Sinn Farage?

Sun 11 Oct, 2009

Ukip and Sinn Féin share a common gene-pool, says Patrick West

There is story, possibly apocryphal, that in the 1980s a newspaper in Co Tyrone ran a headline to the effect of ‘Catholics And Protestants Unite Against Ecumenism’. While this statement is to the immediate eye paradoxical, such a sentence can reflect a perfectly rational state of affairs. Just as when supporters of two soccer clubs faced with a merger invariably unite against such a proposal, traditionalists among two wings of a Church can likewise logically make common cause against amalgamation, or moves perceived to be mutually detrimental to each’s integrity and separate identity. Unholy alliances can make sense.

I was reminded of the aforementioned headline on a visit to Ireland last month, specifically in relation to the vote on Lisbon, and the unspoken and unlikely alliance between Sinn Fein and the United Kingdom Independence Party (Ukip) in urging the Irish to vote No. It seemed baffling that Ukip, whose mandate comes mostly from disaffected hard-right Conservative voters, could be unwittingly allied to a party that represents an organisation that tried to kill Margaret Thatcher and John Major.

Image: a meeting of minds Many others didn’t fail to recognise the incongruity of the situation. British conservatives have historically been no friends of Ireland, particularly when the 26 counties was a member of a previous union, the United Kingdom. Ukip’s leader Nigel Farage has conceded how puzzling his presence must be, recently writing: “The second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty is, of course entirely an Irish matter. Any intervention from a foreigner, particular a foreigner of a particularly ‘home counties’ disposition, pin-striped and so on, English type to boot must be a disaster for any partisan of either side.” Quite so, Nigel. Labour TD Joan Burton derided Ukip as an “unpleasant bunch of extreme right-wingers,” and even Declan Ganley urged Farage and company to shut up, shove off and stop meddling.

However, Ukip’s stance on the Irish vote (ostensibly on behalf of its political grouping in Brussels, Europe for Freedom and Democracy) was entirely logical. Its ostensible axis of expedience with Sinn Féin was not just rational, but for historical reasons, perversely apposite.

This party perceives its nation to be in a union against its people’s will and best interests, a union that it is a drain on in its resources, a union that is insensitive to its cultural and national mores. As a means of remedy, the party’s leader has affirmed to “ensure that the future of our nation is decided by those of us who live here”. These are not the words of Gerry Adams, nor even Parnell, but of Farage.

Both the Shinners and the Ukippers perceive a democratic deficit in the EU, one that it is detrimental to indigenous economies. Sinn Féin fretted about Lisbon “reducing the Irish government’s ability to take essential decisions, driving down pay and conditions and further undermining our public services”. Ukip decries that in Britain “our public services are crumbling under the strain of the 1 million-plus people who have arrived on our shores… It is costing us our democracy. In that last 12 months [since May], over 2,500 pieces of EU legislation – that’s 75% of all new UK laws – have come into force, and our parliament is powerless to stop or alter any of them”. And just as Sinn Féin worried about Lisbon’s effect on Irish farming, so Ukip has tapped into a longstanding disquiet about the EU’s fisheries policies.

Despite their different stances on economic and social policy, Sinn Féin and Ukip are united by the fact that both are culturally nationalist parties that have as their raison d’être national self-determination. The reason why many hardened British conservatives of today sound like Irish nationalists of yore is that they now find, or perceive, themselves a minor member of a union of which they want no membership. Brussels is to them what Westminster was to the Irish Party and is to Sinn Féin: the centre from which the distressing connection must be severed.

Thus if British conservatives appeared to be making unlikely coquettish advances towards Irish nationalist sentiment, perhaps it may be a subconscious admission that the boot is now on the other foot. In the old days of Union, it was Britain which unhappily lorded over Ireland. Now the EU holds hegemony over Britain, Ukip believe and lament. I doubt as a consequence you will be hearing any words of contrition from British conservatives, to the effect that they recognise how ‘insensitive’ they were during the Home Rule debates of the late-19th and early-20th centuries, when the Tory Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, spoke of the ‘ignorant peasantry of Ireland’ whom he compared to ‘Hottentots’. Nor do I await an announcement that they now ‘feel Ireland’s pain’, and admit that the absentee landlords of the 19th century are similarly and unfavourably comparable to today’s contemptible Brussels bureaucrats. But one thing many on the British right have come to champion as a consequence of the UK’s membership of the EU, which it finds so regrettable, is the principle of national self-determination – for all. And as the only mainstream party in the UK to seek full withdrawal from this union, Ukip stand by themselves alone.

Patrick West is a writer based in England and author of “Beating Them At Their Own Game, How The Irish Conquered English Soccer” (Liberties Press, 2006)