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  Sinn Féin continued to grow, almost doubling its vote in the European election of 2014 and coming within touching distance of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. The party’s bid to channel the anti-austerity mood had a strong parliamentary focus: when a major protest movement against water charges developed from the autumn of 2014, it was unwilling to endorse calls for civil disobedience. Trotskyist parties with origins in the same milieu that once spawned People’s Democracy made all the running on that front, forcing Sinn Féin to adopt a stronger line. The hard-left groups also posed searching questions about the party’s new strategy, which still allowed for a governing alliance with the centre right, as long as Sinn Féin had the greater number of seats.11 The same reluctance to try and make the political weather was apparent at a later stage, when a powerful campaign for abortion rights took shape in the South. Sinn Féin delayed adopting a clear pro-choice position for so long that it was in danger of being overtaken by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

  Sinn Féin’s left turn reached its peak in the first half of 2015, when the victory of Syriza in the Greek elections inspired talk of a new left-wing surge across the periphery of the Eurozone. As the Sinn Féin MEP Martina Anderson told the party’s Ard Fheis that year: ‘In Athens it’s called Syriza, in Spain it’s called Podemos, in Ireland it’s called Sinn Féin.’12 The Sinn Féin leadership could not be held responsible for the capitulation of Syriza under pressure from the Troika later that year, any more than they could be blamed for Labour’s coalition manoeuvre in 2011.13 But their response to the rout in Athens was to shy away from a clash with the ‘Berlin Consensus’ that had inflicted so much social suffering on Ireland and Greece alike. Sinn Féin’s disappointing performance in the 2016 general election – a little under 14 per cent, well below its polling average for the previous year – greatly reinforced that tendency. The party’s 2017 Ard Fheis changed its policy on coalition, clearing the way for a junior partnership with Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil once again.14

  Just as a window of opportunity for republicans appeared to be closing in the South, events in Britain suddenly flung one open in the North. To the surprise of many, Sinn Féin’s partnership with the DUP lasted for the best part of a decade. Ian Paisley hadn’t done a very good job of preparing his supporters to accept a deal with the old enemy, and his seeming bonhomie with Martin McGuinness was too much for many DUP activists to swallow. Paisley’s deputy Peter Robinson, formerly seen as a pragmatic balm for his leader’s persecuting zeal, soon eased ‘the Big Man’ into retirement with the promise of a tougher line.15

  The power-sharing administration inspired no great love in either community. In 2015, the journalist Susan McKay described a political culture that seemed to ‘lurch from crisis to crisis with scarcely more than a shrugging of shoulders, a raising of eyebrows, a disheartened smirk’, and the dysfunctional assembly at its heart: ‘Petitions of concern, which were built into the Good Friday Agreement to prevent the voting-in of sectarian measures, are widely used simply to block anything the other side wants to do.’16 But the regional government survived a whole series of events that might have sunk a more conventional lash-up, including the 2014 arrest of Gerry Adams for his alleged role in the murder of Jean McConville, a Belfast woman killed by the IRA in 1972.17

  The real source of disruption came from the centre of the United Kingdom, not its periphery. When the Conservatives returned to power in London after the crash, it was only a matter of time before they extended their austerity programme across the water, and there was a prolonged stand-off over welfare cuts in 2014–15 that threatened to collapse the power-sharing institutions. The long-term impact of the Great Recession on British politics was then just starting to take effect.

  In 2015, the Labour Party elected Jeremy Corbyn, a stalwart of the Bennite left, as its new leader. While Corbyn’s opponents used his historical ties with Sinn Féin as a line of attack, in practical terms, his policy of support for the Good Friday Agreement was little more than would be expected from any Labour politician.18 More significant for the fate of Northern Ireland was the presence of men like Michael Gove and Boris Johnson in David Cameron’s cabinet, with strong roots in the Daily Telegraph–Policy Exchange nexus that had denounced the GFA as a sell-out to Irish nationalism.

  In 2016, Gove and Johnson spearheaded a successful drive to take Britain out of the European Union, without appearing to remember that the United Kingdom had another segment called Northern Ireland. The DUP, now led by Arlene Foster, also supported the Leave campaign, while its Unionist rivals joined Sinn Féin and the SDLP in the Remain camp. The region voted to stay in the EU by a 56–44 margin, which made no difference to the outcome given the vast preponderance of English votes. In general, the strongest Remain votes were in majority-nationalist areas, with the greatest support for Leave in unionist strongholds, although it was clear that a significant minority of unionists had ignored the DUP’s counsel.

