For years Sinn Fein in the North was accused of acting as both government and opposition, enacting right wing policies in government while presenting itself as anti-establishment, pretending to oppose the sort of politics it was itself carrying out.  It talked out of both sides of its mouth and had more sides than the Albert Clock, as we say in Belfast.

It got, and still does to a lesser degree, get away with it because its dumping of traditional republicanism has been continually praised while its clinging to symbolic remembrance of its dead armed struggle is repeatedly damned.  More fundamentally, it succeeded because it is the most vigorous defender of Catholic rights in the ‘new’ political settlement that has been anointed saintly status by the powers that be, stretching from Washington and London to Dublin and Belfast, not to mention Brussels.

It has had lots of powerful friends on its journey from rebels to politicians, happy to indulge its self-ID as progressive radicals while it became the centrepiece of a regime of dysfunctional failure.  It could forever bask in the naked contempt of its unionist coalition partners, the best of enemies, while telling its supporters that a united Ireland was ‘within reach’. What made it repellant to some made it attractive to others.

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During a walk-about with a Sinn Fein candidate in last weeks local elections an Irish Times journalist noted that some potential voters appeared to treat the party as if it was already in Government – part of the establishment – and part of the problem it was presenting itself as the solution to.  Waving Tricolours and singing rebel songs doesn’t exactly distinguish you in the South, which now routinely names itself Ireland, leaving the North to get along with Northern Ireland, the nomenclature that unionists goad Sinn Fein with its unwillingness to allow pass its lips.  Now Sinn Fein has found in ‘Ireland’ a new rival that claims to be even more nationalist than it and waves the flag even more vigorously.  The structural conditions applying in the North don’t exist south of the border so are no help to it.

The rise of the far-right and its opposition to immigration, especially in some working class areas of Dublin, is widely held to be a major reason for the apparently sudden and stunning setback to Sinn Fein in the local and European elections held last week.  In an opinion poll in June 2022 it was recording support at 36 per cent, by far the biggest party.  Last week it gained only 12 per cent of the first preference vote and would be the fourth largest if we count the bag of independents as a party.  In 2020 it suffered from standing too few candidates to maximise seats from 25 per cent of the vote while in 2024 it stood too many.

It isn’t Fine Gael or Fianna Fail who are labelled the traitors now, although Sinn Fein long ago found that approach would get them nowhere.  It is now Sinn Fein who are the traitors to the Irish nation, who support a ‘new plantation’ and who refuse to prevent immigration when ‘Ireland is full’.   It is Sinn Fein that is now accused by the assorted racists, far right and fascists as betrayers of the ordinary working class Irish.

All the anti-immigrant tropes that have been seen across Europe are now a ready currency in Ireland and Sinn Fein is the primary political target.  Within less than a couple of years a self-satisfied liberal view that Ireland was more or less immune from the rising tide of racism and xenophobia so prevalent elsewhere has been evaporated.

The growth of the population has largely been due to immigration while the keenness of the Irish bourgeoisie to show its support for Ukraine (in the absence of an ability to provide weapons or troops) has meant that over 100,000 Ukrainian refugees have been welcomed.  This has been followed by an increase in refugees from other countries, less welcome, not least because they aren’t white and no political capital is accrued by having them.

The Irish State was already undergoing a housing shortage when it decided to open its doors to these refugees; stumbling from one emergency measure to another in order to cope while offering welfare rates on a par with the natives.  As the number of those seeking international protection also grew local protests against the housing of these refugees developed in small towns and mainly working class areas of Dublin.

Numerous arson attacks prevented accommodation from being created for refugees while local people claiming not to be racist protested, claiming only to be concerned with the lack of local GP or other health services; an existing shortage of accommodation, or the turning of a local hotel that might have brought in tourists into a refuge for asylum seekers.  The localism of political activity in much of Ireland found it easier to mobilise against asylum seekers than against the failure of the state to keep health, education and housing in line with a growing population.  No doubt many of the local protesters are voters for the bourgeois parties responsible for the policies that led to the failure.

The governing parties decided to clamp down and the toughened rhetoric on immigration became one of control – ‘firm and fair’ – the same reactionary rhetoric employed elsewhere that everyone knows means an attack on the rights of refugees.  The governing parties had found a scapegoat for their failures and a handy weapon against its political rival in Sinn Fein: opinion polling claimed to show that part of its support was more opposed to immigration than that of other parties.

The party first tried to dampen this by arguing that the Government had failed to talk to or consult properly with local people about the accommodation of refugees in their areas but one of their TDs had to admit that “we were a bit all over the place.”  This has settled down to more or less aping the rhetoric of the Government and policies that are more or less the same.

None of this could appease those looking for a quick racist solution and who aren’t going to be convinced by the benefits of immigration, not least because they haven’t seen any.  The benefits of opposing anti-immigrant and racist solutions from a socialist point of view don’t exist for those who don’t have a socialist project and don’t see any utility in working class politics.  Sinn Fein can’t argue this way and even the left mainly presents liberal and human rights arguments that are no part of this politics.

Sinn Fein thus doesn’t escape blame from more backward and reactionary workers while its more liberal and vaguely progressive supporters won’t support it bowing too far in their direction.  Both have reason to doubt the party, with the recorded decline in its support preceding the more recent prominence of migration.

There is only so much complaining you can do before you’re asked to explain what you’re going to do about it, arising from doubts about exactly what you stand for.  U-turns have been public and obvious over a range of issues, including the price of housing, proposed hate legislation, support for the failed referendum proposals that were roundly defeated and then reversal of a promise to re-run the vote if they failed.  All these are small relative to the fundamental U-turns in the North, but this just illustrates the different environment it has to work in.

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Sinn Fein is not yet the past, but it doesn’t look like the future now either.  That famous Irishman Oscar Wilde said that “there is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”  Sinn Fein has been much talked about leading up to the elections and especially about the results, including by the leader of the current Government coalition.  You’re not supposed to talk ill about the dead in Ireland so Sinn Fein isn’t dead, but it isn’t the main story and we’ll talk about that next.

Forward to part 2