Over the past weeks and months the leadership of Sinn Féin have been launching a campaign to bring the debate on a United Ireland to an international audience. There have been forums in New York, San Francisco, London and Liverpool. More have been planned and it is part of a programme to gain support from all around the world for Sinn Féin's strategy to achieve a United Ireland.
Below is a piece submitted by Tom Shelly who is a socialist supporter of Sinn Féin in the US in which he discusses how Sinn Féin should build support for Irish Unity within America. I would like to thank Tom for his contribution and I would encourage anybody else who wishes to write a piece to just send it to me in a comment and I will post it.
In the Spirit of James Connolly
This will be a summary of an article on my blog which is called "In The Spirit Of Malcolm X." I decided to go with Connolly for this since he spent several years organizing unions in America. Going back to Malcolm X, what prompted me to name the article that way was the following quote:
"I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those that do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation... It is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a racial conflict of Black against white, or as a purely American problem. Rather we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiter."(Malcolm X Speaks, pp. 232-233) January, 1965.
The article is about how SF and its American allies try to generate support for SF’s agenda in America. I feel that they are making a mistake by focusing so much on Irish-America. They should focus more on generating support from people of all ethnic backgrounds who are interested in.
**Anti-imperialism (the situation that nationalists have experienced needs to be frequently and consistently portrayed as part of a global rebellion which in recent decades has included the Palestinians, East Timor, Apartheid S. Africa, Chiapas, Native America, etc.)
**Social justice (it makes sense to explain to people that sectarianism is similar to racism and anti-semitism and kind of similar to homophobia, and people who are against those forms of bigotry should show some interest in helping to combat sectarianism in the North)
**economic justice (explaining where the political centers of the nationalist and unionist communities are (center-left and center-right respectively) and the working-class nature of the nationalist community and explaining that uniting Ireland will strengthen liberal, progressive, left and working-class movements should attract support)
There’s a lot more people of all ethnicities that feel passionately about those issues from a liberal-left perspective than there are Irish-Americans already involved or likely to get involved and SF is going generate almost zero support from non-Irish-Americans to the right of center. SF can probably quadruple the amount of support their cause in America has, and all of that growth will go to SF, although a small percentage of old supporters might start supporting some other group in protest.
For this to happen SF will need to start behaving in America the way they do in Ireland. We should see Adams and other figures in the leadership being invited to speak at more events with a progressive audience- for example, pro-Palestinian events, pro-labor events. Wherever possible, SF should make this happen (they probably have some allies who could get them invited) and then it will just grow from there. They’ll have to make it very clear where their politics actually are, especially at the beginning of this process, and that should involve changing the way they talk about generating support in America, adding the appropriate links to Irish Northern Aid web-sites (that will affect what visitors think of INA and might involve some link exchanges and will encourage INA members to reach out on an individual level to liberal-progressive-left groups), attending the alternative, inclusive St. Patrick’s Day event in Queens, NY, that sort of thing (the Queens parade is a good way for SF to get it’s foot in the door, it will signal that they want a different relationship with America, and LGBT groups will respond positively and members of those groups have connections with other liberal-progressive-left groups).
This will have an effect on present and future generations of a segment of Irish-America and would see that group become more liberal-progressive-left, which will mean fewer people voting for the GOP and more people voting for the Democrats, and SF and their agenda will do better with more Democrats elected to federal office.I think that’s about it for a summary.
Two points about how this is relevant to this blog:
1) When people in Dublin went with Higgins instead of McDonald, that’s because they wanted the solid socialist in these bad economic times. Part of people thinking SF might not be solid socialists is their record in America. The SP, about 10 years ago, said that SF is left-wing in the South, right-wing in America, and in between in the North. The North’s a separate discussion, but SF could respond to that by being left-wing in America.
2) The approach I’m recommending might firm up the left-wing commitment of some people in SF who are a little too flexible, and nudge other members towards the left.
So, in summary of the summary, SF and it’s agenda will benefit greatly by focusing on people in America with the right politics instead of the right genealogy.
The article is at http://devlin-mcaliskey.blogspot.com/2009/05/in-spirit-of-malcolm-x.html