  Most of the commentary on the implications of Brexit for Northern Ireland focused on the question of its land border with the South. While that was certainly an important issue, the upsurge of chest-thumping British nationalism that followed the vote posed a more immediate problem for the region. The outcome soured an already fraught relationship between Martin McGuinness and Arlene Foster, and the DUP leader then finished the job by refusing to take responsibility for mismanagement of a renewable-heating scheme that will impose a crippling financial burden. The Sinn Féin–DUP partnership fell apart at the beginning of 2017 as McGuinness announced his resignation. Shortly afterwards, Cameron’s successor Theresa May called a snap general election, lost her parliamentary majority, and had to rely on support from Foster’s party to stay in power.

  At time of writing, there is no certainty about the outcome of Britain’s journey towards Brexit, let alone the political impact it will have on either side of the Irish Sea. Sinn Féin clearly sees potential in the issue to win support for a united Ireland. We can trace no predictable, linear route from Northern Ireland’s Remain vote to Irish unity. However, it has at the very least introduced an element of flux to the existing constitutional arrangements that was hard to imagine just a few years ago. The possibility of movement towards Irish unity is bound to pull Sinn Féin back towards the nationalist side of its political character, already more important to the party than a left-wing platform that remains – in the words of Eoin Ó Broin – ‘ambiguous, underdeveloped and at times contradictory’.19

  2017 witnessed another milestone in the ‘normalization’ of Sinn Féin, as the death of Martin McGuinness and retirement of Gerry Adams saw two younger women with no IRA backgrounds, Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O’Neill, take the reins. In itself, this generational shift need not be a conservative step: if there is one lesson to be drawn from the IRA’s history, it is that the whiff of cordite offers no lasting guarantee of radicalism. But in practice, McDonald and O’Neill are likely to continue a long journey towards the centre ground traversed by so many republicans in the past. Those who still aspire to the kind of change that the most radical elements in that tradition dreamed of will have to look elsewhere.

  Acknowledgements

  I’m very grateful to my colleagues at New Left Review – Susan Watkins, Kheya Bag, Emma Fajgenbaum, Tom Hazeldine, Midori Lake and Rob Lucas – for all of their support, and for picking up the burden of my editorial duties while I took time off to finish the writing of this book. Leo Hollis shepherded it into print for Verso with great tact, and hopefully stopped me from drifting too far down a number of rabbit holes. The book draws heavily upon my doctoral thesis, which was funded by the Irish Research Council, and I want to acknowledge their generous support.

  I owe a debt to many researchers in the field of Irish history whose work is indispensable for any understanding of this period. I especially want to thank Kevin Bean, John Borgonovo, Sarah-Anne Buckley, Matt Collins, David Convery, Brian Hanley and Donal Ó Drisceoil for their comments, advice and encouragement with this project. Any rema
ining errors are my own, of course.

  I owe another debt to countless friends and comrades who have discussed the events that this book covers with me over the years. They include Kevin Brannigan, Colm Breathnach, Darren Cogavin, Des Derwin, Paul Dillon, Oisin Gilmore, Mark Grehan, José Antonio Gutiérrez, Bernie Hughes, Kevin Keating, Paul Kerwick, Fintan Lane, Stephen Lewis, Alan MacSimoin (an example to all of us, who sadly passed on soon after I completed the manuscript), Sam McGrath, Tommy McKearney, Scott Millar, Paul Moloney, Cian O’Callaghan, Aindrias Ó Cathasaigh, Fergus O’Hare, Gearóid Ó Loingsigh, John O’Neill, Kevin Quinn, James Redmond, Frank Scalzo, Helena Sheehan, Kevin Squires and Brian Trench. Brendan Harrison deserves particular thanks, both for putting me up on trips to Belfast and for helping me to understand this period long before I started researching it formally. The late Father Joseph Brennan would have spotted an echo of his classes in the book’s opening chapter; it’s a great pity that I didn’t get a chance to send it to him. Invaluable support came from Mary O’Flynn, Laura Shudell, Holly Loftus, Ciara Kennedy, Frank and Shane McGuinness, and above all from my parents, Mary and Johnny, to whom I dedicate this book.

  Notes

  Introduction

  1. Bernadette Hayes and Ian McAllister, ‘Public Support for Political Violence and Paramilitarism in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland’, Terrorism and Political Violence, vol. 17, no. 4, 2005, pp. 600–1.

