended operations, which is locked into power-sharing, which voted to work with the PSNI.

And yet, who knows what resonances this might have beyond the specific issue. Does it add or reduce the legitimacy of other groups with self-described Army Councils? Does it strengthen or weaken the position of Sinn Féin to cast loose the ties and substance of another organisation? How does this play on the ground. For those of us with longish memories from a WP background the image of local residents in estates up and down the country calling on the supposed muscle that accompanied the WP, but was (honestly) never evident on that level, to deal with drug dealers and such like is still fresh. The disappointment when it was clear that marches might indeed take place but that they would be supported by the community rather than a group with a certain set of initials was evident. It’s a small thing, and one would presume Sinn Féin are aware of that. Probably more than most since they seemed to use the WP template (particularly as regards community politics) as both inspiration and cautionary tale. And in so doing have made steps forward and backwards - which only goes to prove that no two situations are exactly the same. But even so, the residual power and authority that comes from such ‘connections’ is not to be underestimated. There is of course another fact which is that Sinn Féin can be more overt about its former connections, that an entire generation of its political strength were entirely open about their part in the events of the past three or four decades and this too has a substance that the WP (and I’m obviously talking here about the South in particular) didn’t - in the main - have.

Perhaps not coincidentally we’re now also being treated to the memoirs of Jonathan Powell. Which weirdly describes a sort of opposite dynamic to the one above where the Army Council is apparently being sent a P45 (It’s in the post… probably). For we learn that:

Tony Blair offered to take the unprecedented step of holding secret masked meetings with the IRA leadership as he fought to save the Northern Ireland peace process from collapse over the contentious issue of illegal weapons, a senior aide reveals today.

In a sign of the extraordinary lengths the former prime minister was prepared to go to during his decade-long quest for a settlement, he tried repeatedly to meet the IRA’s eight-strong Army Council to persuade them to disarm and sign up to the peace deal.

Now that’s a meeting I’d have liked to have taken place. What would they have talked about? How many familiar faces would be sitting around the table? Still, I wonder is the following correct?

The revelation that Blair was prepared to become the first leader of a major country to meet a proscribed terrorist organisation - at the urging of Bill Clinton soon after he left the White House in 2001 - comes in a new book by Jonathan Powell, the former No 10 chief of staff, serialised in the Guardian this week.

Powell, who told the Guardian on Saturday that the west should now talk to al-Qaida, tells the paper today: “Tony was always convinced of the powers of persuasion that he had to win people over. About three or four times he suggested to Gerry Adams that he should meet the IRA Army Council. Adams said ‘well I’m not really sure about that’. One time he said ‘yes, maybe’, but then it came to nothing.”

And why the reticence? Well, okay, perhaps such reticence was for obvious reasons. And meanwhile, al-Qaida? Surely the world has wobbled a bit on its axis this weekend.

Asked how the meetings would have been conducted, Powell says of the IRA leaders: “I suppose they could have worn masks.”

The disclosure that Blair wanted to woo the leadership of the terrorist organisation that came close to assassinating his two immediate predecessors as prime minister is the most dramatic illustration to date of the former prime minister’s determination to bring republicans in from the cold.

Most interesting, referring back to choreography are the following points ‘also revealed’:

· Blair offered a secret deal to Adams during the 1998 Good Friday agreement to release IRA prisoners after one year. In public Blair only offered to release them after two years.

The rather more mundane revelation that:

· Powell held a series of secret meetings with the Sinn Féin leaders Martin McGuinness and Adams, often being driven around by republicans on lengthy detours to republican safe houses in the predominantly Catholic Derry to avoid detection.

Er…okay then. The more interesting again… and who is to say this won’t have those who consider the whole thing to be a sham in a fervour of excitement…

· Blair redrafted an IRA statement at Chequers in the presence of Adams in 2003 and Powell regularly drafted Sinn Féin statements.

· Blair was prepared to have a showdown with the British army over its initial refusal to remove watchtowers from the strongly republican South Armagh. The head of the army in Northern Ireland threatened to resign, though an agreement was eventually reached.

· The identity of the key IRA leader who decided republicans should disarm. Powell declares there would have been no peace deal without the agreement of Brian Keenan, described by Powell as “the biggest single threat to the British state” when he ran the IRA’s British bombing campaign.

