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…

Well then. That was a most interesting speech we were treated to by Gerry Adams at the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis. If only because it provides an eloquent apologia and explanation of the Peace Process and the justifications for the turns that Sinn Féin have had to make.

First there were the outcomes:

Today, comrades, Sinn Féin Ministers are placing equality at the heart of decision-making in the North for the first time. The all-Ireland institutions are up and running and starting to make a real impact.

And a few weeks ago, led by An Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, by Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, 11 Ministers from the North - four of them “Shinners” - and 11 from the South, discussed a range of matters affecting the people of this island. And there wasn’t one English Minister about the place.

But who would have thought it possible? Well, I don’t want to be saying, ‘I told you so’, but, I told you so.

Interesting to see the focus on the North and then the linkage to the South. The old enemy relegated to insignificance - indeed utter marginalisation.

Forty years ago, when I was much younger, the civil rights movement took to the streets in the North. It had united republicans, nationalists, socialists and other progressive forces around basic demands. It became organic and spontaneous, and won mass support in a way which is an example to us today.

The attack on that movement in Derry in October of that year was the beginning of the slide into a conflict which lasted for more than a quarter of a century. It took republican initiatives and a republican peace strategy to create the conditions in which a political agreement could be forged, 10 years ago this April.

Which is a neat way of stepping over Republican responsibility for aspects of that conflict. But, no matter.

Some good points too…

Already, a significant difference is being made. The next necessary stage in this process is the transfer of policing and justice powers to the Executive and away from the British government.

Let me be clear. We expect the British and Irish governments to honour the commitments they made at St Andrews. The DUP has said they will not agree to this, at this time. And they have advanced a number of spurious reasons.

They claim there is not sufficient public confidence - the time is not right. I strongly disagree. I believe the majority of people, nationalist and unionist, want these powers transferred now.

Thirty-six years ago it was the unionists who collapsed the Stormont regime because the British government removed law and order powers from it. Isn’t it ironic today that it is unionists who are objecting to the return of these powers?

Well, even beyond the implicit imputation at shabby sectarianism, he most definitely has a point. Mind you, in fairness, this was always going to take time.

Kinder words than one might imagine for the DUP (but cautious ones too… perhaps an inkling of yesterday’s events was in his mind)…

The political institutions, and let us commend them for this, would not be in place if longsighted DUP leaders had not taken the initiative. They need to stand up to the rejectionists to ensure the stability and durability of the institutions.

The DUP has to fulfil its responsibilities and obligations on a range of issues, including the transfer of powers, and also on the Irish language. In fact, the future of the DUP, the future of unionism, and of the power-sharing arrangements will be decided, to a very large extent, by the way DUP leaders deal with these matters.

Sinn Féin is very conscious of the problems which they face. Any leadership intent on managing a process of transition will face difficulties. But the long-term resolution of these difficulties is never found in pandering to the lowest common denominator, or by standing still, or by doing nothing.

The Sinn Féin leadership knows this full well. We have consistently faced up to difficult challenges. We have consistently faced down those who would take our people back to conflict. They are the past - not the future.

One hopes that they are right.

Then there is the project.

We are closer, friends, to bringing about Irish reunification than at any time in the past. Despite ingrained partitionism within the Irish establishment, there is growing support for Irish unity and there is a growing awareness of the importance of the all-Ireland economy to this nation’s future.

But none of this will happen by chance. We need to set out how we will reach this historic goal - how do we create the conditions for a united Ireland? In the coming weeks I will be establishing a high-powered taskforce led by Martin Ferris, Gerry Kelly, Larry Downes, Bairbre de Brún and Rita O’Hare, to drive forward the roadmap to Irish unity.

As we approach the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Rising we are asking the Irish diaspora to put its full weight behind a renewed campaign for Irish reunification. I would like to invite others of like mind to come on board and to make this a genuine movement for change over the next number of years.