  2. Brendan O’Leary, ‘Mission Accomplished? Looking Back at the IRA’, Field Day Review, vol. 1, 2005, pp. 233–4.

  3. Christopher Paul et al., Paths to Victory: Detailed Insurgency Case Studies, Washington, DC 2013, p. 329.

  4. Ministry of Defence, Operation Banner: An Analysis of Military Operations in Northern Ireland, Army Code 71842, July 2006, Foreword. The author of those words, Sir Mike Jackson, was an officer in the regiment that killed fourteen civilians in Derry in January 1972.

  5. Ian Cobain, Cruel Britannia: A Secret History of Torture, London 2012; The History Thieves: Secrets, Lies and the Shaping of a Modern Nation, London 2016.

  6. Tom Nairn, The Break-Up of Britain: Crisis and Neo-Nationalism, London 1977.

  7. V. I. Lenin, National Liberation, Socialism and Imperialism: Selected Writings, New York 1968, p. 130 (emphasis in original).

  1. The Long War

  1. Barry Flynn, Soldiers of Folly: The IRA Border Campaign 1956–1962, Cork 2009, p. 197.

  2. Ibid., pp. 200–1.

  3. Nancy Curtin, The United Irishmen: Popular Politics in Ulster and Dublin 1791–1798, Oxford 1994, p. 21.

  4. Nancy Curtin, ‘The transformation of the Society of United Irishmen into a mass-based revolutionary organization, 1794–6’, Irish Historical Studies, vol. 24, no. 96, November 1985, pp. 476–84.

  5. Curtin, The United Irishmen, pp. 136–9.

  6. James Quinn, ‘The United Irishmen and social reform’, Irish Historical Studies, vol. 31, no. 122, November 1998.

  7. Curtin, The United Irishmen, p. 170.

  8. James Quinn, ‘Theobald Wolfe Tone and the historians’, Irish Historical Studies, vol. 32, no. 125, May 2000; Francis Shaw, ‘The Canon of Irish History: A Challenge’, Studies, vol. 61, no. 242, Summer 1972.

  9. Christine Kenealy, Repeal and Revolution: 1848 in Ireland, Manchester 2009.

  10. Owen McGee, The IRB: The Irish Republican Brotherhood from the Land League to Sinn Féin, Dublin 2005, pp. 28–9.

  11. Donal McCartney, ‘The Church and the Fenians’, University Review, vol. 4, no. 3, Winter 1967.

  12. Shin-Ichi Takagami, ‘The Fenian rising in Dublin, March 1867’, Irish Historical Studies, vol. 29, no. 115, May 1995.

  13. T. W. Moody and Leon Ó Broin, ‘The IRB Supreme Council, 1868–78’, Irish Historical Studies, vol. 19, no. 75, March 1975, p. 314.

  14. Donald Jordan, ‘John O’Connor Power, Charles Stewart Parnell and the centralization of popular politics in Ireland’, Irish Historical Studies, vol. 25, no. 97, May 1986.

  15. McGee, The IRB, pp. 66–9.

  16. Ibid., pp. 120–36.

  17. Matthew Kelly, ‘“Parnell’s Old Brigade”: the Redmondite–Fenian nexus in the 1890s’, Irish Historical Studies, vol. 33, no. 130, November 2002.

  18. James McConnel, ‘“Fenians at Westminster”: the Edwardian Irish Parliamentary Party and the legacy of the New Departure’, Irish Historical Studies, vol. 34, no. 133, May 2004.

  19. McGee, The IRB, pp. 298–9.

  20. Ronan Fanning, Fatal Path: British Government and Irish Revolution 1910–1922, London 2013, pp. 32–40.

  21. Diarmaid Ferriter, A Nation and Not a Rabble: The Irish Revolution 1913–1923, London 2015, p. 107.

  22. D. George Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland, London 1995, pp. 295–9.

  23. Ferriter, A Nation and Not a Rabble, p. 108.

  24. Conor McCabe, ‘Irish Class Relations and the 1913 Lockout’, in David Convery, ed., Locked Out: A Century of Irish Working-Class Life, Sallins 2013, pp. 10–12.

  25. Emmet O’Connor, ‘The age of the red republic: the Irish left and nationalism, 1909–36’, Saothar, no. 30, 2005, p. 74.

