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NI
minister John Spellar’s ban on Sinn Féin’s
North American fundraising reminded me about a question
long in the back of my mind: how much have the Provos
earned since their entry into constitutional party
politics? I checked Niall O’Dowd’s “Too
Late for SF Ban” editorial in The Irish Voice
(May 12-18). Since the “peace process” and
the IRA ceasefires, he gives a figure of over $5 million.
This certainly presents a windfall for a party with
such a comparatively small number of elected representatives
in Stormont, Westminster, and Dublin. What happens
to all of those greenbacks?
In
preparing an article on Noraid for the forthcoming
Encyclopedia of Irish-American Relations (not
a genealogical but a reference work!), solid information
on earlier funds raised for the armalite before the
promotion of the ballot box remained rather elusive.
In the 1970s, the individual donations to Noraid were
often as little as ten or twenty dollars. The lack
of easily obtainable financial records from Noraid
due to its preferred conveyance of funds to An Cumann
Cabhrach by personal courier prevented U.S. inspection
along much of the activists’ money trail. What
mattered most to many of its supporters was the continuity
of such financial support with earlier American generations
back to Clan na Gael days: the Cause again could be
elevated as a rallying point and a source of ethnic
solidarity and cultural resistance to post-WWII suburban
assimilation.
After
FBI crackdowns, with the rise of Friends of Sinn Féin
and the demotion of Noraid, respectability supplanted
gunrunners, and lobbying replaced smuggling. Jack
Holland and Ed Moloney both prominently feature this
shift in their books. Provo commitment for the establishment
of the socialist, or even radical, republic faded
into rhetoric. Replacing it came the embrace of bureaucracy,
corporate donors, the ringing of the Wall Street bell,
and the wrangling of grants for community development
from Brussels’ largess.
As
with Noraid in the 1970s, the accounting for SF’s
funds today raises questions. The numbers claimed
by the FBI for supposed and actual weapons procurement
fluctuated, and were alleged by republicans to be
inflated and by their opponents to be calculated.
Niall O’Dowd, in this later decade, credits the
party’s clout to the money lavished upon SF.
He boasts of the party’s “well-appointed
offices,” its “professional operation,”
and its ability to deliver its message better than
any other Irish party. He asserts that the party has
passed any need to depend upon “her exiled children
in America” (my phrase, not his: the Proclamation
may be part of the Provo iconography, but it’s
as isolated from SF reality as the U.S. Declaration
is in its nuclear-proofed, transparently displayed,
heavily mummified acrylic tomb in Washington).
Instead,
SF has its cash flow assured by “a professional
fundraising gambit.” He explains: “Members
do not keep their salaries but rather plough back
most of the funds into the party.” If next month’s
elections gain two European seats, he predicts that
“there would be considerable sums flowing in
to the party’s coffers. With expenses European
MPs can earn up to $600,000, most of which would likely
be returned to the party.” I trust that the devotion
of its representatives to the party continues their
socialist ideology despite the temptations of capitalist
gain.
O’Dowd
blames the SDLP, who actually put “social”
first in their name, of jealousy. When John Hume was
the White House’s darling, he raised plenty of
bucks from “very well connected supporters.”
Now that SF has the momentum, “the success of
the party has surpassed the tipping point” where
SDLP can topple over SF’s cash cow.
Letter
writers to The Blanket recently have asked
why our journal persists in criticising SF without
offering concrete alternatives. In my article on the
1934 Republican Congress I attempted to honestly set
out that leftist front’s strengths and weaknesses
as it struggled to form another republican-socialist
campaign outflanking both outmoded militarism and
constitutional compromise. My questions about SF likewise
raise uncomfortable questions. How long can idealism
and criticism persist without concrete gains attained
for everyday people, who have heard so many ideologues
and witnessed so many hypocrisies committed in the
name of the common folk? Why not take the path of
lesser resistance and work within a system that now
is well funded, media savvy, and welcomed into the
corridors of power? Many of us, disenchanted by the
evolution of a movement to which we had long been
committed, keep waiting—as in 1934—for another
rising. But this messianic tendency weakens our own
ability to survive the inevitable letdown when we
put too much trust in leaders, bearded or shaven,
shaggy or rouged.
I think of the war for independence, when Sinn Féin
truly asserted itself in 1919-20. Courts, armies,
governing bodies, trade began independently of the
land’s ruling power. As boycotts earlier had
toughened the stance of the previous generation or
two against the landlords and gombeen men, so a few
activists determined to wrest a republic without waiting
for cash flow and EU elections. And exiles always
played a role, and politicians.
Last
week, I talked to friends in Hungary. They told me
that they wanted their country to be like Ireland.
The EU funds would pour in as they did to Greece,
Portugal, and Ireland; these nations would now be
not only geographically but economically First World.
Hungary in a generation would breed its own Celtic
Tiger. I wondered, however, if they remembered Sinn
Féin’s first leader—who, for all
his shortcomings—made the link with their nation
and our own in his The Resurrection of Hungary.
Nobody today wants a dual monarchy as Arthur Griffith
first proposed on the Austro-Hungarian model. Hungary
had been forced into submission by Kaisers and armies
that crushed its 1848 rebellion. But the comparison
remains: Hungary and Ireland fended off imperialist
forces as they attempted to gain a somewhat more democratic
nation and a culturally distinctive ethos that was
threatened by its dominant superpower. They kept rebelling,
and kept persisting.
If we at The Blanket want to speak with and
for everyday people and not their politicians, what
limits and what opportunities can a guerrilla strategy
offer on the web, on the street, and in the media?
How can a socialist legacy many of us share further
republican goals? Can a leftist policy accomplish
broader gains in a post-Wall global society? These
are not defeatist but relevant concerns. If we don’t
want either the Donegal luxury home or the flat in
the ghetto to be the symbols of a maturing republican
future, what shall we offer instead? It’s fun
to fulminate at the Emperor’s nakedness, but
we need to sew new clothes with a better fit. Otherwise
window-shoppers walk on by to the giant cash cow display
and the tricoloured posters with a bearded man outside
party headquarters.
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