The less surprising… nay, bloody obvious point that…

· Adams and McGuinness told Powell and Blair on several occasions that the IRA needed to hold on to its arms because they were under threat from the dissident Real IRA.

And also:

Powell admits to the Guardian today that Blair lavished attention on Sinn Féin for the simple reason that it had direct influence over people who controlled weapons. “Seamus Mallon’s [the former deputy leader of the SDLP] complaint is that we talked to Sinn Féin because they had the guns. My answer to that is: yes and your point is?

Which is - of course - why the wailing and gnashing of teeth from those who know better about how the ‘extremes’ prevailed is so irritating (and we saw Ed Moloney riffing on this at the launch of his book on Paisley last week when he decried the success of SF and the DUP). Well, yes, but their tactical positions have shifted substantially from the extremities whatever about the strategic goals they retain.

And then there are other issues…

Powell writes that after the first Downing Street meeting with Sinn Féin, Adams approached Blair for a private word to underline his commitment to the process, but also his determination to become the first republican leader in Irish history to avoid a major split.

Powell wrote: “Adams … said to Tony that he could of course split the movement any time we wanted him to, but that his aim was to carry them all along, and that he was at them persuading every day.”

The remarks persuaded Blair that Adams was serious and that he would accept a deal that fell short of Irish unity. This paved the way for 10 years of bumpy negotiations in which Powell often embarked on secret missions to meet the republican leadership.

Powell gives a vivid account of how he was summoned by McGuinness to Derry in November 1998 as the government tried to persuade the IRA to decommission its arms. Powell wrote: “When I got to Derry I stood apprehensively outside the Trinity hotel waiting for someone to recognise me. Two seedy-looking men came up and said: ‘Martin sent us,’ then ushered me into a waiting car.”

Powell said it was right to make concessions to Sinn Féin. “We certainly believed there was every chance that the IRA might go back to violence, just as they had with the Canary Wharf bomb [in 1996].”

’seedy’ he says. Those Derry Republicans - eh? What on earth would it have been like in a parallel universe in a struggle with say PD? How would his sensibilities have survived the likes of McCann? But getting back to the main point, the issue of concessions is so fraught that I’m interested to see what more is revealed, or if anything of any other significance will appear.

Still, let’s see what the DUP says, and then perhaps we’ll have a better idea about choreography…

And so this is what it comes to when you address Ógra Fianna Fáil. As reported in the Irish Times (which is going through a redesign, a reformatting and an increase in price this week, to no clear purpose that I can make out):

THE ULSTER Unionist Party (UUP) will consider Fianna Fáil as future coalition partners in Northern Ireland in years to come, Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs Éamon Ó Cuív has predicted.

Fianna Fáil, which recently started cumainn in the University of Ulster in Derry and Queens University in Belfast, is currently examining options for development in the North.

It’s quite a leap into the unknown.

Mr Ó Cuív rejected the argument put forward by some in the party that it should establish grassroots organisations in Northern Ireland, but not actually contest elections. Fianna Fáil could very quickly, he said, face applications for membership from people who were already elected to bodies in Northern Ireland and who would want to run again.

“We could find ourselves in a situation where we are confronted by Northern elections in a short time after organising there.”

He noted that Ulster Unionist Party leader Reg Empey was the only senior Unionist politician to criticise openly Fianna Fáil’s Northern expansion.

Which, it has to be said, does present at least some problems, doesn’t it? On the other hand, isn’t this rather fantastical. I’ve mentioned before how I suspect it would take a considerable length of time for Fianna Fáil to operate successfully in the terra incognito North of the border. That is, assuming it can operate at all. The example of the Northern Ireland Conservative Party - that exotic bloom translated into the so far unyielding soil of the six counties - hardly gives comfort to those eager to progress the national agenda by cross border political means. Of course the NICP was, arguably, a bit too exotic. Fianna Fáil at least has the qualification of coming from this island and that border is fairly permeable.

Despite this, Mr Ó Cuív, who is Éamon de Valera’s grandson, said: “The question that Ulster Unionists will be asking is that if they are bound to share power with a nationalist party, would they prefer it to be Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil or do they think that the SDLP can reverse the tide.”

