Banking on Sinn Féin being ostracised could be a big mistake
AFTER John Hume performed magnificently in retaining his seat in the European election, 1984 was depicted as a particularly good year for the Social Democratic Labour Party in the North.
He polled 62.3% of the nationalist vote — up by over 5% on SDLP’s vote in the 1983 UK general election.
Sinn Féin’s share of the nationalist vote — as represented by the performance of its European election candidate, Danny Morrison — dropped from 42.3% to 37.7%. It seemed that momentum, which is so often seen as crucial indicator in politics, had swung back to the SDLP, which naturally touted the party’s performance.
Officials in the Department of Foreign Affairs and the taoiseach’s office were far from sanguine, however, because Sinn Féin had not run its leader, Gerry Adams.
“It would be a serious mistake to see an encouraging underlying trend in this for several reasons,” the taoiseach’s office warned on August 29, 1984. “The fact that Sinn Féin decided to field Morrison, and not Adams, against Hume was read by nationalists generally and even by Sinn Féin supporters as an effective concession of defeat.” Adams would undoubtedly have been a more popular candidate.
“The SDLP are weaker than Sinn Féin in their capacity to ‘deliver’ on local government issues,” the report continued. “It must therefore be assumed that, in the absence of credible political progress in the meantime, Sinn Féin would stand a real chance of overtaking the SDLP in next year’s local elections.”
Despite the outcome at the polls, the authorities in Dublin were convinced that Sinn Féin was actually gaining politically on the ground. Following US President Ronald Reagan’s visit to Dublin, Tadhg O’Sullivan, the Irish ambassador to the United States, visited Northern Ireland for talks with various people. Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich told him that Sinn Féin was capable of improving its electoral support, because its party activists “were extremely hard constituency workers”.
The cardinal “was very critical of the SDLP for its lack of constituency activity”, according to O’Sullivan.
“A contact in the Housing Executive had told him that in the Belfast area they were receiving approximately 140 enquiries a week from Sinn Féin to four from the SDLP. He stood by his view that many people voted for Sinn Féin on the basis of local or constituency issues rather than support for violence.”
O’Sullivan also talked with both SDLP deputy leader Seamus Mallon and Joe Hendron. Mallon explained that there were three elements to the Hume vote in the European election:
More than 100,000 moderate nationalists;
A small farmer vote that supported Hume personally, because of his work for the farming community at the European Parliament;
About 20,000 Alliance Party voters who supported Hume in order to help defeat Sinn Féin.
The SDLP could not rely on either the second or the third elements of the Hume vote in a different election, according to Mallon. He felt Sinn Féin and the SDLP should therefore work closer together in order “to maximise nationalist strength”.
Although Mallon was unequivocal in his opposition to violence, he argued that it was a mistake to try to ostrascise Sinn Féin, because nationalists needed to co-operate, if they were to secure the necessary changes in Northern Ireland. People were not going to be satisfied with some form of devolved government with a mere token Irish dimension. Joe Hendron, on the other hand, disagreed with Mallon. Hendron saw the SDLP and Sinn Féin support coming from distinctly different sections of the nationalist community. He felt the SDLP would lose much of its vote, if it tried to cooperate with Sinn Féin. He was therefore looking to the London and Dublin governments to come up with a package that would demonstrate that — unlike Sinn Féin — the SDLP was able to deliver.
From the perspective of 30 years on, it would seem that SDLP activists made the mistake of relying on the two governments to rescue them by generating the impression that they were effective, even though Sinn Féin was doing most work on the ground.
Garret FitzGerald’s advisers were under no illusions in 1984. “There is not the slightest doubt that if you and I fail, the SDLP, who have been holding the line in extremely difficult circumstances, must collapse fairly soon,” Cabinet secretary Dermot Nally warned the Taoiseach on October 17, 1984.
The prominent politicians of 1984 have all moved on — Garret FitzGerald, Charles Haughey, Albert Reynolds are all dead, while Dick Spring, Bertie Ahern, Alan Dukes, John Bruton, and John Hume have all quit politics.
It is often said that, “a week is a long time in politics”, so 30 years has been a virtual lifetime. The curious thing is that Gerry Adams is still very much to the fore.
Trying to ostracise Sinn Féin did not work in Northern Ireland 30 years ago, even after almost two decades of violence, so the main parties could be making a serious mistake in hoping that people will ostracise Sinn Féin in the 26 counties at this time.
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