A number of interesting trends have emerged from the three political polls from the Sun, the Irish Times and the Sunday Business Post in the last two weeks. The polls have revealed a stable figure of support for all the major parties and one of the most striking is the average of 15% which Sinn Féin has received. The trends for the parties in the three polls can be seen in the chart below.
Should these figures come to pass in the General Election next year it would surpass any support Sinn Féin has received in an election in the Republic of Ireland since republicans first contested in elections in the South in 1981 as anti H-Block candidates. In the wake of these results I thought it would be interesting to look at Sinn Féin’s electoral history south of the border.
Gerry Adams and his supporters gained control of the Republican movement in the early 1980s. This happened after his release from Long Kesh, where he had been sentenced to three years between 1973 and 1976. Ed Moloney in his IRA history asserts that it was here that Adams divulged the idea of the IRA participating in political agitation. This policy accepted the need for republicans to capture public support which logically pushed it towards contesting elections. The H-Block Hunger Strikes presented the republican movement wih its first participation in electoral politics, resulting in the election of Bobby Sands to Westminster in April 1981.
The first electoral participation south of the border came in the following June. Nine prisoners, four of them hunger strikers, ran as anti H-Block candidates agreed between the National H-Block Committee and Sinn Féin. Unexpectedly two prisoners were elected, Kieran Doherty in Cavan-Monaghan, who later died on hunger strike and Paddy Agnew in Louth. This was the beginning of the so-called Armalite and Ballot Box strategy.
However this would be the limit of republican success in elections until the Peace Process. In the February election of 1982 Sinn Féin ran seven candidates and received only 1% of the vote. As Moloney says ‘the message was clear: Southern voters might come out at an emotional moment and support dying hunger strikers, but otherwise they would spurn the IRA and its political wing.’
The next major landmark in Sinn Féin’s electoral history in the Republic came at the 1986 party Ard Fheis. It was here that the party decided to drop abstentionism to Dáil Éireann. Against the expected opposition Gerry Adams stressed that it would be accompanied by an escalation of the IRA campaign indicated by recent aquirment of Libyan arms shipments. Accompanied by supportive speeches from other prominent IRA members including Joe Cahill and Martin McGuinness, delegates were reassured that the military campaign would not be run down. The motion was passed and a minor splinter occurred in the movement. Ruairí Ó’Brádaigh left Sinn Féin and founded Republican Sinn Féin with its linked paramilitary group the Continuity IRA, one of the dissident groups operating today.
The first test of the new non-abstentionist Sinn Féin came in the 1987 General Election. However the results remained the same with the party attaining a mere 1.8% of the vote. This was followed up in the elections of 1989 and 1992 with tallies of 1.2% and 1.6% respectively. the results displayed the Irish electorate’s aversion to the party while the IRA continued to carry out atrocities during the period in question, such as the Enniskillen Remembrance Day bombing. it also highlighted the utter contradictions in the Armalite-Ballot Box strategy.
As the Peace Process developed Sinn Féin reaped more benefits in elections in the Republic. In 1997 the party had its first TD elected: Caoimhghin Ó’Caoláin in Cavan-Monaghan. In 2002 the party made its first major breakthrough with five TDs elected to the Dáil with 6.5% of the vote. Moloney comments that ‘a rhetorical commitment to peace wasn’t doing the part any harm at all.’ However, hopes to build on this success failed to materialise as Sinn Féin lost a seat in the 2007 election, followed by poor results in the 2009 local and European elections. There seemed to be indications that the party had reached a plateau of support in the Republic.
This brings us to the present day and if the trend from the three recent polls were to materialise, the results would surpass anything Sinn Féin has attained in a vote to Dáil Éireann in the last thirty years.
They are many reasons behind this latest Sinn Féin resurgence in the polls. The three recent polls reveal a trend of Fianna Fáil reaching record lows and a slight decline in Labour support from recent polls. These two trends indicate republican and left wing votes moving to Sinn Féin.
Pearse Doherty’s victory in the Donegal by-election and his subsequent impressive media appearances have also added vitality to Sinn Féin south of the border. Doherty had a head start in the campaign with his High Court victory to get the by-election staged but he was undoubtedly the most impressive of the by-election candidates. Sinn Féin now seems to have a natural successor to lead the party in the Republic rather than its previous failed attempts to promote Mary Lou McDonald.
In his column in the Irish Examiner Ryle Dwyer commented on Sinn Féin recnt popularity increase. ‘Sinn Féin seems to be doing particularly well among people in the 18-24 age bracket. They are too young to remember the horrors committed by Sinn Féin and the PIRA during the latter part of the last century.’
Stephen Collins in the Irish Times outlined the distinct possibility now of a Labour lead left-bloc also encompassing Sinn Féin and Independents. This potential outcome is aided by the formation of the United Left Alliance including the People Before Profit movement and the Socialist Party. Labour’s Ruairí Quinn was questioned last week on George Hook's Newstalk radio programme on this. He snubbed the idea saying he did not regard Sinn Féin as a left wing party but as an extreme nationalist party. This may well be Labour's view now but opinions can change in post election bargaining. It is unlikely that Sinn Féin will form part of the next governement but there is no doubt that the 2011 General Election will be the most successful in the party's history in the Republic. It could very well be the foundation of futurer progress for the party in this part of Ireland.
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