Unknown soldiers: Fianna Fáil opens Northern front. Sort of
Tue 01 Dec, 2009
Fianna Fáil’s move North isn’t just opportunism, but it is decades too late, says Jason Walsh
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
COMMENTS
Jason, while I agree with many of your criticisms of Fianna Fáil (and the confusion over whether McHugh is or isn’t an FF member) I think you’re missing the point.
Ok, Fianna Fáil may well not be the great white (and green and orange) hope for Northern Nationalists and a move t’up North might or might not work out.
But at least they are seriously (if hesitantly) considering it.
Surely in the aftermath of the Belfast Agreement, and with the military option largely a non-option for most Republicans/Nationalists of whatever form, some sort of process or push must be made to at least TRY and implement the reintegration of the Northern polity with the rest of Ireland.
By a Southern political party of FFs mainstream, establishment standing taking on a Northern component, with the potential in the future of a Northern membership, electorate and elected representatives to answer to there is some hope that the great betrayal of Irish citizens north of the Border (post-1920s) will never occur again – or at least have some sort of repercussions for those in power in Dublin who take that road again, enough perhaps to make them hesitant about doing so.
The only way forward I can see, if we are serious about a United Ireland (and not just doing wrap the green flag around me boys rhetoric), is a move towards true All-Ireland institutions at “private” or “non-state” levels if the promises of the glorious All-Ireland Peoples’ Fisheries Board (or whatever) do not emerge.
All Irish political parties should be All-Ireland political parties. All Irish organizations, be they political, economic, cultural, from nerdy coin collectors to serious men in suits, should be All-Ireland ones.
We should take the view of the North that the British Conservative Party does. It is an integral part of our national territory (constitutional amendments aside) and we should act as such. Cameron and the Tories are all hell for leather to see “Northern Ireland” fully integrated in the “UK” (forgive the quotation marks, but it’s too tempting not to use them!) – they want normalization of “NI” within the “UK”.
That is what we should be doing. Normalizing relations between North and South, not on partitionist lines (stop the war, give them limited autonomy and tell ‘em to shut the hell up), but trans-partitionist lines. If the Unionists won’t agree to cross-border bodies, screw the official bodies, let’s start creating unofficial ones.
If you can’t get through the block ahead of you, well go over it, around it, under it but whatever you do just keep going.
Furthermore a Fianna Fáil presence in the North is a direct answer to the UUP / Tory alliance. If we really are looking at some sort of hung parliament in Britain, and Cameron is serious about his UUP partnership, think of the implications of Unionist influence on a future Tory British government in those circumstances.
The only way that could be countered is by having some sort of corresponding and substantive influence on the Irish government by Northern Nationalists – and if not by Sinn Féin in power in coalition power in Dublin then by a hefty number of FF reps in the Northern Assembly.
This would also give a more legitimate and democratic face to Ireland’s claims of ultimate sovereignty and self-determination over the North (in International eyes anyway – most of us would believe those claims are already entirely legitimate and democratic and have been for the last, oh, 90 odd years)
FF and SF in power in Dublin? FF and SF with the DUP in power in Belfast?
Is that such a bad scenario?
And lets be honest, Fianna Fáil could do with mixing it up in the tough and unforgiving political playing fields of the North. It might actually reinvigorate a party that has completely lost its way (and its soul) and succumbed to the lure of power and money (or is it the other way around?) for the last 30 or 40 years.
If this process was to Re-republicanise the Fáilers I for one would be jumping up and down with joy (even if it means taking on a rump of SDLP wooly-headed, small “c” conservatives).
Fianna Fáil was once, a long time ago, a progressive and radical political force in this nation that took us through the final birth pangs of full Independence. The dismantling of the Irish-British Treaty of 1921. The removal of the Governor General. The removal of the judicial powers of the British parliament and privy council. The reduction of the place of the British king as head of state. The Economic War of the 1930s. The taking back of the Treaty Ports. And above all the 1937 Constitution of Ireland.
