An Phoblacht – Samhain/November Issue now out… November 9, 2011
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics, Sinn Féin, The Left.trackback
Available from usual stockists, the latest issue of An Phoblacht is out. And a most interesting read it is from the cover story about the Presidential Election through to
Good to see Robbie Smyth taking on the commentators whose math on the election counts and the SF vote share were seriously askew in a piece entitled ‘Some Media Commentators Can’t Count’ accompanied by a lovely photograph of Eoghan Harris.
The editorial is strongly against the handover of public monies to the financial sector after November and quotes the following:
Gerry Adams explained that Sinn Féin is not opposed to the write-down in Greek debt. “But what is good enough for Greek citizens should be good enough for Irish citizens. Irish taxpayers are being forced by this government to endure extreme hardship while paying billions of private banking debt to unguaranteed bondholders. The only people arguing that this should happen is the Government and the Anglo bondholder.”
All in all a good read… here’s the rest of the contents:
Presidential Election: Martin McGuinness made the difference
Other Presidential election coverage Pages 5 to 9, 21 and 30
Nelson McCausland: Minister for Evictions?
Funding fears for rural transport network
Priory Hall housing scandal: Nightmare legacy of the Celtic Tiger
**
We must face the reality of eurozone chaos
Ní leór plean Keane don Chothromas Diúltach
Pat Finucane assassination – David Cameron’s Downing Street Dishonour
McCluskey Civil Rights Summer School – Finding the truth in the conflict
North’s Police Ombudsman to go in January after three damning reports
Gerry Adams on the ETA cessation of armed struggle and Ireland’s role in the dramatic breakthrough in the Basque Country
Is fiú cuairt ar chartlann nua | An ghéibheann, isteach sa Facebook
Political ex-prisoners: Trying to break the chains of the past
Palestinian Fatah leader speaks to An Phoblacht
Feargal O’Hanlon Memorial Lecture – Seán Cronin, IRA strategist, historian and journalist
The Miami Five – Still fighting for justice 14 years on
Remembering the Past – The Compton Report: A whitewash for torture of internees in Ireland
Cork’s Tadhg Barry, comrade of James Connolly, to be remembered
Matt Treacy’s ‘More Than A Game’ – ‘Soviet Soccer Saturday’
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
If I was Robbie I wouldn’t be re-visiting the presidential campaign. Less than stellar performances from himself on TV. McGuinness made the difference alright, but not possibly in the way that was the intention.
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But that’s irrelevant to the substantive point which is that a range of commentators offered absurdly and stupidly negative analyses of the SF performance at the Presidential election that a range of voices well beyond SF took issue with for their lack of credibility.
What ever about Smyth’s failings in this or that forum – and by the by it’s always tiresome to see one instance or another of SF or an SF members performance dragged out as if that’s somehow emblematic of their inevitable political downfall [TM no end of commentators] – that’s the crux of the matter.
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On the other hand, SF and their supporters have been offering ridiculously positive analyses of McGuinness’ performance the election.
The results for SF were mixed. They finished a distant third, were 1% percent above losing their expenses and didn’t make the kind of inroads into the FF heartland they were hoping for, but they did hammer Gay Mitchell and succeeded in raising the party profile throughout the state, and probably did no harm to their image in the North at the same time.
As Mark P raised here before though, plucking Martin from Stormont for the run does reveal the party’s weakness when it comes to finding representatives of substance as well.
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I’m interested in your experience. Talking to SF people in Dublin I had quite the opposite experience where none was talked up so I’m wondering was this a case of different locations on the island.
I’m not as convinced as you re McG’s candidacy indicating weakness. Labour, a party with over double SF’s representation in the South had trouble finding candidates and wound up with three potential ones, two of which were pretty grim. FG a party with four to five times as many reps chose disastrously from three. Fianna Fáil, a bigger party, didn’t even put forward a candidate and the left/independent bloc didn’t either.
As regards McG. Well, Doherty was too young, MLM too divisive seemingly, and others not really with the sort of recognition that McG gets. For better and for worse.
I think that it is very possible that with another SF candidate they might have done slightly better… until I start to try to work out which one. And as soon as I throw a face or name into the mix I wonder if they wouldn’t have been closer to their General Election figure than with McG.
And there’s also the issue of utility. As I noted previously, SF will never put forward a candidate anywhere close to as contentious as McG.
