ADDRESSING DELEGATES AT the Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis in Killarney in March 2014 party President Micheál Martin confirmed reports that Fianna Fáil would run candidates in the Northern Ireland election in 2019. Speaking to assembled journalists in the aftermath of his speech Martin also said that ‘the party should begin fielding candidates for election there [Northern Ireland] for 2019’. At the Ard Fheis, a motion on behalf of Donegal North East and Dublin Bay South delegates was passed, without debate, which demanded ‘active and serious participating and engagement in the political process in Northern Ireland’.
Martin’s comment should not be viewed as a bolt out of the blue. Speaking on RTÉ radio’s News at One in the aftermath of Fianna Fáil’s decimation at the 2011 Irish general he said that the party was ‘actively considering’ entering mainstream Northern Ireland politics. In the coming years he envisaged that Fianna Fáil would work ‘on the ground’ with the ultimate ambition of contesting local county council and Assembly Northern Ireland elections.
Many within the media and political circles may be quick to criticise Fianna Fáil’s announcement. With only 20 seats in Dáil Éireann, no women TDs and the party in the initial stages of recovery at local level, Martin may be accused of seeking salvation in Northern Ireland from the trauma that Fianna Fáil currently finds itself in the Republic. In an attempt to rescue Fianna Fáil from the political abyss Martin has now returned to a staple part of the party’s traditional nationalist rhetoric: Fianna Fáil’s solemn pledge to secure a united, all-Ireland, 32 county republic.
Martin’s pronouncements, however, cannot be written off as pure political opportunism. Following the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 and the ‘normalising’ process that occurred within mainstream Northern Ireland politics thereafter, the Fianna Fáil leadership believed that the time was appropriate to consider its 26 county status. The DUP’s decision in 2007 to enter a power-sharing executive with Sinn Féin, as noted by a senior Fianna Fáil source, meant there was no longer any reason for Fianna Fáil not to enter Northern Ireland politics, as it was now ‘pragmatic … politics as usual’.
Consequently, in September 2007, under the direction of its leader Bertie Ahern and former taoiseach, Fianna Fáil officially drew up plans to remodel the movement on an all-Ireland basis. Ahern announced that Fianna Fáil had decided to extend its organisation into Northern Ireland so as to possibly contest future local county council and Assembly Northern Ireland elections, scheduled for 2016.
Ahern noted that it was ‘now time for this party to play its full role, to take its proper place, in this new politics – in this New Ireland’. The contesting of elections at Stormont, not Westminster, the Fianna Fáil leadership announced, was the party’s central goal. The master plan, albeit a long-term strategy, was for a Fianna Fáil government to simultaneously hold office in the Dublin and Belfast parliaments.
Upon Ahern’s announcement, a new sub-committee of Fianna Fáil’s national executive, the ‘Northern Ireland strategy group’, was formed to draft the party’s strategy on the prospect of entering mainstream Northern Ireland politics. Until his retirement from politics in 2011, the sub-committee was chaired by Minister for Justice and border county Fianna Fáil TD for Louth, Dermot Ahern. According to Dermot Ahern, prior to the 2011 Irish general election, the committee met on a regular basis to review progress, plan future development and work with interested persons in a ‘spirit of mutual co-operation’.
Other committee members included former ceann comhairle and Fianna Fáil TD for Cavan-Monaghan, Rory O’Hanlon; his fellow former party TD for Cavan-Monaghan and minister for agriculture, fisheries and food, Brendan Smith, and former minister for community, rural and gaeltacht affairs, Fianna Fáil TD for Galway West, Éamon Ó Cuív.
Dermot Ahern explained that Bertie Ahern was the inspiration behind Fianna Fáil’s decision in 2007 to remodel the party on an all-Ireland basis. According to Ahern, a close confidant to the taoiseach, the latter argued that Fianna Fáil had never intended to remain a solely ‘partitionist party’ and therefore there was ‘no rationale’ behind the organisation’s reluctance to contest elections in Northern Ireland.
The catalyst for the taoiseach’s decision was as a direct consequence of the signing of the St Andrews Agreement in October 2006. Although devolution of policing and justice powers to the Northern Ireland Assembly remained unresolved, in the aftermath of the Agreement, the DUP and Sinn Féin took the momentous decision to enter a power-sharing executive with one another. The decision resulted in the restoration of the Northern Ireland Assembly in May 2007 and, significantly, Sinn Féin agreed to support the PSNI.
With the Northern Ireland Executive up and running, led by first minister Ian Paisley and deputy first-minister Martin McGuinness, Fianna Fáil went ahead with its plans to cross the border. In early December 2007, Fianna Fáil commenced its first recruitment drive in Northern Ireland in almost 70 years. In Northern Ireland two new ‘political societies’ were established. The first to be formed was the William Drennan cumann at Queen’s University Belfast, (which had approximately 350 members), the second the Watty Graham cumann at Magee campus of the Ulster University, in Derry.
Furthermore, in the same month, Fianna Fáil successfully registered with the UK Electoral Commission as a Northern Ireland political party.
At the 2009 Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis, it was revealed that the establishment of Fianna Fáil fora across Northern Ireland, initially on a county-by-county basis, had commenced. A Fianna Fáil spokesperson said each forum would not constitute a party branch, but was an informal grouping of people interested in or sympathetic to Fianna Fáil. Dermot Ahern outlined that the aim of each forum was ‘to build up membership and a solid party structure’ in a particular electoral region. The idea of establishing a number of fora, he explained, was to ‘put a toe in the water’, to ‘test public opinion’ in a particular constituency in Northern Ireland.