He believed that the Ulster Unionist Party could see Fianna Fáil “as the favoured party. The answer to this is not black and white,” he told the Ógra Fianna Fáil conference.

Fianna Fáil should not limit its catchment just to nationalist voters who supported Sinn Féin, or the SDLP, or who did not vote at all.

Still, why the Ulster Unionists? Why not the DUP? Or is that a bridge too far for Fianna Fáil. And yet, one might suggest that the DUP had less historical baggage as regards Stormont than the UUP, and arguably a greater - albeit newfound - appetite for economic and political pragmatism that would chime well with that of Fianna Fáil. But of course the DUP has taken up with Sinn Féin, so that option is off the table for the moment. Whether this indicates some calculation by FF that the big soggy centre of NI politics will swing UUPwards in the future is an interesting thought to contemplate, but I doubt it.

And yet, then again, why not the UUP? Mild, centrist, polite, used in a former incarnation to government and to all the messy compromises that come with government. Able to forge and use a cross class coalition of interests for the best part of forty years. Less in thrall to the religious dimension than the DUP, but still aware of and able to play to that dimension. And how convenient that it should slip the shackles of the Orange Order. Yes. That would do nicely when one thinks about.

That we are talking at base about parties of the centre, centre/right, does not appear to faze Ó Cuív one iota. After all, the UUP has - despite something of a liberal strand - never been recognisably ‘progressive’ in any meaningful sense. And one might argue that, ironically, this makes it a very typical Irish political party indeed. The DUP, despite having a more populist and working class base perhaps makes fewer concessions still to the centre left. And that too places it firmly within a spectrum of broadly unsurprising political activity found on this island.

Also, ironically, despite the jibe that class always lost out to national identity in Irish nationalism, the charge is perhaps even more appropriate to Ulster Unionism in all its variants. The parties of Unionism were as noted above, and remain, great pan-class constructs which have reified identity above more local or specific concerns. And even to suggest the DUP is more populist is, in some ways, merely to ascribe features based upon their membership rather than to indicate any specific ideological component. One of the banes of leftism has been a tendency to project revolutionary or ideological aspects onto groupings which have only the vaguest and most transitory relationship with same. I’ve yet to see a convincing argument about the proletarian nature of the DUP, but no doubt it’s being written up somewhere. Feargal Cochrane in his “Unionist Politics and the politics of unionism since the Anglo-Irish Agreement” touched on some of this when he noted that:

“another complicating factor within the DUP was provided by class divisions between the party’s urban working-class heartlands and the increasingly middle-class composition of the leadership, and more importantly, the conflicting political agenda’s of the rural middle-class Free Presbyterian voters and their urban working class secular bretheren. Clifford Smyth argues that the extent to which the DUP became a working-class party is a matter for conjecture, commenting that it is impossible to prove Paul Arthur’s hypothesis that ‘Political Paisleyism was proletarian, but religious Paisleyism attracted lower middle-class congregations which crammed the ample car park with their Cortinas”.

Tellingly Cochrane doesn’t address the UUP in class terms at all, other than tangentially.

Having said that, what is interesting about this is that it points to a new future political structure in the North where southern political formations would vie for votes in the North and also attempt to be part of the governing institutions. It’s not quite a unity agenda, in the sense that there is no impression from Fianna Fáil that it intends to use any future position in government to leverage the situation forward. And in that respect Ó Cuív’s words about “…they are bound to share power with a nationalist party” are revealing. The Good Friday Agreement status quo remains just that. Sure, there will be greater emphasis on cross-border links, but no hurry. And then there is his question about ‘reversing the tide’. Does he mean the SF tide? Or that which has ensued after the GFA? Or has a certain rhetorical vagueness entered the equation? And is that last sentence of his to be interpreted as a call to move beyond nationalism? What sort of Fianna Fáil is being offered here? Certainly it stretches the definition of catch-all to undreamt of extremes.

