Sinn Fein

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Sinn Féin, a radical nationalist party founded by Arthur Griffith and Bulmer Hobson in 1905. Its name roughly translates as ‘ourselves’, indicating its emphasis on cultural and economic independence. The party was formed in the aftermath of the enthusiasm for radical organizations generated by the Boer War. It attracted a disparate group of Fenians, dissatisfied Nationalist Party members, feminists, and pacifists, and absorbed a number of existing radical groups, including the Dungannon clubs, the National Council, and Inghinidhe na hÉireann, as well as an earlier nationalist movement, Cumann na nGaedheal, founded by Griffith in 1900.

Sinn Féin's programme was broadly based on Griffith's ideas. Ireland was to become an equal partner in a dual monarchy under the English crown. The party's economic policy emphasized the development of Ireland's own resources and a reliance on the domestic market. In this way an independent Irish industry could be built up behind high protective tariffs, allowing Ireland to support itself economically and end emigration. To achieve these goals, Sinn Féin advocated passive resistance. Irish MPs should withdraw from parliament and form a national assembly in Ireland, while citizens should withdraw their co‐operation from government institutions in favour of Irish ones, starting with the courts.

Sinn Féin was not successful in political terms in this period. On the one occasion it challenged the Nationalist Party in a parliamentary election, the North Leitrim by‐election of February 1908, its candidate was defeated by a margin of three to one. However, it provided a focal point for fringe movements, and had a disproportionate influence on political thinking, particularly through the writings of Griffith. As such it obtained a certain notoriety as anti‐British, particularly during the First World War, when it opposed recruitment. As a result it was widely held responsible for the rising of 1916, although Sinn Féin as an organization had not in fact taken part.

This association with the rising explains why Sinn Féin became the name of the new militant nationalist movement that took shape during 1917 and began to supplant the Nationalist Party. The new party, however, was a coalition of radical republicans, who had participated in the Easter rising, and more moderate nationalists from the original Sinn Féin. The strains inherent in this coalition became clear in the compromise wording of its objectives agreed at its first convention in October 1917: ‘Sinn Féin aims at securing the international recognition of Ireland as an independent Irish Republic. Having achieved that status the Irish people may by referendum freely choose their own form of government’. At this convention Arthur Griffith stood down as president in favour of Eamon de Valera, the only surviving commandant of the rising.

Although there was a great deal of overlap with the leadership of the IRA, Sinn Féin was an independent and different organization. Apart from a large number of old Sinn Féin members, its success also attracted a radical element from the old home rule party into its ranks. An analysis of its leadership shows that Sinn Féin was heavily dominated by young Catholics from lower middle‐class backgrounds. Its association with the rising and its opposition to conscription ensured that the organization became very popular. By December 1918 it had attracted 112,080 members. Its new‐found support became apparent in the 1918 general election, when it won 73 out of 105 seats in Ireland. Republicans have always appealed to this result, representing the last time that all Irishmen voted in a free and undivided way, to legitimize their continued fight for independence. Although republicans actually took less than 48 per cent of the vote, the fact that constituencies in which there was no opposing candidate have been excluded from this count, and that northern constituencies were divided between Sinn Féin and the Irish Party, indicates that a majority of voters probably did support Sinn Féin. However, this did not necessarily constitute agreement with the means used by republicans later on. The 1918 Sinn Féin manifesto was very vague on the use of physical force and relied heavily on passive resistance and an appeal to the Versailles Peace Conference.

The image of majority support for Sinn Féin in this period is further undercut by the results of the local elections in 1920. It did particularly poorly in the urban elections of January 1920, when it received only 30 per cent of the vote. It was better organized for the rural election the following June and managed to acquire 72 per cent of votes cast. In general the Sinn Féin vote was stronger the more Catholic, rural, western, and less northern an area was. It was highest in rural Connacht, where Sinn Féin received 97 per cent of the vote, and lowest in urban Ulster, with 15 per cent.

The influence of Sinn Féin became less the more violent the Anglo‐Irish War became. Its alternative government institutions slowly crumbled under the pressure of British measures, and the Dáil was largely unable to exert influence on the IRA. Like all other republican organizations it split over the Anglo‐Irish treaty, the name ‘Sinn Féin’ being retained, after some initial uncertainty, by the anti‐treaty group.

Following the defeat of the republicans in the Irish Civil War, Sinn Féin was caught in an inescapable dilemma. If it wanted to keep to its civil war principles it had to reject the existing political institutions. However, doing so would inevitably forfeit electoral support as Sinn Féin could not represent its voters. To remain a serious force it had therefore to rely on the potential threat formed by the link with the IRA. Unable to make the republic a reality by political means, Sinn Féin therefore mainly functioned as a mobilizing institution for the IRA. Attempts to represent the people quickly came up against the obstacle of republican resistance to participation in parliamentary politics. The resulting tension has continued to haunt the movement ever since the civil war, leading to a series of splits.

