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3. THE ARMALITE AND THE BALLOT-BOX

THOUGH SINN FÉIN WAS founded in 1905, the party today has little enough in common with the organisation established by the journalist and propagandist for Irish nationalism, Arthur Griffith, who later headed the delegation which agreed to the Anglo -Irish Treaty of 1921.

The one major thread of continuity with the original Sinn Féin has been the policy of abstentionism from Westminster. In his book published in 1904 and entitled, The Resurrection of Hungary, Griffith argued that Irish MPs should emulate their Hungarian counterparts who had adopted ‘a manly policy of passive resistance and non-recognition of Austria’s right to rule’.1

The Hungarians had achieved political and economic autonomy under a dual monarchy, whereby they stayed at home in Budapest instead of going to Vienna. Griffith argued that the Irish could do the same by adopting a similar policy and remaining in Dublin instead of going to Westminster.

The passive resistance element of his approach did not pass on to his successors in Sinn Féin but the abstentionist policy still survives. At time of writing, Sinn Féin candidates elected as MPs do not take their seats in the House of Commons.

In view of the major changes in Sinn Féin and IRA policies and tactics over the last thirty-odd years, there has been some speculation about a change of tack in this respect as well. This arose again in advance of the British general election of 7 May 2015 and there were media suggestions that Sinn Féin could wield significant influence by setting aside its stay-at-home approach.

Writing in the Sunday Business Post, columnist Tom McGurk recalled how the unionist bloc exacted a price from Prime Minister John Major in the 1990s for keeping his Conservative Party government in power:

Were Sinn Féin to adopt a new policy of ‘qualified abstentionism’ – in other words, a tactical approach where it would only go to Westminster and vote when the party considers the matter of serious significance – what could the republican objection be?... Nor do I believe that anyone could credibly argue that such a policy of ‘qualified abstentionism’ undermines any determining principle of Irish Republicanism... The political reality in the real world, as Sinn Féin has discovered since the party abandoned abstentionism on both sides of the border, is that historic principles can become political cul de sacs.2

In a column for the Belfast-based Irish News, Tom Collins pointed out that unionists and the moderate nationalists of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) would make use of any leverage they might have if they held the balance of power at Westminster. He continued:

One party unable to trade its support – explicit or tacit – for political advantage is Sinn Féin. They have been refused entry to the Commons by the British insistence that they swear an oath to the Crown, and by their own unwillingness to see the oath for what it is – a meaningless irrelevance... It’s time Sinn Féin called Westminster’s bluff and turned up. Some left-wing MPs have slurred their words, others have crossed their fingers behind their backs, some – it is claimed – have resorted to gibberish. Gaelic is acceptable, apparently; that opens up a whole host of possibilities.3

In the same paper two weeks later, columnist Tom Kelly wrote: ‘Sinn Féin has... said it wants to see regime change at Westminster and hopes for a Labour administration. That being the case, who would be surprised that even if they fight the upcoming election on an abstentionist ticket, that they wouldn’t rack up at the Palace of Westminster to vote, if Labour needed the numbers? Some may say “never” but “never” has never been a shibboleth for Sinn Féin under the leadership of Gerry Adams.’4

In an interview with Stephen Walker on BBC Northern Ireland’s The View, one of Sinn Féin’s five MPs, Francie Molloy from the Mid-Ulster constituency, categorically denied that any such move was planned. Interestingly, the interview was conducted at the Palace of Westminster and, when asked if the policy would be reviewed in the event of a hung parliament, Molloy said: ‘No, definitely not... It’s not up for the ardfheis. It’s not up for review. It’s not up for a decision at this point in time.’

