Will the real Sinn Féin please stand up – because King Gerry's Louth invasion is
sending out mixed signals to potential voters.
Most Southern voters see the Shinners as a hardline Left wing outfit, to be
regarded with even more suspicion than the almost defunct Stickies, namely the
Workers' Party.
To kick the rival moderate SDLP in the balls, Northern Sinn Féin has got to
boast how it is 'Proud To Be A Provie'.
So are the Shinners saying one thing in the Republic, yet totally singing to
a different tune in the North? Is Sinn Féin socialist first, or nationalist?
King Gerry needs to avoid the fatal pitfall which befell his arch rival, Ian
Paisley senior, who became branded the Grand Old Duke of York as he led his men
up the hill and down again.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of Big Paisley's first major outing as
the Grand Duke. He was to the fore in forming loyalist vigilante group, The
Third Force. It flopped.
This year also sees the silver jubilee of the forming of another Protestant
paramilitary group, the red-bereted Ulster Resistance – again with Paisley
senior as a key supporter. The DUP abandoned the Resistance when the chips got
too hot.
The end result was that when Paisley himself did something very positive –
forming the Chuckle Brothers with the Shinners – his once DUP faithful turned
traitor and forced him to quit as First Minister, DUP boss and Free Presbyterian
Moderator.
If the Shinners, north and south, are not singing from the same republican
hymn sheet, King Gerry could find himself de-throned as party president come
May.
Gerry has only one option. He must do what former First Minister David
Trimble of the now almost defunct Ulster Unionists should have done – swing Sinn
Féin to the Radical Right.
The SDLP is bashing the Shinners at every turn – just as Jimmy Allister's TUV
are thumping Peter Robinson's DUP.
The SDLP and TUV have no chance of becoming a significant force in Stormont.
Their shouts and rants are to cover up their lack of policies.
Gerry needs to resurrect the famous General Eoin O'Duffy's Blueshirts.
Ironically, Sinn Féin should take as its example two 1930s movements ito which
it was once bitterly opposed – Cumann na nGaedheal, once protected by
Blueshirts, and O'Duffy's own National Corporate Party.
Ireland needs all-island discipline and security on the social and economic
fronts. A hardline Right-wing Sinn Féin can deliver this.
Former Orange Order boss and MP Rev Martin Smyth once branded Sinn Féin as a
fascist movement.
He said: "Fascism is a right wing dictatorship with a government controlled
economy and no opposition. That mantle of fascism belongs in Ulster more to Sinn
Féin than to loyalists."
In 1918, Sinn Féin was the dominant party on this island. Eighty years later,
the Good Friday Agreement set the stage for an all-island agenda.
If the Shinners want to realistically dictate policy in both Stormont and the
Dáil, they must mothball the IRA, dump ex-jailbird candidates and become
Ireland's new Blueshirts.
Sounds like a radical solution – but if Sinn Féin can run the North with the
DUP, it must become a Right-wing version of John Turnly's Irish Independence
Party.