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http://leargas.blogspot.com/2011/10/reflections-on-election.html
http://judecollinsjournalist.blogspot.com/2011/10/irish-presidential-election-five-things.html
I think FG have proven that you can’t just throw any candidate out and hope for the best in a presidential election. Martin McGuinness may be the most contentious candidate possible, the one with the most ‘baggage’, but he’s also the only one with that statesman-like quality SF were going for. They were hoping his role as dFM up at Stormont, his connections with various international leaders, etc. would play well for him. Not even Gerry has that kind of profile, and up-and-coming politicians like Pearse and Mary Lou are, in fairness, lightweights.
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I see our ‘friend’ is feeding his obsession with all things Soviet once again.
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I haven’t really been keeping track of the whole debate on the net on this so I might have missed some of the more party-line people but speaking as a shinner I don’t think our analysis has been ‘ridiculously positive’. We fell short, but only a little way, of our target of 15 per cent, we achieved our targets of getting third and beating one of the government parties.
We also, and Robbie goes into this in a bit of detail in the paper, broke a lot of new ground, getting over 10 per cent in constituencies we didn’t contest in February, doubling our share of the vote in weak constituencies like the two Tipperary ones. That has potential for our performance in 2014.
We never, as far as I’m aware, expected him to win and it was only after there was a poll that had him on 19 per cent that people started to talk about him getting close to 20, but it wasn’t something that I think cooler heads took as seriously.
We increased our share of the vote four points, crippled Gallagher’s campaign and achieved most of what we wanted to do. It’s a good result for us and I’m happy with it. Sure, I’d have liked to have broken 15 per cent, or even got close to 20, but that was always going to be challenging.
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Could Isay that in Tipp South the Republican Socialist vote is Seamus Healy. So if SF regards itself as part of the Socialist and Republican left then Tipp South is not weak.
I think this Pres. outing has consolidated SF as the national left opposition to the government and FF. Left in the sense that this is how the electorate see it.
SF’s rivals have a problem of breaking out of the 5 constituencies (ok they have a little base in a handful of others) and becoming seen as national rather than a few Gregorys.ULa wasted a summer in my opinion and the separate campaigns by the duopoly has weakened it.
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That’s a very good point Jim re the republican socialist vote. And that functions in much the way Gregory did being of the republican socialist side of the fence but not necessarily clearly in it…
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Healy himself might admit to being a republican socialist if pushed. However, people in Clonmel simply see him as the working class/trade union representative and the inheritor of the strong Labour voting tradition in the town.
With the exception of a few rural pockets, the constituency has not had a strong tradition of republicanism in modern times. Clonmel was a British army garrison town for hundreds of years (there are the architectural remains of that around the town in the form of things like a presbyterian church that became a car showroom and (if memory serves) a Quaker meeting house which became a union office. My father (who came from real rebel country up in the Silvermines) always said that Clonmel was a very “English” town and I used to laugh at him, because I saw it as simply rural suspicion of urban culture. Nowadays, I actually think he was onto something. It would be improbable in the extreme, given the size and longevity of the British presence in the town, if a significant percentage of the townspeople did not have an English soldier or two in their family trees, not to mention the obvious cultural influence that would be an inescapable result of rubbing shoulders for so long. I observed the subtle differences myself between people from the long-entrenched Clondmel working classs and the rural interlopers like my own family who migrated to the town. The Labour Party was run by people with deep roots in the town, like (the lamentable) Sean Treacy, while Fianna Fail was run by the teachers and psychiatric nurses who originated in the small villages. Dimiarly, the oldline Clonmel working class ran the soccer club, while the rurual types dominated the GAA club. I think these phenomena were more pronounced 30 years ago when Ireland was in the process of becoming more urbanized than they are now. One interesting sign of the political impact of urbanization is the existence of contemproary left policians of one hue or another who come from rural (and sometimes even farming) backgrounds: Rabbitte, Gilmore, Joe Higgins, Michael D.
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JC
A bit unfair on Healy. He has always claimed the Republican Socialist mantle. He organised the anti-extradition campaign for a Provo inclined priest (forget name). he was witchhunted on this spurious pretext by Pendergast.
In ULA he represents the Republican Socialist position. (Obviously not IRSP more Connollys version)
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“as if that’s somehow emblematic of their inevitable political downfall”
Aw c’mon WBS. Have a heart. I desperately need those emblems of the Provos inevitable political downfall to sustain me in these terrible times.
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Joe, brilliant. I laughed out loud when I read this.