In September 2009, Fianna Fáil officially formed its first forum in the constituency of Downpatrick, South Down. The event was attended by Fianna Fáil ministers, Dermot Ahern, Éamon Ó Cuív and Rory O’Hanlon. Items discussed at the gathering included North-South relations, the all-Ireland economic agenda and recruitment of new members.
In July of the same year, the youth-wing of the Fianna Fáil, Ógra Fianna Fáil held its first summer school in Derry; by the summer of 2009 Ógra Fianna Fáil had approximately 250 members in Northern Ireland. In early August 2010, the Ógra Fianna Fáil again held their summer school in Northern Ireland, on this occasion the venue was Belfast. In November 2009, a further constituency forum, the party’s third (the other being established in Crossmaglen, South Armagh) was formed in the constituency of Fermanagh South Tyrone.
Dermot Ahern explained that by the summer of 2010 there was a confidence within the Fianna Fáil government that the time was opportune to push forward with the party’s plans to extend into Northern Ireland. Following the signing of the Hillsborough Agreement in February of that year and in the context of increased cross-border co-operation Ahern recalled that a genuine sense of calm and stability characterised North-South relations. The Hillsborough Agreement finally permitted the devolution of policing and justice powers to the Northern Ireland Executive, thus resolving the outstanding matters from the St.Andrews Agreement of 2006.
In this new spirit of ‘reconciliation and partnership’, as noted by Ahern’s successor as taoiseach and Fianna Fáil leader Brian Cowen, the Irish government called on the implementation of the ‘outstanding commitments’ relating to the establishment of the North-South parliamentary forum and the North-South consultative forum, as enshrined under the terms of Good Friday Agreement of 1998.
With the support of Dermot Ahern, Cowen was also eager that the Fianna Fáil party take advantage of the improved relations between Dublin and Belfast. In July 2010 he visited the republican heartland of Crossmaglen, South Armagh, to officially open a Fianna Fáil office in the town. Accompanied by an entourage of senior Fianna Fáil members, including Dermot Ahern, Cowen’s presence marked the first occasion that a serving taoiseach visited Crossmaglen. Fianna Fáil headquarters, somewhat optimistically, announced that by the end of 2011 further fora would be established in all of Northern Ireland’s Six Counties, with plans to create fora in Belfast city, Derry city and Co Tyrone.
Fianna Fáil’s optimism, however, was dealt a dramatic blow following the party’s crushing defeat at the 2011 Irish general election. Fianna Fáil’s humiliating relegation to the opposition benches, under the party’s new leader Micheál Martin, meant that there were very few resources, or indeed appetite, to continue with Bertie Ahern’s one-time master project of remodelling the party on an all-Ireland basis. Although Martin initially spoke of his willingness to continue in the footsteps of his predecessors to extend Fianna Fáil into Northern Ireland, in mid-2011, he decided to ditch the proposal of remodelling the party on an all-Ireland basis.
Instead Martin argued that both Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen (particularly the former) were far too quick to announce their desire to establish Fianna Fáil in Northern Ireland, without actually giving this policy due consideration. In particular, Martin believed that Bertie Ahern’s pronouncements on the subject smacked of political opportunism, with his predecessor failing to devise a strategic long-term plan of how Fianna Fáil would operate on an all-Ireland basis.
As Martin recorded in a 2011 interview with Cuisle [a Fianna Fáil magazine dedicated to articulate ‘the voice of the members’] ‘you can’t just go headlong onto it’. Although Martin explained that he would like to see Fianna Fáil eventually participate in Northern Ireland politics, this, he argued, must be a long-term goal. In the intermediate period, he maintained that a ‘programme’ must be implemented to evaluate the current circumstances.
In hindsight, Martin admitted that Fianna Fáil’s initial announcement to extend the party across the border ‘was done without doing our homework and that has been a problem’. Therefore, he decided to follow a cautious approach. He spoke of his plans to establish a ‘think tank’, to discuss ‘everyday’ social and economic policies in relation to Northern Ireland and to commission a ‘white paper’, which he envisaged might allow ‘some blue sky thinking about it’. In line with his cautious approach Martin also ruled out the prospect of an official alliance between Fianna Fáil and the SDLP. Speaking in May 2011 Martin rejected the probability of an immediate deal between Fianna Fáil and the SDLP.
Why, then, has Martin decided to formally announce that Fianna Fáil intend to contest the Northern Ireland election in 2014? The rise of a Sinn Féin in the Republic of Ireland and the sense that the Good Friday Agreement has transformed the context for political competition, has compelled the Fianna Fáil leadership to look to the North. Only recently Martin spoke of the ‘threat’ posed by Sinn Féin to Fianna Fáil’s electoral recovery. He believes that there is a ‘lack of leadership’ among the mainstream parties of Northern Ireland and he feels that Fianna Fáil can fill this leadership gap.
Describing Fianna Fáil as the party of the ‘middle ground’, Martin envisages that his Soldiers of Destiney can march into Northern Ireland and champion social injustice and become the voice of ‘working class communities’.
Since the 2011 general election, under Martin’s robust leadership, Fianna Fáil have gradually regained some of the ground lost to her political rivals in the republic. According to a Sunday Independent-Millward Brown poll of July 2013, for example, in recent times there has been a strong improvement in Fianna Fáil’s support levels and fortunes mainly at the expense of the government parties, the Fine Gael Party and the Labour Party. Martin’s new Northern strategy must, therefore, be viewed within the context of Fianna Fáil’s attempts to re-merge as a dominant force in politics in the Irish Republic.
Dr Stephen Kelly, Lecturer in Modern History; Liverpool Hope University. His new book, out this week, is entitled ‘Frank Aiken: Nationalist and Internationalist,’ co-edited with Dr Bryce Evans.
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