Strange times. But rhetorical times. Before any of this becomes even slightly persuasive it would be necessary to see concrete action. I don’t see any prospect of that in the immediate, or even the medium term. And so Ó Cuív’s comments should be regarded if not necessarily with cynicism, then certainly with scepticism. I don’t follow the old DL line that say and do nothing to upset Unionism (you’ll see examples of it in upcoming Times Change when they’re added to the Left Archive). Unionism is a fairly robust entity, even at the worst of times. But rhetoric is another thing entirely. Don’t say it unless you mean it. I don’t really believe they mean… at least not yet.

An interestingly robust speech from John Gormley in Belfast at the special conference of the Green Party.

Speaking in Belfast at a special regional party agm on Saturday, he insisted only the Greens could offer real opposition to the Sinn Féin/DUP-led Executive at Stormont. He claimed the Northern Ireland Greens, as a political entity, had emerged as a result of the Good Friday agreement.

Is this true? That’s quite a claim to make, and perhaps indicates some effort to take a degree of ‘ownership’ of the process albeit at a remove. They certainly make great play of the way in which the Green Party in Northern Ireland is a ‘Region’ of the Irish Green Party, and yet also has links to the Scottish, Welsh and English parties. Which, in some respects seems weirdly reminiscent of the Socialist Party approach. But, maybe they’re correct. Then it’s on to the current situation.

“The DUP and Sinn Féin have fought their war and signed their treaty. That is their legacy. It is now our turn,” he said.

The term ‘chutzpah’ springs to mind, considering that both those entities command many multiples of the support garnered by the Green Party. But… one has to start somewhere. And it is with at least some sort of an ideology that he does so…

“We are the result of a political climate that soars far above sectarianism or religious identification - climate change, pollution and the challenges of the globalised economy do not stop at national borders. Sectarian politics aimed at one section of the community and not the other is one reason why so many in Northern Ireland feel disaffected - the Green Party offers these people a reason to vote.”

Brave words too, when he said:

“With the entry of the Green Party into government in Dublin, we will deliver not just for voters in the Republic but also for the people of Northern Ireland,” Mr Gormley said.

“Using the cross-Border bodies and other joint initiatives on nuclear power, renewable energy, tourism and GM food, the party in Northern Ireland will approach voters at the next elections with evidence that Green power delivers a better quality of life for all.”

I simply don’t know the terrain that the Green Party in Northern Ireland negotiates well enough to be able to judge how this sort of appeal will play. On the one hand this is all eminently sensible stuff. On the other one might suggest it is the sort of message which might have a certain resonance that would be slightly off-putting to some in the North. After all, however well-intentioned, the idea that Irish Government Ministers are casting their eye across the Border is likely to cause some pause for thought in certain circles. Mind you, the language is precise. ‘Northern Ireland’, ‘cross-Border’. This may indeed not scare the horses.
And this dovetails with a good article in Sundays Business Post by Pat Leahy about the way in which the Green Party has taken the sensible step in government of avoiding becoming the ethical watchdog of Fianna Fáil. They learned well from the Progressive Democrats who foundered upon precisely that issue. As Leahy notes:

The new approach by the Greens to sharing power with Fianna Fail is motivated by the party’s belief in the importance of its own policy agenda. If you believe that you are helping to save the world from potential disaster caused by climate change, it puts the issue of who paid for Bertie Ahern’s curtains in perspective. But the Greens’ approach is also informed by the experience of previous coalition partners of Fianna Fail - and in particular by the combustion of Michael McDowell’s PDs in the last government.

Now there are those, and some are reading this, who disagree profoundly with this analysis. But… it’s sort of sensible if one believes we face an existential threat then, as Leahy notes, Ahern and the North are relegated to a very distant second and third - perhaps in that order.

And that leads to a pragmatism that in a sense puts government at the heart of the project:

The message that the Greens understood was this: if we go into government with Bertie Ahern, it can only be on the basis of waiting for the tribunal to report. We can’t let evidence or leaks or court challenges dominate the business of government.

The Greens were also, say senior sources, heavily influenced by the experience of Green parties in Europe. ‘‘Agree the programme, get the ministries, compromise and say when you can’t do things,” said one source. ‘‘Try to get our stuff done.”

It’s a model of coalition different from anything that Fianna Fail has encountered in the past. ‘‘Basically, we’ve seen that approach doesn’t work,” said Dan Boyle, a senator and influential figure within the party.