Would that they now become the driving force for finally finishing the unfinished business…
By Séamas Ó Sionnaigh on 2009 12 02
Hi Séamus,
I don’t actually disagree with your analysis. Personally I would like to see Fianna Fáil make a proper move into the North. What bothers me is that they waited until republicanism was emptied of content before doing so. BTW, that’s not an apologia for violence. Fianna Fáil could have moved into the North at any point and said: “Our objective is unify Ireland as a single polity so we are now entering the North.” Bertie’s waffle about how it was “only now” that FF could move North makes no sense at all. Surely the party should have provided an alternative back then, too?
Agree WRT the Tories. The new battleground is integration into the national polity: British or Irish is the question. My view is that it’s too late for the British to get interested now. They could have done it in 1920, 1930, 1940 etc, right up until the late 60s but it’s far too late now.
“Fianna Fáil was once, a long time ago, a progressive and radical political force in this nation that took us through the final birth pangs of full Independence.”
Interesting that you mentioned that. I’ve been planning on writing something on that for some time.
By Jason Walsh on 2009 12 02
Hi Jason. I agree with you that Irish Republicanism is in a state of crisis, North and South. It does indeed seem to be a hollowed out ideology – and bizarrely it’s been hollowed out not by those who oppose it but by those who claim to uphold it.
Go figure…
Most certainly Fianna Fáil should have gone across the Border electorally decades ago (wasn’t Éamon de Valera a “Northern MP” after the 1921 partition election, along with Collins and Griffith and others? They got elected North and South at the same time. I think six or seven “MPs” from the North refused to take their seats in Stormont and instead sat as TDs in Dáil Éireann, including obviously Dev and Collins. And wasn’t one TD elected solely in the North but sat in the Dáil? There’s an interesting question. When did that stop?).
If Northern Nationalists in the 1960s and ‘70s had been given a more substantial outlet for their political hopes and aspirations (and nationality) via a Fianna Fáil cross-border presence rather than the old crony Nationalist Party and the later too-soft SDLP it might had changed things greatly – and perhaps prevented or lessened the northern conflict.
As for Bertie Ahern, if he told me that the sun was beating down outside I’d go out in a wetsuit holding an umbrella.
I agree that the new battleground for the North is going to be one of integration, Ireland versus Britain. It’s war by other means. This is perhaps one of the unexpected (if actually predictable) side effects of the Peace Process and the Belfast Agreement.
Technically speaking there is nothing in the Agreement to prevent either side “integrating” the North into their national territory as long the “Border” and the appearance of British sovereignty remains.
You could have the North in a de facto United Ireland while technically being in a de jure United Kingdom - at least for one of the two broad communities there.
Of course the British are in fact and reality ahead of us in this game – since we have effectively accepted the superiority of their sovereignty over the North of Ireland to ours. But it doesn’t mean that facts on the ground can’t change facts written into international treaties (it happens all the time).
This is where Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, Labour, the Greens and others would come in.
If these parties had strong northern components, and if the Northern Nationalist community was incorporated into the Irish body politic as a whole, it would take us a long way on the road to a de facto United Ireland – which is the best we can hope for in the short to medium term.
I’ve written myself about Fianna Fáil coming into power in the 1930s and staging what was effectively a revolution in then Irish politics. I don’t think people today realise how seismic an event that was. In effect just nine years after Irish Republicans were defeated in the Civil War by the Free State alliance of Irish Nationalists, Southern Unionists and the Roman Catholic Church, Irish Republicans were back in power – in the face of intense opposition and hostility from the Free State establishment and the British.
By 1937, just fourteen years after the Irish Republic of 1916-1923 was defeated / overthrown / suspended (choose your own description), the Irish Republic was back (albeit missing six north-eastern counties), in an Irish Republic in all but name – de facto versus de jure again.
So sometimes what seems impossible is entirely impossible – if you have enough imagination, drive, will power and intelligence to see it through.
By Séamas Ó Sionnaigh on 2009 12 02
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