The use of the phrase ‘at this point in time’ was remarked upon later in the same programme by Peter Kellner, of the polling and market research company YouGov, who commented that ‘it allows you to say “times have changed”.’5

In his biography of former Sinn Féin president Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, American academic Robert W. White writes that, during an ardchomhairle (national executive) meeting in the early 1980s, Molloy had suggested that Owen Carron should take his seat at Westminster. Carron had won the Fermanagh-South Tyrone by-election of August 1981, which was caused by the death of hunger striker Bobby Sands.6 In response to a query from myself, Francie Molloy, who is currently Sinn Féin MP for Mid-Ulster, said he made the suggestion ‘when Owen was an Anti H-Block Armagh MP’. Carron later got elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly as a Sinn Féin candidate and, when he sought to retain his Westminster seat, without success, in the 1983 UK general election, he ran on behalf of Sinn Féin. Molloy told me he had previously proposed that Sinn Féin end its policy of abstention towards Dáil Eireann at Leinster House. This body was seen as usurping the true Irish parliament, the First Dáil, established in 1919, and the Second Dáil, which was elected in May 1921.

On Saturday 10 January 1970, two historic events took place in Dublin. One was a major anti-apartheid protest against the presence of the all-white South African rugby team at the stadium on Dublin’s Lansdowne Road.7 The present writer was one of about 10,000 people who took part in the march and, walking past a nearby hotel on the way home, someone pointed out that a Sinn Féin ardfheis (annual conference) was being held there. I did not realise it at the time, but it was an occasion that would have wide and fateful ramifications for both parts of the island.

The ardfheis continued the next day, with a debate on a motion to drop abstentionism. This continued until 5.30pm, when a vote was taken. A two-thirds majority was required under the party constitution but support for the motion fell short, at 153 votes out of 257.8 However, when asked to back a motion of allegiance to the anti-abstentionist leadership of the movement, thereby implicitly endorsing the new policy, about one-third of delegates walked out and announced the setting-up of what became known as Provisional Sinn Féin.9 A secret convention of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) had already been held the previous month in Boyle, County Roscommon, where a motion to drop abstentionism was approved 28-12, and the minority split away to set up an alternative IRA headed by the ‘Provisional Army Council’ – the 1916 Proclamation was issued by the ‘Provisional Government’. A statement issued by this new body urged republicans not to be ‘diverted into the parliamentary blind alleys’ of Westminster, Leinster House and Stormont’.

The statement outlined the background to the split from the Provisionals’ point of view: ‘The adoption of the compromising policy referred to is the logical outcome of an obsession in recent years with parliamentary politics, with consequent undermining of the basic military role of the Irish Republican Army. The failure to provide the maximum defence possible of our people in Belfast and other parts of the six counties against the forces of British imperialism last August is ample evidence of this neglect.’10

In between the two meetings, leading pro-abstentionist Ruairí Ó Brádaigh visited seventy-seven-year-old Tom Maguire at his home in County Mayo. Maguire had been a member of the First andSecond Dáil Éireann, regarded as the only legitimate assemblies in Irish republican ideology. In December 1938, Maguire was one of a group of seven people elected to the Second Dáil (which was never formally dissolved) who signed over what they regarded as the authority of government to the IRA Army Council. That body henceforth considered itself the only legitimate government of Ireland. In a statement issued on 31 December 1969, Maguire said:

An IRA convention, held in December 1969, by a majority of the delegates attending, passed a resolution removing all embargoes on political participation in parliament from the Constitution and Rules of the IRA. The effect of the resolution is the abandonment of what is popularly termed the ‘Abstentionist Policy’. The ‘Abstentionist Policy’ means that the Republican candidates contesting parliamentary elections in Leinster House, Stormont or Westminster give pre-election pledges not to take seats in any of those parliaments. The Republican candidates seek election to the 32-county Parliament of the Irish Republic, theRepublican Dáil or Dáil Éireann, to give it its official title. The declared objective is to elect sufficient representatives to enable the 32-County Dáil Éireann to be reassembled... Accordingly, I, as the sole survivingmember of the Executive of Dáil Éireann, and the sole surviving signatory of the 1938 Proclamation, hereby declare that the resolution is illegal and that the alleged Executive and Army Council are illegal, and have no right to claim the allegiance of either soldiers or citizens of the Irish Republic... I hereby further declare that the Provisional Executive and the Provisional Army Council are the lawful Executive and Army Council respectively of the IRA and that the governmental authority delegated in the Proclamation of 1938 now resides in the Provisional Army Council and its lawful successors.11

The statement from Maguire probably helped to prevent the anti-abstentionists from securing the vital two-thirds majority. The two competing wings of the republican movement came to be known as the Official IRA/Official Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA/Provisional Sinn Féin. Republicans wear an Easter lily badge every year to commemorate the 1916 Rising. When the ‘Officials’ produced one which used adhesive instead of the traditional pin, their branch of the movement quickly became known at street level as the ‘Stickies’ while the Provisionals were called simply the ‘Provos’.