I’m genuinely intrigued as to how long this can run. It seems to me that it might be for quite a while, but time will tell. Certainly the Green Party appear to be digging in. As Leahy also notes:

Besides, as one Green source pointed out, when the party’s ministers are looking from the government benches at the opposition hyperventilating about how the Greens are failing to keep Fianna Fail honest, the thought often occurs to them: do we really want to do what our enemies want us to do?

It’s a fair point. And always important to remember that no one group holds the franchise on the belief that their way and their way alone is the true expression of the public good. And wow, the Greens have that in bucket loads. Gormley said at the weekend that:

“It is up to us now to get out there, to spread the word, to recruit more members and to compete aggressively and confidently in elections. We are members of the most progressive, responsible and dynamic political movement on this island, in these islands, and across the world.”

Now it may be misplaced confidence, but the polls so far support them.

As it happens I have a reasonably nice year planner from the Green Party which has photo’s and contact details of their current elected representatives including Brian Wilson (Member of the Legislative Assembly - and believe it or not apparently a member of the NILP back in the day, later on the Alliance Party and later still and Independent. A heart in all the right places, more or less.). I like the way in which they’re forging something of a broad based, all island(s) approach, but… we’ve seen how socialism didn’t quite go the distance to bridging the gap between communities. Being the old cynic that I am I tend to be dubious that environmentalism or Green philosophy will somehow do better.

Still, this is a different age. Perhaps if Gormley does soft-pedal the one phrase he didn’t use clearly in the above quotes, that of ‘national identification’, he and the Green Party will be fine. Perhaps. But maybe to come to terms with the situation it will be necessary to actually engage with that very issue.

Ah, the glories of our new dispensation. A shining city upon a hill. Well, okay, a parliament building at the end of a road leading to a hill. And it’s already working! For this evening the news arrives that:

Ian Paisley Junior has resigned as a Stormont junior minister in the Office of First Minister and Deputy First Minister.

He stepped down after pressure following a series of allegations about his lobbying and links to a developer.

It is the end of an, admittedly short, era but one that has left a mark on young Paisley (I’m disturbed to discover he’s one year younger than me - not sure why it’s disturbing).

‘With a certain degree of sadness I have informed the First Minister (Ian Paisley Snr) of my intention to resign from ministerial office,’ he said.

There had been rumblings in January from the great and the good within the DUP:

Unease among senior members of the Democratic Unionist Party deepened tonight over junior minister Ian Paisley’s controversial lobbying for major development projects in his constituency.

Even though there was no sense of any move in the DUP to oust him, authoritative party sources confirmed the affair had caused huge embarrassment and disquiet in their ranks.

One said: “While I don’t think there’s a member who believes Ian has done anything terribly wrong, there is concern about the way this issue has been handled.

“It is fair to say some members, including people in senior positions, are unhappy that stories about Ian’s lobbying activities are continuing to haunt him and the party.

And one can see the hand of the internal, or is it now external, opposition from the DUP gene pool:

In a letter released to Traditional Unionist MEP Jim Allister under the Freedom of Information Act it emerged last night Tony Blair referred six constituency issues Mr Paisley raised during the October 2006 St Andrews talks to Northern Ireland Office ministers.

These included issues affecting the Giant’s Causeway, the future of St Patrick’s Barracks in Ballymena, the development of a spa resort with 200 homes and a judicial review over the contested land deal in Ballee.

This has hit Paisley the Youger fairly hard.

“The past 10 months have not been without controversy,” he said. “Personal criticism, unfounded allegations, innuendo and attacks on me personally, followed by Ombudsman’s reports that have cleared me - this relentless period of criticism by those who have decided on this path has been unceasing.

“The criticism has been a distraction and has got in the way of the activities of this government, and importantly it has gotten in the way of the activities of my political party.”

One wonders is this the first after effect of last weeks ’shock’ win by the UUP of a previously safe DUP local government seat in Dromore. But that may be reading too much into it. And the paradox of Dromore is that any of the activities of Traditional Unionist Voice are more likely - on that showing - to deliver DUP seats to the old enemy of the UUP. Now, the UUP may huff and may indeed puff, but, they’re no more likely to walk away from GFA MkII than the DUP at this stage.

