Glasnost at An Phoblacht? August 21, 2007
Posted by franklittle in Media and Journalism, Sinn Féin, media.trackback
“Strange that you should single out the deaths that can by any stretch of the imagination be laid at the door of the British Army and brush aside the far greater numbers of deaths caused by the IRA….How about printing a tally of deaths caused by the IRA just to even things up? It’ll be a long list…”
An excerpt from one of the tedious internet debates about the Northern conflict? A letter from the Belfast Telegraph or the Irish News taking issue with a Sinn Féin supporter?
Actually no, it’s taken from the current issue of An Phoblacht, where it appears beneath the headline ‘Stop blaming the poor British peacekeepers!’. Admittedly it appeared in the paper’s letters page but it is still so surreal an experience to see a letter like that published in the Sinn Féin party newspaper I had to read it two or three times to make sure I wasn’t missing some ironic twist. I still haven’t ruled out poor editing. One of the other letters in this week’s edition is written by an Independent councillor, Peter McAleer, who resigned from Sinn Féin and is given the opportunity to berate the party’s deal with the Labour party, accusing them of abandoning the T&G’s Mick O’Reilly.
It’s a bit GUBUesque to be honest but it’s also not entirely out of character for the paper, or at least as much of it as I have been reading recently. I started buying the Phoblacht again after reading on Slugger that there was a major internal debate about the party’s performance in the recent election campaign going on in the pages of the paper. Over the course of a number of weeks about a dozen or so party members, activists, candidates and officials wrote letters or articles about the election campaign with the overwhelming majority critical, in some cases extremely critical, of the party leadership.
It even printed a letter from me taking issue with one of the more foolish arguments advanced by a supporter of the party leadership who claimed the party had only moved to the centre on economics, but had moved to the left in every other policy area and therefore, the party has not moved to the centre. You don’t need to be an economic reductionist to find that particularly silly to read. There was also a flurry of discussion around a claim from one activist that Ógra Shinn Féin was basically useless, and responses from other correspondents, Ógra activists in the main, taking issue with it.
So why is a political party’s newspaper giving space to the party’s own membership to accuse its leadership of incompetence and misrepresenting policy? Why are they printing letters from former Sinn Féin councillors and people who see the British Army as peacekeepers?
As with many aspects of Sinn Féin, you can take the negative position or the positive. The negative one is that it is a cunning plan by Adams, a latter day Baldrick for cunning, to allow the Southern membership to blow off steam about the election result without actually having to change anything and to identify possible future dissenters and trouble-makers while portraying the party paper as open for debate. This week’s letters page is nothing more than an attempt to drum up controversy in the silly season by printing material An Phoblacht’s readers will be infuriated by.
The positive position is that one of the more Stalinist political parties in the country is being just a little more open. A bit of Glasnost, so to speak, is being allowed in as part of the party’s efforts to ‘find itself’ again after a fairly poor election result. The leadership is now, in a post-IRA phase, no longer immune to criticism. People from outside the party, even people who in McAleer’s case would have one time been accused of betraying the party, can have their say.
Optimistic? Very much so. But at the same time I suspect it is unlikely that I will ever pick up a copy of the Socialist Worker criticising the party’s links to Islamic Fundamentalists and accusing Kieran Allen of being incompetent. It will be an even colder day in Hell before The Socialist prints letters from readers arguing that Peter Hadden is, when you get down to it, badly wrong on pretty much everything and that it is Kevin O’Loughlin’s fault they lost Dublin West.
It is to be welcomed when a political party shows a willingness to publicaly debate the mistakes of the party leadership and to allow other views to be published, especially one so tightly managed as Sinn Féin. I doubt this means An Phoblacht is going to open its pages to every Tom, Dick and Harry, but as the newspaper of a political party, it could hardly be expected to and perhaps we should simply acknowledge this as something positive and maybe even somewhat innovative in party political publications today.
“But at the same time I suspect it is unlikely that I will ever pick up a copy of the Socialist Worker criticising the party’s links to Islamic Fundamentalists and accusing Kieran Allen of being incompetent. It will be an even colder day in Hell before The Socialist prints letters from readers arguing that Peter Hadden is, when you get down to it, badly wrong on pretty much everything and that it is Kevin O’Loughlin’s fault they lost Dublin West.”
A note of caution. I admire SF for being so … open. But, this is strangely reminiscent of the way many parties left of social democracy went in the 1988-1991 period … in the long run it exposed fault lines within them and led to their transformation or more often disappearance. Of course a counter argument is that that might not be the worst thing in the world either… (the former, the former, not the latter)… An example I always think of is the Communist Refoundation party in Italy which has wrestled long and hard with just what point it occupies on the left spectrum.
The other thing is that AP these days is more geared towards the southern cadre, and they would often be different types from the northerners (it was ever thus…) So I find it’s usually a bit more leftish and a bit more, well, republican than the sort of writing you find in the Andytown News. Since the election it’s actually got to be a bit of an interesting read again. Funny what a setback can do.
I think I would err on the positive interpretation of this shift. The party is now sufficiently large and well established as to be able to engage in much needed open debate, and there is a genuine feeling amongst Sinn Féin members I know, that the mistakes of the election campaign have been learned about and discussed with a strong likelihood that they will not be repeated in a future election, a huge learning experience for all…A good thing surely?
oh incidentally the correct link to my weblog is the one on this posting..not the one above which for some reason is incorrect..technology!!!!
