On June 26th, 1997, the ceann comhairle, Séamus Pattison, had to remind TDs of a long-standing custom in Leinster House: that maiden speeches be uninterrupted. There was little chance of that happening, however, when the new Sinn Féin TD for Cavan-Monaghan, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, rose to speak as the party’s new and sole Dáil representative. As he spoke, some TDs interjected to refer to murders and broken ceasefires.
Fifty years previously, Fianna Fáil TDs had entered Leinster House after the end of their abstention; relations were fraught, with Civil War wounds still raw, but the head of government, Cumann na nGaedheal’s William T Cosgrave, was still able to contend: “It is the best thing that has happened during the last five years.”
Nonetheless, Cumann na nGaedheal was hardly going to cheer Fianna Fáil’s taking over of government just five years later in 1932 and the shadow of the gunmen was a potent controversy of that era. Whatever common cause Fianna Fáil made with the IRA, however, was quickly dispensed with. Éamon de Valera did not want his plans for governance to be compromised by the military shadow, nor allow the treaty divide to dictate all his decisions. He invited pro-treaty civil servant Maurice Moynihan to tea in the Dáil restaurant and asked a shocked Moynihan to become his private secretary. Moynihan told him he didn’t agree with many of his policies but de Valera told him that did not matter. Moynihan was later to recall: “He didn’t ask how I voted and never did.”
Illegal organisation
De Valera was also canny enough to appoint barrister and Longford-Westmeath TD James Geoghegan to the sensitive post of minister for justice: Geoghegan had taken no part in the War of Independence or Civil War. While the release of IRA prisoners followed Fianna Fáil’s assumption of government, the Department of Justice subsequently became preoccupied with facing down the Blueshirts, a reminder that the IRA held no monopoly on threats to the State. As for the IRA, by 1936 de Valera had made it an illegal organisation and a few years later his minister for justice was Gerry Boland, an IRA veteran but now steely crusher of republican dissidents, six of whom were executed on his watch during the second World War.
It would be naive to think Sinn Féin's transition to power can be straightforward
Comparisons between Fianna Fáil in the 1930s and the contemporary breakthrough of Sinn Féin get us only so far; after all, Fianna Fáil in 1932 replaced a government some of whose members had also been at war, initially in the company of their now political enemies. The military conflict they had collectively experienced was short and their focus now was on the southern state.
Yet when considering the prospect of Sinn Féin in government today, the theme of the shadow of the gunmen still rears its head, not least when Sinn Féin members raucously and triumphantly refer to it themselves and when their opponents decry the shadowiness of those who allegedly control Sinn Féin. The passage of time and a peace process have of course taken heat out of this issue; it is also fair to assume that were Sinn Féin to be in government that too would contribute to further distance. But the whiff of cordite does not disappear completely and perhaps some in Sinn Féin won’t want it to for reasons of heritage, constituency and their own beliefs or their determination to promote a jaundiced historical narrative. But such appeals to republican lineage might ultimately be a form of compensation for the compromises that Sinn Féin will inevitably have to make if in government.
Adaptation
Its success last week is also the latest stage in a long journey of survival and adaptation. For decades, through its various iterations, Sinn Féin was on the periphery; its president in 1928, JJ O’Kelly, said it had “no prospects to offer but the old unrequited service to a deathless cause” and only 50 delegates attended its ardfheis in 1949. It was also primarily a mouthpiece for the IRA: “Sinn Féin should come under Army organisers at all levels” according to a directive in possession of IRA chief of staff Séamus Twomey in 1977.
It has repositioned and revised on a journey that included dropping parliamentary abstention in Ireland, acceptance of consent in relation to a united Ireland and a championing of popular left-wing causes. This journey has also involved contradiction, pragmatism, self-interest and ambiguity, hardly traits exclusive to Sinn Féin.
It will go on repositioning, just as Fianna Fáil did in becoming a remarkably successful party while making little headway in fulfilling its foundational aims. What Fianna Fáil did excel at was getting and keeping power, which trumped the need for ideological purity, or being, in Patrick Pearse’s phrase, “the saviours of idealism”. It would be naive to think Sinn Féin’s transition to power can be straightforward or that issues arising out of its historic and current allegiances and alliances will disappear, but power and the prospects of keeping it or losing it will also focus Sinn Féin minds.