Expect also to hear more pressure put on the other old enemy, Sinn Féin, for the Army Council to disband. Just to keep up appearances as it were.

And marvel at how rapidly it has taken for what passes for ‘normal politics’ elsewhere to manifest itself in the North. Truly we live in remarkable times.

A stunning three minutes on Channel4’s Picture This strand this evening with the work of British photographer Jonathan Olley who has documented the installations of the RUC and British Army in the North over the past ten years. Fair dues to Slugger for bringing it to general notice.

One of the most compelling sequences was the overlay of one of his photographs (seen above) of a British Army watchtower in Crossmaglen from a decade ago on the current street scene.

The brutalist, dalek-like design of the installation in what is a very familiar townscape provides a jarring visual and cognitive dislocation. It is in no sense an apologia for violence to suggest that this manifestation of the militarisation of an essentially civil environment reflected a pernicious dynamic that encompassed all within that environment. Nor is it reaching to suggest that the power relationships within that environment were exemplified by these structures. Their dismantling has reflected genuine change in the nature of those relationships. Perhaps that civil space will permit for the development of a form of class politics? Or perhaps it already has. Note that the Irish Times today reported that Ian Paisley would not be contesting the next Westminster Election and some were suggesting that he was devoting his time to Stormont. Granted the DUP has denied the reports blaming “unfounded press speculation”. But with the DUP and SF, parties with at least some aspect of a working class complexion, currently hegemonic in Stormont one can only reflect that while it’s class politics, it’s not quite the sort of class politics many had hoped for. Ah well, give it time…

For those interested other images can be seen on Jonathan Olley’s excellent website. Interesting that he should say that he is - as far as he knows - the only one to document this area in any sort of a comprehensive fashion. Doesn’t that tell it’s own story?

Beginning with a public apology to WBS for leaving him so long to carry the site by himself, something he is more than able to do I should point out. But the strains of moving house in December caused more than a little difficulty in the Little household.

It’s a pity, because when I read this fantastic story  where, as I’m sure people already know, Sinn Féin’s former Unionist Outreach official Martina Anderson argued that immigrants were the wrong sort of Catholics I would have given a great deal for a good broadband connection. Beneath the lunacy there is a serious point that nationalist areas continue to be more economically deprived than unionist areas and there is, I suppose, a legitimate concern that Polish immigrants might skew the numbers due to their ability to get jobs when the Sinn Féin voters of West Belfast cannot. But the manner in which it was made, and Anderson’s failure to realise that it is Sinn Féin’s habit of thinking along sectarian lines (Not the same, before the crypto-provos that I was amused to see inhabit the site descend on me, as saying it is a sectarian party) that created the problem in the first place.

It is difficult to think back to the position Sinn Féin enjoyed in the second week of March. They had just achieved another triumph at the ballot box in the Northern Assembly elections, managing to give the SDLP a kicking on one of their flanks, and a motley crew of alternative republicans a kicking on the other side. The party leadership had delivered an endorsement of policing by the members little short of unanimous and they faced into an election here in May with every chance of doubling their seats in Leinster House and livening up their Dáil team. There was an expectation of a dividend from Southern voters for the Assembly being re-established and the image of Paisley and McGuinness sitting down together drawing a line under so much of the negotiations impasse. If there was a slight cloud on the horizon political anoraks might have noticed Adams’ appalling performance on A Week in Politics the night of their Ard Fheis, but few people watched that show and surely they would have sorted out the problems, such as not knowing what tax rates his party was proposing, by the election.

