If the jester got a laugh, he got a free drink. If his joke was in poor taste, the audience could throw plastic balls at him.

An English comedian called Eddy took to the stage to tell his gag.

“If Sinn Féin ever gets into government, we’ll all be able to apply for grants to build bomb shelters in our back gardens.” 

Silence.

Eddy was hit by so many plastic balls that he fell off the stage. He learned that night that you don’t take Irish people for fools.

Twenty-five years after the signing of the most controversial political document in recent Irish history, Sinn Féin is poised to win the next general election. Could such a result be a foregone conclusion?

In the 2020 general election, the party received the most first-preference votes and won 37 seats — its best result since 1923. It signified the most seismic realignment of the political playing field since the start of the State.

Sinn Féin won 24.5% of the first-preference vote, almost doubling its share from 2016 as a result of voters’ discontent at soaring prices, crippling rents, collapsing public services, and a lack of humanity on the Government’s part towards many sectors of the population.

Sinn Féin admitted in the aftermath that if it had fielded more candidates, it could have had a landslide victory.

Three years later the state of the State is immeasurably worse. The call for sweeping change from across the electorate is almost deafening.

Is anyone really that surprised that Ireland’s most controversial party is now the major player on the political landscape?

The initial incarnation of Sinn Fein was founded by Arthur Griffith in 1905. The party split before the Irish Civil War and again in its aftermath. This then gave rise to the two main political parties in the Republic, namely Fianna Fáil, and Cumann na nGaedheal, which would become Fine Gael. 

Sinn Féin split again in 1970, at the start of the Troubles. This split gave rise to modern Sinn Féin, which has gone to great lengths to claim ownership of and lineage from the earliest versions of the party.

Both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have consistently condemned and criticised Sinn Féin because of its connections with the Provisional IRA down through the years.

What must be considered here are the reasons why hundreds of young people chose to join the provos in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday.

Fear, exclusion, racism, sectarian bigotry, and the constant threat to their families of abduction and death were among those reasons. 

Ask anyone who lived in South Armagh, or East Tyrone, or in Ballymurphy or West Belfast in those years. Ask them about the Shankhill Butchers, or the Glenanne Gang.

In the South, most people chose to stay mute about what was going on a few miles north, because it had no impact on their personal lives. 

Many of those people then condemned the men and women who made it their business to protect their communities against the UDA, the UVF, the UDR renegades, and the agents who colluded with MI6 and the British army.

History has shown that revolutionary tactics are often the final resort for a community as it struggles to protect its members’ lives and personal liberty and to win political power. 

Real momentum in social development requires every community to challenge its ruling class if they believe they are being victimised and subordinated.

Margaret Thatcher hated Irish people coming to Britain, she told then taoiseach Garret FitzGerald. She called us spongers. She also said she hated sending her young soldiers to their deaths in the North; but yet she kept doing it.

Bitterly divided

When a reporter suggested that the presence of the British army in Northern Ireland wasn’t having much of an impact, she replied that, if nothing else, they were getting plenty of target practice.

Thatcher made the North the most bitterly divided place in the world during her reign as prime minister. By allowing collusion between the security services and unionist death squads, she was as bad as any terrorist.

Thatcher allowed 10 republican prisoners to starve to death in 1981 rather than give in to their demands for political status. When asked during the hunger strike how she felt about the men, she said: “I admire their resilience.”

In October 1984, the Provisional IRA inflicted a damning revenge for the dead hunger strikers by blowing up the Grand Hotel in Brighton, where Thatcher and her cabinet were staying. Thatcher survived.

When she signed the Anglo-Irish agreement with Garret FitzGerald the following year, her reason for doing so was her belief that it would prevent Sinn Féin’s growing support from eating into the popularity of John Hume’s Social Democratic and Labour Party. 

It didn’t work. Gerry Adams was already planning his party’s political future.

As Viktor Frankl wrote in Man’s Search For Meaning, “When we are no longer able to change a situation...we are challenged to change ourselves.”

While Thatcher was busy destroying her own country, and devastating working-class families and communities across Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin was busy laying its cards on the table. Gerry Adams said as far back as 1984 that neither the British army nor the unionist death squads could ever defeat the ballot box.

Thatcher would turn in her grave if she thought she had inadvertently become the midwife to Sinn Féin’s rebirth. As a result of her stubborn toxicity, a terrible beauty born through many years of struggle and lost lives finally emerged as a political party to be reckoned with.

Times have changed

Three years ago, Micheál Martin stated categorically that his party would not form a “grand coalition” with Fine Gael. “People want change...they want Fine Gael out of office...they’ve been there too long, they haven’t delivered on key issues such as housing, health, and the impact of cost of living on many people. The people want a new government, that means a completely new government.”

Five months later, he formed a government with Fine Gael.

Martin also said back in 2016 that his party would not enter a coalition with Sinn Féin. He said it was Fianna Fáil’s duty to always challenge what he called Sinn Féin’s “cynicism and hypocrisies”. 

During the Civil War, 77 young men, many of them in their teens, all unarmed prisoners of war, were executed by the Cumann na nGaedheal/Labour government.

Fine Gael are the direct descendants of Cumann na nGaedheal. Micheál Martin’s condemnation of Sinn Féin might soon come back to haunt him.

History no longer appears to be a factor for most of today’s voters. Many of them don’t remember the Troubles. 

This government’s cynicism and hypocrisy could well become its own downfall — a tough reminder to them that the days of voter loyalty and pump parish politics are gone. Sinn Féin’s historic landmarks over the years have come in many shapes and sizes. 

The next one is shaping up to be like nothing we have ever seen before.