Writing
a paper for a college course a few years back, I
stumbled upon an excellent article written by Donnach
Ó Beacháin entitled From Revolutionaries
to Politicians: Deradicalization and the Irish Experience.
The article traced the evolution of Fianna Fail,
from a small group of radical revolutionaries ready
to pick up arms to reunite the country to an institutionalized
political party that relied more on radical rhetoric
than it did on any sort of goal to actually end
partition. While jotting down similarities between
Fianna Fail — from its ascension to power in
1932 to the present day, and Sinn Fein from the
late 1970s until the present day — I was startled
to flip back through the pages and see the copious
comparisons. I began to substitute Fianna Fail's
name with Sinn Fein's, and the article still made
perfect (non)sense. Some examples:
Describing
Fianna Fail's transformation after embracing constitutional
politics (i.e., ending its abstentionist position
on Free State elections), Ó Beacháin
asserts:
This
is demonstrated aptly in the recent alleged involvement
of Provisionals in preventing a meeting of dissident
republicans in Derry. Sinn Fein and the PIRA have
shown little tolerance for anyone questioning the
hallowed GFA, or Sinn Fein's obvious hunger for
power and mainstream political legitimacy. But instead
of the power struggle that developed between the
IRA and Fianna Fail after 1936 (when Fianna Fail
banned the IRA), the current IRA has acquiesced
to Sinn Fein policy following a concerted and brilliant
coup d'etat by Gerry Adams and Co. The CIRA, RIRA,
INLA, and ex-PIRA volunteers have become the IRA
of the 1930s.
de
Valera rewarded those IRA volunteers who lay down
their guns against the state (both Irish and British)
with positions in the Special Branch, the army,
and the police; and when, not if but when, Sinn
Fein sits on the policing board, former PIRA volunteers
could find themselves with jobs in the PSNI (Provisional
Service of Northern Ireland). It may seem farfetched
now, but can we really disbelieve anything at this
point? Ó Beacháin notes that "with
the IRA banished to history, Fianna Fail stood to
gain considerably as the sole beneficiary to the
valuable republican ideology left behind, which
it could now treasure and parade as its own."
Replacing Fianna Fail with Sinn Fein here is not
ludicrous at all. During the recent hunger strike
commemorations, we witnessed Sinn Fein's hollow
rhetoric concerning its lionizing of INLA volunteers
— who they've historically viewed not as comrades,
but rivals — that everyone who was not a SF
acolyte found disgusting.
For
rhetoric is the instrument of political parties,
is it not? Ó Beacháin quotes Italian
political philosopher, Roberto Michels, who asked
"whether the structural properties of political
parties are conducive to the realization of the
Endziel" ('end goal' [in this case,
Irish unity]). He ultimately concluded that "the
whole process [was nothing more than] a tragicomedy
in which the masses devote all their energies merely
to effect a change of masters." And most importantly,
"that the growth of the party organization
weakens the commitment to the revolutionary aim."
As Sinn Fein legitimizes itself at the cost of the
Endziel, it will ultimately become Fianna
Fail in its ideological elasticity, and anyone who
opposes its fluid policies (i.e., rhetoric) will
find themselves banished to a political Siberia.
According
to Ó Beacháin, for Michels, "power
is always conservative" (has Sinn Fein not
become increasingly more conservative over the years?
They might dispute this in comparison with other
nationalist and unionist parties, but they have
become more conservative nonetheless). No one (not
least Sinn Fein) would challenge the claim that
Fianna Fail is solely a political party of symbolic
republicanism. By this I mean that its republican
principles, the means to the goal (Irish unity),
have become rhetorical and reformist rather than
radical and transformative. Sinn Fein is headed
down the same path, and even if one day they manage
to hold power for as long as Fianna Fail has, it
will no longer be the revolutionary party it once
was — "its leadership composed of politicians
by accident, those of the revolutionary generation"
— but a hierarchical, bureaucratic, organization
deradicalized by the complexities of power politics
and another failed institution in the quest for
a 32 county, socialist republic.
Source:
Ó Beacháin, Donnacha. "From Revolutionaries
to Politicians: Deradicalization and the Irish Experience,"
Radical History Review 85 (2003) 114-123.