And then, it all went horribly wrong and has been continuing to go wrong since. The election result in May has already been analysed to death but the party has lost a number of councillors since then in the South. Some for political reasons, some for personal ones and some for ‘personal’ ones. I reckon a number of people saw the bandwagon was running out of steam and decided to get off before it collapsed altogether. The DUP have bitch-slapped them around the place on the Irish Language Act, which the Shinners concentrated their attentions on while ignoring economic issues. Caitríona Ruane has proved an unmitigated disaster in education with her handling of the classroom assistants dispute set to enter the textbooks of administrations on both sides of the border about how not to handle an industrial dispute. Her proposed alternative to the 11+ is confused, scanty on details and poorly thought out. There is no sign of any momentum for devolution of policing powers and indeed the resignation of their Fermanagh/South Tyrone MLA and former Agriculture Spokesperson Gerry McHugh along with the refusal of Sinn Féin councillors in Strabane to sit on the Policing Boards shows that the anti-policing section of the party retains some pull. Conor Murphy hasn’t done a bad job on water charges, approaching it in a sensible fashion regardless of what the far left thinks, and Gildernew has managed to hold the fort in Agriculture as well, but there has been nothing spectacular from Sinn Féin in the North. Except for attacks on Margaret Ritchie of course, which seems to have a lot more to do with attacking the SDLP regardless of what they’re doing than anything else.
Down here, the party has reviewed itself thoroughly and decided that it did nothing wrong, or at least its leaderships did not. It is telling that despite Fine Gael’s success Kenny fired Phil Hogan and a question-mark remains over Kenny’s leadership. Rabbitte and the authors of the Mullingar Strategy in Labour have been cast aside. Sinn Féin’s upper leadership remains intact and the move of key northern activists like Declan Kearney into positions of authority in the party in the South suggests that Adams, having listened to the opinion of Southern members for the last six months has decided to ignore it and continue to centralise control in the mistaken belief that someone other than him, and he alone, is responsible for the party’s disastrous election campaign. The murder of Paul Quinn brought out the standard Sinn Féin approach of blackening the name of the victim with accusations of criminality that seem unproven. What seems more clear is the eager desire among their political opponents to hi-jack the Quinn’s case to attack Sinn Féin, but they would have no campaign to manipulate were it not for Quinn’s murder and how Sinn Féin handled it.

WBS has already looked at the coverage of the Sinn Féin conference and the only thing I would add to that is McDonald’s comment that Sinn Féin does not have an ‘open door’ policy on immigration is no policy shift. The Shinners, despite the accusations of far-right lunatics on Stormfront, have never had such a policy but the party’s strong support for immigrant rights has often seen them cast that way, though like WBS I don’t think it affected their election performance. What interests me is the conference in Dublin Airport, at which the press were not welcome, held a couple of weeks beforehand. Criticism of the leadership, and of Ruane’s performance in education in particular, was much in evidence and my Southern SF based source who attended was slightly surprised to see the extent of the internal criticism of Ruane from Northern colleagues.

For the Shinners, they have two opportunities to get themselves back in the game in 2008. The first is their Ard Fheis in March. The reality is that the party is still shaken and still lacks energy. The Ard Fheis is also the most likely time and place for leadership changes to be announced with members of the current leadership not contesting positions and newer, probably Southern, people being put forward for one or two of them. It will also be interesting to see if there are candidates against leadership choices for the main positions from the grassroots. If there are to be some of the serious internal reforms the party needs and have yet to appear, this is the place for them.

The second is the EU Reform Treaty. This brings me neatly to a favourite topic, which is the madness of Vincent Browne who argues at the back of the current edition of Village that Sinn Féin has not made its position on the EU Reform Treaty clear and it is his opinion they are likely to back it. Ahh Vincent, take thy head out from the Mahon Tribunal and read a paper. Sinn Féin’s party leadership, and McDonald & Adams in particular, have been making clear their intention to not simply oppose the Reform Treaty, but to lead the opposition to it. Most recent press statement from the party on it is here. What makes Browne’s error all the more mystifying is that the former Sinn Féin European Director Eoin O Broin now writes for his magazine. This referendum campaign gives Sinn Féin the opportunity to portray itself as the ‘real’ opposition to establishment centrist politics and even the possibility of fighting a winning campaign, which would be a massive boost to a party going into Local Elections in 2009, and European Elections where only a miracle will save their seat in Dublin.

As for the party in the North, it’s not my area of expertise but I suspect the DUP and the Northern Ireland Civil Service will be allowed to continue to drive the agenda on important issues while Sinn Féin shout about the Irish language or wrestle with the conundrum of whether Polish Catholics are ‘real’ Catholics or some sort of ‘provisional’ Catholic. There is an old saying that in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is King. Lacking such a person, I suspect for Sinn Féin in the North it will be whichever one of them has the stick.

A long way from the heady days of March 7, 2007.