Sam McBride: Failing to win over unionists doesn’t mean Sinn Féin’s charm offensive is failing

In some ways, the very fact that she gave the speech is a demonstration of how politics is changing.

There was a time when Sinn Féin advocated paying unionists to leave in the event of a united Ireland.

In 1987 – four years into Gerry Adams’ 34-year tenure as president of Sinn Féin – his party proposed a united Ireland regardless of the wishes of the majority in Northern Ireland, adding that “anyone unwilling to accept a united Ireland and wishing to leave should be offered resettlement grants to permit them to move to Britain, or assist them to move to a country of their choice”.

The policy was an attempt to wrestle with the practical implications of Sinn Féin’s refusal to accept that a united Ireland should or could realistically come about without a majority in both the north and the south wanting that to happen.

But even after Sinn Féin’s 1998 acceptance of the principle of consent – that unity was only possible if a majority in Northern Ireland supported constitutional change – there have been limited real attempts to persuade unionists that they should vote for Irish unity.

But there has been a pronounced change in the party’s approach over recent years, and particularly since Ms McDonald’s elevation to the leadership. The difficulty for Sinn Féin, however, is that the sorts of radical changes which might persuade some unionists that the party is serious about persuading them about Irish unity – such as stating that the IRA campaign was unjustified - are unthinkable without Sinn Féin losing its core support and splintering.

Ms McDonald’s Monday night remarks at Queen’s University were an example of how difficult Sinn Féin’s task is. In a speech which began with the pledge that “reconciliation is and will continue to be a constant focus of my leadership”, only the most churlish member of the audience would have objected to much of what she said. But, just as Sinn Féin supporters would be sceptical of nice words from Arlene Foster, so unionists will test what Ms McDonald said in the speech against their wider experience of Sinn Féin.

Ms McDonald outlined what she said was a challenge “to be truthful with each other”. Yet last year Ms McDonald told this newspaper that she believed Gerry Adams’ claim that he was never in the IRA, a denial which even most republicans do not believe to be the truth.

The Dublin-based Sinn Féin leader went on to say that there is a need “to have the hard conversations”. But her speech conspicuously avoided some of the hardest conversations which will be inescapable if Sinn Féin is to win over unionists to Irish unity.

The cleverest, and most logical portion of the speech focused on the failures of the southern state – something which Sinn Féin can comfortably do because it has always argued that partition failed both parts of the island.

The north (Ms McDonald did not refer to Northern Ireland at any point in the speech) had become “a gilded cage” for unionists, she said, with poverty across all sections of the working class and with generations who were “fodder for the shipyards, hard labour and emigration; dying young after a life of backbreaking work”.

In an acknowledgement that Carson and fellow unionists had been right, she said that “in the south, Home Rule did indeed become Rome rule” and that “it was mostly women that paid the price in the mothers and babies homes, as slave labour in the laundries”.

But it was Ms McDonald’s euphemistic comments on the Provisional IRA which were the most problematic for some in the audience.

She said that conflict takes root “when our common humanity, our civility and our compassion for the other is lost”. But there was no acknowledgement of the lack of humanity, civility or compassion necessary before shooting a lecturer in the head because of his political views – as happened to Edgar Graham just yards from where she stood – or before setting off multiple bombs across a teeming city centre, as happened on Bloody Friday in the city in which she made her speech.

Ms McDonald’s speechwriters were aware of the difficulty of acknowledging Mr Graham’s murder. Last October, during another Sinn Féin speech at Queen’s, the party’s vice president, Michelle O’Neill, faced sharp criticism from the murdered law lecturer’s sister, Ann, who accused her of a “fudge” after she said that she was sorry that she had lost her brother but would not say that she condemned his murder.

Aware of that, Ms McDonald herself raised Mr Graham’s murder: “Queen’s has not been immune from the conflict, pain and loss. It impacted on staff and students. Edgar Graham a lecturer was killed by the IRA. Sinn Féin member and Queen’s student Sheena Campbell was killed by loyalists. Her portrait now hangs on the Sinn Féin offices in Leinster House. I cannot undo that damage or that loss.”

However, simply mentioning the fact that Mr Graham was “killed” (not murdered) by the IRA failed to address the central point of his sister’s request - she wanted to hear Sinn Féin said that shooting an educator in the back of the head as he went about his job was unjustifiable, even in the midst of a wider conflict.

Indeed, Ms McDonald appeared to admonish IRA victims who want to see republicans ask for forgiveness. She said: “There are some who use the past to abdicate responsibility to lead in the present – those who want to refight old battles, to demand repentance, victory and surrender. That is not the basis for reconciliation. That way only perpetuates division and separation.”

The closest she came to alluding to atrocities which even to the IRA are now indefensible was to say obliquely: “Wrongs that have been done cannot be undone.” But the Sinn Féin president went on to say that the future “cannot be about legitimising or delegitimising deeds, or groups, or outlooks”.

Given the unlikelihood that few unionists will be convinced by what Ms McDonald has said, why would she – and her party – put such effort into an attempt at ‘unionist outreach’?

In understanding what Sinn Féin is now doing, it may be instructive to look at something which Peter Robinson did as DUP leader almost nine years ago. As leader of a party whose founder ridiculed the Roman Catholic church, Mr Robinson suddenly began to court Catholic voters. He began making wider moves to take his party to the centre, railing against the “benign apartheid” of religiously segregated education.

There was scant evidence of success in attracting Catholic recruits but many observers believed that Mr Robinson’s real aim, coming just months after losing his Westminster seat to Alliance’s Naomi Long, was to soften the party’s image in a way which would help it to stem the flow of votes to Alliance.

As with Mr Robinson’s outreach, the real target of this effort by Sinn Féin might not be those to whom it is ostensibly targeted. With a border poll now a realistic possibility over the next decade, Sinn Féin will need every vote it can get to make the result competitive.

For the first time in Northern Ireland’s history, there is now a significant and growing cohort of constitutional swing voters who are open to being persuaded of the merits of either the Union or Irish unity.

The sort of people who vote for Alliance or the Green Party or who increasingly do not bother voting at all, they are less likely to be hung up on the past and may – unlike most unionists – be persuaded by Sinn Féin’s carefully-chosen words.