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After Fianna Fáil won the election of 1932, the Cumann na nGaedheal Government chose to cede power peacefully to its former civil war opponents. This did not usher in democratic stability though, as Fianna Fáil continued to depict itself as an all-encompassing national movement and Cumann na nGaedheal tried to reinvent itself in ways that failed to accept the normality of opposition. First, they tried to form a cult of personality around W. T. Cosgrave, and then, when that failed, they incorporated some of the strategies of continental fascism. In so doing, they again attempted to define politics as best embodied in a single national movement with a strong nationalist leader. It was only after the failure of the turn toward fascism that Irish politics truly became accepting of multiparty democracy.
Once the Anglo-Irish Treaty was passed, the pro-Treatyites had to set up a functioning democratic state. In this, they were influenced by a variety of competing factors. They valued multiparty democracy, but also were used to a politics that worked through a single party speaking for an allegedly monolithic nation. They also valued the creation of a Gaelic state: a new Irish way of organising a state and a society that broke with British models in crucial ways. In particular, they wanted to set up a state that avoided the conflicts inherent in the British two-party system. Throughout 1922, there were attempts to set up a democratic state but also repeated calls for a politics that minimised conflict. Throughout the year, politicians debated the founding principles of the new state, from theories of representation to the characteristics of an ideal representative.
A new analysis of the difficulties in normalising opposition in the Irish Free State, this book analyses the collision of nineteenth-century monolithic nationalist movements with the norms and expectations of multiparty parliamentary democracy. The Irish revolutionaries’ attempts to create a Gaelic, postcolonial state involved resolving tension between these two ideas. Smaller, economically driven parties such as the Labour and Farmers’ Parties attempted to move on from the revolution’s unnatural focus on nationalist political issues, while the larger revolutionary parties descended from Sinn Féin attempt to recreate or restore notions of revolutionary unity. This conflict made democracy and opposition hard to establish in the Irish Free State.
This chapter sets out the historiographical context for the book. It analyses the ways in which previous scholars have emphasised Ireland’s relatively easy transition to democracy after the civil war ended, whether through analyses of factors that smoothed this transition or analyses of the democratic beliefs of key Irish politicians. The chapter also notes the fact that recent scholarly emphasis on the Irish civil war has obscured the challenges to democracy that continued after the civil war ended in 1923.
After the civil war ended in 1923, there were widespread expectations that Irish politics would return to a ‘normal’ left–right division and that the prominence of nationalist issues and the Sinn Féin Party would end. There were a number of smaller parties – the Farmers’ Party, the Labour Party, and the National League – that were organised around economic issues and were prepared to take power once politics returned to normal. The two large nationalist parties – the pro- and anti-Treaty wings of Sinn Féin – did not want this kind of normalisation, and continued to promote the need for a single national party and a style of politics that departed from British norms.
This chapter argues that the difficulties over the acceptance of open division began even before the Treaty was signed in 1921 and the civil war began in 1922. During the revolution, Sinn Féin leaders worked hard to prevent differences of opinion within the party from being expressed openly. Debates of the revolutionary Dáil were framed in such a way as to minimise oppositional voices and to present a united front against British imperialism. Deputies were then unprepared for an open debate over the Anglo-Irish Treaty when it was signed.
The creation of Fianna Fáil in 1926 and its decision to enter the Dáil in 1927 are often seen as a massive change in Irish politics and the consolidation of Irish democracy. While having nearly all political opinion represented in the Dáil did matter, the normalisation of opposition did not take place in 1927. The smaller parties saw their dreams of forming a government fail in the summer of 1927, and the two large nationalist parties continued to stump for the recreation of a single national party that would dominate politics. Fianna Fáil also co-opted many of the issues that had animated the smaller parties and left them less room to operate ideologically.
The conclusion draws the book to an end by reminding the reader of the context of upheaval that sees 100 years of Northern Ireland marked in 2021, not least due to Brexit. The centenary of the coming into existence of two states on the island of Ireland will not be celebrated by Sinn Féin given its opposition to such a thing at the time. Yet it marks an optimistic era for the party in that it sees a United Ireland as closer than at any other point in the last century. It is a time when it seeks to further establish itself as the party of a new generation – who no longer ascribe to a Sinn Féin vote the value that their parents might have, and no longer really care to make the connection with the IRA a priority. A major challenge will be holding on to the gains in this generation made in 2020 by keeping its voice distinctive to others in the policy sphere.
This chapter presents the overarching questions that underpin the study of Sinn Féin and sets out the overall structure that will be used to address these questions.