Politics: Sinn Féin proclaimed its centenary year of 2005 as marking "a century of struggle for Irish freedom". In his fair-minded new book, Sinn Féin 1905-2005, Kevin Rafter discusses the numerous parties which have claimed the Sinn Féin "political brand name" during those years. He provides a historical account of such groups, focusing in particular on Gerry Adams's party since the 1980s.
Rafter's central argument is that "pragmatism has been the defining characteristic of Sinn Féin during the Adams leadership era". When the IRA's armed struggle was no longer valuable, practical republicans altered their strategy; in order to gain votes in different parts of Ireland, Adams's Sinn Féin has necessarily played different tunes; and so on.
There is surely much force to Rafter's case. Sinn Féin politics over recent decades has in particular been determined by pragmatic recognition of one key reality: that most Irish nationalists don't want to vote for a movement engaged in a systematic campaign of political murder. So if republicans were ambitious about achieving mainstream political power (and they were), then ultimately the IRA had to be seen as something of a hindrance. As Rafter puts it: "There was only so far that Sinn Féin could travel while the IRA was still in business."
One of the great strengths of Rafter's fascinating book is its deployment of vivid new interview material. So, in showing that IRA violence made life difficult for those republican politicians who had to defend such horror, he quotes one Sinn Féiner's candid recollection that after an IRA operation, "You would go, 'Oh f**k, not again, how am I going to defend this?'."
The book is not without its slips and repetitions, but it presents a balanced and lucid account of an important and complex subject. Its central figure is, of course, Gerry Adams, whom Rafter calls Sinn Féin's "star attraction", "still by far the party's main electoral asset". Adams describes his own latest book, The New Ireland, as having been "written in an attempt to sketch out a sense of modern Irish republicanism now and for the future". There's much that is telling in this manifesto. Adams's statement that "the most important principle of Sinn Féin was and is self- reliance" helps identify that confidence in their own capacity for forward movement which has enabled republicans to shift from one form of struggle to another in recent years.
And Adams himself has been the crucial figure in changing the nature of republican struggle, from violence tinged with politics to a politics tinged with violence. This has had some undoubtedly positive consequences ("the fact is that many hundreds of people who might be dead are spared to live their lives free from the dangers of conflict"), and it has also seen Adams's party flourish: "Sinn Féin is now politically and organisationally stronger than at any time since the 1920s."
The new Sinn Féin has belatedly recognised some key Irish realities ("Does Sinn Féin accept the institutions of the southern state as the legitimate institutions of this state? Of course we do"), and Adams's book also shows him to be aware that comparisons between Irish suffering and that of poor countries is fatuous ("Ireland's social and economic problems are but a shadow of the great poverty, inequality and distress experienced by other nations").
All of this is welcome. Yet thoughtful readers of The New Ireland will still find it disappointing in several respects. Adams's claim that "a single all-Ireland state makes economic sense" is one unlikely to be taken seriously by people who know anything about the Irish economy. Again, he suggests that Irish unity can come about once there is a majority of "50 per cent plus one" in favour of it in the North. But this would merely reproduce in reverse the situation which Northern Ireland so long and so painfully experienced in the past: a large and resistant minority would be coerced into a state whose jurisdiction they firmly rejected. Violence would undoubtedly again be the result.
The pragmatic aspects of Adams's recent politics have much about them to be commended. If genuinely new and trusting relationships are to be built in a new Ireland, then more honest pragmatism yet might be required of those who lead Sinn Féin towards it.
Richard English is professor of politics at Queen's University Belfast. His book, Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA, is published by Pan
Sinn Féin 1905-2005: In the Shadow of Gunmen By Kevin Rafter Gill and Macmillan, 270pp. €24.99
The New Ireland: A Vision for the Future By Gerry Adams Brandon/Mount Eagle, 124pp. NPG