Sinn Féin had become dormant in 1922, and was revived only in May 1923. Rejecting the legitimacy of all institutions set up by the Government of Ireland Act 1920 and the treaty, it continued to recognize the second Dáil, elected in May 1921, as the de jure government of the Irish Republic established in 1916. Sinn Féin nevertheless participated in elections in Northern Ireland and the Free State. It did indeed do quite well in the south, but less so in the north, where the Nationalists received the majority of the Catholic vote. However, it soon became clear that abstentionism was a political dead end. As a result a large section of the party led by de Valera wanted to enter the Free State Dáil and work for the republic from within. This led to a split with the IRA in 1925, and in 1926 the party itself broke in two, with the de Valera section walking out to form Fianna Fáil.

Without the IRA connection the remainder of Sinn Féin became increasingly irrelevant. Fianna Fáil took away most of its national and international support, and it soon ran out of money, preventing it from contesting elections. The IRA provided a new lease of life in 1938, when Sean Russell asked the movement's permission for the bombing campaign in Great Britain. In response the second Dáil transferred its powers as government of Ireland to the IRA army council, which now felt justified in declaring war on Britain. Official links between the IRA and Sinn Féin were again established after the Second World War when the IRA realized it needed a political party to mobilize public support. Sinn Féin enjoyed some electoral success as a result of the border campaign. It won four Dáil seats in 1957, but with the violence going nowhere it lost all of these in subsequent elections. Realizing the republican movement needed to build a mass following, it became increasingly involved in social issues during the 1960s, moving more and more to the left.

The tensions between socialists, who eventually wanted to enter the Dáil, and the militarists who believed in the armed struggle, came to the boil under pressure of the mounting violence in Northern Ireland. As a result the movement split in January 1970 into official and provisional Sinn Féin, mirroring the split within the IRA the previous month. Official Sinn Féin changed its name in 1977 to the Workers' Party, and went on to establish itself as a minor party in parliamentary politics in the Republic.

True to its military objective Provisional Sinn Féin refused to participate in elections in Northern Ireland and functioned mainly as a propaganda machine for the Provisional IRA. However, in the late 1970s, republicans began to realize that the conflict could not be won militarily and that they were losing popular support. Although the campaign of violence was not called off, Provisional Sinn Féin again turned to abstentionist politics after the public response to the hunger strikes in the early 1980s convinced them this could generate support. Although the fusion of military and political means (the ‘bullet and the ballot‐box’ strategy) seemed successful, engagement in party politics slowly led towards a fuller involvement in the political system. In 1986 Provisional Sinn Féin decided to accept the Dáil as a legitimate institution; this led to the secession of Republican Sinn Féin and its military wing, the Continuity Army Council, who refused to accept any diminution of the abstentionist policy. In the last decade, Provisional Sinn Féin has been involved in creating a new political arrangement within Northern Ireland, which also provides for institutional links with the South (see peace process). Their full involvement in the political process in the North has been made possible by an IRA ceasefire first called in 1994 and renewed in 1996. This has again led to opposition within the movement and to the formation of the 32‐County Sovereignty Committee, with a military wing, the Real IRA.

These splits in Sinn Féin and the IRA again reveal the difficulties of operating a dual strategy of political and military action. Although initially closely linked, institutionally and in personnel, the two organizations have experienced different dynamics. The logic of membership of Sinn Féin has tended to the peace process, while IRA volunteers are naturally more convinced of the potential of physical force. These pressures have inevitably led to tensions between the two organizations, each pulling in different directions. However, in recent years the republican leadership has successfully convinced most of the army's rank and file of the value of peaceful means against historical precedent. The fear of extensive splits has created a careful and slow approach to any concessions, such as decommissioning, which could be judged an acknowledgement of the failure of the use of force. The subsequent transformation of Sinn Féin to a fully political organization has enabled it to become the largest nationalist party in Northern Ireland and, potentially, a political force to be reckoned with in the south.

Bibliography

Davis, Arthur , Arthur Griffith and Non‐Violent Sinn Féin (1974)
Laffan, Michael , The Resurrection of Ireland: The Sinn Fein Party, 1916–1923 (1999)
Patterson, Henry , The Politics of Illusion: Republicanism and Socialism in Modern Ireland (1989)
O'Brien, Brendan , The Long War: The IRA and Sinn Féin 1985 to Today (1993).

Joost Augusteijn

Sinn Féin [Irish,=we, ourselves], Irish nationalist movement. It had its roots in the Irish cultural revival at the end of the 19th cent. and the growing nationalist disenchantment with the constitutional Home Rule movement. The founder (1900) was Arthur Griffith , who in 1899 established the first of the patriotic journals, The United Irishman, in which he advocated complete national self-reliance. The movement was not, at first, an overtly political one, nor did it advocate violence. Its method was, rather, one of passive resistance to all things English and included an attempted revival of Irish Gaelic.