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The Sinn Fein presidential candidate was on Wall St. meeting with capitalist predators when his candidacy was announced. At the same time, a few blocks away, the left opposition to finance capital was beginning its occupation of Liberty Plaza.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/08/the-situationists-and-the-occupation-movements-19682011/
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Green Tories – is this why all the blood was shed?
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In fairness the man was trying to encourage inward investment to the north. Given that he’s never said he’s a revolutionary Marxist or anarchist it’s hard to take him to task for something most social democrats (and indeed the WP back in the days I was a member) found/find acceptable.
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Yes, but there’s another trend of Marxist thought, associated with Paul Baran and the Monthly Review ‘school’, which includes the whole ‘dependency school’, and which denies the alleged progressive role of economic imperialism. And this trend is much more in accordance with revolutionary Irish republicanism than the Bill Warren/BICO/IIR anti-Leninist advocacy of the progressive role of imperialism. This latter is indistinguishable from Walt W. Rostow’s economic ideas. Rostow was a distinguished cold warrior and an advisor to Kennedy on how to defeat the Vietnamese revolution.
We are now witnessing the effects of reliance on foreign capital for Irish economic development.
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For all the Irish Industrial Revolution’s many problems, I don’t think it’s an accurate reflection to suggest that it bears anything in common with the likes of Rostow. In fact, this is nonsense, pure and simple. I doubt you’ll find a chapter entitled “Beyond Monopoly: The State Sector”, followed by 100 pages on putting in place the fundamentals of a state-driven, planned socialist economy in the works of the likes of Rostow. I doubt you’ll find this type of thing in the works of anti-communists “Beyond monopoly capital the future belongs to the state sector and to the Irish working class”. One wonders, reading the above comment, if you could argue that having read it.
The IIR was not saying the Irish economy should rely on foreign capital; it was in fact a plan to apply state power to the natural resources of Ireland.
So let’s criticise the IIR by all means, but preferably for what it actually does say rather than what people would like to think it said.
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Perhaps my memory is going. Its some time since I read IIR. I have a copy somewhere and will try and excavate it.
My response above was to WBS’s remark re “encouraging inward investment”, an economic policy which he says the WP found acceptable. I immediately thought of the Harris/Smullen’s IIR. But maybe I’m mistaken and perhaps WBS is not referring to it above.
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CL, I’m not referencing the IIR either to be honest. Indeed I’m trying to make precisely the opposite point you are making when you introduce the idea of Baran etc who in fairness would hardly be a strand readily identifiable either to many social democrats or democratic socialists.
I’m simply pointing out that SF and McG are pursuing a fairly mundane if not indeed typical approach taken by many non Marxist leftish centre left parties. One can critique them for that, absolutely, but not, I think, for not being Marxist when they haven!t suggested they are marxist in the first place – and I should add the comment which sparked me more into making the point was th Green Tory one which seems to me to be in factual (and historical) terms simple hyperbole which illuminates hardly at all. Surely one can argue they share similarities with other non Marxist or partially Marxist inflected groups like the ANC (or successive socialist/SD administrations in Europe) who have encouraged investment for jobs, but that seems to me to be a different argument…
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Fair enough, that clarifies things. However i do remember reading somewhere CPI’s Michael O’Riordan criticizing IIR for favouring economic imperialism and I conflated this with encouraging foreign investment.
And there is a strand of Marxist thought which looks upon economic imperialism as progressive (Bill Warren) et al. Sinn Fein’s approach to seeking economic development, North and South, through U.S corporate investment is broadly in line with the conservative economic policy pursued in Ireland since shortly after WW2. The collapse of that model is now evident.
As for the ANC, its leadership has come under quite some criticism from the left for adopting the neoliberal ideology.
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There’s a difference between believing multinational development would help lead to class consiousness and growth (as the WP did once) and parading your friendship with US vultures as McGuinness does, nothing in the least left-wing about his campaign at all.
Not bad, but not great results for SF area-by-area and not likely to be replicated when they are up against FF, ULA or independents in a general election.
McGuinness generally performed well, but struggled with the focus on the IRA- the other spokespeople did not handle that too well either. They are used to talking to themselves about the war, and indeed glorifying it in private, and arn’t able to convincingly do that for a non-republican audience. Robbie blustered on TV, came across as an ejit to Browne (who wound him up way too easy). Others did better, MacLochlainn for example.
