At the beginning of June, Sinn Féin notified members that there will be no Ard Fheis this year. It was to have been held towards the end of the year which would have run into the Presidential election campaign. Instead, they are planning to have one in April 2026 in Belfast.
The last Ard Fheis was held in Athlone in September 2024, and while the party claimed that it was attended by more than 1,000 members, including registered delegates, several photographs inside the venue including during Mary Lou’s keynote Presidential address suggested that it might have been less than that.
Dwindling active – as opposed to registered – membership and falling interest overall in participatory politics is not unique to Sinn Féin. No party has the number of members, or even election workers, they once had. Sinn Féin had more dedicated people when it had less voters. Something to ponder perhaps.
The email referred to “logistical” reasons for the postponement, and one of these would certainly have been trying to stage one at the same time as running a candidate for Áras an Uachtaráin.
If the candidate was to be Mary Lou then a primetime Saturday evening slot might have been a good kick start. On the other, it might cut across efforts to pitch their candidate to a bigger audience than a partisan one. In any event all the candidates will have lots of exposure at this time so an Ard Fheis in the run up is not much of an addition.
It has been suggested that putting the Ard Fheis back will avoid any potential airing of ongoing internal disquiet over the November general election results. The disappointment of the June local elections formed the background to the September 2024 Ard Fheis, but whatever internal dissatisfaction might have been expressed had been contained by the party’s focus on the upcoming general election. A date had not yet been set before the Athlone event but it was certain to happen pretty soon afterwards.
That meant that people were advised to keep their powder dry in the expectation that Sinn Féin might do much better than it had in June. It did not, and there has been no real opportunity for the membership to let their feelings known since.
The extent to which there is even such a substantial internal faction is moot. It is notable that some of the most significant rumblings from within have not been over immigration policy – which was the main reason why Sinn Féin lost votes to both the ‘right’ and ‘left’ – but over transgenderism of all things.
Health spokesperson David Cullinane was forced into an embarrassing climbdown when extremists took umbrage over a straightforwardly sensible comment he made on social media. There were then threats of, and actual, resignations by “long standing members” none of whom I ever came across in 30 years. This led to a recent conference to thrash the matter out.
The details of that, and the issue itself, are trivial if not ludicrous. It is embarrassing that a substantial part of the membership and leadership of a party – which was formally established 120 years ago at a time when the Irish nation was in the midst of a revolutionary awakening of consciousness across the political, cultural, trade union, co-operative and sporting fields – ought to have chosen this absurdity as a hill to die on.
Sinn Féin is not alone in this. I daresay that Dev and Lemass and Connolly and Griffith would be similarly embarrassed by the people who lead the parties which claim their legacy. Sinn Féin get it more because they carry the name.
To what extent the silly dispute over transgenderism revolves around or impacts the leadership of Mary Lou or might be a factor in deciding whether she will run for the Presidency is unclear. She has, however, clearly been using the past few weeks to test the waters on such a bid.
As part of that it is interesting that the two main pitches she has made through the unusual medium of a sort of mini-state visit to Blighty have been the economy and the border poll.
On the economy, she has continued the outreach to Big Capital, even having Davy’s apparently again acting as the host, as they did when Pearse Doherty met with “50 global investors” in April 2024. Davy pitched the New Shinners as akin to Blair’s New Labour. Seemingly, Mary Lou had taken umbrage and described it as a mere “soundbite” when reminded of it at the weekend. Too close to the bone perhaps.
Even the fact that all of this gladhanding by Mary Lou and Pearse took place in London speaks of either monumental historical ignorance and loss of memory, or a deliberate two fingers to the ghosts of the past and any lingering notion that Ireland might be something other than an adjunct to the London, or more lately New York, stock exchange.
It is worth bearing in mind that the Old Shinners who were dismissed and pushed aside from the mid-1980s were derided by the “core group” around Mary Lou as “right wing”. This was when the Belfast Army Council faction were dumping the original social and economic programme of the Provos, Éire Nua.
I defy anyone to read that document and its prescription for radical decentralisation and indigenous co-operative and local enterprise driven development independent of Britain, the EU and corporate Capital, and decide that it is “right wing.” I defy anyone to imagine that Griffith or Connolly might have buttered up to “global investors.”
The irony is that not only do harmless left liberal parties like Sinn Fein and Starmer’s Labour Party push transgenderism instead of what their parties originally stood for, but corporate Capital throws untold millions into promoting transgender ideology and abortion and open borders – for the reason that it suits them to. Abortion is a positive on maternity leave. Even Marx understood that the destruction of the family was such an imperative.
Likewise the “foundational Provos” – as the latest bunch of left liberal arrivistes are fond of describing people who were there before the Clintons and the Feeneys decided others that it was a good career move – would not have been peddling the snake oil of the ‘border poll.’ That was the other main plank of the platform ML brought to London.
Sinn Fein know exactly what a deception that is. They signed up to it in 1998. The Good Friday Agreement clearly states that the British governor of Northern Ireland under whom Stormont has delegated powers from the Crown has the decision on if and when to call such a poll. That will be “if at any time it appears likely to him that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a united Ireland.”
There is no such evidence, nor likely to be. The nationalist vote is almost exactly the same as it was 30 years ago. 40% of the electorate vote for parties who want unity and not even all of their voters, according to polls, want unity. Census and other data suggest that if anything immigrants prefer being “British” than Irish. Why would they not? Ireland in either part is an anglophone extension of England. That is why they come, not to learn Irish and hurl Junior B.
If Sinn Féin were serious about achieving unity they would not be in Stormont. The original Sinn Féin had no military wing nor any need of one. It carried an idea that was centuries old. That you do not achieve Irish sovereignty through Westminster – nor any devolved local administration through ‘home rule.’
The only legitimate poll on unity would be one held on the same day in every one of the 32 counties and posed the same question with a binding result. This was mother’s milk to Irish nationalists since the Tans and the B Specials were sent to terrorise people into overturning the democratic decision of the people in December 1918. No subsequent poll has ever overturned that.