In 1905, Sinn Féin was organized politically, but until the outbreak of World War I it gained little strength. The British suppression of the Easter Rebellion of 1916 greatly stimulated its growth. In 1917 many of its leaders, released from internment, met to reorganize under the leadership of Eamon De Valera . In the election of 1918, Sinn Féin put up a candidate for every Irish seat in the British Parliament and won 73 seats. To protest British rule over Ireland, the elected members declined to go to Westminster. Instead, they set up an Irish assembly in Dublin, called the Dáil Éireann , which declared Irish independence. The British attempted to suppress terrorists, led by Michael Collins , by a policy of counterterror and sent (1920) a body of military irregulars, popularly known as the Black and Tans, to reestablish order. The populace rallied to Sinn Féin.

In 1921 the British government yielded and began negotiations to establish the Irish Free State. The partition provisions of the resulting treaty did not, however, satisfy the militant wing of Sinn Féin, represented by De Valera, and civil war ensued. Gradually most of the country became reconciled to the new government, and Sinn Féin virtually came to an end when De Valera withdrew from it in 1927 and entered the Dáil.

In 1938 the few remaining intransigents merged with the Irish Republican Army (IRA), becoming the terrorist organization's political arm in advocating unification of Ireland by force. In 1969, along with the IRA, it split into official and provisional wings. The Marxist-oriented official Sinn Féin eventually became the Workers' Party, while the provisional wing continued to support the provisional IRA's use of terrorist activities to achieve unification. Gerry Adams has headed the latter party since 1983. In 1986, Sinn Féin ended its boycott of Ireland's parliament, with members taking seats for the first time since the parliament was established in 1922.

In late 1994, after the IRA and Protestant militias agreed to a cease-fire, efforts were begun to negotiate a settlement of the Northern Ireland issue. However, the peace process was put in jeopardy by renewed violence on the part of the IRA in 1996. Because of this, negotiations begun in June, 1996, did not include Sinn Féin. Following a renewed cease-fire in July, 1997, the group participated in peace talks begun in September of that year.

In 1998, agreement was reached concerning political restructuring in the province that would allow Protestants and Catholics to govern jointly in a democratically elected assembly. Members of Sinn Féin were elected to the assembly and participated in the province's government, but moderate Protestant leaders insisted on IRA disarmament (finally begun in Oct., 2001) as a condition for Sinn Féin's long-term participation in a broad-based government.

In 2002 the arrest of party members on charges of spying for the IRA led Protestants to call for Sinn Féin's ouster from the government, and home rule was suspended. Elections in Nov., 2003, which made Sinn Féin the largest Irish nationalist party in the assembly, did not lead to the reestablishment of home rule. In 2005 senior party members were accused of sanctioning alleged IRA robberies. Later in 2005, charges stemming from the 2002 case were dropped, and one of the accused spies admitted to being a long-time government informant, prompting charges that the spying case was a politically motivated attempt to aid moderate Protestant Unionists. Sinn Féin remained the largest Catholic party after the Mar., 2007, elections, and later that month the Democratic Unionists, the more militant Protestant party, agreed to enter into a power-sharing government with Sinn Féin.

Bibliography: See R. Davis, Arthur Griffith and Non-violent Sinn (1974); M. Dillon, The Dirty War (1990); P. Taylor, Behind the Mask (1998).

Sinn Féin (Ireland) Sinn Féin (Irish Gaelic: ‘we ourselves’) grew out of a nationalist movement articulated by Arthur Griffith between 1905 and 1908. It was initially an intellectual movement calling for an independent Ireland under a dual monarchy along the model of Austria-Hungary. In 1912 it opposed the Home Rule party of John Redmond, and became gradually more politically active (although it took no direct part in the 1916 Easter Rising). In the 1918 British Coupon Elections it won 73 seats, as compared with 25 for the Irish Unionists, and used this success to claim a mandate for an independent Ireland. The Sinn Féin MPs refused to attend Parliament at Westminster, and set up a Parliament in Dublin, the Dáil Éireann (the Irish Parliament, not yet recognized as sovereign), in 1919. The party split over the treaty partition of Ireland (1921–2), with the anti-treaty wing fighting against the Irish Free State during the Civil War (1922–3). The party declined following this, with many of its members joining de Valéra's Fianna Fáil.

