Review: The Long Game - Inside Sinn Fein by Aoife Moore

Synopsis: Inside the rise of the political party, once subordinate to the IRA, that is on the brink of taking power in Ireland.

Sinn Féin, long widely-regarded as the political wing of the Provisional IRA, is the most popular political party in both Northern Ireland and the Republic. A movement once synonymous with a paramilitary campaign is on the brink of taking real power through purely democratic means. But if Sinn Féin has mastered the art of electoral politics, it remains strangely opaque. Who really runs the party? How is it funded? And what can we expect of it as a party of government?

Aoife Moore, Irish Journalist of the Year 2021. explores these and other burning questions in The Long Game. Drawing on exclusive interviews with current and former members of Sinn Féin, she builds up a picture of a party undergoing a profound, and still incomplete, transformation. She looks at the key individuals and moments that put the party on its present course, and she explores tensions within the party and the wider republican movement.

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Moore's books is intended to provide a fair and accurate account of the rise of the Irish political party, Sinn Fein. And to be fair, Moore does this, documenting the legitimisation of Sinn Fein in 1974 through to its current incarnation today. Along the way, the narrative looks deeply into the culture and history and personalities of those within and those pulling the strings of the party.

What the reader will find when picking up this tome are the following, summarised in dot points below, and in no particular order:

• the efforts of the party leadership to change the party's image were undercut by forces within the movement;
• the party was and is in a state of perpetual flux;
• the party is still tied and subservient to its historical paramilitary and political baggage;
• there is a deep seeded culture of bullying, cover-ups, political disfunction, paranoia and suspicion, scandal, chaos, malfeasance;
• it has a top down structure and hierarchy that is not driven by grass roots culture;
• the party leadership worked to control its members and centralise power and no deviation from the party line is tolerated;
• the party narrative was and is driven, controlled and censured by dominant personalities who didn't care for change until the politics became popularly unpalatable;

From available sources, historical documents, and anonymous interviews, Moore has managed to put together a history of the party. The narrative, however, goes back and forth with the introduction of each new character and key events to give perspective and context to the overall story (Irish storytelling is never linear). 

I personally, would also have preferred two things:

1. that the actions of the Sinn Fein were viewed also in context of the actions of its political and paramilitary opponents, though understand that this would have increased what is already a decent lengthy tome;
2. that the detail on the hierarchical structure of the party had been documented earlier in the book to aid the reader is grasping where each organisation was placed.

I have previously read a great deal about Irish history and politics leading up to the early 2000s, so I was keenly interested in what Moore (who implies that the reader has a certain level of knowledge already) had to say and what she could add to what had previously been written. There were some snippets I found of interest whilst there was much that confirmed and substantiated what I knew and suspected from my own readings and research.

Overall, from an outsiders' perspective, Moore achieves her intent. A worthwhile read for those for whom this subject matter is of interest.

Ex-IRA man's novel adds to intrigue over Northern Bank heist

From The Guardian: 

On 19 December 2004, masked raiders took £26.5m in cash from the vaults of Belfast’s Northern Bank, loaded it on to a truck and vanished into the night.

It was one of the most audacious heists in British criminal history, and it left an enduring riddle: did the IRA do it? Police on both sides of the Irish border suspected so, but the group denied any involvement. The robbers have not been caught and the investigation remains open.

Now a former IRA volunteer and convicted bank robber, Ricky O’Rawe, has added to the intrigue by writing a novel with echoes of the raid.

Northern Heist, published September 2018, is a rollicking, colourful account of the preparation and execution of a very similar robbery. The fictional one is committed by a Belfast criminal gang headed by a character named James “Ructions” O’Hare, a professional thief. The IRA is not involved in the robbery but demands a cut of the proceeds, leading to twists and double-crosses.

read more here @ The Guardian