Okay. We’ll get back to you on that.

But let’s move from ‘legacy’ issues to the sort of thing that is at the centre of my politics. And let’s consider the following.

Prosperity and job creation are key priorities for Sinn Féin. Ireland needs an enterprising economy. We need to generate wealth. We need to be competitive and that’s the reality. We need to live in the real world.

And we have been reaching out to those who form the backbone of the economy - entrepreneurs, hoteliers, workers, retailers, union leaders, pub and restaurant owners, the fishing and the farming community.

We understand the concerns of those who continue to provide the vast majority of jobs in the economy. We know that they face particular pressures as the Government fails to tackle these issues which are undermining competitiveness

Engagement is good. Engagement with business is good. I’d like a clearer explanation of just what are these issues that are ‘undermining competitiveness’ though - and there’s more of this from the conference floor.

Sinn Féin understands the need for a strong economy to provide essential health and education and other public services that citizens have the right to expect in the 21st century.

Sinn Féin is not anti-business. Sinn Féin is pro-business.

Neither is Sinn Féin a high tax party. We are a fair tax party.

Now, I’m far from instinctively antagonistic to business. However, I’m also far from starry eyed about business. I’d really like some people on the left to take ownership of the idea that business (like the market) is a tool that is essential in various ways to our economy. But that as a tool it is necessary to use it carefully, that we don’t bow down before business or ascribe to it unreasonable powers or abilities. That is why language such as ‘pro-business’ doesn’t really impress me any more than being ‘anti-business’ impresses me. As well be ‘pro-water’. Our political project seeks to set business within a framework where societal outcomes are maximised. This may well be good for some business, but not so good for other business. But let’s not pretend that business doesn’t have its own agenda, its own project and that this in certain obvious areas is directly at odds with our project - a project which is not and should not be a statist top down approach to economic or social management.

Therefore, while I understand the use of the soundbite - in political terms - I feel uneasy about it.

And although the next section isn’t bad it seems somewhat disconnected in the overall scheme of things.

We are against exploitation in the workplace. We are against industry that pollutes the environment. But we are very much in favour of building businesses that are integrated with their communities, providing necessary employment, providing good terms and conditions, and services and goods that are essential to our people’s needs.

Perhaps I’m being unreasonable, but is it beyond the collective wit of SF to come up with a formula which reiterates that it seeks business and enterprise which works with society and human needs rather than against them? That we should be in control, again not in a reductionist statist fashion but in a more complex multi-layered way whereby the energy and enthusiasm of enterprise serves all rather than just a minority and where those who are marginalised can be enabled and facilitated by such energy? See, it’s not so difficult is it?

And, in truth we know that SF can do the old workerist rhetoric as well as anyone…

In the coming months there will be discussions on a new social partnership plan here involving the Irish Government, employers and unions representing the public and private sector.

This Government expects workers, who contributed most to the growth of the Celtic Tiger, and who benefited the least, to tighten their belts at a time of economic uncertainty. This is totally unacceptable.

But if it really wants to break new ground then it could do worse than being more explicit about its ability to rein in the excesses of capitalism while being able to facilitate its positives particularly as we approach tougher economic times.

Still, none of this strikes me as truly ’socialist’ in any meaningful way, and indeed is it reasonable to expect it to be so? Large sections of the further left were always half in thrall to PSF when the whiff of cordite was strong. The realities of a communal struggle was always reified to a revolutionary struggle against the capitalist state. That the revolutionaries are now proving as the smoke clears to be somewhat less full-blooded is unfortunate, but perhaps inevitable. That this revolution was a chimera is something others of us would take no great pleasure in saying ‘we told you so’.

Yet this cautious near-centrism is not without resistance within Sinn Féin. As the Irish Times noted:

The party’s ardchomhairle produced a cautiously-worded motion on tax policies which said that taxes would be “increased only where demonstrably necessary. Tax rates should be decided on the basis of what is needed to meet social goals and other spending demands,” the motion declared.

