Sinn Féin

I

Introduction

Sinn Féin (Irish Gaelic, “ourselves alone”), Irish nationalist political party, appearing in various forms throughout modern Irish history, initially formed by Arthur Griffith in 1902.

II

The First Sinn Féin

The first Sinn Féin party (1905-1917) was a pacifist and propagandist organization which did not, for the most part, contest elections. Griffith hoped through his journalism to gain support for his advanced nationalist ideas. Foremost among these were his advocacy of a protected Irish economy which would enable native Irish industry to flourish, and a dual monarchy settlement for Britain and Ireland modelled on the settlement reached between Austria and Hungary in 1867 (the Ausgleich). Griffith proposed that the British monarch should be crowned in Dublin as the king or queen of the Kingdom of Ireland. Ireland, he proposed, would have its own parliament in Dublin, autonomous of Westminster, while the two kingdoms would remain united through the person of the monarch. Sinn Féin's ideas failed to attract widespread support, but the 1916 Easter Rising transformed the party.

Sinn Féin had no official connection with the violence of the 1916 rising, but in the aftermath it was associated with the event by the press. Following the execution of the leaders of the rising, Sinn Féin successfully contested a series of by-elections and became the focus for political activity protesting against British rule in Ireland. In 1917 the party adopted a republican constitution, and the two strands of revolutionary protest in Ireland, constitutional and military, fused within its ranks.

III

The Second Sinn Féin

The second, revolutionary and republican Sinn Féin party (1917-1921) was led by one of the leaders of the 1916 rising, Eamon De Valera. Sinn Féin's growth and popularity was further enhanced by the British threat in 1917-1918 to introduce conscription to Ireland in support of its war effort against Germany. Sinn Féin, in conjunction with other nationalist bodies and the Roman Catholic Church, organized a vigorous anti-conscription campaign which gained huge popular support. The 1918 general election confirmed Sinn Féin's popularity in the area outside the 6 north-eastern counties of Ulster, bringing it 73 out of a possible 105 Irish parliamentary seats (with 48 per cent of the vote). In January 1919 Sinn Féin established its own parliament in Dublin, the Dáil Éireann, and formed its own administration. From 1919 the Irish volunteers, later the Irish Republican Army (IRA), gave allegiance to the Dáil and waged a war of independence against British Crown forces in Ireland.

Sinn Féin was a diverse party, encompassing monarchists and republicans, free-trade economists and protectionists, Irish-Irelanders who wanted a totally isolated Gaelic society, and those who simply wanted independence. The 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, which concluded the war of independence, offered far less than most of the revolutionaries wanted. Many like De Valera rejected it because it did not deliver a republican settlement for Ireland. Those who accepted it understood this and, led by Michael Collins, they hoped that the treaty would deliver full independence at a later date. Sinn Féin split on the issue of the treaty, and six months later the rival factions entered into a civil war.

The victorious pro-treaty Sinn Féiners went on to form the governments of the Irish Free State as the Cumann na nGaedheal party, later the Fine Gael party. After the civil war, the anti-treatyites formed a new third fundamentalist republican Sinn Féin party (1923-1970), once again under the leadership of De Valera. In 1926 De Valera led his followers out of the third Sinn Féin party, which refused to recognize the Free State's legitimacy, and formed the Fianna Fáil party. After 1926 Sinn Féin became a rump party in both the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland. It adhered to its fundamentalist republicanism and nationalism, but this elicited little or no electoral support. Left-wing republicanism sapped its more able members, and the party became merely a mouthpiece for the illegal IRA. In the 1950s the IRA mounted a campaign along the border, and Sinn Féin enjoyed a temporary lease of life, winning two seats in Westminster elections in Northern Ireland and four for the Dáil in the south: all the seats were lost in 1959 and 1961 respectively.

IV

Sinn Féin and the Troubles

Sinn Féin remained a peripheral political organization in Northern and Southern Ireland. The civil rights campaign and outbreak of communal violence in 1968 in Northern Ireland offered it considerable opportunities to infiltrate and participate in popular protest organizations. Violence after 1969 led to a resurgence in IRA activity which further enhanced Sinn Féin's political profile (see The Troubles). In 1970, splits occurred once again within Sinn Féin and the IRA, creating the Official IRA and Sinn Féin “Stickies”, and the Provisional IRA and Sinn Féin or “Provos”. The Dublin-dominated Officials wanted to reform the state of Northern Ireland internally, create working-class solidarity leading to a united socialist republic on the whole island by political means. The Belfast-dominated Provisionals also wanted to remove the British presence in Ireland and create a socialist republic, but primarily by military means. The Provisionals were numerically and militarily stronger than the Officials, and continued the war against the British until the ceasefire of August 1994, resuming violence in 1996. The Officials concentrated on political agitation, becoming in 1977 the Sinn Féin Workers' Party, later the Workers' Party, and since 1992, Democratic Left.

Provisional Sinn Féin's role was enhanced by the 1981 hunger strikes in Northern Ireland which ushered in a new policy of “the ballot box and the Armalite”, or in other words a strategy of a joint military and political campaign. While the IRA continued with its campaign of violence, Sinn Féin contested and won several seats in the immediate aftermath of the hunger strikes, in which ten republican prisoners starved themselves to death in protest over their conditions of imprisonment. In 1983, Gerry Adams, President of Sinn Féin, was elected to Westminster but did not take his seat—he lost the same seat in 1993 to Dr Joe Hendron of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). In 1986 Sinn Féin dropped its abstentionist policy and a small splinter group, Republican Sinn Féin, broke away on the issue. Following the ceasefire declaration of August 1994, Sinn Féin entered into negotiations with the British and Irish governments, though contacts on both sides were limited by Sinn Féin's refusal to endorse any surrender of arms by the IRA as a prelude to full talks.