The impact of Killian Forde’s resignation

Today, the news became public that Cllr. Killian Forde has resigned from Sinn Féin.  David Cochrane is also reporting that he will be joining the Labour Party.  That rumour would also appear to be backed up by the following line from Cllr. Forde’s statement:

I want to be part of an organisation that can introduce the necessary legislative changes and constitutional reforms that will enable my generation to live on an island they can be proud of.

To me, this is further proof of a now established trend – the ongoing difficulties being experienced by Sinn Féin in the south (and particularly in Dublin).

Sinn Féin elected Mary Lou McDonald as an MEP in June 2004, ushering in a new kind of Sinn Féin politician – middle-class, young, articulate and moderate.  They also elected 10 members of Dublin City Council in 2004, with only the middle-class areas of Clontarf, Pembroke and Rathmines failing to elect Sinn Féin councillors.  Beyond this, they topped the poll in 6 electoral areas, and suddenly a raft of young, articulate, moderate Sinn Féin representatives existed in Dublin.  In the days and weeks after the 2004 elections, SF were on a high, and seemed destined to repeat that success in the following General Election.

As we now know, things didn’t quite pan out that way, and since the 2007 election, there has been an endlessly bad news cycle for Sinn Féin.  No point going through them all again, but there have been in the range of 20 resignations from the party (North and South) over the last two and a half years.  Within Dublin City alone, we’ve seen two resignations in Ballyfermot (Tony Smithers and then Lousie Minihan’s defection to Éirigí), one in Cabra (Nicky Kehoe), one in Crumlin (Robbie Sargent), one in North Inner City (Christy Burke), one in South West Inner City (Andrew O’Connell), and now the resignation of Killian Forde in Donaghmeade.  By any standards, 7 resignations is an astonishingly high number in such a short period of time.  Combined with their 2009 local election results, this leaves them with just 4 seats in Dublin City – a weakness only compounded by the loss of their European seat in June.

What’s amazing is that this crumbling has taken place against a back-drop of a rise in popularity for all other parties of the left – Labour, People Before Profit and the Socialist Party all saw significant gains in Dublin, so it can’t be claimed that voters have moved (as they sometimes do) to the right.  Rather, we’re seeing the end result of organisational and policy mayhem, caused in part by having a Belfast leadership out of tune with the mindset of southern voters.  Famously, Toireasa Ferris penned this article for An Phoblacht after the June elections – stating quite clearly that the party had little identity, and that a body of work needed to be done to review the organisation in the 26 counties.

It would appear from the recent resignations, that many representatives agreed with her, and that their frustration at the lack of action has now reached a level they can no longer live with.  There should be no doubt – resigning from a political party (whether as a member, activist or public representative) must be a traumatic experience.  The idea that people who do so are careerist, or traitorous is cheap, and usually they are ideas spouted by wounded activists who feel betrayed.

Ultimately, Sinn Féin faces three major problems from what I can see (and I readily acknowledge that the views of an outsider are always different to those inside a political party):

• Lack of leadership in the south
• Failure to modernise and agree a coherent identity
• Organisational structures

The lack of leadership is an obvious issue likely to face any all-island party.  We have different electoral systems, economies and social and cultural values between the two jurisdictions on the island.  This will always lead to a difficulty for citizens in one jurisdiction accepting a leader from the other.  Just as I predict this issue will become problematic for Brian Cowen if Fianna Fáil actually organise in the north, the reality is that most southern voters don’t feel an affinity to Gerry Adams as a relevant political leader.  On the other hand, if SF were to appoint a separate leader in the south, it would be automatically accepting a partitionist approach.  How they can square that circle, I have no idea, but it’s something that they urgently need to actually tackle.

Failure to modernise is the biggest criticism I hear from mates who are SF activists.  Sinn Féin as a voluntary organisation has evolved from a purely nationalist organisation, to a community focused political campaigning organisation, to a politically confused political party.  Again, they have a very difficult obstacle to overcome – moving further to the left politically is likely to gain them some popularity in urban areas, but lead to a decimation of their vote in core areas such as Cavan and Kerry.  Moving back to the community focused approach seems like the most likely approach for electoral success, but involved a rejection of the new wave of members and representatives who came on board as a result of the professionalisation of the party.  And softening the approach to move in a left-of-centre, equality-focused direction (as they have been doing) is likely to prove popular in rural areas, but would almost certainly see them continue to be squeezed by Labour in urban areas.  On top of this choice, they badly need to figure out how to keep their politics in the south from drifting from their politics in the north – a massive issue that no other political party on the island has to face.

Finally, Sinn Féin have massively significant organisational issues.  For a number of years now, they have been parachuting candidates beloved of the Belfast leadership into areas totally unsuited to them.  The best example remains Mary Lou running in Dublin Central, but strong rumour that Eoin O Broin will be their candidate in Dublin West in the next General Election show that they remain committed to this electorally foolish strategy.  In addition to this foolish strategy, they have yet to deal with the difficulty of accommodating members from republican, communitarian, socialist and liberal backgrounds under one umbrella.  Instead of adapting their organisational structures to accommodate members from these different backgrounds, structures have remained largely unchanged.  In practice, this has meant that one background has utterly dominated in any given area, leading to the plethora of identities held by various sections of the party.

In my view, these are the difficulties highlighted by the resignation of Cllr. Forde from Sinn Féin.  There’s a partner piece to this about how Labour is now attracting members and representatives from all backgrounds, but I’ll await official confirmation that Cllr. Forde is joining Labour before scribbling that one down.