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As was put to me, PIRA blew up two financial centres in their time so perhaps it’s little wonder they are trying to shore up their credentials on the other side now. Just that it’s not ‘Green Toryism’. As for parading friendship with US vultures. I don’t think that’s a fair assessment either. In a Presidential Election to counter the point made by FG that inward investment and consequently jobs would suffer he made the point that he had gone to the US to drum up business interest. I don[‘t see that as ‘parading’ and I genuinely don’t see that as a bad thing depending upon the terms within which those companies come into the Irish market place [also worth considering the SF links with the US labor movement which are far from non-existent]. Indeed, there’s an argument that at least the UK has higher corporate tax rates etc which put our own to shame. Now I knowt hat the Assembly is arguing for a stabilisation with the RoI rate, something I think SF can fairly be critiqued for as being well out of order, but that’s a different argument entirely.
And my overall point would be that it would be better to critique SF on grounds like that than on complaining that they’re ‘Green Tories’ or that they’re not left wing enough. No doubt the latter is true for some, but they’re not a Marxist-Leninist or even a Marxist party, so let’s hold them to account for departures from their democratic sociliast/social democratic approach where there are clear issues as to how closely they actually align to their own electoral material [in the South]. Also in fairness their spokespeople in the Dáil have been consistently left of Labour, and left of centre across the years they’ve been represented there.
To be honest I also don’t think the ULA will put up a better show than SF and I’d be concerned if ULA members start to believe this as a truth. One thing that has struck me is how the ULA ‘brand’ for want of a better word seems a bit attentuated at this point for various reasons, for a start their identity in the Dáil doesn’t seem to be clearly separate from other Independents, outside of it there seem to be a few too many campaigns where they’re pulling apart rather than together.
I don’t say that lightly, I hope that they’ll keep at least four of their seats (I think RBB is going to find DL almost impossible to retain) and perhaps gain one or two – they’re good hard working people one and all but that’s more or less the limits of growth, not least because SF is already stronger nationally and there’s likely to be at least something of an FF increase, although not a renaissance. I also suspect that SF in 2016 is going to be better positioned to pull away current LP seats than the ULA. I could well be wrong in all this analysis, but that’s how it seems to me.
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They’re not objectively a leftwing party, in rhetoric maybe – blowing up shopping centers, pathetic.
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Many of us here have been members of parties with enormous problems in respect to their pasts.
But I’m always a bit dubious about the word ‘objectively’. There’s no such animal. After all ‘objectively’ speaking who would have imagined that the WP could develop out of the SF of 1964?
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He wasn’t talking about shopping centres. He was clearly talking about the London financial district and bombings such as that at the Baltic Exchange. However that was viewed at the time, I don’t think ‘pathetic’ was one of them. Get real!
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That’s an interesting point though who is the ‘he’ in this? I think there’s argument that such actions, economic oriented [though not forgetting two non combatants were murdered during one explosion], non six county based, etc had an impact to some measure and no doubt focused minds. But I think there were limitations both to that and to the capacity to mount them. By the late 1990s large scale bombings like that would – had there been no cessation – probably fairly locked down by the UK security apparatus, I think the history of dissident bombings is revealing in that respect. Very small scale ones just about achievable, large scale ones not. And the fact they happened/happen so infrequently since 1998 points to the logistical difficulties intrinsic in mounting them.
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The Monthly Review School… isn’t John O’Dowd trying to close that one down?
Anyway, the point is that you shouldn’t have to be well-versed in Bill Warren, Paul Baran or anybody else to know that sharing a genial lunch in downtown New York with Henry f****ing Kissinger is hardly the behaviour of any kind of lefty. And nobody to the left of mild social democracy could say that lowering taxes is good for most people. Yet Marty’s the man who told the NI Chamber of Commerce earlier this year that , “Sinn Fein is the only party that has consistently advocated transferring tax varying and borrowing powers to stimulate growth and deliver social justice. We have continually called for and will support the harmonisation of Corporation Tax across the island to promote such growth.” Perhaps he was careful not to equate lower tax with “social justice”.
I would genuinely love to know what people such as those associated with the sadly now-defunct Sinn Fein Keep Left blog or the likes of Eoin O’Broin make of this less-than-left-wing stuff from Martin.
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I’m not so exercised about who someone has lunch with Kissinger. As Ruiri Ó Bradaigh famously said ‘I’ll shake the hand of any man’. But… for the rest I think you have a excellent point. Tax harmonisation on the island – at least in respect of lowering it – makes no sense at all from a left perspective and McG’s comments on that, as noted above, are something to behold. This is where the stresses of the SF approach come into plain view and this is where they have to start explaining if they want to be treated as credible.
