Sinn Féin Early Days Sinn Féin & The Easter Rising

Originally founded by Arthur Griffith as an Irish separatist monarchist party, in 1917 it moved to campaign for an Irish republic, and it is as an Irish Republican political party that it is now known. It is committed to the re-unification of Ireland, replacing the two partitioned states created in 1920, Northern Ireland and what is now called the Republic of Ireland. Unlike other Irish nationalist parties it has until the 1990s campaigned using what was called the Armalite and the ballot box strategy of political agitation and the use or threat of violence, a term first used to describe Sinn Féin's strategy by Danny Morrison, one of the party's leading activists in the 1980s. It has strong links with the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and is sometimes referred to as its political wing.

Historians dispute whether there is in fact a Sinn Féin, some seeing a collection of parties descended from each other as its various leaderships in the 1920s, 1930s, 1960s, 1980s and 1990s split, with other moving to form rival parties, most with new names, some keeping the words Sinn Féin in their title.

The modern Sinn Féin is now the strongest nationalist party in Northern Ireland, where it polls approximately one quarter of the vote. Its main rival in the largely Catholic non- Unionist part of the electorate is the constitutional nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), which won more seats in the 1998 Northern Ireland Assembly election but was eclipsed by Sinn Féin in the 2003 election.

Sinn Féin currently has five TDs in Dáil ÉireannDail Eireann is the lower house of the Oireachtas (parliament) of the Republic of Ireland 1. Its powers are similar to those of lower houses under many other parliamentary systems. It meets, since 1922, in Leinster House in Dublin. Composition The current in the Republic, as well as four MPsA Member of Parliament or MP is a representative elected by the voters of an electoral district to a parliament; in the Westminster system, specifically to the lower house. Australia In Australia, the term Member of Parliament refers specifically to a mem in the British House of CommonsThe House of Commons is a component of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also includes the Sovereign and the House of Lords. The House of Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 659 members, who are known as "Members of Parliamen, though the latter may not take their seats because of their objection to swearing an oath of allegiance to the BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a state in Western Europe, usually known simply as the United Kingdom the UK Britain or less accurately as Great Britain . The UK was formed by a series of Acts of Union which united the formerly monarchThis article treats the generic title monarch . For the origins of the word king and its English use, see Germanic king. For other meanings of the word, see Monarch (disambiguation A monarch is a type of ruler or head of state. The word derives from Greek, and recognising British jurisdiction over Northern Ireland.

In the Northern Ireland AssemblyThe Northern Ireland Assembly is a 108-member legislative body for Northern Ireland that sits at Stormont with powers devolved to it from the Westminster parliament. It is created as a power sharing body, so that every party is represented in the executiv, Sinn Féin have 24 MLAsThis is a list of members of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Their official style is Member of the Legislative Assembly abbreviated as MLA. The current assembly, which was elected in November 2003, has never met as Northern Ireland's devolved government an, up from 18 prior to the 2003 election. When the executive functioned during the 1998-2003 assembly tenure, the party had two Ministers in the Northern Ireland ExecutiveThe Northern Ireland Executive is the (currently suspended) executive body for Northern Ireland, answerable to the Northern Ireland Assembly. It officially took power on December 2, 1999, but was suspended on various occasions, the last effective October. Since the emergence of the Democratic Unionist Party as the largest Unionist party, it is unclear exactly what the future of the assembly and executive will be since the DUP refuses to share power with Sinn Féin while Sinn Féin shows any signs of links to an IRA that has not completed the process of decommissioning of its arms. In European Parliament elections held on June 10- 11, 2004, Sinn Féin candidates Mary Lou McDonald and Bairbre de Brún were elected as MEP's for Dublin and Northern Ireland, respectively; they are in the grouping European United Left - Nordic Green Left in the European Parliament.

1 Early Days

Arthur Griffith
Founder and first leader (1905-1917)

Sinn Féin crystallised around the political campaign of Arthur Griffith and William Rooney at the beginning of the 20th century. For many years Sinn Féin was a loose federation of political groups whose only real connection was the newspapers edited by Griffith which inspired them. Most historians opt for November 28, 1905 as a founding date because in was on this date that Griffith first presented his 'Sinn Féin Policy'. In his writings, Griffth declared that the Act of Union of Great Britain and Ireland was illegal and that, consequently, the Anglo-Irish dual monarchy which existed under Grattan's Parliament and the so-called Constitution of 1782 was still in effect. Therefore, all that was needed to achieve an independent Ireland was to believe that this was the case. Everything else would fall into place.

Sinn Féin was wrongly blamed by the British for the Easter Rising, with which it had no association, other than that some of its ideas--though not its championing of an Anglo-Irish dual monarchy--influenced some of the Rising's leaders. Any group that disagreed with mainstream constitutional politics was branded 'Sinn Féin' by British commentators. The term 'Sinn Féin Rebellion' was also used by the Irish media, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) and by a few of those involved in the Rising.

