A First Minister for All?
Sinn Féin’s cover for a programme of capitulation to Irish capitalism
16 November 2024
Michelle O’Neill attends Remembrance Sunday
ceremony.
On November 10th Stormont’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill participated in a Remembrance Sunday ceremony at Belfast City Hall – the first time a senior Sinn Féin figure has taken part in such an event. More than 100 relatives of republicans killed in the Troubles attacked her ‘shameful’ decision to honour those they blame for the violence in the Troubles.
More than 20 years have passed since Alex Maskey became the first Sinn Féin Lord Mayor to pay his respects to the war dead at the Cenotaph at Belfast City Hall. However, he would not attend the main ceremony that year, refusing to take part in a “military commemoration” of World War One battles and since then, Sinn Féin politicians had declined to attend wreath laying ceremonies in any official capacity.
Ms O’Neill, who said her attendance was a demonstration of her determination to fulfil her pledge to be a “First Minister for all”, laid a laurel wreath at the Cenotaph in Belfast. The protestors, mainly from Fermanagh and Tyrone, O’Neill’s home ground, made the point that the British ceremony was specifically in support of all British military, including those who had participated in the underhand war that had seen the assassination of many nationalists.
The event was not a success. O’Neill said that she was sorry that the protestors were upset, but offered no concessions. On the other hand, Deputy First Minister Emma Pengelly of the DUP offered no support and a member of the loyalist Traditional Unionist Voice party boycotted the event to protest her presence.
Indeed, the policy does not make sense. If Sinn Féin attend Remembrance Sunday under the slogan “First Minister for all”, who represents the republican view of those who protest that position?
A contrast can be drawn with loyalist leader Ian Paisley. He was famous for his unrestrained hatred of Irish nationalism and also of Roman Catholicism as a religion, but was well known as an effective constituency MP who had no hesitation about taking up the social needs of all his constituents!
Sinn Féin appear to have adopted the contrary position, adopting to the positions of unionism while presiding over an administration that offers little in the way of material benefit to its supporters. How are we to understand this position? A starting point would be the traditional republican policy. Then, the explanation for partition and sectarianism was the British presence and the cure was the expulsion of the British, with armed struggle as the “cutting edge”.
The failure of the hunger strikes saw the end of the IRA campaign and a new policy of unity of the nationalist family. The British were now a positive force. Anti-imperialism was replaced by identity politics. Sectarianism was explained as a clash of cultures, with equality of the two traditions as the solution.
Another way of understanding the evolution of Sinn Féin is through the prism of class. The republicans had always believed in a unity of the nation, but this unity was imaginary. The Irish revolution had been followed by a counterrevolution which installed an Irish capitalist class. The various government parties collaborated with Britain and were utterly hostile to a Republic.
In the North the programme of nationalism was represented by a civil rights current centred on inclusion in the British state around the Social Democratic and Labour Party When the British crushed that current they withdrew from the streets and the next period saw a rivalry between petty bourgeois and working-class revolutionary republicanism demanding British withdrawal and constitutional nationalism quietly negotiating for a place in local political structures.
Without a class analysis there was no clear boundary between the two layers and the republican leaders resolutely refused to consistently oppose the repression of the southern state. On the contrary, they used the 26 county parties as conduits to the British. When republican opposition collapsed a ready-made ideology of appeasement was at hand.
So, equality of the two traditions and a first minister for all were already baked into constitutional nationalism. Sinn Féin transformed into the SDLP, fighting for a place and patronage in northern society. Talk of a Republic could be replaced by a gradualist united Ireland in the distant future, dependent on the agreement of unionism and of the British through an imaginary border poll.
For the Irish government, the British and the US, the Good Friday Agreement was a final settlement and Sinn Féin had become administrators in a colonial settlement. They had to convince their followers, through a last-minute mention of a united Ireland, that the GFA was a road to Irish unity.
The two traditions argument enabled them to face in two directions, advancing the nationalist middle class on the one hand and explaining their embrace of British institutions and royalty on the one hand while holding the shiny bauble of unity in the other. They are not speaking to unionism and the unionists aren’t listening. The target is the nationalist middle class itself and, to an even greater extent, the Irish bourgeoisie - a plea that they can be included in government in Dublin. Their traditional base has gone along with the new ideology, but the recent protests suggest that faith in the leadership is wearing thin.
However, many of the protestors lack a class analysis. They believed that the armed struggle could have succeeded and saw no need to confront Irish capitalism. A new movement would have to face reality. The North remains a British colony and in the South imperialism is roaring ahead through a totally dependent economic system unable to meet basic needs on heath and housing and instead run as a tax haven, through integration into European and NATO military structures and through silent acquiescence to genocide in Gaza. It is no accident that leftists and trade union leaders support the northern settlement and stay within the constraints of social partnership in the southern state.
The road to self determination for the Irish working class lies through the outing of Irish capitalism.