Analysis: The fear of change
Date: 12th Mar '02
Name: Article from RM Irish news round up
Analysis: The fear of change
By Caoimhghin O Caolain TD
There have been many forlorn attempts by confused commentators to
explain away the growing support for Sinn Fein. Perhaps the most
bizarre guess was that hazarded by Fianna Fail TD, Willie O'Dea.
In the Sunday Independent on February 11 he raised the
possibility of "personation" in opinion polls! In the same
edition, Brian Hayes TD of Fine Gael blamed RTE. And a couple of
weeks earlier the Sunday Independent editorial speculated that
increased opinion poll support for Sinn Fein might be explained
by "the publicity surrounding the recent spate of Bloody Sunday
films and documentaries".
Deputy O'Dea's guess had the virtue of humour but his anti-Sinn
Fein diatribe continued with a vehemence worthy of his fellow
Limerick man, Dessie O'Malley. It seems Willie has taken on the
mantle of the retiring PD TD.
Deputy Brian Hayes referred to the "hush puppy type of coverage
afforded to Sinn Fein". I wonder if he realises that 'hush puppy
Provo' was the term invented by another columnist, Eoghan Harris,
in his heyday as an RTE producer and Workers' Party ideologue.
Anyone in the station who did not share his anti-republican venom
was thus labelled in an internal paper distributed by Harris in
RTE and subsequently leaked, exposing the climate of paranoia
engendered in Montrose by the censorship regime. There are still
some people who hark back to the days when Section 31 stifled
debate and banned all Sinn Fein members from the airwaves.
The Sunday Independent editorial mentioned above was headlined
"No place here for Sinn Fein/IRA" and said that a vote for Sinn
Fein was a "wasted vote". In the EU elections in June 1999, the
200,000-plus people who voted Sinn Fein throughout the 32
counties (over 88,000 in the 26) obviously disagreed. Since then
our support has been increasing steadily, as will be shown in the
most important poll of all the forthcoming General Election. Our
support must now surpass the 300,000 circulation figure for the
Sunday Independent. They are not all the same people of course,
but such is the level of support for Sinn Fein that (shock
horror) a good proportion of Sunday Indo buyers vote for our
party.
So why do people vote Sinn Fein? Despite Deputy O'Dea's assertion
that Fianna Fail had to 'chaperone' us onto the political path
during the peace process, we have been deeply involved in Irish
politics for a long time. My first election campaign as a
candidate was in 1984 in the EU election in Connacht-Ulster. I
was elected to Monaghan County Council the following year and I
have represented Sinn Fein in local government ever since. In my
constituency there are people who have built our organisation in
the days of censorship and beyond.
In 1992, after we were barred from holding our Ard Fheis in
Dublin's Mansion House, we received a welcome in the community
centre in Killinarden, Tallaght. At that Ard Fheis we published
our document Towards a Lasting Peace in Ireland , which
foreshadowed the peace process.
The growing support is built on that foundation of real
involvement with people in their communities, effective
representation of their interests on elected bodies and our
anchoring of the peace process. In every constituency we have an
organisation of activists who share a determination to succeed,
based on their political beliefs. Our elected representatives are
committed to advancing our aims and policies, not to furthering
their personal careers. That may seem like a smug assertion as
no-one in politics is totally immune to personal aggrandizement,
but it is nonetheless essential to an understanding of the growth
of Sinn Fein.
Sinn Fein is the party of change. There is a hunger for political
change and an end to the domination of politics by the
Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee choices of the past. There is a deep
anger and frustration at the legacy of successive governments in
the areas of health and education. Our health and education
systems were subject to underfunding and cutbacks under various
coalitions in the 1980s and early 1990s. They still have not
recovered as shown by the crisis in hospital accident and
emergency units, and the disgraceful state of hundreds of
schools. And this after nearly five years of the current FF/PD
administration which enjoyed budget surpluses undreamt of by any
previous government.
The Economic and Social Research Institute stated in July 2001
that the "high rate of relative income poverty is a serious
structural problem that needs to be tackled while the resources
are available". There has been accelerating economic growth since
1997 but a quarter of our children and a fifth of our adults are
in households with less than half the average income. There are
60,000 applicants, representing some 150,000 people, on the local
authority housing waiting lists. And some commentators wonder why
voters, in increasing numbers, are looking to Sinn Fein.
I look forward to the debate during the forthcoming general
election campaign. But I want to see a real debate about real
issues about how we as a society can most effectively address the
massive social problems sketched above. I think the electorate
wants to hear that debate also and scaremongering will not
impress them. Let's focus on the issues and the policies.
One thing is certain you'll be hearing a lot more about Sinn Fein
during and after this general election campaign.
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