Back in the day, you’d know you were at a Sinn Féin ardfheis by the Celtic jerseys; nowadays it’s the Palestinian scarves that are the giveaway.
The garment was ubiquitous – even Gerry Adams was sporting one – as delegates gathered in Athlone on Saturday, where the Palestinian ambassador was one of the speakers. She received a lengthy, thunderous standing ovation and her cause was endorsed by many of the day’s speakers.
Sinn Féin has long identified with Palestine, along with other groups that would describe themselves as national liberation movements – the African National Congress in South Africa, the Basques, the Catalans. Basque and Catalan speakers addressed the gathering on Saturday evening, and were enthusiastically received. But they fairly raised the roof for Dr Jilan Wahba Abdalmajid on Saturday morning and again for Mary Lou McDonald on Saturday evening when she called again for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador, describing the Israeli assault on Gaza as “barbaric, hateful, cowardly war crimes”.
Noticeably though, the emergency motion added by the party’s ruling ard comhairle and endorsed by the delegates, which condemned Israel’s attacks on Gaza, also condemned the Hamas attacks and called for the release of Israeli hostages.
Gaza was one of three issues that were most prominent at the ardfheis and the associated exchanges.
The second was the general theme of preparing for government. There are a few elements to this that the party sought to project – promised improvements under a Sinn Féin government in housing, healthcare and meeting the cost of living; offering “change”; and banishing any complacency.
On housing, McDonald declared it the party’s “number one priority” – ahead, so, of even a united Ireland if Sinn Féin should find itself in Government after the next election.
“Of course, the people will make that call,” McDonald said in her televised address. “It’s your decision. We take nothing for granted. There are no inevitabilities.”
But there was a palpable excitement around the place, all the same, at the prospect of being in power in the Republic. Over the last 15 years, in a shift first signposted by Gerry Adams’s decision to take a Dáil seat, the party’s focus has moved from North to South and now, under McDonald’s leadership and facilitated by the post-crash fracturing of Irish politics, it stands on the brink of power in both Dublin and Belfast. There were lots of Northern accents in Athlone on Saturday for sure; but they were talking about being in government in Dublin.
In preparation for that eventuality and to facilitate the journey there, the party has been moving cautiously to the centre and getting rid of policies that might alarm its new found support in the southern middle class. The shouts of “Tiocfaidh ár lá” have not disappeared entirely (and they always got a cheer). But there’s far fewer than there used to be.
Indeed, one observer of many ardfheiseanna noted that much of what was being said from the podium could be said by politicians from any party. Perhaps as Sinn Féin edges to the centre it risks losing some of what made is distinctive. Walking that tightrope between the promise of change and the need to reassure is the daily task for McDonald and her would-be ministers.
She didn’t have everything her own way, though. McDonald took some flak from journalists on the defamation action taken by TD Chris Andrews against The Irish Times and Harry McGee, the latest in a long series of such actions taken by Sinn Féin representatives, including herself, against media outlets. These actions are widely seen in politics as a tactic to put manners on the media. It was a discordant note in what was otherwise an upbeat weekend for a party that believes it is on the up and up.
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