Patrick Murphy: Can Sinn Féin expect more dissent after Tyrone reaction?

The only surprising aspect of the statement in which more than 100 Tyrone people criticised Michelle O’Neill last week was that it was not issued long before now.

For those who signed it, the Sinn Féin leader’s attendance at a British Remembrance Day ceremony was a step too far.

However, honouring Britain’s war dead is simply the party’s latest stage of a 26-year process since the Good Friday Agreement was sold to republicans as a victory.

Since 1998, Sinn Féin has recognised the state of Northern Ireland, socialised with British monarchs who are the head of the armed services, and its lower ranks have laid wreaths at remembrance ceremonies.

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When the leadership laid a wreath, it was no surprise that condemnation finally came from Tyrone, which has a unique republican tradition.

There were no complaints from compliant South Armagh, Belfast or Derry. The statement began, “As a proud Tyrone person….”

The wreath-laying represents an abandonment of all the IRA died and killed for. So Michelle O’Neill’s behaviour raises two questions: what exactly is Sinn Féin’s strategy and can it expect further opposition from within its own heartland?

Like the IRA’s long war, Sinn Féin’s strategy is flag-based rather than people-based. It fought its most recent election with a flag as its manifesto, but no policies.

So, as a First Minister for all, Michelle O’Neill presumably meant all flags, but not all people. Sinn Féin has yet to realise that social and economic issues unite people. Flags divide them.

She honoured those who fought for the British Empire, including the Black and Tans and the men who executed the 1916 leaders, in the belief that they somehow represent unionism.

Meanwhile, her government is responsible for working class unionists (and nationalists) relying on food banks to feed their families, waiting up to five years for medical care and having their winter fuel payments cut – problems which Sinn Féin’s populism cannot address.

So what’s its plan? It appears that having stolen the SDLP’s clothes, Sinn Féin are now rummaging in Alliance’s wardrobe to see what might fit them.

They are also eyeing some of Fine Gael’s finery in the south. The wreath-laying came two days after the general election campaign began there.

According to the Tyrone statement, Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O’Neill no longer “attend key republican commemorations”. In that same tone, Mary Lou said this week it is “not reasonable” to ask the party about the IRA campaign which her party still supports.

Not for the first time in Irish history, the dead get the equivalent of the Last Post, while those who never fought occupy government posts. The IRA campaign is now something of a distant relative for Sinn Féin.

Rank and file members apparently believe that by sacrificing principle for power, the party can reclaim those principles once power has been achieved. Sadly, the party leaders will then tell them that they must continue to abandon their principles to retain that power.

The Tyrone statement challenged that, by returning to what might be called republican first principles. It stated that their relatives “were murdered in their own country by a foreign force that had no right to be there”.

The statement reflects Tyrone’s distinctive history of rebellion. In 1952, for example, Dungannon’s Liam Kelly was expelled from the IRA for unauthorised activity. So he formed Saor Uladh (Free Ulster) and conducted his own independent military activity in east Tyrone, before the IRA launched its 1956 campaign.

In 1954, during celebrations following his release from prison for sedition, an RUC attempt to seize tricolours resulted in what were known as the Pomeroy riots.

The first action in the civil rights era came from Tyrone, when the Brantry Republican Club organised a squat in an unfairly allocated house in Caledon in June 1968. Two months later the first civil rights march took place from Coalisland to Dungannon. Unsurprisingly, many outside the county have a soft spot for some in Tyrone.

Probable opposition to the IRA’s new direction was seriously weakened when eight Tyrone IRA men were killed at Loughgall in 1987. One of the dead, Patrick Kelly, was a nephew of Liam Kelly. Honouring the army which shot them could hardly pass without condemnation in Tyrone.

The question now is: was that statement a one-off, or does it represent growing unease among traditional Sinn Féin supporters? We won’t know for a while, but the chances are that its principles will eventually die with those who hold them.

That will be nothing new, of course. Ireland is a land of buried principles.

Rank and file members apparently believe that by sacrificing principle for power, the party can reclaim those principles once power has been achieved