Fintan O’Toole: Sinn Féin does not seem to see difference between truth and lies

There are two things you need to know about a political party that wants to take power. One is what it will do. The other is what it would never do. The first is about policy and ideology and priorities. The second is less tangible. It’s about boundaries – where are the places a party wouldn’t go? What makes its flesh creep and its stomach heave? What are the things it could not even imagine doing? For myself, I don’t have too many problems with the first set of questions in relation to Sinn Féin. But I have no end of problems with the second.

On the first level – what Sinn Féin is likely to do in power – there are highly exaggerated fears. Sinn Féin will fleece the rich, drive the multinationals out of the country and crash the economy. No it won’t. Sinn Féin is not a revolutionary party. It is a highly pragmatic political machine. It might tilt the balance of economic policy somewhat in favour of the less well-off – which would be very good for the long-term health of the economy. But the notion that it would radically alter the nature of Irish society is fanciful.

Consensus

Even in the area where Sinn Féin’s rhetoric is most radical – rapid moves towards a united

Ireland

– it is highly unlikely to have any real effect. The institutions established under the Belfast Agreement may be wobbly but the underlying consensus represented by the agreement is firm. The vast majority of people on both sides of the Border have no discernible interest in pushing that consensus towards an immediate crisis. The Republic, in any case, has plenty of experience of being governed by people who ramp up nationalist rhetoric but operate the status quo. There is no reason to think of Sinn Féin in government as being much different in this respect from

Fianna Fáil

in the 1930s.

Thus the real unease with Sinn Féin is not directly about what it would do but about where its moral boundaries lie – which seems to be only at whatever point is dictated by the immediate interests of the party. What’s most disturbing about the party’s response to repeated allegations of covering up the abuse of children is that it shows how hard it is to make the party’s collective skin creep. It can apparently swallow a lot of noxious stuff before its stomach heaves.

The sexual abuse of children is about as visceral as it gets – for most people. But Sinn Féin has responded to it as a purely political problem, an awkwardness to be overcome. There hasn’t been a single moment when any senior party figure has seemed shaken or stirred by the suffering inflicted on victims by the IRA’s kangaroo courts. Nothing has broken through the solid phalanx of carefully calibrated obfuscation.

Nor has there been evidence of the slightest disturbance about the small matter of truth. The party can announce, as it did in the days after Maíria Cahill's allegations first emerged last year that "Gerry Adams was not aware of any other cases of abuse" and then simply forget that "truth" when another one comes along – that Gerry Adams admits that he did know of other cases. The existence of IRA kangaroo courts can be completely denied one minute and then accepted the next. Victims can be painted simultaneously as truth-tellers (when they recount their initial abuse) and as liars (when they say anything about their subsequent treatment at the hands of the party).

Language

And it’s not that there’s anything new about lying in Irish politics. It’s that the party doesn’t seem even to recognise that there is a difference between a lie and a truth. It’s all just language, all just a way of getting through another interview, saying whatever needs to be said at that moment until the whole thing dies down. The idea that there might be something out there, something that either did or did not happen, just doesn’t enter into it.

What we see in all of this is that there really are long-term consequences to the party’s history as an adjunct to a killing machine. I’m not suggesting that the party hasn’t changed profoundly in many ways – obviously it has. But what we’ve learned is that it takes a very long time for an organisation to shake off the habits of many decades. The habits of suppressing your natural moral revulsion, of dressing up atrocities in verbiage, of obeying the chain of command – these instincts, forged during the IRA’s “war” seem to die much harder than most of us could have imagined.

Some will argue that none of this really matters if Sinn Féin is going to bring progressive change. But progressive change in Ireland is not just a change in policies, it’s a change in the political culture. It’s about the creation of a democracy in which citizens can see and effect the things that affect them. It’s about a way of using power that is accountable, open and honest. To believe that Sinn Féin understands that concept of accountability, you have share its own capacity for blind faith.