Sinn Fein: reunification “a marathon, not a sprint”

Chris Hazzard speaking

by Theo Russell

Sinn Fein MPs Pat Cullen and Chris Hazzard briefed their London supporters on the party’s future last Monday at a meeting in the House of Commons in Westminster, discussing the disappointing election results in the Irish Republic last month and prospects for ending the island’s partition.
Sinn Fein has fought four elections this year – two in the north of Ireland, a general election in the Republic, and European elections – an experience which Hazzard described as “very busy and stressful“. Sinn Fein is now the leading party in the North with Michelle O’Neill the First Minister of the devolved Northern Ireland Assembly. 
On the border question Hazzard said “All the parties in the Republic say they expect to see a united Ireland in the next ten years, but Fianna Fail and Fine Gael (who have run the Republic since 1945) are in no hurry to deliver this”.
Mary Lou McDonald, Sinn Féin’s leader in the Republic, has had talks about reunification with Labour and the Social Democrats, who have 22 seats in the Dail between them.
Hazzard said Sinn Fein is “working well with the Labour Party left and other independent TDs, and we know that many Fianna Fail’s grass-roots members are unhappy with their leadership’s refusal to talk to Sinn Fein”.
Sinn Fein’s current policy on ending partition is based on discussion and dialogue to ensure that all parties, above all the Northern Unionists, feel included. Hazzard described it as “a marathon, not a sprint”.
He added that if the partition of Ireland ends “the North will automatically become part of the European Union, and there have already been some polls in the North in favour of reunification”.
In the 2020 Irish election Sinn Fein went from 23 to 37 seats – one seat below the winner, Fianna Fail – and may well have taken first place had it stood more candidates.
This was a totally unexpected success which shook the reactionary political establishment in the Republic, but in the November election Sinn Fein failed to follow through, gaining only two seats.
Hazzard put the party’s loss of 100,000 working class votes down to its policies on immigration and transgender rights. “In the working class areas of Dublin our vote didn’t desert to other parties, they just didn’t turn out for us”.
He pointed to the example of the Scottish National Party’s alienation of many of its voters because they saw the focus on transgender issues as irrelevant. “We need to understand working class views on transgender issues, and we didn’t appreciate the level of anger in working class communities over the handling of migrants”.
Since Brexit very large numbers of asylum seekers have entered the Irish Republic through the open border with the North, with an enormous impact on a country of only 5.4 million people.
Hazzard said “our government failed to put any system in place to deal with asylum seekers who were sent into poor working class areas. And people saw that they were being accommodated while nothing was done to help the many homeless Irish people in Dublin”.
“The ruling parties used the issue to create a wedge in the working class in the same way as Farage has done in England, but in the election Sinn Fein took the far right head on and they made no gains, they didn’t even come close”.
As so many times in its history, Sinn Fein is looking to move on from its setbacks in the Republic by learning the lessons and understanding the needs of working class people.

 

Sinn Féin MP warns of voter restrictions

John Finucane speaking

By Theo Russell

Francie Molloy, Sinn Féin MP for Mid Ulster, told a meeting in London last week that the problems the party experienced with registering voters in the North of Ireland for the December 2019 election “were the most difficult Sinn Féin has ever experienced”.

He said: “There are increasing restrictions on who gets onto the electoral register and who can send postal votes.

“We need to prepare for a unified electoral system in the north and south that is completely out of the hands of the British government. Every Irish citizen should be on the register and have the right to vote.

“Demography is changing in the North but it’s not reflected on the electoral register, and that could mean the unionists maintain control even when they’ve lost the popular majority.”

The keynote speaker at the meeting, A decade of opportunity: towards a United Ireland at the Westminster Parliament, was John Finucane, new Sinn Féin MP for North Belfast.

Finucane reminded the meeting that the Good Friday Agreement “is an evolving process” that “requires constant nurturing and active oversight and involvement by the Irish and British Governments”.

But his main focus was on Brexit, which he said “has exposed the failure and undemocratic nature of partition – a political problem, which requires a political solution”.

He added that: “The majority of MLAs and MPs in the North of Ireland are anti-Brexit. Neither the people, nor their political representatives here have consented to the North leaving the EU today. There is a justifiable anger about this.”

In April 2017 the European Union announced that in the event of Irish reunification, the North “would automatically re-join the EU with the rest of Ireland,” Finucane said.

He predicted that recent changes “will inevitably lead to the final break-up of the constitutional structures of the United Kingdom” and said: “It is no longer a question of if, but when the referendum on Irish unity will be held, and many of those of a British or Unionist identity are now considering the merits of reunification.”

Finucane called on the new Irish government after next month’s elections to publish a Green Paper and appoint a minister on how to prepare “a successful transition to a united Ireland”.

He added that the debate on reunification was bringing in wide sections of society in the North of Ireland.

Last year Baroness Paisley, the widow of Ian Paisley and vice-president of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), said: “I just wonder why (Ireland) had to be divided... and I think it was the wrong decision,” adding that she could live in a united Ireland as long as there was freedom of religion – in contrast to her own party leader, Arlene Foster.

Also Billy Hutchinson, leader of the Progressive Unionist Party, which had one seat in the Northern Ireland Assembly until 2007, told the party conference the a reunification referendum was inevitable.