Sinn Féin revived in Northern Ireland as Provisional Sinn Féin in January 1970, following the split within the Irish Republican Army (IRA). As the IRA's political wing, it has called for British withdrawal from Northern Ireland, and the subsequent establishment of a united Ireland. It has contested elections on the basis that it will not take up seats in Parliament if elected. Its electoral support was relatively modest (around 10 per cent or less), but increased sharply following the Downing Street Declaration. It gained 15.5 per cent in the elections of 30 May 1996 for delegates to all-party peace talks. After a renewed ceasefire in 1997 it became instrumental in the Good Friday Agreement. Under the leadership of Gerry Adams, Sinn Féin was transformed from being seen as an extremist Catholic party and the political arm of the IRA to being the main Catholic Party of Northern Ireland by 2001. It became the only party with parliamentary representation at Westminster, the Northern Ireland Assembly, and the Irish Parliament, the Dáil Éireann.

http://sinnfein.ie

Sinn Fein. The Gaelic for ‘we ourselves’. Formed as a series of clubs in Ireland and led by the journalist Arthur Griffith at the beginning of the 20th cent., until 1916 Sinn Fein was more important for ideas than organization. It stressed the need for self-sufficiency in economic and cultural affairs, advocated passive resistance and the de facto establishment of an Irish government as the means of achieving nationalist ends, less appropriately suggesting a dual monarchy along Austro-Hungarian lines for resolving the Ulster question. The British authorities inaccurately referred to the Sinn Fein rising 1916. From 1917 it was used as an umbrella title for the advanced nationalist party, which supplanted the parliamentary party. Following its triumph in the 1918 general election, Sinn Fein formed the Dáil government, but in the Anglo-Irish War it took a back seat in the military campaign and became the political arm of the Irish Republican Army. Splitting over the Anglo-Irish treaty, under de Valera it supported the republican fight in the civil war 1922–3. In 1926 Sinn Fein divided again over the issue of recognition of the Free State Dáil: the minority adhered to an abstentionist policy and retained the Sinn Fein title, the majority formed the Fianna Fail Party. In the following decades, it lost popular support, though remaining significant as the political wing of the IRA on both sides of the border. It abandoned its traditional abstentionist policy over the hunger strikes in 1981 and became increasingly popular among the catholic working class in Northern Ireland, challenging the electoral dominance of SDLP, under the leadership of Gerry Adams in Belfast and Martin McGuinness in Derry. From 1998 until 2002 Sinn Fein took part in the power-sharing administration resulting from the ‘Good Friday’ agreement. In 2005, Sinn Fein took five seats at Westminster, gaining Newry and Armagh from the SDLP. In 2007 it joined the Democratic Unionist Party in a power-sharing executive.

Michael Hopkinson

Sinn Féin (Gaelic, ‘Ourselves Alone’) Irish republican, nationalist party founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith. It seeks to bring about a united Ireland. Sinn Féin became a mass party after the Easter Rising (1916). It won 75% of the vote in the last all-Ireland election (1918), and formed an Irish assembly (the Dáil Éireann) led by Éamon De Valera. A two-year war of independence was fought between Britain and the Irish Republican Army (IRA), led by Michael Collins. The Anglo-Irish Treaty (1921) partitioned Ireland into the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin was split and the country plunged into civil war. The pro-treaty wing (Fine Gael), led by William Cosgrave, formed a government. De Valera, leader of the anti-treaty wing, withdrew from Sinn Féin and formed Fianna Fáil (1926). In 1938, the remaining republican intransigents joined the outlawed IRA. In 1969, two groups emerged that mirrored the factions of the Provisional and Official IRA. ‘Official’ Sinn Féin became the Workers Party. The Provisionals refused to recognize the authority of Dublin or Westminster. The President of Sinn Féin, Gerry Adams, was elected to Westminster four times (1983, 1987, 1997, 2001).

Sinn Fein The Gaelic for ‘we ourselves’. Formed as a series of clubs in Ireland at the beginning of the 20th cent., until 1916 Sinn Fein was more important for ideas than organization. From 1917 it was used as an umbrella title for the advanced nationalist party which supplanted the parliamentary party. Following its triumph in the 1918 general election, Sinn Fein formed the Dáil government, but in the Anglo‐Irish War it took a back seat and became the political arm of the Irish Republican Army. Splitting over the Anglo‐Irish treaty, under de Valera it supported the republican fight in the civil war 1922–3. In 1926 Sinn Fein divided again over the issue of recognition of the Free State Dáil: the minority adhered to an abstentionist policy and retained the Sinn Fein title, the majority formed the Fianna Fail Party. Sinn Fein abandoned its traditional abstentionist policy over the hunger strikes in 1981 and became increasingly popular among the catholic working class. Under the leadership of Gerry Adams, it took part in the power-sharing executive between 1999 and 2002.

Sinn Fein / ˈshin ˈfān/ a political movement and party seeking a united republican Ireland. DERIVATIVES: Sinn Fein·er n.

Sinn Fein Irish movement formed in 1905 by Arthur Griffith. — Ir., ‘we ourselves’.

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