The Sinn Fein Ard Fheis
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
The agenda of the Ard-Fheis (Annual Conference) of Sinn Fein was radically altered in the week before the event in order to make room for the debate on the so called Belfast Agreement.
There was no vote on the proposed Agreement, the decision being postponed to a special Ard Fheis on May 10. Officially this was to allow time for more discussion. Or perhaps the leadership couldn’t be confident of winning if they had put it to a vote – and therefore put it off?
The Saturday session began with speeches from several international delegates, who all intervened directly in the debate, heavily advocating support for the deal.
Speakers from the ANC, the Zimbabwean Government, the US House of Representatives, and East Timor gave the deal international prestige and a feeling of huge world support. It can only be a matter for speculation if they were requested to do this by the conference organisers, or if they took this course of action off their own bat.
Either way, the effect was to create a very strong pro-Agreement background, strengthened by the heavy applause people gave to contributions from international guests.
Next came Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness in tandem. Neither of them directly endorsed the deal, but the hints of approval were obvious. The speeches took up a lot of time, and were padded out with a lot of small detail.
This is especially true of the Martin McGuinness speech which consisted of little more than a list of all the meetings which filled up his diary during the last days of the dealing.
This cut down the time for delegates to debate. Perhaps that was the intention – the leadership certainly knew in advance that opposition to the deal was substantial and widespread.
A poll of delegates published by the Sunday Tribune on April 19 disclosed figures of 40 per cent in favour of the deal, 28 per cent against, and the rest don’t know. In a real vote, with the abstainers excluded, the figures became 61 per cent to 39 per cent, too low to alter the constitutional ban on taking seats in the Stormont Assembly which will be elected on June 22.
The "No" figure would have been a bit higher if supporters of the Bernadette Sands- led 32 County Sovereignty Committee had not been expelled before the Ard Fheis.
Nine members of the Balbriggan branch in North Dublin were expelled recently, and Councillor Francie Mackey of the Omagh branch was excluded a few days before the Ard Fheis started.
Delegates contributions were mixed, some even arguing that the Agreement was a stage in British disengagement. One Belfast delegate said there would be a nationalist majority by 2015 and "consent would be turned on its head". Many emphasised party unity.
Some said Articles 2 & 3 and the 1937 constitution of the South "were not worth tuppence" and did nothing to protect the position of nationalists.
There was some evidence of a division of opinion between northern and southern delegates, fuelled by an article in Andersonstown News suggesting that Northerners were more likely to vote for the agreement because they had to live under much more oppressive conditions.
There were some criticisms of journalists from the Irish Times and the Sunday Tribune for what were seen as critical reports on how much Sinn Fein gained from the talks.
The leadership are likely to call for a "yes" vote in the North and probably will call for the same in the South. They are likely to move an amendment (for which they need a two thirds majority) to the party constitution allowing them to take seat in the proposed Northern Assembly.
Sinn Fein opponents of this strategy, who think the agreement actually strengthens partition rather than being a step towards Irish unity, are hamstrung by not having a coherent alternative, and some delegates seem likely to go along with the deal reluctantly for pragmatic reasons.
The special Ard-Fheis on May 10 will clearly be a critical one, not just for Sinn Fein but for the Republican movement as a whole.