On a so-called border referendum – ie to end partition – he said: “For our part, Sinn Féin believes there should be one within the next five years.

“That means the Irish Government need to begin to plan for a referendum, promote the discussion, and build a vision of a new and united Ireland.”

He called on the Irish diaspora in Britain to lobby MPs and the British government “to live up to its responsibilities under the Good Friday Agreement to announce a unity referendum”.

John Finucane is the son of lawyer Patrick Finucane, who was murdered in 1989 by Ulster Defence Association (UDA) members who were colluding with MI5, which was confirmed in parliament by David Cameron in 2012.

Finucane pointed out that in Belfast: “The absolute unionist majority has been lost in the last four elections and it is not coming back. I say this not out of triumph but as a challenge.” His seat was exclusively held by unionists until December 2019.

Amongst his predecessors was Edward Carson, who led a revolt against Irish Home Rule, paved the way for partition and established the Ulster Volunteers, who received arms shipments from Germany. Lenin famously cited Carson as an example of the British government supporting treason against against their own state.

In the discussion a speaker from the floor spoke about the ‘Magnitsky amendments’ unanimously added to two new laws by parliament, allowing the freezing of assets of “international human rights violators”. (According to the USA and UK, the US lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was murdered by the Russian Government.)

The speaker asked: “If they were so concerned about human rights, why didn’t they pass a law after the murder of Pat Finucane?”

A martyr for Irish freedom

By Theo Russell

A new committee was launched last Friday at the London Irish Centre in Camden, north London, to prepare for the centenary of the death of Terence MacSwiney, the mayor of Cork, who died after 73 days on hunger strike in Brixton prison, south London, in October 1920.

The hunger strike was launched in protest at his internment for possession of “seditious articles and documents" during the 1919–‘21 Irish War of Independence, and the fact that he was tried by a military court, and was joined by 11 other Irish Republican prisoners in Cork Jail.

MacSwiney, a playwright and author, took part in the 1916 Easter Rising in Cork. He was elected to the first Dáil Éireann as Sinn Féin TD for Mid Cork in 1918. After his friend Tomás Mac Curtain, Lord Mayor of Cork, was murdered by members of the Royal Irish Constabulary in March 1920, MacSwiney succeeded him as Lord Mayor.

The meeting was addressed by Martin Ferris, Sinn Féin member of the Irish parliament, the Dáil, since 2002, who described his own experience of being on hunger strike for 47 days in harrowing detail. Ferris was serving a 10-year sentence in Portlaoise prison, Ireland, for IRA membership.

Ferris said that MacSwiney “succeeded in criminalising the empire that tried to criminalise him” and asked: “Those who tried to criminalise us, where are they now? Maggie Thatcher is remembered now for her association with Pinochet and support for apartheid South Africa.”

Ferris also spoke about a major new book, {Ireland’s Hunger for Justice}, which for the first time brings together the stories of 22 Irish hunger strikers who gave their lives for Ireland’s liberation between 1917 and 1981, including two others who died in English prisons, Michael Gaughan and Frank Stagg, in 1974 and 1976.

MacSwiney's hunger strike in 1920 gained world attention and protests in his support were held in Germany, France, Australia and South America. In India, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi and the revolutionary Bhagat Singh were inspired by his example and writings.

The great Vietnamese national liberation fighter Ho Chi Minh famously said of MacSwiney: “A nation which has such citizens will never surrender.”

She fought for Irish freedom

Austin Harney pays tribute to CountessMarkievicz

By Theo Russell

Over 100 people gathered on 28th December at the site of the former Holloway Women’s Prison in Islington, north London, to mark 100 years since the famous Irish republican and revolutionary Countess Constance Markievicz was elected as the first female MP in Britain. She was in jail for her leading role in the 1916 Easter Rising, in which she was a commander of the Irish Citizen’s Army led by James Connolly.

In the 1918 election Sinn Féin swept the board in Ireland but its MPs never took their seats at Westminster, instead establishing a new Irish parliament in Dublin, the Dail. Markievicz was amongst those sentenced to death after the Rising but the decision was reduced to a life sentence because of her sex. Joe Dwyer, Sinn Féin’s Political Organiser for Britain, delivered a message on behalf of the party’s seven Westminster MPs, which said: “The people of Ireland voted for freedom, and to see the future of Ireland decided on the island of Ireland. That historic election saw women voting for the first time, and also saw the election of Constance Markievicz as the first female MP elected to Westminster. She was a radical in every sense of the word – a feminist, a socialist, a revolutionary and a republican.”

Austin Harney spoke for the TUC’s London, Eastern and South Eastern region:  Constance Markievicz was a very principled woman, who would not have accepted the 1921 treaty and the partition of Ireland.” He said that the Free State, which lasted until Ireland became a republic in 1937, “denied Irish women the rights to divorce or abortion”.

Harney also read a message from Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who recalled that Markievicz “had fought for women to be allowed to vote and was jailed many times”, and called on the government, which owns the prison site, to guarantee a women’s centre and homes for women in the redevelopment.

When Constance Markievicz died in 1927 she was refused a state funeral, but huge crowds turned out in Dublin and she was given a guard of honour by the Irish Citizens' Army.