Establishing a political narrative

This is an article i have recently received from a Sinn Féin supporter. It is clearly part of the ongoing debate that is going on in the party at the present time. For me this debate is crucial and will decide what the future holds for Sinn Féin.

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There has been much discussion about the political direction Sinn Fein should follow. Those discussions have been renewed following the recent elections. This site is itself a forum for such debate and there have been posts on the need to be more left wing, to remove ourselves from centrist govt. etc. Over on other sites more hostile posters have questioned whether the party has lost its connection with the working class to more radical left groupings.

How do we answer such a question. One possible answer is we tack left to meet the challenge from that quarter. However to my mind there is also different aspect to the question. Its an aspect that would remain the same whether we were to tack left of PBP/SWP and the SP; it would remain the same even if we went straight to the center. I am talking about the word connection. The connection with the voters is that set of beliefs, assumptions, that sense of trust they have for and awareness of our party.

Connection might as easily be described as whats our message, whats our story or narrative, what are we communicating to the voters and whats their set of assumptions about us. That’s not a left wing right wing thing. It cant be answered with we need to be more left wing or more right wing but its a question of how successful are we in making voters understand our political vision and representing their wishes.

I believe that the recent elections have demonstrated that we have not yet communicated our vision to the voters successfully but rather have allowed others to instead paint a picture in the mind of voters of who Sinn Fein are. I believe that as a party we have not yet challenged that perception aggressively enough.


Before I focus on Sinn Fein’s narrative I’d like to briefly discuss other narratives which might give an idea of what I am concentrating on.

Obama - His campaign was built about the narrative of change and captured the desires of Americans for a step change in society. It also neutered his critics who tried to paint him as inexperienced. Similar to

Gordon Brown - he tried to position himself as the man who was orchestrating the global response to the depression.

The Tories say they are change, willing to make the cuts and do what needs doing

The Liberal Democrats counter that narrative by saying that Labour and the Tories are the same and only the Liberals are free of the political corruption scandals. Only they can reform westminister.

Here in the south of Ireland each party has a narrative or story its trying to communicate to voters and a counter story being told by its opponents or just something that’s associated with the party. Sometimes a counter story is told by the party against its own interests- think of John Gormley standing fastly with Fianna Fail in photo ops but then saying the greens are doing their own thing. Think of Fianna Fail’s message in 2007 that they were the only safe pair of hands and how successful that message was. Also think of how the opposition failed to counter that story and lost (luckily)

Stories and counter-stories.

No matter how just, right or good a message is it generally wont sell itself. It might do if it were the only show in town but its not. There are alternative viewpoints that its competing with and everyone else is explaining why your viewpoint is wrong and theirs is right. Some people even misread your view point and label you incorrectly. So having a clear message or political narrative with which can explain who you are and what you are about is important.

A voter needs to be able to sum your party up in a few words and you need to ensure those few words are positive, actually true, and really speak to a segment in society that has a genuine need. I think its necessary to stress this is not talking about spin - the art of lying. Its rather about ensuring you get to tell people who you are and what you are about and what your opponents are about rather than having them do it for you.

At this point in time the party is pretty much painted into a box in the mind of the southern electorate as a pre-dominantly northern ran and orientated republican party that's pro-workers but that has no decent economic policy or understanding of economic policy and who are electorally stalled and irrelevant to the debate. All the points I marked as counter-stories put out about Sinn Fein in the above table are the most commonly held beliefs about the party. Although about 7-8% of the electorate is hearing our message and connecting with it etc we are seeing, again unfortunately, that we are failing to connect with the next 7-8% of the voters that we need to be at 15% (which is not at all beyond possibility in the medium term).

Making that connection

So why aren’t we at 15% at the moment. Well surely several reasons but I believe that a key one is Sinn Fein’s inability to phrase, or word, its message so that a larger segment of regular people associate with the Sinn Fein message and feel that it represents them and their concerns in a way that they themselves might express it ie it makes a connection with them in the words of ordinary people.

No party can entirely control its message because of the prevalence of others pushing counter stories. To that end the behaviour of certain media outlets etc. who attack Sinn Fein has to be accepted as a fact and cannot be used as a reason for our loss of momentum.

We have been strongly focussed on refuting the counter stories about us by proving our economic/policy credentials via proposals and submissions and via thoughtful and weighted contributions on the Lisbon debate . We have established our southern relevance with a strong cadre of southern based party figures. We have demonstrated our ability to do the real work in govt. by constructively working in the Dail.

However such was the weight of negative propaganda that all we have succeeded in doing is standing still. Now we need to reevaluate the message so that we can grow to 15%.

I believe that Sinn Fein needs to:

(a) go back to basics as Toireasa Ferris said re community work.

(b) Continue to prove our economic/policy credibility with good work but push the message in a more insistant fashion, and in a more passionate manner. I have noted that some SF reps doing TV work are very sober and serious, getting across the message that we are a serious party with a firm grasp of the issue. That’s good but does that mean we don’t make any emotional connection with the voters.

c) We need to start taking some harder, more controversial positions. I don’t mean populist or jam for everybody positions but rather lets push the boat out a bit with costed and economically proofed proposals. People don’t know what our positions are on issues. Lets change that. The Fgers have the health reform, labour their no vote last sept etc. Whats our angle? Dail reform became a big theme for a few days. Can we be the party of reform - god knows people want institutional reform in this state.

(d) What ever words or ideas become central to our message lets not develop that message for our own consumption. This is 2009 and if our way of expressing ourselves is not the way ordinary working class people are expressing themselves then lets stop trying to change the people and instead change how we express ourselves. Our principles remain the same but we instead talk using the language of the office and the factory and the dole queue, not in language drawn from books and journals.

(e) People who are members, or like myself, only supporters, should be conscious that we can play a key part in advancing the SF message. We, with the leadership, are the key players in convincing a broader segment of society that we are capable, competent and relevant to their needs.

f) Finally once we establish a message we should not deviate from it over the short term. Don’t side track but repeat it and keep on it and then repeat it until it’s established.