  26. Emmet O’Connor, A Labour History of Ireland 1824–2000, Dublin 2011, pp. 91–5.

  27. Fanning, Fatal Path, pp. 46–7.

  28. Graham Walker, A History of the Ulster Unionist Party: Protest, Pragmatism and Pessimism, Manchester 2004, pp. 36–8.

  29. Fanning, Fatal Path, pp. 110–14.

  30. Charles Townshend, Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion, London 2005, pp. 39–46, 52–3.

  31. Ferriter, A Nation and Not a Rabble, p. 169; Townshend, Easter 1916, pp. 78–80.

  32. Aindrias Ó Cathasaigh, ed., James Connolly: The Lost Writings, London 1997, pp. 185–92, 194–7, 201–4.

  33. Desmond Greaves, The Life and Times of James Connolly, London 1972, pp. 371–93; Kieran Allen, The Politics of James Connolly, London 1990, pp. 134–60.

  34. Fearghal McGarry, The Rising: Ireland: Easter 1916, Oxford 2010, pp. 213–26.

  35. Michael Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland: The Sinn Féin Party 1916–1923, Cambridge 1999, pp. 113–21.

  36. Fiona Devoy McAuliffe, ‘Workers Show Their Strength: The 1918 Conscription Crisis’, in Convery, ed., Locked Out.

  37. Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland, pp. 164–5.

  38. Ferriter, A Nation and Not a Rabble, p. 156.

  39. Charles Townshend, The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independence, London 2013, pp. 157–9, 165–71.

  40. Fanning, Fatal Path, pp. 241–2.

  41. Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland, pp. 282–3, 310–18.

  42. Townshend, The Republic, pp. 100, 144–8.

  43. Michael Hopkinson, The Irish War of Independence, Dublin 2002, pp. 177–97.

  44. Michael Laffan, The Partition of Ireland, 1911–1925, Dublin 1983, p. 64.

  45. Fanning, Fatal Path, pp. 217–21.

  46. John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary, Explaining Northern Ireland: Broken Images, Oxford 1995, pp. 36–9.

  47. Ferriter, A Nation and Not a Rabble, pp. 249–50.

  48. Fanning, Fatal Path, pp. 293–4, 307.

  49. Michael Hopkinson, Green Against Green: The Irish Civil War, Dublin 2004, pp. 32–3.

  50. Townshend, The Republic, p. 362.

  51. Ferriter, A Nation and Not a Rabble, pp. 260–2; Townshend, The Republic, pp. 404–6.

  52. Hopkinson, Green Against Green, pp. 36–8; Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland, pp. 350–5.

  53. Ronan Fanning, Éamon de Valera: A Will to Power, London 2015, pp. 133–8.

  54. Gavin Foster, ‘Class dismissed? The debate over a social basis to the Treaty split and Irish civil war’, Saothar, no. 33, 2008.

  55. O’Connor, A Labour History of Ireland, pp. 105–6.

  56. Aindrias Ó Cathasaigh, ‘Getting with the programme: Labour, the Dáil and the Democratic Programme of 1919’, Red Banner, no. 35, March 2009, pp. 30–1.

  57. Hopkinson, Green Against Green, p. 52.

  58. Townshend
, The Republic, p. 432.

  59. Ibid., pp. 442–3.

  60. Emmet O’Connor, Reds and the Green: Ireland, Russia and the Communist Internationals 1919–43, Dublin 2004, p. 67.

  61. O’Connor, Reds and the Green, pp. 71–4.

  62. Townshend, The Republic, pp. 446–7.

  63. Laffan, The Resurrection of Ireland, p. 355.

  64. Diarmaid Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000, London 2004, pp. 294–5.

  65. Brendan O’Leary and John McGarry, The Politics of Antagonism: Understanding Northern Ireland, London 1993, p. 108.

  66. John Bowman, De Valera and the Ulster Question, 1917–73, Oxford 1982.

  67. Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland, p. 296; Cormac Ó Gráda, A Rocky Road: The Irish Economy since the 1920s, Manchester 1997, p. 91.

  68. Conor McCabe, Sins of the Father: The Decisions That Shaped the Irish Economy, Dublin 2013, pp. 74–82.

  69. Paul Bew, Ellen Hazelkorn and Henry Patterson, The Dynamics of Irish Politics, London 1989, pp. 145–6.

  70. O’Connor, Labour History of Ireland, p. 140.

  71. Fanning, Éamon de Valera, p. 155.

  72. D. R. O’Connor Lysaght, ‘“Labour Must Wait”: The making of a myth’, Saothar, no. 26, 2001.

  73. Richard Dunphy, The Making of Fianna Fáil Power in Ireland, 1923–1948, Oxford 1995.