However, it met with considerable opposition from the floor, with many arguing, including Dublin South Central TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh, that it was too conservative.

His criticism was that:

Sinn Féin had developed in recent years “progressive and comprehensive policies” on health, education and other social issues. “Implementing those policies costs money, and the failure of FF and FG governments to provide world-class public services to address issues of unequal development and poverty and inequality is directly related to the low levels of taxation in this State.

“We believe that Sinn Féin does not have a credible tax policy. We are unable to explain how we would fund the kind of public services and government programmes contained.

“The ardchomhairle motion does not assist us in this task despite talking about redistributive tax. It does not propose sufficient changes to the status quo and the key challenges which face us - namely, increasing the overall tax take and redistributing from the middle and low-income earners to those who are most able.

“The ardchomhairle motion avoids difficult issues like corporation tax, capital gains tax and a third band for high earners.

“It seeks to preserve Sinn Féin as a party that would not raise taxes despite all our public policy proposals demanding that we must do so.”

It sounds like an interesting debate. Ó Snodaigh comes across almost as the voice of a left Republican strand. To be honest, while I doubt that the key problem for Sinn Féin in the last election was the unseemly haste with which it sought to ‘prove’ its ’sensible’ credentials by rushing towards the economic consensus, it does seem unlikely that such a tactic resonated with the support base. And one has to ask, who precisely are such policies aimed at? The soft Fianna Fáil vote? The sections of the left grudgingly coming to regard it as at least of the left? If the former why will they detach from the larger party of the ‘Republican’ populist strand. If the latter what sort of reckoning has arrived at the conclusion that they will be open to a more centrist profile? Which is not to say that pragmatism should not be an element of a political stance, but… Ó Snodaigh’s critique certainly resonates with me. One does not have to buy into taxing until the pips squeak to note that our public discourse on tax would benefit from a touch of honesty about the fact that choices have to be made if we want to fund projects dear to the left heart.

Finally, in a better than I’d expect editorial the Irish Times noted that:

Rather than gain five Dáil seats, as expected, it lost one. The party’s Northern engine had become decoupled from its Southern carriages.Since [the election defeat in the Republic], a great deal of thought and effort has gone into addressing that dislocation. Obvious signs were the prominence of Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin and Mary Lou McDonald during the ardfheis while Senator Pearse Doherty launched a “Save the West” campaign during a televised warm-up for Mr Adams. Martin Ferris spoke of building a mass movement in support of Irish unity by utilising preparations for the one-hundredth anniversary of the 1916 Rising. But challenges facing the party emphasise the structural rift, rather than conceal it. A campaign of opposition to the Lisbon Treaty will be conducted in this State. And the struggle to secure the transfer of policing and judicial powers from Westminster will take place in Northern Ireland.

Plenty of campaigning scope there then which is important in the lean times between general elections. And important too if only to keep the profile of the MEP high. And the IT acknowledges the centrality of promotion at this point.

Sinn Féin opposes the Lisbon Treaty for traditional reasons. And while that stance is unlikely to broaden the party’s appeal to the business community, it will lift its profile.

But there are battles to come on even more traditional ground. Battles that will define the credibility of Sinn Féin as a party of government both in the North and in the longer term in the South.

The transfer of policing and judicial powers, planned for next May, has already caused political tension. DUP elements are strongly opposed. Dr Paisley has maintained there is insufficient community support for the development at this time. Mr Adams disagrees and regards the issue as one of confidence building. He identified the “nay sayers” as those who opposed power sharing and now want to get rid of Dr Paisley. Missed deadlines are expected in Northern Ireland. What matters is that the new political structures work. Sinn Féin is deeply committed to that process.

Grudging that too, admittedly, but no clearer sign that the new dispensation has taken root. Perhaps even the Irish Times will ultimately warm to this Sinn Féin. Or - with luck - perhaps not.