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Forgot to say there’s a lovely photo of Martin and Kissinger -cue comment about war criminals from Fintan O’Toole – at
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think SF are more interested in harmonization with the south and devolveing power from london. hack of and join up is part how they see making the boarder irellivent.
if it ever does happen in theory does it have to stay low for ever. it would be one of the only tax raising powers the assembly would have. i presume part of the idea is to get money into stormounts coffers as opposed to a better way of collecting money for westminster. Does it have to stay low in the south for ever either.
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‘I’m not so exercised about who someone has lunch with Kissinger. As Ruiri Ó Bradaigh famously said ‘I’ll shake the hand of any man’.
O Bradaigh for all his faults probably wouldn’t be as quick to shake KIssenger’s hand.
An illustration of the contradiction in the SF approach is that they have different policies on Sean Quinn and his empire on different sides of the border, or more precisely different counties in the north-west.
Do you think a party that depends on financial support from the likes of Mr. Morgan of Armagh is likely to endorse higher taxes on businesses?
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I’m only taking ROB’s words as he spoke them. After all he shook Gerry Adams hand subsequent to the famous vote. I’d have thought Kissinger would ahve been at least as difficult/easy an ask.
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Yes, the centrality of a nationalist agenda is unquestionable, but well before any united Ireland situation ever comes to pass they would be happy to see lower corporation tax in NI. This is partly for nationalist reasons but some in Sinn Féin are genuine believers in the benefits of lower taxes and Enterprise Zones and all the rest. A prominent cheerleader is Mitchel McLaughlin who argued in January this year that “the unemployment figures published today highlight the need for urgent action to be taken in delivering the special enterprise zone status promised by David Cameron.” While making the nationalist point regarding the need for economic autonomy, McLaughlin concludes by saying that “In the meantime all parties should unite in demanding that David Cameron bring forward his proposals for rebalancing our economy now – without further delay so that we can judge just how seriously the British government takes the needs of this part of Ireland.” It Maybe I’ve misunderstood, but it sounds to me that McLaughlin is taking Cameron to task for not implementing the Con-Dem slash and burn agenda with sufficient alacrity in the North. Again, I would love to know how Eoin O;Broin etc live with this stuff.
http://www.sinnfein.ie/contents/19914
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they need concenus from across the chamber to lick a stamp though. a nationalist argument isn’t going to cut it with the DUP or the UUP.
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if the implementation of harmonised (lower) corporation tax across the two jurisdictions somehow clinched the nationalist argument the DUP would be dead against it. The DUP realises that it would do no such thing so they are happy that, like them, their coalition partners support lower taxes, enterprise zones etc. Nationalist rhetoric on the part of SF will not cause Robinson and co to lose any sleep.
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While SF supports a 12.5% corporate tax rate across the country, the DUP actually wants a 10% rate in the Six Counties. (They have no qualms about calling themselves a pro-business party.)
On Eoin Ó Broin, he spoke at an event organised by the Republican Congress QUB society last November where he said that raising corporation tax would hurt the economy. He was against low-tax economies at one point, but he seems to have got over it.
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some times people come to the same conclusion for different reasons. just because the DUP support it dosn’t mean that SF are wrong from a nationalist point of view to support it. They might be wrong for different reasons but DUP support alone isn’t enough. on a wider field its part of the contradictions for SF problem for SF is when or if they havn’t already start believing the stuff they say. may all be mute anyway matter could possibly be decided by europe in the near future, for the south anyway. the new road to derry getting canceled keeps the north west cut of from dublin and what ever joined up eonomic potential in the two plans there was.
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It is now more than 50 years since the Irish establishment began promoting the inflow of U.S. corporate capital as the main plank of its economic development strategy. Just because the Eoghan Harris’/Eamonn Smullen’s IIR claimed such a strategy to be ‘progressive’ does not make it so. Half a century after this strategy we see its results in mass unemployment and mass emigration.
The whole notion of the corporation as the main locus of economic activity must be questioned.
That McGuinness was on Wall St. meeting with capitalist predators as Occupy Wall St., a few blocks away, was issuing its anti-corporate manifesto, makes clear that Sinn Fein cannot be regarded as a left win party. The manifesto begins:
“They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation…”
http://www.nycga.net/resources/declaration/.
