From top: Gerry Adams during his Presidential Address at the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis last weekend; Dan Boyle

A Brave New World awaits Sinn Féin Mark Six, the political party which came out of the Hunger Strikes of 1981, inheriting the Sinn Féin franchise as the minority of the minority of the minority of those who had previously laid claim to that title.

Its Moses like leader, the benighted Gerry Adams, having almost led his people to the Promised Land (and having done so five years more quickly than his biblical predecessor), is about to step aside and allow someone else lead his people into Israel (sorry Stormont, sorry government in Dublin).

Making fun of the Dear Leader will probably reawaken the trolls in their hundreds. Let me seek to correct myself. Gerry Adams has been one of the most significant figures of modern Irish politics. He deserves respect and admiration for the way he has led his movement from a fruitless, violent path, towards democratic respectability.

His party is now firmly ensconced as the third force in Ireland. Its mathematical strength may yet bring about a historic realignment in Irish politics.

And yet. The achievement has not been solely his. The Peace Process could never have happened, if it weren’t for John Hume. Without him the initiative would not have gotten off the ground. His reward, in a life now lived in shadows, has been to be minimised and marginalised, especially by the Republican movement.

The role played by Martin McGuinness was equally as important in helping to put, and keep Gerry Adams where he was.

The initiation of the Peace Process with Hume, and the directing and managing of the Republican movement with McGuinness, have been Gerry Adams’ greatest achievements. Achievements for which he should be continually acknowledged.

It is his subsequent role as a political leader that deserves a critique. After the Good Friday Agreement the political growth of Sinn Féin was slow and patchy.

At the 2007 general election the party actually lost a seat. It took the arrival of the International Monetary Fund to the country,and the subsequent election of Pearse Doherty in the Donegal South West by election, for the party to begin its upward trend in support.

Much new support was easily gained through a slavish addiction to the politics of No. Whenever the party nudged towards being more responsible, it found itself going backwards, such as when the Anti Austerity Alliance beat Sinn Féin to the punch over the issue of water charges during the Dublin South West by-election in 2014.

Sinn Féin has been thought to have a glass ceiling on its potential support, as long as Gerry Adams remained its leader. A bright new future awaited the party, as and when Gerry decided it would be time to move on.

This analysis may have been oversold. There are many negatives that attach to Sinn Féin, that exist regardless of who its leader is. A further bee in the bonnet is that Adams may have made this change too late.

This indicates that any bounce the party may expect may not as deep or as long lasting as it hopes for. No Big Bang is likely.

Dan Boyle is a former Green Party TD and Senator. His column appears here every Thursday. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle

Rollingnews

Meanwhile…

Looking for a political stocking filler?

Dan Boyle’s new book ‘Making Up The Numbers – Smaller Parties and Independents in Irish Politics‘ is being published by the History Press on November 27.

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29 thoughts on “Gone On Gerry

  1. Gearóid

    “Let me seek to correct myself. Gerry Adams has been one of the most significant figures of modern Irish politics. He deserves respect and admiration for the way he has led his movement from a fruitless, violent path, towards democratic respectability.”

    “…the benighted Gerry Adams”

    Good man, Dan.

  2. ollie

    the achievements of sinn fein on the island of ireland conpared to those of the pension collecting green party former TDs, hahaha!

          1. Dan Boyle

            Again not really. The Green Party suffered a loss of support in 2011 by being, and remaining, in government while the Irish economy collapsed to a greater extent than other countries during a global economic crisis. Green Party support has increased significantly since then. Your interpretation of my ‘attitude’ doesn’t even come close to being a factor.

          2. Dan Boyle

            If you say so. Factual statements seem to bother you. Conceit is usually the preserve of trolls. I appreciate your empathy.

  3. Rowsdower

    Making up the numbers is a good name for your book.

    I suppose, Only in it for the money would have been too on the nose.

  4. Harry Molloy

    Comments are gas on the internet. People are more than happy to forgive a man who is/was part of an organisation that “disappeared” members of its own community, not to mention responsible for maiming innocent civilians, but will never ever ever forget or forgive politicians who were members of a party who are retrospectively seen as being economically irresponsible.

    One parties ethos concerned the environment, the others concerned killing opponents. Go figure.

    1. Vote Rep #1

      Its weird but I guess its easier to forgive things that don’t affect you. Those people that died were just something on the news.

  5. Gabby

    It may take historians a hundred years to hone “the narrative” concerning the roles played by Gerry Adams and John Hume in leading the oppressed Catholic minority population of Northern Ireland (sorry, the 26 Counties or Ulster depending on the narrator’s angle) into a Land flowing with Milk and organic heather Honey. Who gets written down, written up or written out is not a matter of prepositional caprice: it is dependent on the ripening of time, the eliciting of new facts and the sharpening of perspective. Kudos to Dan Boyle for his attempt to analyze contemporary history while the two Key Men are still living.

  6. Roy H W Johnston

    Thanks Dan for helping forward the idea that a coalition without the earlier FF/FG dropouts from early SF is becoming feasible. We also need to be reminded that the introduction of the gun into the preWW1 all-Ireland Home Rule movement, via the Larne and Howth gun-runnings from Austria via Germany in 1914 was organised by the Imperial General Staff as a ploy to deceive the Germans about their attitude to the coming war, by being primarily concerned about trouble in Ireland. If Home Rule had been allowed to develop politically, with the level of Ulster support that existed prior to the gun-running episodes, we would have avoided Partition. A similar ploy was used post-WW2 to ensure that India would generate Pakistan. Fostering religious divisions in post-imperial situations it would seem is standard imperial practice!
    I got this originally from mu father Joe Johnston who at the time was an Oxford postgrad student from TCD, where he subsequently made his career as a Fellow. He was from a Tyrone Presbyterian background, and an active supporter of all-Ireland Home Rule. His 1913 book ‘Civil War in Ulster?’ had been re-published by UCD Press in 1998; he mad the case the Home Rule in Ulster was an opportunity not a threat.

    1. ollie

      wt cosgrave personally ordered the execution of anti treaty prisoners. his government executed over 70 of these protestors.
      terrorism at it’s finest by so called statesmen.

    2. ollie

      the release of sex offenders? would that be the irish judiciary you are referrong to? judge nolan and his ilk?

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