The Future of Sinn Féin

“When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then and not till then, let my epitaph be written.” - Robert Emmet.

The year is 2032. The Republic is four years old, and Ireland has started to get used to these new arrangements. The tricolour flies side by side with the flag of the four provinces, and the sun shines over The Irish Republic on a bright Easter morning. The Dáil is sitting in Dublin and discussing the merits and demerits of artificial intelligence, while the Seanad is sitting in Belfast and has just voted through a final ban on all diesel cars. An Taoiseach is sitting in her office, looking over the bustling streets of the ancient city of Dublin, wondering to herself: “Now that we’re free, making our own decisions, and on the road towards reconciliation and equality, what’s left to do for us Republicans? Surely I can go home and have a rest. Surely we can hang up our activist boots, surely I don’t have to go to those bloody Cumann meetings anymore, surely I can sit down and discover what this phrase ‘binge watch’ means …” 

And then Mary Lou opens the window and looks out. On the street below her lies a man who has never known anything but cold, rainy nights on city streets. Next to him, the windows of a vandalised mosque are being repaired, by Irish women and men who are tired of people seeing their colour first, humanity second. She sees the boarded up family shops, lying idle as the multinationals take the business their families had for generations. She listens to the frantic conversations of gossipping Dubliners - the only problem being, it’s Béarla they’re speaking as they discuss the breaking news about King Charles’s new trousers. She hears a buachaill óg walk past the site of the newly reconstructed O’Rahilly house asking his father, “What happened in 1916?”,  and receiving an apathetic shrug for an answer.

And then An Taoiseach realises - the struggle has only begun.

The right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland …

When we win the Republic, which I believe will happen this decade, the struggle for political, economic and cultural freedom begins. Though Sinn Féin’s main purpose is to “End British rule in Ireland”, when this is brought about the fruits of that withdrawal will become apparent.

Firstly, independence will give us the opportunity to fully address the economic injustices in our country. As nationalists, we have developed our own ideology regarding what our economic principles will be as a nation, influenced by but distinct from the paths followed by other nations. Fundamentally, as set out in the 1916 Proclamation, that ideology is about economic democracy. The Irish people in a ‘free’ Ireland cannot be slaves to a multinational, capitalist class. We cannot be the pawns in the global game of CETAs and gross wealth accumulation. Having freed Ireland, Sinn Féin must be to the fore in freeing the Irish people. 

In practice, this means encouraging the idea of worker co-operatives, for example. The employees in an enterprise know the business best, and are more interested in the long-term success of that enterprise than investors. This means the workers themselves choosing the management, sharing in the profits, and having true control over their own destiny. If we advocate this for nations, we must advocate it for citizens too.

Similarly, in the new Ireland we must resist with every fibre in our being the existential threat that is globalisation. Globalisation (and unregulated capitalism) are largely responsible for modern urbanisation, which is killing rural, regional and Gaeltacht communities. Capitalism draws people to large urban centres where community-building becomes more difficult. Tackling globalisation does not mean chasing out the multinationals who have relocated here, or closing our minds to the world. Rather, it means regulating their activities to align with our project of Republic-building, and over time, reducing our dependence on them. If we are dependent on these powerful forces, their power over our nation is too strong to resist. 

The Sinn Féin of post-unity Ireland has to be the driving force of this change, while bearing in mind that at the moment, in 2021, this is only a pipe dream if we do not bring about reunification first.

Politics

Our party will also have a leading role to play in the structures of an independent Ireland. 

Bringing politics to the people will be a main aim. Hugo Chávez spoke about making “every man a politician”, which is an ambition we should replicate. Appeasing unionist concerns and the more general need for decentralizing powers will both give us reason to strengthen the powers of local government, particularly over issues that directly affect local citizens.

As well as this, the symbols and design of the new state is something for which we will have to fight. Though wrangling over flags and emblems should not get in our way on the road to Unity, these are important questions for Republicans. I will always argue that the best flag for Ireland is the tricolour of green, white and orange, representing peace and unity between two of our traditions. In a United Ireland, even if another arrangement has been made in the Unity Agreements, we should continue to argue the case for symbols aligned with our own Republican outlook. (This said, we have to bear in mind that no symbol, not even our flag, defines Ireland. Ireland was born thousands of years before the tricolour, and therefore it is only a representation of our nation. Giving up the flag (temporarily) may need to be considered in the planning for Unity, but the prize of Irish freedom is ever greater).

Shaping a society based on Irish Republican principles will be another post-Unity purpose of our movement. Educating the Irish people on the meaning of nationhood, the history of Ireland and on the need for respect and admiration for the diversity in our country, will be key to this.

Tír gan teanga…

When Unity happens, and all 32 counties are under the control of one Irish government, some would call this Freedom. I would call it ‘freedom’ in one sense of the word. Hoping you ignore the Collins allusion, I feel that a United Ireland would give us the freedom to achieve Freedom. It may be better if we look at all these issues, UI, economic, political and cultural, all under the one overarching aspiration of the Reconquest. Though political freedom is the main component of the Reconquest, if we ignore the cultural aspect we have failed and done a disservice to the generations of Republicans before us.

Turning the dream of a bilingual, Gaelic society into reality will be another great challenge for Sinn Féin in the post-independence Ireland. The long-term phasing out of English-medium schools, the use of both languages by the State, the restoration of the Gaeltacht, and so much more is how we will bring this about. 

If the question of cultural nationalism is left as a footnote or as a cúpla focal at the beginning of a speech, then we will not be taking the right path as a party post-Unity.

Focal Scoir

The future is bright for our party. Further electoral success in the north is on the horizon, a Sinn Féin government in Dublin is more than probable, and most commentators are suggesting a United Ireland in the not-so-distant future. While the challenges of this decade should remain our priority, we must begin to plan for the post-colonial Ireland, while not letting it distract us from our current  job of work.

Our history is a lonesome history. A history of death, of Famine, of unwritten epitaphs. A history of 800 years and of 66 days. It is a history of betrayals, of colonisation, of linguacide. But the future does not have to be that way - because the future is in our hands. The future is in Sinn Féin’s hands.

Let us win the Republic, let us shape the Republic - and some time, in the future, we will be able to look back and say that we have built an Ireland to be proud of. We will hear the laughter of our children, of which Bobby Sands so elegantly wrote. We will be able to gather at Emmet’s grave and write his epitaph together - knowing that Ireland is truly free.