Sinn Féin reaches turning point in political positioning

The lyrics to ‘Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves’ echoed around the Belfast Waterfront conference centre decorated with 3.5m- high posters of Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O’Neill and framed with a purple hue designed to honour the suffragettes, writes Fiachra Ó Cionnaith.

The delegates voted in their droves for potentially entering coalition with their supposed enemies in Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil in the future, despite a long-standing insistence, until recently, that they would never consider such treachery.

The party’s limited abortion policy was further liberalised, just months after an initial change, to bring it into line with the country’s landslide yes vote in May’s referendum.

And, for once, those present could only murmur about ‘change’ — and not ‘sulphur’ from its not-too-distant past — being in the air at the Sinn Féin ard fheis.

While the images of Bobby Sands and hunger strikers were still there, alongside promotions for sideline talks about the Ballymurphy massacre, there was no mistaking the fact Sinn Féin’s weekend ard fheis represented a significant moment for the party.

Since Ms McDonald took over from Gerry Adams earlier this year, Sinn Féin has been slowly moving towards the centre ground of Irish politics.

Now fully ensconced as its new leader, Ms McDonald ramped up that change at the weekend, emphasising that her party — and it is increasingly her party — cannot continue to be ignored as a genuine coalition prospect.

The careful and pointed nods to the past were still there, with Ms McDonald using her prime time TV speech on Saturday evening to emphasise the party’s history as much as its future.

Those same nods where there among delegates too, whether party handlers wanted them to be so blatant or not, with one delegate shouting to the crowd “tiocfaidh ár lá” during an abortion debate and another wistfully thinking back to a previous era by saying from the stage on Friday night: “We used to say up the ‘you know who’... but we can’t say that anymore.”

However, the tone and imagery of this weekend’s ard fheis was noticeably different, and pointed in only one direction — Sinn Féin’s new leader wants to enter power with her party.

And to do that, she recognises that there is a need to bring it — or at least give the impression that it is being brought — into centre ground politics in order to win over middle Ireland voters and make it near- impossible for Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to ignore the party as an option.

It remains unclear if Sinn Féin’s focus is on the next election or the election after that, with the party well known for its long-term strategic thinking and a school of thought suggesting a Fine Gael-Fianna Fáil coalition would allow Sinn Féin to define itself as the main opposition party over the coming years.

However, there is no mistaking last weekend’s ard fheis marks a key turning point in the party’s political positioning — and potentially just as key a moment for the wider political arena.