Far be if for the CLR to question the editorial decisions at the Irish Times.  No. Wait a second, we’re always questioning them either directly or indirectly… but today leafing through the Irish Times at lunch what do I see but a remarkable photograph on page 6 (Home News) beside the headline “Unionist says collusion must be tackled”. And there is Raymond McCord  snr wearing a sash addressing the SF Ard Fheis at a podium with the legend “www.joinsinnfein.ie” on it and www.sinnfein.ie in the background behind him. One has to applaud him  for going where he has gone in a bid to tackle the issue of collusion - a topic that has been aired this week here. His son was murdered by the UVF in 1997 and he has subsequently devoted himself to rooting out the source of that collusion.

Somewhat different I think we’ll all agree. It certainly made me look twice. So I turn to page 1 to see what the image there was. Well above the fold was a photograph of members of Kilkenny Gospel Choir with Carrie Crowley doing a Daffodil Day press event. A very good cause indeed and one close to my heart. But nonetheless. Surely the McCord photograph is visually more interesting - not to mention politically. Which raises the question as to why it wasn’t on the cover.

Interesting too the way in which he wore the sash. I wonder if this in some sense gave him a degree of security as he addressed the Ard Fheis, a sort of explicit expression of his cultural and - presumably - political identity. And perhaps too a bit of political cover for when he returns to his own home in his own community. McCord himself is reported as saying that … ‘while not a member of the order, he wore the collarette (which belonged to his father) to emphasise his own unionist background and to make the point that ‘times have changed for the better’. The photograph in the IT is better than the one above (which I swiped from the SF website). Alex Maskey introduced him deftly as ‘an unrepentant unionist who very often finds novel ways of making his point’.
I can’t think of a more vivid expression of how the situation has changed, while also demonstrating that much remains to be achieved and uncovered. And perhaps too an insight into the IT’s editorial thinking.

It’s a great headline to the story that yesterday’s Green Party conference failed to agree a position of either opposing or supporting the forthcoming Lisbon Treaty. It is pretty clear that the majority of Green Party delegates decided to back the party leadership’s call for a Yes vote. Whether it was because they felt that as a party in government they had to do so, or because they had a road to Damascus conversion on the issue like the previously vehemently EU-critical Deirdre de Burca (She wasn’t a Senator then of course), or simply because that always substantial section of the party that supported both Nice referendums and was generally more in line with the European Green movement, now commands a majority.

The Greens are calling for plaudits for the fact that they had an open debate and reached a decision democratically. Leaving aside Gormley’s imaginative interpretation of that vote I suppose, grudgingly, one must acknowledge as much though frankly attempting to lecture other political parties for not doing the same kind of misses the point. No left-wing party would need to debate opposition to Lisbon any more than it would need to debate support for public services or opposition to privatisation. Basic left principles such as support for democracy, opposition to neo-liberalism, opposition to centralisation of unaccountable power and so on make opposing the Treaty a bit of a no-brainer.

It will be interesting to see the practical implications of this for the party though. Since the Green Party does not have a position, can Green Party staff issue press releases in support of the Treaty when they’re supposed to be working for a party that has no position on it? Can the Green Party TDs and Senators use Green Party premises to conduct their Yes campaigning? And as for the No campaign, what organisation or vehicle will they use to advance their arguments? A number are involved already on a personal level in the Campaign Against the EU Constitution, which I am told will be changing its name because the EU has decided to change the name of the document, does this mean they will now move into that structure or will they established a Greens Against Lisbon grouping of some sort?

There might be some suggestion that the Yes side has been undermined by the failure of the Green leadership to get two-third on Saturday, but I’m not so sure. It’s pretty clear that the Green leadership, for whatever reason, carried the bulk of their membership with them and are likely to carry the bulk of Green voters come the referendum. The loss of the Green Party’s organisational muscle is a negligible one. The Greens don’t have the money at the minute to run a major campaign and in both Nice referendums their work on the ground was pretty weak. Where they were key in previous referendums was that in Gormley especially, but also De Burca and McKenna, they had articulate, experienced and educated debaters to be rolled out on the media who could argue for a No vote without being republicans, socialists or working class and scaring middle Ireland too much.

