Sinn Féin rides the wave of political fall-out

Sinn Féin is on the ropes at the moment giving the SDLP a chance to make up lost ground within the nationalist community. Suzanne Breen reports

Sinn Féin's Catriona Ruane, boasted, "The Árd Fheis in March will be different to any of those we have had before," when announcing her party's centenary celebrations late last year. She will certainly be right.

For as more than 1,000 delegates gather in the RDS next weekend, the Sinn Féin leadership is under unprecedented pressure. It knows it needs to pull off a 'spectacular' – in terms of political performance – in order to even hold its ground.

"The Meath by-election takes place a few days later and the Westminster election is in two months, so we know what is at stake," says a Sinn Féin source.

While the by-election is not in itself critical for the party, it is fully aware that its huge political growth over the past decade has rested largely on the impression of an unstoppable momentum in its favour.

Success has bred success. Every electoral triumph reaffirms the belief that Sinn Féin is the only party on the island on the up and its opponents, particularly the SDLP in the North, are yesterday's men.

Joe Reilly was never going to win in Meath but a strong showing was expected. A significant fall in Sinn Féin's vote in the constituency would be a new experience for the party anywhere in recent years. "Yes, we are being tested like never before and these are tough times," admits the Sinn Féin source.

While the SDLP is not expecting to overtake, or even pull level with Sinn Féin in the North, it increasingly believes there will be a closer electoral battle between the two nationalist parties in May than was otherwise expected.

"Everyone had been predicting a walkover for Sinn Féin but the continuing repercussions from the Northern Bank robbery and the McCartney murder have given us a really good chance to fight back," says a senior SDLP politician.

At an SDLP gathering in a Belfast hotel on Wednesday night, there was more energy and optimism in party ranks than there has been in years. "The Shinners are in big trouble," was repeated in conversation after conversation with activists.

Most SDLP figures believe the party will lose Newry and Armagh to Sinn Féin, but they are increasingly confident of holding South Down and Foyle. While Mark Durkan has still a long way to go in terms of impressing and charming most nationalists, his profile has risen considerably over the past month.

Sinn Féin's vote should hold in working-class areas but allegations of IRA money-laundering, murder and mafia-like criminality, make it vulnerable in middle-class areas.

Much of its recent support is from previous SDLP voters who, even if they don't vote for Durkan's party, might stay home on polling day. Certainly, nobody now expects Sinn Féin to win any new middle-class votes and eat further into the SDLP base.

"If it was just the case of the bank robbery, they would have got away with it. But how many decent, respectable citizens want to be associated with those who stabbed an innocent man to death or thugs up to all sorts of crime?" asks an SDLP figure.

Ironically, Sinn Féin's defence strategy in the past fortnight has been that the British government is attempting to criminalise its 340,000 voters. "This argument is total rubbish," says a British source.

"It's not the voters who are the problem, it's those who rob banks and murder people. No-one in government would even attempt to deny Sinn Féin's political mandate, but that is not a mandate for terrorist activity."

British government and security sources do not accept media reports of major divisions within the IRA with the chief-of-staff and key figures in South Armagh possibly returning to war in certain circumstances.

Sinn Féin pointedly refused to comment on reports of an IRA split. The authorities still insist the Provisionals remain remarkably united at leadership level, and that reports of splits are for tactical advantage.

However, politicians and senior police and military figures have been warned to increase their personal security. The existing threat level of IRA attacks has been reassessed, although purely as a precautionary measure. Security sources say they have no indications the IRA is about to breach its ceasefire.

The planting of £50,000 in stolen Northern Bank notes at the police social club at Newforge in south Belfast highlighted the increasingly slack security in the North.

Three weeks ago, this reporter, who was attending a PSNI media reception in the building, was admitted without even being asked my name. Unable to locate the reception, I wandered freely along corridors, up and down stairs, and into rooms without being stopped once or asked for ID.

The Chief Constable, Sir Hugh Orde, and several Assistant Chief Constables were present inside. PSNI sources said while there was no possibility of returning to the oppressive pre-1994 security levels, the laxity of recent times could not be allowed to continue.

^ Not a bad week for Sinn Féin

On Friday, 25 February, the Irish Independent published a poll showing Sinn Féin had double the support in the Republic of Ireland that it obtained in the 2002 general election (10 per cent as compared with 5 per cent in 2002). The poll was conducted during a week in which Sinn Féin was linked with massive bank robberies in the North, large scale money-laundering in the South, its leadership named as members of the IRA army council and suggestions that it was engaged in purchasing a bank in Bulgaria in association with an international criminal gang.

On Thursday, 17 February, stashes of sterling bank notes were found in the Cork area and later elsewhere in the country. This precipitated the crisis for Sinn Féin. Unattributable Garda sources claimed these discoveries were linked with IRA robberies in Northern Ireland, including the 20 December €38m robbery of the Northern Bank in Belfast, and that the discovered cash was being laundered or had been laundered by Sinn Féin members. These unattributable briefings were re-enforced by an attributable briefing by the Garda Commissioner, Noel Conroy, on Friday, 18 February.

This was followed by claims by Michael McDowell on a radio programme on Sunday that Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Martin Ferris were members of the IRA army council, having on several previous occasions refused to say, for reasons of national and security interest, who he believed were on the IRA army council. However, a day later the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, referring to Michael McDowell's claims about IRA army council membership, said intelligence information was one thing but hard evidence was another.

On the first day of the cash finds, several people were arrested, including a prominent Sinn Féin person in Cork, Tom Hanlon, a former local councilor and candidate for the party in the Cork South Central constituency in the last general election. Everyone arrested, including Tom Hanlon, was subsequently released, apart from Don Bullman (30), a chef of Fernwood Crescent, Leghanamore, Wilton, Co Cork who was charged last Friday with membership of an illegal organisation. Don Bullman was stated by Garda sources to be connected not with the Provisional IRA or Sinn Féin but with an organisation fiercely at odds with the Provisional republican movement, the Real IRA.

Real IRA sources in Belfast claim Don Bullman is not and never was a member of that organisation and, they claim, when he was incarcerated in Portlaoise prison at the weekend he did not join either of the two Real IRA factions in the prison (the Real IRA is split with one group wanting to continue the "armed struggle" and the other wanting to buy into the peace process). However, these claims about Don Bullman, apparently, are unknown to the Garda.

An unnamed Garda source told The Irish Times that the IRA was working with a Bulgarian crime syndicate on plans to buy a bank in Bulgaria to facilitate a massive money-laundering operation. Michael McDowell was less sure about this claim a few days later, saying only "I would not disbelieve claims that they (the IRA) were engaged in either trying to acquire or establish a financial institution in Bulgaria". This apparently arose from suspicions concerning a trip to Bulgaria on the part of people associated with Chesterson Finance, the Cork financial company, allegedly implicated in the IRA money-laundering operation. The Irish Examiner had established that these people had gone openly to Bulgaria and had met with the Bulgarian Finance Minister, Ilia Lingorski, who is responsible for foreign investment.

A person who was on that trip, Denis O Connell, told the Irish Examiner they had been interested only in property investments and their meetings in Bulgaria were connected solely with that. Another person on the trip, Phil Flynn, former President of ICTU (Irish Congress of Trade Unions) and former chairman of several government task forces, had earlier stated the same.

vincent browne