How encouraging such institutions for economic and social development can be viewed as ‘progressive’ is a mystery.
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Sure, but again, SF makes no pretense that it seeks a revolutionary transformation of society in the way you suggest. I don’t think that doesn’t make them or at least significant strands within them left wing though, my definition of left wing is drawn a fair bit more widely than that.
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I accept they have left wing strands, but they are primarily a populist, nationalist party,-one that can also accommodate the extreme right.
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Ulltra-Catholic Gerry McGeough led Sinn Féin’s opposition to the referendum on the Nice Treaty in the Republic of Ireland and was also a Sinn Féin Ard Comhairle member.
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They also contain that scourge of communism – Matt Tracey.
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A party of the left [or leftish, as I’d prefer to call it] accomodating those with extremely conservative social views [whatever about McGeough’s economic views, and just to be clear we were very strongly agin what his magazine was propounding while it was out if you look back through the years]… never!
Though, hold on a moment, I can think of a good example from very very recent Dublin political history which might fit the bill where someone with no dissimilar views on some social issues has just gone AWOL.
😉
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But again, there’s no huge contradiction in that. The British Labour Party through it’s high social democrat phase – say 1945 to 196ish was overwhelmingly anti-Marxist and anti-Communist. Still managed to be highly effective in delivering a social welfare state, the NHS and breaking the back of class and social conventions that stultified that society.
You’ll also find Marxists within SF.
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The British Labour Party, unlike Sinn Fein, has never had fascist in its ranks (Oswald Mosley left Labour before he became fascist)
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Never knew about Kissinger thing – Green Tories is perhaps to nice – McG what a fucking creep.
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The world is a complicated place. People have to meet people all the time that they differ slightly or strongly with. Being at a meeting in the early to mid 2000s of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy which is where the photograph was taken which McGuinness delivered a speech at seems to me to be fair enough in the context of the peace process.
I mean this is worse than actually negotiating with Blair? Or Bush?
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Yes, much worse. That c*nt oversaw the killing of comrades in Chile and elsewhere, nothing excuses that image – I was not aware of it before and feel sick now – McG = CREEP
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‘world is a complicated place’ – pathetic.
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Pathetic? Really?
Great response.
You haven’t answered my question about whether an Irish Republican addressing a foreign policy think tank in the US during a process where the need for US support was hugely significant is somehow worse than negotiating during that process with those who initiated or supported the Iraq war?
The thing is “Reni” the world is a complicated place. I know people who had friends murdered by Republicans of all stripes. And those who also had friends murdered by the Loyalists and somehow some of those people have had to come to terms with these situations each other and worse. So you’ll understand I have little time for moral high horses.
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WBS
No, it doesn’t pretend to be revolutionary but how can it be termed left – at least in the North- given it’s support for lower corporation tax and its implementation of con-dem agenda in NI?
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I think that the individual circumstance of the North in terms of admnistration does muddy that water somewhat. Not so much on the harmonisation issue [which in any case is likely dead in the water given the economic blow back of the last few weeks] and which as I say there are signfiicant questions to be answered. But in relation to the lack of revenue raising powers on behalf of the Executive/Assembly there’s an argument, and I accept it’s thin, that there are constraints and that it is as important to keep a political process in train there. So I don’t think it invalidates the idea that they can be a left wing party, albeit in my view a sort of leftish social democratic one, operating in a very particular circumstance. What I would like SF to offer up is a set of red lines across which they won’t go.
Whether that is likely to be offered to us is a different matter.
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every time the provo’s draw a line in the sand they cross it be careful what you wish for. there drifting around the left as left v right economics becomes increassingly more polorised, think the process will work itself through.
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I’ve just done a quick google and it’s clear that at least the SF kids are still down with the socialist revolution. This, for example, is from Ógra Shinn Féin south west belfast website:
Any suggestion that socialism is alien to so-called traditional republicanism is unfounded. Equally incorrect is any suggestion that in the context of a struggle for national freedom nationalism and socialism do not march together.
Our task as a revolutionary movement at this stage in the struggle for freedom is to act as the mass organiser of the people, and young people in particular; to lead them in agitational activities on issues such as better working, living and social conditions, showing them in all these fights that their enemies are their landlords and their gombeen exploiters banded together into the establishment.
The objective is both nationalist and socialist – a 32 County Democratic Socialist Republic.”
http://www.sebelfastsinnfein.com/elections
And, once again, I’d love to know if Eoin O’Broin and the people behind Sinn Féin Keep Left would consider himself themselves revolutionary socialists.
