Thirty-three years after he was first elected president of Sinn Féin, Gerry Adams will stand before 2,500 delegates at the Convention Centre in Dublin and seek their support to lead the party again. The vote will not be contested.
Adams may have outlasted five leaders of Fianna Fáil, five leaders of Fine Gael and seven leaders of the Labour Party, but time catches up with us all. Even Adams.
Those gathering in the capital for an ardfheis that coincides with the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Rising know that the Adams era is coming to a close.
They are aware of the difficulties his departure will bring. Despite a series of controversies, fumbles during the general-election campaign, and the baggage left by The Troubles, his party members remain devoted to him.
To them Adams is a leader whose contribution to the peace process has been largely ignored. A man who devoted his life to removing the gun from Irish life. A man who has paid a heavy price for that.
To his political opponents he is a man who attempts to distort history. A leader who, despite being arrested in connection with the murder of the mother of eight Jean McConville, denies being a member of the IRA but refuses to distance himself from the organisation.
To much of the electorate who know little of Adams’s past, he is a celebrity. Many members of the public will duck when they spot a politician; others use the opportunity to vent their frustration. But during the recent election campaign many people wanted selfies with Gerry Adams.
It is a quality few other politicians in Ireland possess. The Dublin South-Central TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh says that Adams is Sinn Féin’s best electoral tool.
The newly elected TD Louise O’Reilly says, “Do I think the leader is immortal? No. It is up to anyone to challenge him, but the fact that Gerry retains the leadership is because he has the full support of the membership.”
One Sinn Féin TD privately says, “Of course at times there is cribbing about Gerry’s leadership. But the people who crib are the very people who use Gerry to win them votes.
“For me there are some issues that needed to be addressed. When controversies emerge or questions about legacy issues are raised, it takes too long for us to deal with them. We don’t move quickly enough, and by stalling we allow them to fester in the media for days.”
Is that a leadership failure or a communications failure? “Both.”
A difficult election
Adams, despite the party’s loyalty to him, made the election campaign a difficult one for Sinn Féin.
Days after the republican Thomas “Slab” Murphy was convicted before the Special Criminal Court, Adams called for the court’s abolition.
The policy, a long-held Sinn Féin position, quickly became a target for the party’s political opponents.
The resulting debate may not have bothered Sinn Féin’s core supporters, but it pushed the party farther from the middle ground it needs to occupy to win votes.
The Dublin South-West TD Seán Crowe says, “People believed we wanted to do away with an arm of the State that could lock criminals away. We lost the argument on that front.”
The Dublin Mid-West TD Eoin Ó Broin says the debate was more of a media phenomenon than a true electoral issue.
“The media were not interested in the Special Criminal Court. They wanted a stick to beat Sinn Féin with, and that is a handy one. What voters wanted to talk about was a lack of Garda numbers, the closure of Garda stations.”
Much of the pre-election debate focused on the economy, a subject favoured by the Government parties. In the first week Sinn Féin won some of that battleground when it exposed a €2 billion hole in Fine Gael’s calculation of the so-called fiscal space.
Sinn Féin – accused last year by Government TDs of engaging in “fairy-tale economics” – was now helping Fine Gael to lose the election.
The gloss soon wore off when Adams gave a series of interviews, most notably on Today with Sean O’Rourke, on RTÉ Radio 1, and fumbled his figures. The party’s gains soon filtered away.
Many TDs privately admit that it damaged them. But the party’s director of elections, the MEP Matt Carthy, says the media wanted to catch Adams out. “There is an element of game-playing. When the media are interviewing him, if he cannot come up with the answer straight away, he is accused of all sorts.
“Gerry’s strengths go above and beyond the economy. He is the person with the vision, the strategy.”
Adams is 67 years old, and his time as party president must be drawing to a close. But a big problem for Sinn Féin is who will replace the man who has delivered political growth and electoral success and has bridged the Border for it.
Others, however, see Adams as the block to Sinn Féin’s growth. Were Mary Lou McDonald or Pearse Doherty to lead the party, they believe, some of the barriers that Adams creates could fall down.
Jane Suiter, a political scientist at Dublin City University, says, “Adams has his own following, and whether those would necessarily follow under a new leadership has still to be proven. So while he is probably a barrier to some, he may also be an attraction to others. To what extent one balances the other is an open question. I don’t think anybody can know the answer.”
Pre-election focus groups put together by Ipsos MRBI on behalf of The Irish Times suggested that there is little regard for Adams in Dublin’s working-class districts.
One person in the groups described him as a liar. The group voiced support for McDonald, whom they hailed as a hero for her uncompromising attacks on Government politicians. But the difficulty for McDonald would be to please the party in the North.
Doherty could be a compromise. The Donegal TD, labelled a reluctant politician by his colleagues, insists he has no leadership ambition.
“It is not something I think about, to be honest. For me Gerry is the person who ensures Sinn Féin remain true to our values. As we move closer to government and the party continues to grow, the fear is that we move away from those values. Gerry is the anchor. If I was asked, I would consider it – but I don’t ever see it happening.”
McDonald admits that she has the ambition but is not ready to try fill the boots of the party leader.
“He is a one-off. When the history of this period is written, I believe, history will judge Gerry Adams very favourably.
“Having worked with him for the past number of years, I can tell you he is shrewd, patient and has incredible stamina. I have said so many times I nearly bore myself saying it: when the time comes I certainly would have an interest in my name going forward.”
Closer to power
Regardless of who leads Sinn Féin, the party is edging closer to power in the Republic of Ireland. It gathers this weekend on the back of a largely successful, if slightly disappointing, general-election result – disappointing considering its strong polling and the depth of anger the electorate expressed at the Government parties.