Meanwhile, among the anti-Treaty campaigns, there has been some frustration that the SWP has established another front entity to campaign against the Lisbon Treaty while aleady being affiliated to the Campaign Against the EU Constitution, established a couple of years ago when the EU Constitution was first being put forward. Happily, in a remarkable display of honesty for one of the most duplicitous political entities in Ireland, the SWP has altered the site since it was first put up to acknowledge that the people identified behind it, Kieran Allen and Sinead Kennedy, are both members of the Socialist Workers Party. Still, there is some ill-feeling that they went ahead off their own bat without consulting other people in the CAEUC.

Also of interest is that it is the SWP that has both established the website and it affiliated to the CAEUC. Firstly, the SWP’s affiliation to the CAEUC is quite a recent one, and as late as early last year a prominent member of the SWP told me they honestly didn’t see the EU Constitution/Lisbon Treaty issue as a priority. Certainly SWP activists were noticeable by their absence from early CAEUC meetings. Yet here we have them setting up a website, publishing a pamphlet outlining he reasons for a No vote, describing it as a key priority in their New Year’s message and affiliating to the CAEUC. Curiously, there is no reference to People Before Profit, their previous electoral front group. The PBP website has not been updated for several months and seems to have no position, good, bad or indifferent, on the Lisbon Treaty. Considering the use that could be made by the SWP out of Lisbon for attracting people to the organisation, it’s a slight surprise to me they’re being upfront about who they are in the campaign and not using the PBP brand.

But more frustrating than the SWP playing ’silly buggers’ has been the annoyance felt by many, and ably pointed out by Daily Mail columnist Joe Higgins in last Thursday’s Irish Times, about the media’s appointment of Dermot Ganley as head of the anti-Treaty movement in Ireland. Ganley, and his Libertas movement, with no track record on Europe at all, has come from almost nowhere at the start of December to being seen as a key played in the Lisbon Treaty debate. Libertas certainly has money, but no actual organisation as such, though it’s clearly got some smart people doing the media. But Higgins rightly points out that the media, and the Irish Times in particular, has been doing what it can to portray the anti-Treaty campaigns and groups, predominantly left-wing or progressive in Ireland, as right-wing or even fascist. It’s what the media tried to do in both Nice referendums, successfully in the latter case.

But the reason for the Dermot Ganley love-fest has two other aspects. Firstly, if Ganley is the leader of the No campaign, then no other organisation or individual can be leader. With Sinn Féin the only substantial political party to be opposing the Treaty and, at this point in time, the only serious political organisation to be opposing it, the media would find it difficult to avoid handing the mantle of leadership of the No side to Sinn Féin if Ganley wasn’t there. Considering that party’s weakened position, the last thing the Irish media establishment wants to do is give it the shot in the arm of portraying it as leading anything. With Ganley on the chessboard, he can be appointed figurehead, sparing the need to pay attention to what the Shinners are doing.

Secondly, Ganley is a businessman, and a successful one. Most other opponents of the Treaty in Ireland are left-wing, they wear beards, many of them are in trade unions and some have stood on the side of the road holding placards. The Irish media worships business and successful businessmen. A successful businessperson can have his or her opinion taken seriously on any topic in Irish society, whether he or she knows anything about it or not and it’s clear Ganley has some understanding of the Treaty, simply by virtue of the fact that he or she has made a success at business. Ganley is credible in a way that people like Patricia McKenna or Mick O’Reilly, people with far vaster experience of anti-EU Treaty campaigns and a much better understanding of the Treaty than Ganley, can never be.

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.