Bomb attacks backfire on Sinn Fein

Press, 31 January 1984, Page 18

Bomb attacks backfire on Sinn Fein

By

COLIN MCINTYRE

of Reuter, in Belfast

A Christmas car bomb attack in London and the deaths of two men in a gun battle in the Irish Republic have led to a sharp change in the fortunes of Sinn Fein, the political party of the Irish Republican Army (1.R.A.). The organisation, riding high a few months ago on good electoral gains and prospects, now finds itself ostracised by top government officials in both parts of Ireland and facing curbs on its activities in the Republic. Ironically, the two acts of violence which have set back the' party’s advance were the work of the 1.R.A., the main Republican guerrilla group whose violent campaign to drive the British out of Northern Ireland is openly supported by Sinn Fein. An Irish policeman and soldier were killed in a gun battle in the Republic on December 16 during the rescue of a prominent Dublin businessman kidnapped by the I.R.A. for ransom.

The next day a huge bomb planted by the I.R.A. in a car outside Harrods department store in London, crowded with Christmas shoppers, left six people dead and 90 injured.

The actions were politically embarrassing for Sinn Fein, an organisation rooted in an independence struggle that left Ireland partitioned between the predominantly Catholic Republic and a British northern province with a Protestant majority.

The deaths of the two Irish Security Force members appeared to violate a traditional I.R.A. ban in force for decades on attacking officials of the Irish Republic.

The Harrods bomb’ broke a pledge given at Sinn Fein’s Congress last November by a masked I.R.A. official that while the campaign of violence would continue civilians would be spared.

Sinn Fein’s president, Gerry Adams, denied in an interview with Reuter that the incidents, which he regretted, represented a change of policy. He said the bombers appeared to have gone outside their brief while the shootings were a case of self-defence. The two incidents immediately led to calls from both sides of the border for the banning of Sinn Fein and internment of suspected I.R.A. members.

As passions cooled both the British and Irish Governments decided that banning Sinn Fein would only drive it underground, making it more difficult to track and adding to its romantic appeal, especially for the young. Britain’s Northern Ireland Secretary, James Prior, however, ordered his Ministers to have no further contact with Sinn Fein, which holds one seat in the British Parliament and is represented on several local councils in the province.

Until now these representatives have enjoyed normal co-operation with government officials and Sinn Fein could lose its reputation for getting things done if it is deprived of official recognition. In the Republic, the Deputy Prime Minister and Labour Party leader, Dick Spring, said he would refuse to meet deputations including members of any group supporting violence — a clear reference to Sinn Fein — and other Ministers may follow suit. The Dublin Government is studying plans- to tighten laws on incitement to violence which could make Sinn Fein leaders liable to prosecution for publicly supporting the I.R.A. All this has come at a bad time for Sinn Fein, which last year announced that it was planning a major electoral offensive in the Republic. This followed the organ-

isation’s successes in the north over the last two years when, campaigning under the slogan “a ballot-paper in one hand and a rifle in the other,” it won 10 per cent of the vote in polls for a provincial assembly and more than 13 per cent in the June, 1983, General Election.

Sinn Fein, whose ultimate declared goal is a revolutionary socialist state in a united Ireland, is hoping to win votes among Ireland’s restless youth, nearly a third of whom are unemployed. It opened its campaign in the south last November by taking more than 7 per cent of the vote in a Dublinby-election, finishing ahead of Labour, which has lost support by going into coalition with the conservative Fine Gael Party. Sinn Fein’s leader, Mr Adams, who declines to take his seat in the British Parliament, acknowledged that the incidents last year, particularly the shooting in the south, represented a setback. “The Dublin government has been casting around for an excuse to crack down on Sinn Fein, especially since our recent successes, and they are exploiting the shooting incident to the full,” he said. “If they don’t succeed in stopping us they will become more oppressive, and we will see internment.”

Speaking in one of Sinn Fein’s “advice centres” on the Falls Road, the main Catholic area in Belfast, Mr Adams said the I.R.A. men involved in the gun battle with Irish Security Forces had kidnapped the supermarket chief, Don Tidey, to raise funds. “They took a calculated political risk and it didn’t pay off,” said Mr Adams, who said he did not know of any change in the I.R.A. standing order barring attacks on Irish police or troaps.