Richard English, writing in Open Democracy, tries to explain why Gerry Adams and the modern Sinn Féin leadership, are keen to celebrate the legacy of party founder Arthur Griffith 100 years ago. Griffith wasn't even a republican, preferring the Austo-Hungarian model of a dual monarchy. Also his preferred version of nationalism did not espouse revolutionary violence whereas the later Sinn Féin became inextricably linked with the militarisation of Irish politics after 1916. There is no direct organisational lineage providing continuity between the different versions of Sinn Féin since 1905 but, according to English, what "Arthur Griffith set out in Dublin on 28 November 1905 was an impressively powerful nationalist philosophy of self-reliance. Sinn Féin – in English, 'Ourselves' – involved not only an emphasis on Irish distinctiveness, but also a crucial stress on the nation’s own capacity and strength".
Given that the armed struggle lead to bloody stalemate at best, contemporary Sinn Féin is trying to revive a politics of advanced nationalism. The IRA has come to recognise the futility of violence and needs to replace it with something that will keep up its momentum in the post-violent world of political struggle. English argues that there are valuable lessons for others to learn from the Irish experience:
In this sense – in a world in which many young people, from Yorkshire to Iraq to Palestine, are now being radicalised into the role of bomber – there are surely some lessons for all to learn from Ireland. If even Gerry Adams is prepared to star at a birthday party for an irenic cultural nationalist form of politics, then there is surely some sign that even the most bloody of zealot-movements can find more peaceful politics to be a more successful way of doing business.
It's interesting that Sinn Féin is reaching back to a pre-violent past, when the party of that name had a strategy of what would be now called "civil resistance" - something that Charles Townshend usefully reminds us in his superb book 1916: The Irish Rebellion. Townshend claims that the Sinn Féin programme had "real claims to global relevance" and cites Ghandi's acknowledgement of Sinn Féin's influence on his own idea of passive resistance or satyagraha. He also points out that the Arabic word intifada, meaning shaking or sloughing off, would have fitted the Sinn Féin line quite well. So maybe Sinn Féin, taking full advantage of historical amnesia and celebrating the foundation of a famous brand name, might well provide an example of a successful transition to post-violence (more or less) but in Northern Ireland it will assert its confident nationalism against a community that is uncomprehending and hostile and unwilling to be persuaded.
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