SF lost momentum because it doesn’t stand for anything

The state knows a threat when it sees one.

It never adopted a hands off approach to Irish republicans. It would never have escorted volunteers as they harassed librarians or allowed them to set up illegal roadblocks. It wouldn’t have sat back as they committed multiple arson attacks. Successive governments took action, calling republicans terrorists, prohibiting any broadcast of their voices on the airwaves, lest the public be corrupted by their seditious message.

We need not overcomplicate why the state has declined to pursue fascist groups organising across Ireland these past five or so years: an emboldened far-right serves the interests of the ruling class. Fascism co-opts the aesthetics of revolution to protect power, blaming migrants and sexual minorities for overlapping social crises that stem directly from government policy. It creates ambient fear and suspicion in communities, making solidarity among working people next to impossible.

A headline you’ll never read: far-right group saves tenants from illegal eviction.

Mobilised far right groups have benefitted the political establishment by mostly targeting opposition parties. Sinn Féin, once widely accepted as the next government in waiting, has been attacked on two fronts: open fascists and citizen journalists spread toxic lies and conspiracy theories about the party in working-class communities, while broadsheets aimed at middle- and upper-class voters draw comparisons between Sinn Féin and this same far right. “Sinn Féin are traitors to the Irish people,” they are wont to say.

Sinn Féin has pandered to the far right in response. The party scrambled to signal they are at least a bit callous towards migrants. Leader Mary Lou McDonald expressed support for faster deportations and a means-tested asylum application process. Justice spokesperson Pa Daly and health spokesperson David Cullinane declared their opposition to “open borders” – a nonexistent policy invoked as a means of placating racist anxieties about foreigners. When the government targeted homeless asylum seekers with fences along the Grand Canal, Sinn Féin just said the barriers "can't stay there indefinitely."

The decision to pivot right on immigration, informed by plummeting poll numbers and a pliant media increasingly centring immigration as a topic of discussion, was futile.

Despite its best efforts, Sinn Féin failed to make significant gains in the recent local elections. But the explanation for its loss of momentum is more complicated than ethnonationalists gaining support in some pockets of the country, sapping their votes. Sinn Féin maintained its seat count in the five local election areas where far right candidates won.

Blaming the far right is convenient for everyone. The media feels vindicated in its long-held suspicion that a great deal of Sinn Féin supporters are lumpen nativists. Government happily talks about anything but crises in housing and healthcare. Meanwhile Sinn Féin avoids confronting the main source of its electoral stagnation – a growing realisation among voters that the party doesn’t stand for anything in particular.

If you don’t like my republican values, I have other ones

In publishing its immigration policy paper last week, Sinn Féin shortsightedly surrendered terrain to the right, legitimising the idea that vulnerable people, not the ruling class, are responsible for social deprivation.

International Protection: A Fair System That Works is a hastily cobbled together collection of policies, many already supported by government. Its primary function is to deliver a message to anti-migrant protesters: no need to worry, you won't have to look at asylum seekers in your areas if we're in power. The message is thinly veiled within a series of proposals, notably that accommodation sites for asylum seekers will be decided based on a "pre-assessment" of a community followed by a "consultation" with residents. This an effective exemption for socially deprived areas – the sites of many far right demonstrations against migrants – from housing people fleeing famine and war.

Sinn Féin is offering reassurance to people harbouring racist sentiments while also attempting to maintain a veneer of progressivism. Social affairs spokesman Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire said the new document is based on “republican values” – which now include increased deportations and indulging in the delusion that people torching international protection centres are upset that their local councillor hasn’t engaged with them enough.

Republican values used to involve smashing the far-right, not trying to convince investors that it can be managed. When Pegida held a rally in Dublin in 2016, its members were physically confronted by anti-fascists and republicans chanting “Nazi scum off our streets”, resulting in the public order unit intervening. Speaking at the counter-protest, Sinn Féin MEP Lynn Boylan warned Ireland must stop racist policies creeping into the mainstream. “It is each and every one of our responsibility to call out racism where and when we see it,” she said.

The Sinn Féin in attendance at that rally no longer exists. In its place is a centrist party moving rightward on key policy issues – Irish neutrality and the Special Criminal Court, Palestinian solidarity and now immigration. It uses deliberately vague language about wanting to form a government without Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael but won’t rule out coalition with a party that in living memory has presided over not one, but two defective, distended housing markets.

In other words: vote for change – but don’t expect it.

Stand for something. Anything

Maybe Sinn Féin was always headed this way.

Liam Ó Ruairc, in his book Peace or Pacification? Northern Ireland after the defeat of the IRA, argued that the Good Friday Agreement defanged a once radical Irish republican movement; it implemented neoliberal economic policies as a means of consolidating peace. In practice, peace time is a sectarian competition for resources. The promised peace dividends never materialised for working-class communities, whether nationalist or unionist – and as of March 2024, one in four children in the north live in poverty.

Sinn Féin is however at least perceived as standing for something in the north, the aspiration of Irish nationalists to achieve a united Ireland, and continues to receive support on that basis. This objective shapes the party's actions. Its manoeuvres are in some way intended to advance the cause of Irish unification. What does the southern branch of Sinn Féin stand for?

Mary Lou McDonald is an opportunistic leader whose political instincts – triangulate, equivocate, obfuscate – align with those of a modern Fianna Fáil politician, not a republican. But on some issues Sinn Féin still has the capacity to avoid floundering. Yesterday the party unveiled another new document, this time addressing housing. The document’s strategy outlined could benefit non-homeowners – the state must have a more direct role in the provision of housing and stop catering to investment funds.

Housing, Sinn Féin’s says, will be its focus for the next election. Great. Trying to end the housing crisis is laudable but a new line on immigration has helped ensure the next election will be fought on terrain unfavourable to the kind of progressive message that won over much of the electorate in 2020. As we’ve learnt from the mistakes of the European left, hostility to foreigners doesn’t neutralise fascists – it legitimises voting for them and brings their ideas into the mainstream. Analysts might have overestimated the far right's effect on Sinn Féin's last election results, but the next vote could see a much heavier toll.

Here’s what Sinn Féin’s party line in the recent local elections should have been: Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party are scapegoating immigrants to distract the public from their failures in government – don’t misdirect your justified anger at vulnerable people. The party must offer voters a real, unapologetically left platform and vision to buy into – an approach that yielded results for Nouveau Front Populaire in the recent French elections.

Performative cruelty against asylum seekers is a symptom of the political cowardice that has brought about Sinn Féin’s current crisis. No amount of bigotry, xenophobia or racism will please people who call you Sharia Féin and believe Ireland is being invaded by refugees. Concessions won’t capture the imagination of the general public.

Only actually standing for something can do that.