Cillian McGrattan: ​​​Sinn Féin’s response to the Dublin riots showed the party's authoritarianism, not its leftism

The rioting that followed the stabbing of young children in Dublin at the end of November were instigated by a small group of far-right fascists, according to Fintan O’Toole. In typical bien pensant hand-wringing style, he advised not enabling those hardcore activists – an intellectual sleight of hand that doesn’t quite disavow responsibility but nevertheless insulates his audience (who really wants to enable far-right fascists after all?).

Opinion in the Guardian provided similarly somnolescent platitudes: the riots would surely end years of ‘complacency’ by alerting the population to the threat of fascism.

For Newton Emerson, the Sinn Féin response to the riots was an outworking of the party’s leftist ideology:

The party is under pressure from a backlash against immigration but it cannot be seen to give in to racism or far-right agitation. Nor can it show any of its usual sympathy for the disadvantaged and marginalised once they have trashed central Dublin and attacked gardai. Law and order is how it squares the circle, outflanking government parties on the right without becoming ‘far right’.

That response culminated in a motion of No Confidence in the Justice Minister Helen McEntee which was defeated in the Dáil 83 to 63.

Apparently, the decision to table the motion was the subject of unprecedented criticism within the party, which tends to keep a lid on internal dissent.

It was a mistake to align the party with the far-right, went the argument, and it was ‘unwise’ to speak to policing and justice issues given the party’s historic links with terrorism.

The problem with all of this type of analysis is that it takes Sinn Féin’s leftist identification at face value. And viewing the Dublin riots through the same Left-Right lens does the same thing to the putative far right.

Like changing optics during an eye test, one lens can obscure more than it clarifies.

Rather than plotting the riots and the Sinn Féin response along the right-left horizontal axis, another way might be to see them on the vertical authoritarian-libertarian one.

As an historian, I’d argue that the authoritarian explanation better captures the longer-term tendency within Sinn Féin.

Not just as the party who continues to refuse to condemn the IRA’s murders of 23 Gardai – as John Cushnahan pointed out on these pages (‘Sinn Fein have no moral authority to condemn Israel over the killing of civilians,’ November 12; ‘Far right extremism should play no part in future political life in either part of Ireland,’ December 5).

It also explains Sinn Féin’s targeting of Drew Harris, the current head of the Gardaí, and Minister McEntee.

I’ve written before about how a key tactic of republicans is to erase the memory of those they killed during the Troubles – the republicanisation of the past involves constant attempts to humiliate their victims, suppress criticism by blaming perceived historic injustices and by cultivating the placating consensus of drawing a line in the sand.

And of course, Harris, who was an officer in the RUC and whose father was killed by republicans, was subject to criticism following his appointment in 2018.

But he and McEntee have also been subject to a heightened campaign of criticism from earlier this year, which coincided with the Sinn Féin response to the November riots. Viewed through that lens, the Sinn Féin motion wasn’t about trying to find a left-wing response to immigration concerns: It was a populist attempt to wedge that unrest into a longer campaign about trying to hollow-out the democratic values on which the Irish state is based.

By merging concerns over immigration with criticism of Harris and McEntee, Sinn Féin draw on the playbook it developed in the North: The legal and democratic apparatus can’t be trusted because it’s implicated in (some way) with shadowy, untrustworthy elements – the RUC leadership’s collusion with loyalists, the Gardaí leadership’s failure to protect citizens (and the rank-and-file Gardaí) from what Mary-Lou McDonald (echoing other commentators) described as ‘entirely predictable’ attacks by ‘instigators’.

It's easy to locate anti-immigrant concerns within the far-right: It suits the Left to disavow and, besides, anti-immigrant activists often self-identify as far-right. But viewed through an alternative lens, anti-immigration is about claims of authority – the right to say who belongs and who doesn’t.

And, ultimately, this is what Sinn Féin’s project is all about: An authoritarian movement that gets to say who belongs, what works, who counts.

The democratic answer to those questions typically refers to principles of transparency, equality, and accountability – values that are an affront historically to authoritarians and fascists.

Sinn Féin’s ersatz leftism and deep-rooted authoritarianism: QED.

​Cillian McGrattan lectures in politics at Ulster University