Surviving leaders of the Rising under Eamon de Valera took over the party. De Valera replaced Griffith as president. It nearly split between its monarchist and republican wings at its 1917 Árd Fheis (conference) until, in a compromise motion, it proposed the establishment of an independent republic, after which the people could decide whether they wanted a monarchy or republic, subject to the condition that if they chose a monarchy, no member of the British Royal Family could serve as monarch.

2 Sinn Féin & the Easter Rising

Sinn Féin was boosted by the anger over the execution of Rising leaders, even though before the executions, the Roman Catholic hierarchy, the Irish Independent newspaper (the biggest selling daily newspaper in Ireland then and now) and many local authorities actually called for the mass execution of Rising leaders. Yet even that public sympathy did not give Sinn Féin decisive electoral advantage, It fought a tough battle with the Irish Parliamentary Party under John Redmond, later John Dillon, with each side winning by-elections. It was only after the Conscription Crisis, when Britain threatened to impose conscription to boost its War effort that support decisively swung behind Sinn Féin.

3 The 1918 General Election

Sinn Féin won 70% of Ireland's seats (73 in total) in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland parliament at the general election in December 1918 and 497,107 votes but it is difficult to assess how much support it genuinely had because most of the seats it won (indeed most of the seats won by everyone) were uncontested. Some were uncontested because of mass support. Others went uncontested because rival candidates were afraid to contest them. Recent studies of Sinn Féin votes in contested national, by-election and local election results in the period 1917-1921 suggest it actually had the support of 45-48%, far ahead of any other political party but much less than the 80% to 90% claimed by Sinn Féin later, though one study, based purely on analysing the actual results of the 1918 general election and presuming similar voting patterns islandwide suggested a possible Sinn Féin percentage, had all seats been contested, of 53%+. [1] Sinn Féin subsequently underwent successive splits (1922, 1926 and 1970), from which emerged a range of parties, Cumann na nGaedhael, Fianna Fáil and Official Sinn Féin, later Sinn Féin The Workers Party, now known as the Workers' Party.

4 The Split over The Treaty

Eamon de Valera
Second leader of Sinn Féin (1917-1926).

Following the conclusion (December 1921) of the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations between representatives of the British Government and de Valera's republican government (chosen by Dáil Éireann, the assembly set up by Sinn MPs (or TDs as they were called) and the narrow approval of the Treaty by Dáil Éireann a state called the Irish Free State was established. Northern Ireland (a six county regional state set up under the British Government of Ireland Act 1920 opted out, as the Treaty allowed. A short but bitter Irish Civil War (June 1922-April 1923) erupted between the supporters of the Treaty and its opponents. De Valera resigned as President of the Republic and sided with the anti-treatyites. The victorious pro-treaty "Free Staters", who amounted to a majority of SInn Féin TDs and a majority of the electorate, set up the Irish Free State. Many of those pro-treaty Sinn Féin TDs formed their own party, Cumann na nGaedhael, merging in the 1930s into Fine Gael.

Having abandoned armed action in the Free State, the movement split again with the departure (March 1926) of its leader Eamon de Valera and fellow advocates of participation in constitutional politics, who subsequently founded the Fianna Fáil party and entered the Irish parliament ( Dáil Éireann) the following year, forming a government in 1932.

5 From ‘Official Sinn Féin’ to Democratic Left

After a number of unsuccessful attempts at armed insurrection, including a disastrous link up in the 1940s between some Sinn Féin members and the Nazis (whom they thought could help them overthow the southern Irish state), the party in the 1960s moved to the left, adopting a more Marxist analysis. In 1970, a further split occurred when more traditional republicans split from the increasingly Marxist IRA and Sinn Féin to form the Provisional IRA and its political wing Provisional Sinn Féin. The remainder of the party became known as Official Sinn Féin, and evolved into a Marxist political party which became the main radical left force in the Republic of Ireland in the 1980s.

In 1977 Official Sinn Féin renamed itself Sinn Féin the Workers Party, under which title it won its first seats in Dáil Éireann in 1981 and 1982. In 1982 it ditched the 'Sinn Féin' tag, calling itself The Workers Party. A further split in 1992 saw the Workers Party leader and all but one of its TDs defect and set up a new party, Democratic Left. Democratic Left served in government with Fine Gael and Labour (1994-97) before merging with the Irish Labour Party. The Labour Party leader and deputy leader elected in 2002 are both former members of the Democratic Left. Meanwhile the remainder of the Workers Party lost its only Dáil seat in the 1992 general election and from then on its only public representatives were on the municipal councils of Dublin and the south-eastern town of Waterford.