On reading the letter from ‘Sean’ ‘USA’ it does seem to have an element of here is a really blatantly anti-republican argument, ‘poor British peacekeepers etc’ that will allow someone from the leadership to advance the argument to end all arguments on Trouble’s victimhood. Could it be that the sniping about how many Brits were killed compared to IRA volunteers, how many civilians died compared to paramiltaries, and the publicity about the really sordid side of the war; like young GAA player Graham and his family in Fermanagh, are leading to young Shinners asking difficult questions? In my experience most young Shinners in the south have no idea how many people the IRA killed and certainly have no idea about the dirty sectarian stuff. The war was essentially August 1969, pogroms, internment, Bloody Sunday, Dublin-Monaghan, hunger-strikes, collusion. They wouldn’t have a clue about half of what went on.
‘Sean’s’ letter could provide Danny Morrison (under any one of his names) with the room to upgrade the argument that not only did the Brits kill a couple of hundred civilians but they are also responsible for ALL Loyalist killings and hey, its their fault Ireland was partitioned so they are kind of responsible for the ones we killed as well. The state was to blame, we were all victims, its time to move on…except for Pat Finucane, we’ve got to know the truth there and Loughall, and Dublin-Monaghan…
(I do believe in knowing the truth about these things btw, but not just the selective nature of it).
It’s weird isn’t it? It’s certainly unusual for a movement that has been Northern-dominated and tightly controlled to allow such laxity of views. On the one level it’s certainly a positive move if it is evidence of glasnost or an opening up of democartic debate in PSF and that can only be a good thing for them and for everybody.
But, in another sense it is dangerous, glasnost in practice can create fissures and factionalism, surely something that a semi-militaristic leadership has no interest in promoting? What if it was for instance the beginnings of a Southern revolt against what is perceived as a hindbound Northetrn leadership? A reconfiguartion would be interseting…
Also let’s not forget that this sort of thing has happened before in diffrent contexts of course, but the United Irishman in the 60s was often a paper that floated controversial ideas that precipiated leadership “new departures”. And indeed, the letters columns were often controversial and challenged the then shibboleth of abstentionism. Some SF cumann refused to sell certain UI papetrs they felt were unduly influenced by “communists” thinkers such as Roy Johnstone etc.
Ed’s got a point about the deliberate amnesia regarding the conflict though and maybe it is a cynical move by PSF leaders so they can lance the boil about “war” “truths”, but they are playing a dangerous game after all, if you want to start on about who shot who then even the young Provos in the South will eventually come to realise the sordid nature of it all…..we hope!
Hopefully. Calling for ‘truth’ is a dangerous business when you have things to hide. Mind you if Gerry A can deny being in the Ra and people don’t fall aound laughing anything is possible.
Ed, I know it’s tempting for you to find Adams’s evil hand behind everything but really, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I’m in a Sinn Féin office and we get letters like that fairly regularly.
Fair enough.
Hey Wednesday-I’m sure you get letters like that all the time, but what is the thinking behind printing one of them?
Are we reading too much into all of this glasnost stuff…is it a case of “this guys views are fairly abhorrent to us, but let’s show the world we are open and can take all views”. I’m interested because as has been stated you’d be lucky to get the SP or WP or any party for that matter to print views that so obvioulsy were out of sync with their world views.
You’d have to ask the editor that, Redking. Maybe he just didn’t think there was a good enough reason not to print it.
Interesting piece from Frank, the SF leadership would have to be brain dead not to understand that with the standing down of PIRA the centre of the struggle has moved from north to south. SF members in the south due to the environment they have grown up in, are far less conspiratorial than their northern colleagues. Thus the ‘follow the leadership line’ is not so easy to enforce. Dublin SF took a hit when members left to found eirigi, so the last thing the leadership wish is to drive more comrades out.
However it could be a normal party political generational in fighting thing, the current SF leadership has been in place for some time leaving a generation further down the party chain aching to get a grip on the parties levers of power.
Some of whom cannot be to pleased when Adams decided to jump a generation and parachute younger candidates into position. Myself I feel there are only two things which will reinvigorate SF, Gerry Adams will have to either stand down or make a serious attempt to enter the Dail. I cannot see SF making much headway beyond its current position unless its leader sits in the southern parliament.
As to the letter in question, im surprised some over eager Shinner did not see the hand of those dastardly spooks we have heard so much of from CH.
My immediate reaction is that Adams might stand a good shot of getting into the Dail, depending on the constituency. But then there’d be the obvious hail of abuse from the Independent papers and the state broadcaster to consider. What do you lot think of his chances?
Not great to be honest. Depends on the constituency.
Well interestingly, while there were responses to the “Brits as peacekeepers” letter, they came across as ordinary members responding, rather than the heavyweights of the leadership coming in.
To be honest, while I obviously hung the introduction to my piece on the letter for the ’shock’ value, I was more surprised from a political sense to see a former SF councillor being given space to criticise a party strategy.Politically, a bigger deal I think.
I think Splintered is right in that Sinn Féin in the South is certainly more to the left and arguably more republican than Sinn Féin in the North. Since An Phoblacht is Dublin based, maybe this is reflected in what it publishes. It makes one wonder if as presumably Adams & Co are finally realising that the South is a different political environment to the North, they have begun to realise their party is different in the South too.
Finally, on Mickhall’s post, I think this is going to be a decisive few years for Sinn Féin in the South. I slightly disagree with his analysis of what might be the decisive political developments.
To me, it is down to whether Adams allows the party in the South to develop as a left-wing, campaigning political party, or he continues to see it as a ‘foot in the door’ for Northern nationalists. Historically, he has seen it as the latter. The only way the party will be saved as an entity down here is if he is forced to stand aside from that view.