Sinn Fein and the global progressive alliance
The ex-terrorists have found a place in the elite world, unlike unionists
In recent times there has been a succession of articles and broadcast pieces appearing all asking the same question: is Irish unification now inevitable?
This has happened amidst wrangling over Brexit and the Northern Ireland Protocol and now with Sinn Fein becoming the biggest party in Northern Ireland Assembly elections, while leading opinion polls in the Republic.
In 2016, Labour-affiliated British writer Kevin Meagher had a book published entitled, ‘A United Ireland: Why Unification is Inevitable and How it Will Come About.’ In a recent update, he said, “In chess, they call it ‘zugzwang.’ It is not quite checkmate, but it’s the point where the game starts to become irretrievable [for unionists]. Every move, (and, for here read every issue), weakens the overall position. There is no prospect of rallying to recover it.”
The idea that Irish unification is inevitable matches exactly the framing that Republicans led by Sinn Fein/IRA have adopted for many decades.
As the former IRA man Sean O’Callaghan wrote in his book The Informer in 1998, “there is a growing sense of confidence among northern nationalists – the sense that history is on their side.”
I would say that this matches a full-scale alignment with hard progressivism that nationalists in both Ireland and Scotland have embarked upon, not least in seeing their triumph as inevitable: that history is bending in their direction and against their opponents.
It’s a story of politics as destiny, as if towards the city on the hill, to enlightenment and righteousness: to a time when truth, unity and justice will be restored to these ancient kingdoms, now transformed into progressive paradises.
In Ireland, Sinn Fein is most obviously the owner of this story. By clever politics the party has moved from a Eurosceptic standpoint to embrace of the EU, thereby putting it inside the Irish political consensus. It’s a bit like how it put itself alongside the much-admired John Hume of the SDLP in order to gain kudos and respectability in the 1990s, before virtually knocking out his party as a vehicle of nationalist sentiment north of the border. Also, with the Irish government of Leo Varadkar joining the EU in a hostile stance to Britain’s Conservative Brexit governments, Anglophobia became a mainstay of Irish politics once more – shifting another part of the consensus in Sinn Fein’s direction.
The narrative of ‘inevitability’, of our triumph and their defeat, also wholly aligns to that of the European Union and its leading countries France and Germany. Talk on the Continent and among EU supporters in the UK that Brexit Britain will fail, is failing and will (or must) regret its choice expresses that same sort of incontestable knowledge, not just of the present and past but of the future.
In this way, for both Irish nationalists and the supra-nationalists of the EU, questions of politics and governance in Ireland and in Europe are matters of knowledge. You are either right or wrong about them: and they are right while their opponents (unionists in Northern Ireland, Brexiteers in Britain and other EU-sceptics in Europe) are wrong. Such questions of right and wrong have already been answered. They are closed and those who vainly try to keep them open need to be ignored and derided – just as the unionist side in Northern Ireland is now.
It’s a rationalistic and progressive narrative, it’s everywhere and has become so familiar it’s easy to get on board with, and get away with in most circles.
There has been alignment of narrative along these lines between Sinn Fein, the other parties in the Republic, the SNP, the EU and its supporters, its most powerful member states (notably France) - and also the Democratic administration and Congress in the US, which shows zero interest in unionists or in any interpretation of the Good Friday Agreement that recognises their status and affiliations.
All of these forces have been heaping pressure on the UK to loosen its ties to Northern Ireland by maintaining the Protocol’s border with the rest of the UK, while strengthening those with the Republic.
In this context I think all the talk about ‘inevitability’ is tempting. In many ways on this question, at least in the general political narrative around it, all roads seem to lead to Dublin and Brussels.
However, according to the Good Friday Agreement, unionists in Northern Ireland are meant to have a say too. For all the faults of the unionist parties, they are determined to make themselves heard. But they find themselves firmly outside the global progressive consensus. Their natural focus on holding on to their little corner of the world puts them at odds with this consensus, in London as much as in Dublin, Brussels and Washington.
The narrative of Sinn Fein and its allies jumps over the unionists. It leaps ahead of them in the classic progressive fashion, standing in the future telling them they’ve already lost, taunting them for their helplessness in the face of history.
This inherently authoritarian approach may seem fine when we’re aligned to it but it makes us burn with anger when we’re not. And that’s without the most enthusiastic promoters of this story of ‘inevitability’ belonging to a party whose armed wing, in living memory, used to murder your forebears (and also became a ruthlessly effective organised crime outfit - something generally neglected today).
Whatever lies in the future, in my view those who gather around this story alongside Sinn Fein are not just showing the unionists disrespect but are being distinctly irresponsible, even reckless. This goes for those in power in Dublin, Brussels, Paris and Washington, but also for those who cheer them on from London and elsewhere, confident that they are on the right side of history.
Interesting read.
You described Sin Feinn as the tip of a progressive alliance over NI/Brexit matters, backed by a Washington/Brussels/Dublin/London alignment. Do you foresee the DUP, or any other unionist party, mirroring the move and becoming the de facto edge of a counter-alliance? If so what would be this alignment?
Also interesting stuff about the SDLP, feel free to develop.