Revisionist Scholarship and Modern Irish Politics by Robert Perry

Author:Robert Perry [Perry, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781317063582
Google: BNfsCwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 29880289
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Managing the Sinn Fein Base

Gerard Murray and Jonathan Tonge argue that Sinn Fein was ‘forced to engage in duplicity towards its own supporters, reassuring doubters that armed struggle remained a tactical option’ (Murray and Tonge, 2005, 265). Anthony McIntyre stresses that there was an ‘authoritarian culture that has gripped Provisional republicanism under the leadership of seeming Sinn Fein president for life, Gerry Adams’ (McIntyre, 2008, 304).

Questions have to be asked about the leadership, analysis and honesty of the Sinn Fein Leadership. Had the base of the movement undergone a real process of education? Was there real debate within the Republican movement on its ‘peace strategy’? Was there discussion and analysis of what was possible? Was there an awareness of the frustrations and constraints as well as the rewards of democracy? Was there a realisation that the Republican movement could not get everything it wanted? Was there a collective understanding within the Republican movement of what was expected from it by their partners in dialogue, i.e. the nationalist consensus? Did they not realise that high, unrealistic expectations, bordering on triumphalism and encouraged at the outset by the Sinn Fein leadership, could and did lead to an inevitable return to violence, the traditional IRA response? Why did they not see that the abstentionist culture and policy would have to go? One is forced to conclude that the IRA cessation had taken place without any process of re-education being undertaken within the Republican movement to convert the militarism of many republicans to an exclusively political, democratic and legal method of pursuing their objective.

Ed Moloney argued that an IRA spilt had been a ‘virtual certainty from the moment that Adams embarked on the peace process, such was the scale of the departure from traditional IRA ideology that the enterprise implied’ (Moloney, 2002, 479). The process begun by Gerry Adams ‘meant recognising the existence of the Northern Ireland state and the Sinn Fein leadership knew that. The deep hostility of their supporters to this meant, however, that the leaders were obliged to carefully manage their base’ (Moloney, 2002, 484). This careful management did not just apply to ‘their base’. The view of the leadership of the IRSP of the Provisionals is that ‘it is elitist, that it is determined to control all within its bounds, that they need to have the hegemony of the struggle’ (Perry, 2008, 46); the Provisionals, the IRSP Leadership asserted, want the sole right to speak on behalf of the entire community; and that the Provisionals want to show that only they can deliver peace in Northern Ireland. For the IRSP Leadership this hegemonic role, that the Provisionals have, necessitates the demise of the IRSP or, indeed, any radical dissenting voice around which any dissident elements can gather.7

Richard English states that IRA members were briefed to the effect that ‘the northern assembly established by the Agreement represented a transitional arrangement on the way to a united Ireland. Confidence was expressed that demographic change would soon produce a nationalist Northern Irish majority in favour of unification’ (English, 2003, 300).

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