The Officials were led by Cathal Goulding and Tomás MacGiolla,the Provisional leaders included Ó Brádaigh, Dáithí O’Connell and Seán Mac Stiofáin. Although abstentionism was the formal reason for the split, there were other issues involved. The Goulding-MacGiolla leadership was seen as having let down the nationalist community in Belfast by failing to put preparations in place for the onslaught by loyalist mobs the previous August. Some nationalists in Belfast reportedly equated the letters IRA with ‘I Ran Away’.12

The Ó Brádaigh-O’Connell-Mac Stiofáin faction, on the other hand, was depicted as consisting of conservative Catholics and right-wingers. Years later, reflecting on the split, Gerry Adams wrote that ‘For many of the dissidents the issue was not abstentionism itself but what it had come to represent: a leadership which had led the IRA into ignominy in August [1969].’13

But apparently this was not the case south of the border.14 The Officials were variously portrayed as reformists or crypto-communists who had abandoned the ‘national struggle’. The Provos felt vindicated when, on 29 May 1972, the Official IRA called an indefinite ceasefire while reserving the ‘right to defend any area under aggressive attack by the British military or by sectarian forces from either side’. 15

The Provisional movement was at first dominated by southern-based individuals, but the balance of power began to shift after the extended ceasefire that took place from February to September 1975, although it continued to exist, in theory, until the following January. As part of the truce, seven ‘incident centres’ were set up in nationalist areas of Belfast, Derry and elsewhere. These were staffed by republicans, with a direct phone line to the Northern Ireland Office of the British Government to resolve any issue which jeopardised the ceasefire. Republican leader Máire Drumm said they were a ‘power-base for Sinn Féin’. Afterwards, Ó Brádaigh said that republicans were told by the British Government that it ‘wished to devise structures of disengagement from Ireland’. For his part, Secretary of State Merlyn Rees insisted this meant that, if paramilitary violence came to an end, then the British would reduce security to a ‘peacetime level’. 16

There was a fairly widespread feeling at the time, and not just in republican circles, that the British commitment to the North had become quite fragile.17 But instead of leading to British withdrawal,the ceasefire contributed greatly to the dislodgement of Ó Brádaigh and fellow-southerners of his generation from leadership of the movement. Richard English makes the point, in his 2003 book on the IRA, that the members of the organisation had been given to understand that the British were edging towards the exit-door and, when it turned out that this wasn’t the case, the southern-based leadership lost a good deal of credibility.18

On 30 January 1975, ten days before the truce began, there was a development which would have massive implications within a few years for the republican movement and the entire island. A committee headed by Britain’s Lord Gardiner issued a report which called for an end to ‘special category status’ whereby persons who were imprisoned for offences arising from the Troubles were effectively treated as political prisoners, and did not have to wear prison uniforms or carry out prison work. The Report said: ‘The introduction of special category status for convicted prisoners was a serious mistake... The earliest practicable opportunity should be taken to bring special category status to an end.’ The British Government accepted the recommendation, which came into effect from 1 March 1976. The first prisoner to arrive under the new dispensation, Kieran Nugent, refused to wear a prison uniform. Declaring that ‘they’ll have to nail it to my back’, he wrapped himself in a blanket instead. His example was followed by hundreds of other republicans, and ultimately led to the hunger strike of 1981 in which Bobby Sands and nine other prisoners died after refusing food as a protest against the ending of political status.19

There have been subtle differences between republicans on either side of the border. At the time of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 most IRA members in the North went with Michael Collins, whose personal attitude to partition was more militant than other pro-Treaty leaders and perhaps even some on the anti-Treaty side, who were focused on the issue of sovereignty and the oath of allegiance involving the British monarch, which was part of the Treaty.20