6 'Provisional Sinn Féin'

Gerry Adams
Leader of Sinn Féin (1983-present)

With the Officials' repudiation of armed force in 1972, Provisional Sinn Fein became the political voice of the minority of northern nationalists who saw IRA attacks as the means of forcing an end to British rule, domination by the overwhelmingly Protestant Ulster Unionist Party and discrimination against the northern Nationalist (in effect Catholic) community, which had made Northern Ireland, in the words of Ulster Unionist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate David Trimble, a "cold house for catholics." But until recently they never accounted for the majority of nationalists, who voted for the Social Democratic and Labour Party under John Hume. A small minority voted for the Alliance Party.

Nationalist distaste at the deaths of ten IRA hunger-strikers in British prisons in 1981 gave Sinn Fein a springboard into electoral politics in the north. An internal power stuggle between a southern leadership of Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and a Northern leadership under Gerry Adams, saw Ó Brádaigh and his associates leave to establish Republican Sinn Féin, which they claimed was the 'true' Sinn Féin. Part of the split was over the decision of Adams and Sinn Féin to abandon abstentionism (ie, the refusal to accept the legitimacy of, and to participate in, the parliaments of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland). While the policy of abstentionism towards the Westminster British Parliament was continued, it was dropped in relation to Dáil Éireann. Under the presidency (from November 1983) of Gerry Adams, Sinn Féin leaders sought to explore wider political engagement, resulting in the 1990s Northern Ireland peace process. The move was also hastened by a series of disastrous IRA attacks, including the killing of people attending a Remembrance Day ceremony in Enniskillen. Adams, who has been moving the movement away from military engagement, brought the party to a highpoint of popularity, capturing 5 seats out of 166 in Dáil Éireann in the Republic 2002 general election.

The party overtook its nationalist rival, the Social Democratic and Labour Party as the largest nationalist party in the 2003 Northern Assembly elections, with Martin McGuinness, judged widely to have been a successful Minister for Education in line to take the post of Deputy First Minister in the Northern Ireland Power-Sharing Executive Committee, should the executive be reformed. However the electoral success of the hardline anti-Agreement Democratic Unionist Party, which replaced the Ulster Unionist Party as the leading unionist party, is thought to make the prospect of setting up a new executive less likely. Some critics of Sinn Féin allege that the DUP's electoral success, and its resulting threat to the Agreement, was contributed to by the failure of the IRA to decommission its weapons, a decision that seriously undermined the ability of the pro-Agreement David Trimble to win majority unionist community support. Sinn Féin does not accept that allegation.

Sinn Féin also won a considerable number of seats in the 2001 Westminster election. The party however continues to subscribe to an abstentionist policy towards seats in the Westminster British parliament, as taking the seats they won would require them to swear allegiance to the British monarchy and effectively renouncing their republicanism.

7 Good Friday Agreement

The party has been committed to constitutional politics since the Good Friday Agreement of April 1998, though the failure of the IRA to decommission its arms in a manner acceptable to Unionist leaders (unionist criticism of the IRA's slow pace of decommissioning was echoed by the Irish taoiseach (prime minister), Bertie Ahern, the SDLP leader Mark Durkan and the British Prime Minister Tony Blair in public in October 2002) led to repeated suspensions of the peace process. The IRA finally started decommissioning arms after the attacks of September 11, 2001 resulted in increased United States pressure to move the process on and the evaporation of much of the support previously enjoyed in the U.S. However the discovery of an apparent spy ring linked to Sinn Féin operating within the Northern Ireland civil service, led to the suspension of the Executive and the reinstatement of direct rule in Northern Ireland, a suspension already on the brink of being triggered amid threats of resignation from First Minister David Trimble over the apparently slow pace of IRA decomissioning.

8 Further reading

Tim Pat Coogan, The Troubles (Arrow, 1995, 1996) BooksEnthsiast.com
Tim Pat Coogan, Michael Collins (Hutchinson, 1990) BooksEnthsiast.com
Brian Feeney, Sinn Fein: A Hundred Turbulent Years (2003) HB: BooksEnthsiast.com PB BooksEnthsiast.com
Roy Foster, Ireland 1660-1972
Geraldine Kennedy (ed.) Nealon's Guide to the 29th Dáil and Seanad (Gill and Macmillan, 2002) BooksEnthsiast.com
F.S.L. Lyons, Ireland Since the Famine
Brian Maye, Arthur Griffith (Griffith College Publications)
Dorothy McCardle, The Irish Republic (Corgi edition, 1968) BooksEnthsiast.com
Patrick Sarsfield, S. O'Hegarty & Tom Garvin, The Victory of Sinn Fein: How It Won It & how It Used It (1999) BooksEnthsiast.com
Peter Taylor, Behind the Mask: The IRA & Sinn Fein BooksEnthsiast.com

9 External Link

9.1 Parties with Origins in 1916-21 Sinn Féin

9.2 Other Northern Ireland Parties

9.3 Other Irish Websites to View

UK political parties Irish political parties Republic of Ireland political parties Northern Ireland political parties

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