Will We see a Sinn Féin Lurch to the ‘Right’ Post-Election?

Around this time last year, I had a conversation with a Sinn Féin TD in Dublin. 

This TD has been a party member for decades. He isn’t a Johnny-come-lately or some eccentric who somehow ended up in the Dáil in 2020, but rather an individual with serious clout within the party. 

He was the first to bring up the topic of immigration in our conversation. He immediately began to slam the government and make anti-immigration arguments, talking about the Irish homeless the housing crisis, and so on. I was shocked. In previous years I’d heard this TD make some extremely preachy statements against racism, the far-right, and all opponents of open borders. 

It struck me as a very significant shift in his thinking on this issue.

There are reasons to think that Sinn Féin is making a turn to the “right”, particularly on immigration and social issues.

On economic issues, it’ll remain somewhat populist but as seen when Pearse Doherty told IBEC they have “nothing to fear” from a Sinn Féin-led government – the “revolutionary” image of Sinn Féin seems to be misplaced.

Two years ago, Sinn Féin was undoubtedly the antifa-supporting “No Pasarán!” party, trying to keep the immigration genie firmly inside the bottle. However (to mix metaphors) the dam has broken on the immigration issue. Now Sinn Féin is seeing the consequences of this. It received a drubbing in the local elections in June. 

For the past few years, the party assumed it just needed to wait for the general election to be called in order to sweep to power based on opinion polling and the party’s strong showing in 2020. It got a rude awakening in June.

Recent scandals have taken their toll, but the immigration issue has been massively damaging to Sinn Féin. Some unthinking defenders of Sinn Féin ask rhetorically on social media why the Irish “far-right” (read: ordinary working-class people) refer to Sinn Féin as the “traitors” when they’re not even in government. 

But they’re answering their own question. Sinn Féin is meant to be the opposition, they’re meant to be the party of the working man and the party of the most radical version of Irish nationalism – the kind which was prepared to take up arms and risk “dungeon, fire and sword”. But they’re seen as having totally abandoned this. The party bosses realise this and are beginning to rethink their strategy going forward.

Ideology and Irish Republicanism: The Historical Context:

Republicanism has been remarkably ideologically diverse and flexible over the years. Take for example Seán Russell, who joined an IRA delegation to Moscow in the 1920s to see whether the Soviets would sympathetically fund/arm the revolutionary army, and by 1939 he was engaged in a bombing campaign against England and allied with Nazi Germany. 

This isn’t to endorse or denounce either historical regime, but just to show the ideological flexibility within the IRA. This is summed up in the somewhat trite aphorism, “England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity”, or “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Modern Sinn Féin’s image is a left-wing nationalist one and one that tries to tie itself with the anti-colonial movements of the twentieth century. The international wall in Belfast has murals expressing sympathy with Palestine, the South African ANC, the Tamil Tigers, and other revolutionary forces.

As an Irish nationalist, I don’t think this kind of anti-imperialism takes away from my own nationalism. I do find it to be somewhat of a childlike view of international history, the idea of leagues of oppressed nations versus oppressor nations strikes me as retrograde and from a different time in the context of today’s hyper-globalised world.

Personally, I cannot see strong parallels between Irish society and the societies of Palestine, black South Africans, or Indians. These people similarly do not identify the Irish as some sort of kith and kin. The Irish are a European nation and have far more in common with other small European nations which suffered at the hands of large empires. We have more in common with the Serbs than we do with the Indians, in my opinion. But this is a matter of taste; I have no ideological objection to independence for third-world nations, and I certainly see no contradiction in opposing mass immigration while also supporting in principle the right of self-determination abroad. 

Sinn Féin is coming around to this idea, though they’ll still performatively keep inviting ANC speakers to their ard fheiseanna for the foreseeable future. But I have no serious issue with it. It’s just a curious and symbolic throwback to a different time. It makes no difference to me whether they invite the ANC, the Palestinian Authority, or the Israeli Likud to mill around their conferences so long as they put a manifesto before the Irish people which is immigration restrictionist.

Sinn Féin, in its current incarnation, managed to successfully persuade its militarists to decommission their arms and accept the Good Friday Agreement. This was a serious undertaking by the Adams-McGuinness duopoly and a dangerous one at that. But it was undertaken by politicians of tremendous skill (with a little help from their friends in intelligence agencies). The idea that Sinn Féin is locked into a policy of open borders or support for mass immigration just because it used to sell Antifa badges on its website is extremely naïve. The party is versatile. Its policy can and will shift on this issue, particularly in the coming years.

Evidence of a Policy Shift:

Since last year, Sinn Féin has been realising the scale of this sea-change in the Irish public’s views on immigration and a host of other contentious social issues. They’ve quietly performed a significant about-face, which is to be praised. Let me give some examples to show how Sinn Féin is moving to the right, particularly on immigration.

“Dublin Riots”

The November 2023 “Dublin riots”, caused by the infamous stabbing of children by an Algerian, were condemned by all sides. Of course, what serious mainstream party is going to endorse or equivocate for overt criminality? But notably, Sinn Féin called for the resignation of Garda Commissioner Drew Harris over his mishandling of it. Unlike some others, they realised that blame wasn’t just to be placed squarely on the shoulders of the “far-right”. They took serious flak for this and were accused of playing to the far right. It was an early signal of what was to come.