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I don’t believe republicanism and socialism are alien to one another.
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Nor do I. For what it’s worth I’m very much a socialist republican. i was simply pointing out that some within SF do regard themselves a s socialist revolutionaries. Interesting though, that they describe themselves as nationalists and socialists. Given the less that nationalism is more often exclusive than universal,in my view it is much harder to be a coherent socialist nationalist.
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Yes, entirely agree. As I hope I’ve indicated from the start I’m no uncritical booster for SF, all I’m trying to do is cut through some of the rhetoric.
I think there are genuine questions about policy/approach/tactics and you’ve very clearly articulated some which you have raised in the thread above. It dismay’s me to see the drift from what I think are principled [and admittedlynon-Marxist] positions on the economy. As I said earlier I can see a rationale for sticking with teh peace process to this point. However, I genuinely want to know at what point would they break wtih teh Executive if asked to implement x y or z and what in their opinion is x y or z…
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I suspect the answer to what point they would break with the Executive is roughly when hell freezes over.
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But I think that’s a question that should be put to them and on a continuing basis.
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It should certainly be put to their voters. Although I suspect the large majority want them in power permanently regardless.
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That’s seriously depressing.
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Sectarianism kills progressive politics!
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Should have read:
Given that nationalism is more often exclusive than universal,in my view it is much harder to be a coherent socialist nationalist.
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You make a very good point. It’s time to bid the peace process goodbye and get on with grown-up politics in which coalitions are not mandatory and ideological positions at least to some extent determine who your party gets into bed with. At the very least, as you say, it would be great to know what might constitute an ideological bridge too far for them. What would force them to leave government not as part of some “peace process” ritual dance but because they couldn’t hack forcing it through? I think we may have to wait a while before the answer to that question is forthcoming. A real pity, because in my view they could really start to transform NI politics if they began to think in these terms. And i don’t say that as their most ardent admirer.:)
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I don’t know much about it, but they remind me of the kind of election machine that serviced ethnic communities in New York in the 19th century. The people get some leverage from the party machine and the machine lives to grow the machine. Or maybe they’re more like the Borg – but mostly they assimilate Catholics. And with those pearls of insight it’s off to bed.
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That’s the real danger of the structures in the North. Great as far as they go in getting people talking, entirely useless in the long haul. But the problem is how long is the short to medium haul. And I think your point about grown-up politics is key.
I just can’t work out what the best alternative would be. I’d lvoe to say class politics. But… is it too early, or is it impossible at this point or … I don’t know.
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if corporation tax fails then they have invested alot of energy for nothing. similar tactics could meet the same fate. maybe that would be a spur for plan b. there not untinking but they are fixated.
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That’s a memorable line right there shea, ‘not unthinking, but they are fixated’.
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Just on harmonizing corporation tax. I’m sure I heard the DUP leader say recently that they don’t want to harmonize, they want to undercut! 10% is what they want as opposed to our 12.5%. Cue Southpark: The people from the future are taking our jobs.
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I should add that it’s enough to make any self-respecting partitionist puke his porridge.
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There’s an interesting post here from FF which puts forward the idea, in the light of the recent SDLP leadership contest, of a 32-county Social Democratic Republican Party formed from the merger of FF and the nationalist bulk of the SDLP.
And another post here from Jenny Muir at East Belfast Diary which holds out an invitation to whatever social democratic rump exists within the SDLP to merge with the NI Labour Party (UK).
In the light of the discussion above about SF’s nationalist vs social democratic basis, and their relative strength within the nationalist politics on both sides of the border, having already beaten the SDLP into teh ground up north and quite possibly eclipsing FF in the south within the next few years, does anyone really think it’s credible that they will retain any semblence of socialism let alone social democracy when their target is to eclipse centrist populists parties and coppoer fasten their position as the dominant party of opposition? Really, it just isn’t going to happen. They’re heading with full intent further into the mainstream of centre politics.
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Sorry, links here:
http://www.legionoftherearguard.com/?p=404
http://eastbelfastdiary.blogspot.com/2011/11/blogging-has-had-to-take-back-seat.html
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BTW I see Tracey, ala Seanie Lemass, is at it again having a pop at the CPI on politics.ie worth reading for an insight of some ‘thinking’ in SF.
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Interesting posts on SDLP. Didn’t know that FF were thinking about that stuff.
