Unknown soldiers: Fianna Fáil opens Northern front. Sort of

It’s been a long time coming but Fianna Fáil finally has a real presence in the North. Gerry McHugh, an Assembly member and local councillor who broke with Sinn Féin, has joined the party, giving it its first seat in the Northern Assembly. Sort of.

This poses a very simple question: how come this ‘republican party’ has never stood in the North before?

All of the parties in the South claim to be republican, even Fine Gael, by dint of their operation in and support for a republican polity. In Ireland, however, the term republican has a more precise meaning: declaring itself ‘the republican party’, as Fianna Fáil does, implies support for the reunification of Ireland as a single republic.

Indeed, successive Fianna Fáil administrations have dropped hint after hint that they are working day and night to unify Ireland. In reality they have worked day and night to keep the place at arm’s length. Most recently, the bizarre spectacle of ‘republican’ elected deputies chastising the public for shopping in the North, something they described as ‘unpatriotic’, gives some indication of Fianna Fáil’s ideology-free opportunism.

Of course, the Arms Crisis of 1970 occurred when two Fianna Fáil cabinet ministers, Neil Blaney and future Taoiseach Charles Haughey stood accused of conspiring to supply arms to the nascent Provisional IRA. This cannot be seen as an attempt to unify Ireland. Such moves would be political in form and would have come from the government taking collective responsibility for doing something, whatever that might be. The alleged arming of the Provos is much easier to understand as an attempt to kill two birds with one stone: stop Northern Catholics from getting massacred without getting dirty hands in the process and, at the same time, slap down the communist-inspired Official IRA of the era.

A year before the Arms Crisis, Taoiseach Jack Lynch raised and then dashed the hopes of Northern Catholics under siege from loyalist paramilitaries and the unionist police force. Reacting to the violence, Lynch made a now infamous broadcast address to the public:

“It is clear now that the present situation cannot be allowed to continue. It is evident also that the Stormont government is no longer in control of the situation. Indeed, the present situation is the inevitable outcome of the policies pursued for decades by successive Stormont governments. It is clear also that the Irish Government can no longer stand by and see innocent people injured and perhaps worse.”

This was widely interpreted as Lynch warning the Stormont government that unless they stood the mobs down he would send in the defence forces to fight them. Of course, Lynch did no such thing. Instead of standing (idly) by he paced up and down and then set up military-run field hospitals along the Derry-Donegal border.

Regardless of its occasional dalliances with outlandish republican rhetoric, Fianna Fáil has always been a partitionist party. Despite this rhetoric and, in fairness, a significant rural republican voter base, the party has done less than nothing to bring about a United Ireland. Indeed, De Valera’s foundation of the party out of Sinn Féin was itself ultimately an acceptance of the partition of Ireland.

forth contacted Fianna Fáil this afternoon to ascertain what the status of the party’s lurch Northward. We were told, “Hold on now, Fianna Fáil doesn’t have an MLA,” and that the party would issue a statement within the hour.

And indeed it did issue a statement. Rather than simply state the obvious truth that Fianna Fáil has made a move, however small, into the North, the statement uses enough bland formulations to deny this that it may well qualify as theology:

“Reports today that Fianna Fáil has an elected representative in the Northern Assembly are incorrect. Mr Gerry McHugh applied for individual membership of Fianna Fáil some time ago. Thousands of people from across the island are individual members of the party – a new classification of membership introduced in 2005, which enables members and supporters to interface with the Party, without the usual voting rights or membership obligations. Fianna Fáil is happy to receive applications for individual membership from those members of the public who share our ideals and aspirations.

“Fianna Fáil has no plans, at this stage, to be represented at elected-office level in Northern Ireland.”

So there you have it. It is now possible for members of Fianna Fáil to hold elected office that has nothing to do with the party – though arguably Jackie Healy-Rae and Jim McDaid had already proved that.

More interesting than Fianna Fáil talking out of two sides of its mouth on what it means to be a party member, is the issue of what this means for the popular republicanism that the party prides itself on.

Despite the party’s cock crowing three times over McHugh, Fianna Fáil has clearly been slowly moving North over the last few years. The party has only been able to do this now that it is safe to do so because the republicanism of its opponent, Sinn Féin, has been completely contained by the institutions set up in the wake of the peace process. The party’s continual meddling in the North, whether flying a kite for merger with the moribund Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) or the setting-up of politically pointless party cumainn in three Northern counties is nothing more than meaningless gesture politics.

Even if the party had made a whole-hearted attempt to enter the North, thus making a tentative step toward unifying the two Irish polities (and it didn’t – like Bill Clinton smoking marijuana but not inhaling, Fianna Fáil has a member who is an elected MLA but isn’t a party MLA) the move, while welcome, would come decades too late to signify a commitment to a united Ireland. Fianna Fáil’s move Northward shows republicanism is now as hollow North of the border as it is in the South.

Jason Walsh is the editor of forth. He is a Dublin-based journalist, Ireland correspondent for the CS Monitor and contributes to the Irish Times, Guardian and other newspapers. His personal web site is jasonwalsh.ie