The
recent statement by the Fianna Fail Minister for
Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern, in which he pointed
out it was only a matter of time before Sinn Féin
went into a coalition Government in the South, is
being seen by many as a carrot being held out to
the Provisional Republican Movement which is intended
to encourage them to stand PIRA down sooner rather
than later, or perhaps even a public statement by
Fianna Fail of a quid-pro-quos if they were to do
so. If so, it may well be wiser for Sinn Fein’s
long term prospects if Mr Adams and his immediate
leadership cadre refused to sup on this particular
chalice. It may turn out to have been spiked with
a slow acting poison, designed to bring about the
demise of Sinn Fein as a major player in Ireland's
political arena. Why so, some may ask; surely SF
can only benefit from the public exposure and media
coverage they would gain from being part of the
Government within the Republic of Ireland. Perhaps,
but history points to the reverse, not a single
one of the political parties who have down the years
entered Government in the Republic of Ireland as
a junior partner have prospered. Nor, bar one, have
any of the leading politicians within these parties.
The sole exception is Pat Rabbitt and he and his
colleagues had to liquidate their organisation,
the Democratic Left, into the Labour Party to do
so, and even in his case the jury is still out.
Indeed far from rewarding the smaller parties for
entering government, the electorate has punished
them, in some cases severely, seemingly blaming
them for the sins of the senior party within the
coalition they had entered. Clann na Poblachta,
the Party founded by Sean McBride, a former chief
of Staff of the IRA, gained ten TDs in the General
Election of 1948 and entered into a coalition with
Fianna Gael and the Irish Labour Party. Many felt
they were on their way to becoming a major political
force within Ireland. However by the early 1950s
they had been reduced to two TDs. There followed
a period of further decline and by the end of the
1950s Clann na Poblachta had disintegrated altogether.
The Labour Party has faired better as it had a more
solid core constituency. Over the years it has been
a member of a number of Coalition Governments with
both of Ireland's main political parties, Fianna
Fail and Fine Gael, although it has never lived
up to the often-made suggestion that it would replace
Fine Gael as Ireland’s second party. The LP
emerged from its last period as a member of a coalition
government, this time in office with FG and the
Democratic Left badly bruised (1994-97), losing
nearly half of their seats in the Dail in the subsequent
general election; their most high profile LP leader
for decades, Dick Spring, went on to lose his own
seat in 2002.
The Workers Party/Democratic Left which itself originally
grew out of SF —some people believe that the
WP trod the very same path that Mr Adams is now
treading, the only difference being they took the
walk over thirty years before— was once considered
to be the for-runner of a new Left within Ireland,
in much the same way as some members of Sinn Fein
see their own party to be these days. After breaking
from the Republican Movement in the early 1970s
and eventually discarding the SF prefix to adapt
its new name the Workers Party, they went on to
gain seven seats in the Dail. The WP then went on
to experience the type of split that is all too
familiar on the left, when due to political and
personal differences six of the party’s TDs
broke away to form the Democratic Left, which with
unseemly haste they then liquidated into the Labour
Party with whom they had spent a period in office
as members of a Fine Gael led coalition government.
The WP has struggled on without having anything
like its former success, suffering what seems to
have become an iron law of Irish politics. i.e.,
the electorate is unforgiving to smaller parties
when they enter into a coalition with one of the
two larger parties.
The last of the smaller parties to enter into a
coalition has been the Progressive Democrats who,
like the SDP across the Irish Sea, was to be the
harbinger of a new type of politics to the Irish
People. This turned out to be nonsense as far as
both of these parties were concerned and it is difficult
to see the PDs lasting as a political force beyond
the current decade when its leading personalities
leave the political stage. The PDs sole purpose
these days seems to be to make sure their most senior
members have their bottoms seated comfortably within
a Government issue ministerial limo.
In
the long run it is the electorate that carries the
most weight and if I were Gerry Adams, I would think
extremely careful before drinking from a golden
chalice marked 'coalition', the more so if it were
offered by a man wearing a green glove. I would
also consider cutting out carrots from my diet;
they are, after all, coloured orange. For if his
party enters into a coalition government with FF,
which is in reality a right wing party with an opportunist
green tinge, what will this say about Adams' claim
that Sinn Fein is a party of the left? Now whilst
a Labour, Green, Sinn Fein coalition could at a
stretch be seen as a principled joining together
of like-minded politicians, it really is difficult
to see how joining Fianna Fail could be seen as
anything more than SF joining up with Tammany Hall-like,
gombeen-men. Something, incidentally, that Mr Adams
has not shied away from doing in the USA. To conclude,
as far as entering into any coalition in the South
is concerned, Sinn Fein has some interesting decisions
to make, which in the long run will be as important
to its future development as when they decide to
finally stand PIRA down.