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Post by Conall Parr on the SDLP conference from ‘The Detail’ website;
‘The evening is a more relaxed affair. The Co–operative party, over from London, has sponsored the drinks reception and I run into veterans of the Northern Ireland Labour Party who dearly wish the NILP had the close relationship the SDLP enjoys with the British Labour Party today. Ex–MLA Dawn Purvis is there though I hear her assuring Attwood’s brother Tim she won’t be joining the SDLP under any circumstances. I chat with John Dallat properly, who actually turns out to be very affable guy. He reveals when he was starting out in the SDLP ‘we were told whatever you do you don’t say a bad word about the Catholic Church or the GAA’. In between discussions with fraternal Irish Labour delegates I find myself talking to Fine Gael’s Frank Feighan, TD for Roscommon/South Leitrim. When I mention the late Garret FitzGerald he says he wishes his party had done even more to play up the link between his party and the SDLP which is why he’s there. Naturally he’s down in the mouth about Fine Gael’s candidate in the presidential election but I suggest Sinn Féin’s real target over the next few years are Fianna Fáil, both considered to be vying for the same republican vote. With younger members and superior organisation I predict Sinn Féin will in time gradually overwhelm them, but Feighan is adamant ‘We haven’t seen the last of Fianna Fáil’.’
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I think that’s probably true. I find it difficult to see SF fully supplanting FF. The votes are too different and SFs history still too raw at this stage.
The SDLP is an odd group, isn’t it though Shay? Sort of neither flesh nor fowl and locked into the North in a way that constrains it hugely, ie it’s always dependent upon others outside the North for validation/legitimation in terms of broader national linkages. The DUP and UUP have a similar problem of course, and no clear way through or past it, as the UUP’s dismal Tory lash up proved.
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Wouldn’t let it lie etc…
http://www.newswireni.com/content/martin-mcguinness-visits-occupied-wall-street-revolution-begins
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But ‘Terry’ complaining that Martin has two faces is a bit rich…. No?
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Martin has more faces than the Guildhall Clock. I have numerous personalities, its different.
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You should take a look at our moderation policy, it’s the second tab along. Particularly the bit about sockpuppeting. Consistency of use of user names is only fair. It keeps everything on a level playing field.
I only use three handles online, my actual name in Irish, my actual name in English and WBS. That way people know precisely who I am in the sense that they know broadly speaking where I’m coming from even if they aren’t aware of my offline identity.
What people do elsewhere is their business but on this site we ask for a similar consistency not least because it doesn’t then give the impression that there are multiples of people with the same opinion all jumping into a discussion when in fact there might only be one or two.
WordPress has a neat feature that flags up multiple use of usernames across any given time period and it was that which brought a few things to our notice. I imagine if I was pushed I could go back and search for similar coincidences across the years but I’ve no time and less inclination.
But, and this is a generalised point to anyone who is using more than one user name, if there’s any more of it we’ll delve back and have a look at patterns of usage.
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To clarify. The ‘he’ refered to earlier is your good self in responding to the ridiculous charge of ‘green toryism’ levelled at republicans by someone on here. Not wishing to get into a debate about specific tactics in the armed struggle, the only point I would make about your comments is that to attempt to draw a parallel between the massively greater resourced, popularly supported and efficiently organised and directed IRA and these tiny, unrepresentative, militarist factions, generally described as ‘dissidents’ is pointless. They will never be capable of the type of operations mounted by the IRA in their time.
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Sorry, I wasn’t getting a dig in Sean, the thread was relatively old and I couldn’t see who Ramzi was talking about either. I’m as one with you re both points you make, firstly on the absuridty of the green toryism stuff and secondly in reference to the capability of those groups you reference, and I take your point that closing the latter down would be many times easier than the IRA. That said I do think that a general securitisation, to coin a phrase, of society in the 2000s in particular and in the wake of 9/11 specifically, has had a muting effect and would have had had the armed struggle continued. Which is perhaps another reason to be glad we’re in an entirely different context.
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i think you mean Reni not Ramzi?
(I dont think i have commented on this thread so far – that is because I have broadly agreed with the stuff you have been saying World)
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Apologies I’m all over the place Ramzi!
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No worries WBS. Anyway lots of reasons to be glad we’re in an entirely different context. Great site. Keep up the good work.
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Having read this I believed it was extremely informative.
I appreciate you spending some time and effort to put this information together.
I once again find myself personally spending a lot of time both reading and leaving comments.
But so what, it was still worth it!
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