Suiter says, “Sinn Féin did not perform as well as they could have, given the fragmentation of the vote. Votes that could have gone to Sinn Féin went to Independent candidates.
“There is also a question of whether those that said they were voting Sinn Féin did in the end.”
A gain of nine seats has brought the party’s representation in the Dáil to 23, with a further seven seats expected to be secured in the Seanad elections. Significantly, the party lost much of its historical voter “toxicity”, gaining 12 per cent of the transfers in the general election.
But Mary Lou McDonald concedes that the party still has a lot to do to win the confidence of some sections of the electorate. “You have to build that. That does not happen overnight.
“Even though Sinn Féin is Ireland’s oldest political party, we are still in some senses the new kids on the block when compared with Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael. There is a bit of ground to make up there, but I have no doubt we can make that ground up.”
Dramatic growth
The party has grown dramatically in the past decade. In 2007 the party claimed 3,000 members, four seats in the Dáil and an opinion-poll average of 10 per cent. In 2016 it not only has those 23 TDs but also has 10,000 members and opinion-poll ratings that have touched 27 per cent.
It is a success built on a strong community presence, strident policies on abolishing water charges and property tax, and a strong resonance with younger voters, including a 1.6 million reach on social media.
The party’s chairman, Declan Kearney, says significant changes were made in the party after the 2007 general election. “One of the things we did was embark on a recruitment drive. The membership figures were static, at 3,000, year on year.
“We shifted our focus to real-world policies and tried to focus our efforts on ordinary people and their needs. We knew we needed to sharpen and focus the campaign and create policies that attracted people and speak to the reality people were facing.”
It worked, with a near sixfold increase in the party’s representation in the Dáil since then. Now, in the aftermath of another election, each constituency is to submit a review to the election department run by Rory Vallely and Brian Tumilty.
The party has already identified four constituencies where it believes it should have secured seats: Dublin West, Longford-Westmeath, Wexford and Donegal. This last constituency saw the loss of Sinn Féin’s justice spokesman, Pádraig MacLochlainn, a blow for the party.
With a second election now threatened, Sinn Féin faces a series of challenges – including why a number of women have left the party.
The Cork East TD Sandra McLellan stepped down from politics in February, citing “vicious” attempts to “defame and undermine” her. And, earlier this month, the Omagh councillor Sorcha McAnespy quit over “nepotism and misogyny”.
McAnepsy said, “There are good people in Sinn Féin trying to do good things. It is a local issue. The problem I had with the party was there was no mechanism to deal with it. On a local level I was being manipulated, and I couldn’t find a person in the party to help me through it.”
Then there is the problem of the past for Sinn Féin. The party’s links with the IRA continue to haunt it. Two senior party members, the Kerry TD Martin Ferris and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness – were convicted of IRA membership in the 1970s. Dessie Ellis TD is a former IRA prisoner who was extradited to Britain in 1990.
Mary Lou McDonald says legacy issues should not be shied away from. “We need to address the issues raised by survivors and victims. We have to look the past in the eye. We are in constant contact with the relatives and communities of those injured, bereaved, wronged or hurt by the conflict.
“But in the South, when an election comes, you can almost time it – certain political people and certain sections of the media raise particular cases.
“I am not saying they don’t have a right to raise the case, but it is raised with the specific intention to damage Sinn Féin.”
Policy issues
Then there are the policies. Sinn Féin’s recent growth has been largely down to its opposition to the introduction of the property tax and water charges – even though Adams said in 2014 that he would pay the water charge on his holiday home in Donegal, before changing his mind.
The party’s socially aware image is helped by Sinn Féin representatives’ claim to take home only the “average industrial wage” of €37,000, barely two-fifths of the full Dáil salary. But there is no public clarity on what happens with the rest of the money.
It is used for recruiting additional staff or opening offices, according to Pearse Doherty. None of it goes back directly to the party, he says. But it does not go back to the State, either.
The party admits that the policy of taking the industrial wage is sometimes questioned by TDs who struggle with the position – and perhaps with the lower wage.
Ken O’Connell, political director for the 26 counties, says it is a policy the party may seek to change in the coming years.
But the party’s working-class-hero status is not always enough to win the backing of other left-wing representatives in the Dáil.
When Gerry Adams was nominated as taoiseach last month, the seven TDs from People Before Profit and the Independents4Change group abstained from the vote. The three TDs from the Anti-Austerity Alliance voted against him.
The party is not too far from making the leap into government. But until it can do business with other parties – and deal with the barriers that drive potential partners away – it is destined to drive policy from opposition rather than force its introduction from within government.
Perhaps the accusation that most hurts the party is the regular claim that it is “cult-like” – a claim borne from the refusal of members to publicly criticise or question the party, and their often-blind loyalty to the leadership.
It leads to a perception – one Sinn Féin struggles to shake – that there is no debate, no discontent and no leadership ambition within the party.
It is a case of discipline, not dictatorship, Doherty says. Other TDs say that leaking from meetings or cribbing about the leadership is counterproductive.
But is avoiding a story about a parliamentary party dispute worth the accusation of a cult-like mentality?
The Meath West TD Peadar Tóibín says, “I have friends who work in organisations, and if I ask them about what happens at board meetings, they won’t tell me. Why would they? The word ‘cult’ implies we have sacrificed ourselves to a higher being. It is simply a case of respect and responsibility for each other and the party.”
This most disciplined party expects further growth in the coming years – and, with changing demographics and its well-oiled political machine, it can achieve it.
The biggest question it faces is that of when to replace its current “higher being”. And who his successor will be.
