If the republican movement is to have a meaningful voice in the UK’s Brexit negotiations, it must exorcise the demon of abstentionism from Sinn Fein.
Since its formation in 1905, Sinn Fein has maintained its public stance against British rule in Ireland by refusing to allow its MPs to take their Commons seats. Yet Sinn Fein elected representatives take their seats in every other parliament. Even the late Ian Paisley senior and late Martin McGuinness successfully ran the DUP/SF power-sharing partitionist Executive at Stormont during the so-called ‘Chuckle Brothers’ era in the peace process.
June 8th could see a major shift in the Orange/Green balance of power in Northern Ireland. Unionists have already lost their majority in Stormont. There is the real possibility that republicanism could become the majority voice at the ballot box with nationalist or republican candidates clinching the balance of Northern Ireland’s 18 seats.
In mainland Britain, Scottish and Welsh nationalist MPs as well as anti-monarchy or republican MPs within Labour all take their seats, leaving Sinn Fein as the political odd-ball. Republicans who cling to the ‘dinosaur dynasty’ of abstentionism would do well to remember the Commons success of former Mid Ulster MP Bernadette Devlin, who became one of the youngest MPs to take her seat in 1969 as a Unity candidate. She is a devout republican socialist, but clearly recognised the sterling merits of the political phrase – if you’re not in, you can’t win!
Eloquent republican elected representatives have made significant impacts in Stormont, Dublin’s Dail, and the European Parliament, so if they truly want to prove that Sinn Fein has totally embraced the principles of democracy – as well as campaigning effectively for the best Brexit deal for the UK – all Sinn Fein MPs elected on 8th June must dump abstentionism into the dustbin of history. The Brexit deal will not get final approval in Brussels or Strasbourg, Dublin or Belfast – Westminster will be the key battle ground and the Commons chamber in particular.
In the nationalist community, the SDLP will be fighting for its very survival, its three MPs all facing stiff competition from Sinn Fein and the moderate nationalist party needing tactical voting by unionists to stop a Sinn Fein onslaught.
The secret of Sinn Fein’s success has been the cultivating of the so-called ‘draft dodger’ candidate – people who have no known links to the Provisional IRA. Since IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands won the 1981 Fermanagh South Tyrone Commons by-election, the trend in Sinn Fein for almost a generation was that most candidates should be either ex-jailbirds or have links to the IRA. The ballot box went hand in hand with the bomb and bullet. But since the 1994 IRA ceasefire, that trend has been radically diminished. A new generation of republican from the Catholic middle class and well-educated has emerged, none of whom served their political ‘apprenticeships’ in the Provos. This is now the era of the ballot box and bachelor honours degree!
Electorally, this has meant that Sinn Fein can emerge from its hardline republican working class heartlands and roam into the bastions of middle class moderate nationalism. Sinn Fein is sweeping up votes that normally went to the SDLP. Ironically, Sinn Fein is dishing out to the SDLP at the ballot box what the SDLP did to the original Irish Nationalist Party in the 1970s. The INP was the main Stormont Opposition party during the era of unionist majority rule. Indeed, SF2017 is almost a mirror image of a former republican party, the Irish Independence Party, founded by hardline republicans within the SDLP in the 1970s who felt the SDLP had too much of an emphasis on socialism and not enough on republicanism.
In another twist, the IIP was led by Protestant John Turnley, a former British Army officer who was later murdered by loyalist terrorists in 1980.
In hard political terms, if the ‘draft dodgers’ rule the Sinn Fein roost after 8th June, then SF2017 equals IIP1977. While the IIP did not win any seats in the 1979 General Election which saw Maggie Thatcher sweep to power, had Turnley lived and the 1980 and 1981 republican hunger strikes avoided, the IIP would now be sitting pretty at Stormont and Sinn Fein would merely be a social supporters club for the rebels of the 1916 Easter Rising.
But cue the reality pill. The ‘draft dodger’ strategy is not only putting SDLP seats under severe pressure; at least two unionist-held seats could fall to Sinn Fein. This is forcing unionists to put up ‘unity’ candidates to defend its seats in both North Belfast and Fermanagh/South Tyrone.
While the SDLP may well be fighting for its very survival within nationalism, so too is the once dominant Ulster Unionist Party battling for its future in unionism. Lose its two MPs and the UUP will split, with the centre right heading off to the DUP and the liberals sucking up to the centrist Alliance Party.