Madam, - Michael McDowell, Minister for Justice, writes of the genealogy of political parties in this State, and of which political party can best lay claim to the heritage of Arthur Griffith (The Irish Times, January 15th).
But the more important question is not which party can most clearly establish its links with Griffith, but rather what the leaders of Sinn Féin stood for in its early years.
The founders of Sinn Féin not only sought a dual monarchy, but during the War of 1914-18 they seriously examined the possibility of having a German prince as King of Ireland - scarcely a demand traditionally associated with republicanism.
Arthur Griffith was hostile to the Dublin trades unions in 1913 when, under Jim Larkin and the ITGWU, they were battling against poverty and the depredations of the employers' leader, William Martin Murphy.
Many trades union leaders broke with Sinn Féin in the early decades of the last century. Others, such as Connolly and Larkin, were hostile to Sinn Féin from the outset and helped in 1912 to found an alternative working-class party based on the trade unions, the Irish Trade Union Congress and the Labour Party.
A very wide range of political parties can trace their origins to the Sinn Fein of 1905. Fianna Fáil emerged from a split in 1927. The Progressive Democrats emerged following a split in Fianna Fáil. The Provisionals and the Officials came into being during an internal IRA dispute in 1969. The INLA emanated from the Officials in 1975. Cumann na nGaedheal (later Fine Gael) was founded by a group of people who had been involved with Sinn Féin. And the fascist Blueshirts were led by a man who had worked closely with Michael Collins. (Sean Russell was not the first to seek allies in the German Reich!)
Surely a Party with such a litter as Sinn Féin has produced (and there is other progeny) raises questions as to what it stands for at all.
But if Mr McDowell has confused the discussion by arguing about political heredity, he makes a dog's dinner of his references to Marxism. He displays about as much understanding of Marxism as his Taoiseach does of socialism. Mr Ahern thinks the essence of socialism resides in his ability to visit the Zoo or the Botanic Gardens. Mr McDowell imagines that Marxist is a mere term of abuse.
Sinn Féin is not Marxist, nor does it even proclaim itself to be such. Its spokesmen confine themselves to the mantra that Sinn Fein is "the largest nationalist party in the North". Nationalism is divisive. It is exclusive. In the North what is called nationalism drags in its wake an inextricable jumble of historical baggage, religious bigotry, selective martyrology, and deliberate terror.
Nationalism is the very antithesis of socialism, and the leaders of socialism always sought to eliminate the influence of nationalism from the working class and labour movement. To that extent one cannot be simultaneously nationalist and Marxist - unless of course, one opts to give an arbitrary meaning to the words that one uses.
Mr McDowell is right about one thing. Sinn Féin is not a republican party - at least not in any historical sense where the word republican is derived from the struggle against absolutism and arbitrary rule by an élite. But he has lumped together nationalism, republicanism, socialism, Marxism and terror, without making the slightest effort to define any of his terms.
Such an approach does not promote clarity in the current discourse about politics in this country. Rather, it only contributes to the ongoing decay of terminology. - Yours etc.,
FINBAR GEANEY, Sutton Park, Dublin 13.