Hate Crime Bill

As is well known, Sinn Féin initially supported and voted for the notorious Hate Speech Bill. They even criticised it for not being draconian enough. But fast forward to October of this year when the party voted against it – en bloc. Furthermore, the criticisms made by Matt Carthy were solid. His arguments were praised at the time by right-wing Independent TD Mattie McGrath, who said he “could not agree more” with Carthy’s points.

In addition to Carthy’s criticism of the censorious nature of the bill, he referenced the undefined meaning of hate in the bill and compared it with the term “durable relationships” from the 8th March referendums: “the term “durable relationships”, which we know caused so much confusion in our society because nobody knew precisely what it meant. Now, we have the Minister, Deputy McEntee, trying to introduce a new definition of “gender”, despite there being no consensus as to what this means”. He continued in this vein, criticising the woke gender provisions in the bill: “Most people do not understand what this means precisely” and advocated a “common-sense approach”, to revert to the long-standing definition of gender set out in the Equal Status Act 2000.

Not only did Sinn Féin vote against the (watered-down) Hate Crime Bill, but they did so on grounds that were conservative in nature.

Shifting Immigration policy

In June, Sinn Féin local election leaflets argued the government’s approach to immigration is “shambolic”. It continued, “Sinn Féin is opposed to open borders – Ireland like every other country must have control over its own borders”. This is a big statement for a party like Sinn Féin and a clear nod in a rightward direction.

The Sinn Fein policy document on international protection, released in July, is a modest proposal but a serious one. It calls for the enforcement of deportation orders, greater implementation of fines on airlines and other carriers transporting passengers with no documents, and for prosecutions of individuals, and it calls for a bilateral immigration approach with Britain related to people coming via its ports and airports. It also calls for an end to the private asylum racket. This is a realistic policy. It’s a far cry from the “no human is illegal” waffle that we may have gotten from Sinn Féin just a few short years ago.

The party’s integration spokesperson, Claire Kerrane TD, is currently (as of 8 November 2024) in hot water over a deleted social media post – which she stands by – that called for deportation to be considered for any immigrant who commits a crime. She is standing over the comment, as is her party leader, Mary Lou McDonald. This is significant. It’s also coming from a young, bright female TD – not a disgruntled councilor venting to himself on social media. The fact Mary Lou McDonald is standing by it as, in her words, “common sense” is very telling about where Sinn Féin is going.

Election 2024:

Sinn Féin’s credibility on the immigration issue is not especially strong going into this election. The party needs to regain the trust of the working-class communities currently tarring them as “traitors”. The party is likely to finish third, or maybe second on a good day (marginally ahead of Fianna Fáil), in the elections. It will be cast into opposition for another five years as a new government is formed consisting of Fine Gael-Fianna Fáil and some third-party support (likely Labour and/or SocDems).

Mary Lou McDonald’s leadership is in danger if the party underperforms in the election results, particularly if it’s seen as a right-wing backlash against “woke” Sinn Féin. The natural choice for the party godfathers would be to move to a new leader who can regain the trust of a large proportion of disenchanted Sinn Féin voters. The natural choice is Pearse Doherty. His image is one of a more traditional republican from a rural border county. He’s also a good media debater and performer and has a genuine command of economic issues in a way that others in the party do not.

The November 2024 election results are going to disappoint Sinn Féin members who this time last year were anticipating entering government. The party is going to inevitably carry out a postmortem and engage in soul-searching. But early signals already suggest the party is aware that immigration and association with liberal trendy social issues are a millstone around its neck.

How does the party expect to fundraise in Trump’s America over the next four years, tapping into Irish Catholic and Republican networks while espousing a liberal-left worldview that’s domestically resulting in the party bleeding votes? The people who really run Sinn Féin are wily enough to know that this image and policy is running out of the road and in fact becoming counterproductive.

At the forthcoming general election, I would urge nationalist voters to use their top preferences for nationalist parties and independents in your area. But consider transferring to Sinn Féin with your lower preferences rather than simply letting your vote wither away.

Conclusion:

Sinn Féin’s image for decades was associated with radicalism, it was implicitly associated with advanced nationalism. It wasn’t just about the IRA, but it was about celebrating cultural nationalism, opposing revisionists and people trying to run down the nationalist struggle in Irish history. Implicitly it was a party loaded with machismo.

Several studies have shown that the reason there was no right-wing nationalist party in Ireland was due to the fact Sinn Féin attracted this potential archetypical voter. As such, many on the right have seen Sinn Féin as a gatekeeping force, an entity that was holding back the development of right-wing populism. But now that immigration is a serious issue, we’re likely to see right-wing candidates poll quite well in some constituencies – but Sinn Féin is for now the major opposition party. There is no sign that any of the right-wing parties can approach anything similar to its level of support for the foreseeable future.

Just two years ago Sinn Féin was stuck in a mode of mouthing the shrillest pro-immigration slogans. Now it’s criticising open borders and voting against hate speech measures on conservative grounds. In another two years’ time, especially after an election drubbing which is interpreted as a rejection of its lingering pro-immigration image, the party will be moving closer to even supporting a policy of remigration. Don’t be so quick to dismiss this possibility; who could’ve guessed that the militant “young Turks” from Belfast who took over the party in the 1980s would in fact end up bringing the party to a compromise agreement. Sinn Féin is nothing if not cynical and flexible, just as all political parties are.