Irish
America wants a
united
Ireland. And it's
ready to
fund it.
The money
for violence may have stopped flowing, but the fundraising for the cause of
Irish nationalism has continued.
By Suzanne
Lynch
in Yonkers,
New York
Illustration
by Peter Strain POLITICO
November 28,
2024 4:00 am CET
https://www.politico.eu/article/how-irish-america-went-from-bombs-to-ballots/
Inside
McKeon’s, one of several Irish pubs that line the main street of Yonkers, the
quiet hum of early evening has settled in. Baseball beams down from silent TV
screens as locals nurse pints of Guinness.
Soon, talk
turns to politics — not New York politics or United States politics, but Irish
politics.
In an
election scheduled for Nov. 29, Ireland’s traditional parties are facing off
against Sinn Féin, a political party once affiliated with the Irish Republican
Army (IRA), the militant group that carried campaigns of murder and bombing in
Ireland and the United Kingdom well into the 1990s.
There’s
little doubt where the sympathies lie among McKeon’s regulars. After all, it
was in Irish-American enclaves like Yonkers that the community once raised
funds to send guns and bombs to the IRA, whose stated goal was to kick the
British out of Northern Ireland and reunify the island within a single Irish
Republic.
Karl, whose
great-grandfather came from County Cork, says he would like to see a united
Ireland, but admits he doesn’t follow the intricacies of Irish domestic
politics.
“It should
be one island. It shouldn’t have been split up by the Brits,” he says,
referring to the 1921 partition of Ireland, which granted independence to the
Republic of Ireland and left Northern Ireland as a part of the U.K.
Gerry, who
moved from Ireland to the United States 40 years ago, thinks it’s time for a
change. “I talk to my family back home, and they’re worried about Sinn Féin,”
he says. “But I think their time has come. Why not give them a chance?”
The money
for violence may have stopped flowing, but the fundraising for the cause of
Irish nationalism has continued.
Department
of Justice filings show that Friends of Sinn Féin, the party’s fundraising arm
in the U.S., has been busy since the U.S.-brokered 1998 Good Friday Agreement
brought peace to Ireland.
The group,
which is registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act as an agent of
Sinn Féin, has raised $2 million over the past five years. Most of the money
comes from fundraising events, such as its annual gala dinner in New York, as
well as individual donations and merchandise sales.
While rules
around political funding in Ireland prohibit money raised abroad from being
sent to the Republic, Friends of Sinn Féin can legally send money to Northern
Ireland. The group’s most recent filings show it sent $51,000 (€47,700) to its
Belfast branch in the six months from November to April — just ahead of this
summer’s election in Northern Ireland, in which Sinn Féin once again emerged as
the most popular party in the region.
The money
raised by Friends of Sinn Féin is used primarily to advocate for Irish
nationalism in the U.S. — including splashy full-page advertisements in
publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post, typically around
St. Patrick’s Day in March.
Ciarán
Quinn, Sinn Féin’s representative to the U.S. and Canada, says the group’s
American supporters — more than 34 million people in the country claim Irish
heritage — have long relinquished any talk of violence. Their focus now, he
says, is “the next stage” — the reunification of Ireland.
“The dream
of Irish unity, that grá [the Irish word for “love”] for Irish unity, Irish
independence and sovereignty, has gone through generations,” Quinn says. “And
this current generation now sees the potential of getting it across the line.”
When the
Irish Republic was being founded around a century ago, nationalist hero Éamon
de Valera, fresh from his audacious escape from Lincoln Prison in England, was
hailed by crowds from Philadelphia to San Francisco as he embarked on an
18-month fundraising tour.
The founding
document of Irish nationhood, the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, composed
by the nationalist leaders of the Easter Rebellion of 1916, specifically
references Ireland’s “exiled children in America.”
Irish-American
culture is replete with shadowy memories of boxes being quietly passed around
Irish bars from Boston to Chicago looking for money for the “cause.”
Gerry Adams,
the leader of Sinn Féin from 2011 to 2018, was banned from traveling to the
United States as violence raged in Northern Ireland. And yet, during “the
Troubles” — the 30-year conflict between
Northern Ireland’s Catholics and Protestants — Noraid, an Irish-American
organization, smuggled cash for weapons to Republican terrorists waging what
they saw as Ireland’s fight for freedom.
After the
Good Friday Agreement, the guns largely fell silent in Belfast. Sinn Féin
slowly moved into the political mainstream, reinventing itself as a
parliamentary party both in the Republic of Ireland and north of the border.
Irish-America
also followed suit. Noraid was wound down; Adams was granted a visa and became
a regular fixture at the annual White House St. Patrick’s Day reception.
Even today,
Sinn Féin enjoys a sprinkle of stardust in the U.S. that it doesn’t have back
home. The party’s luminaries are frequent visitors, enjoying name recognition
that serving members of the government in Dublin can only dream of.
In 2019,
Adams was given a hero’s welcome by then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi as
she presented him with a lifetime achievement award from Irish-American
Democrats, even as then-Irish Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe looked on,
unnoticed, from the crowd.
Sinn Féin’s
current leader Mary Lou McDonald also regularly travels to the U.S., where
she’s greeted in some circles as a celebrity. In May, just weeks before
European and local elections in Ireland, she found time to squeeze in a trip to
a small Irish-American club in Massachusetts.
Irish
nationalists have also been able to rely on the support of U.S. politicians.
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton played a vital role in bringing about the
Good Friday Agreement, and key players in the U.S. Congress helped bring the
warring factions to the table and ultimately persuaded the IRA to decommission
its arms.
As the U.K.
was leaving the European Union, of which the Republic of Ireland is a member,
Pelosi intervened in the negotiations between the two sides. She told the
Conservative government in London that it could forget about a trade deal with
Washington if it allowed a hard border to be erected on the island of Ireland.
After months
of political chaos, the U.K. agreed instead to hold controversial checks
between Northern Ireland and the British mainland.
In recent
weeks, Mary Lou McDonald also wrote to Irish citizens abroad ahead of this
month’s election, urging them to ask their family and friends in Ireland to
vote Sinn Fein. “As an Irish Citizen living abroad, you should have the
opportunity to return and live, raise a family, and prosper in Ireland,” she
said, the latest effort by the party to engage the diaspora in an election
happening thousands of kilometers away.
‘A Nation
Once Again’
For
Ireland’s traditional political forces, the popularity of Sinn Féin in the U.S.
can sometimes be a source of dismay.
“The
unification project does not and should not belong to any one political party,”
Leo Varadkar, a former Irish taoiseach, or prime minister, told POLITICO. “It
belongs to all parties, civic organizations and individuals that believe in
it.”
He contends
that many Irish-Americans believe that Sinn Féin “has stronger support at home
than it does” — a reference to the fact that the party has been losing ground
in the Republic of Ireland in the run-up to this month’s election. Having
brought Sinn Féin within touching distance of government, its leader McDonald
has seen support slip away as the party has dealt with a number of personnel
scandals and struggled to articulate a policy on immigration, a key issue for
the Irish electorate in November’s election.
Varadkar, a
member of the centrist Fine Gael party who often clashed with McDonald before
he stepped down as taoiseach in March, has taken up the banner of reunification
since his resignation. In a speech in Northern Ireland in September, Varadkar
said that unification should be an “objective” and not just an “aspiration” for
whoever is in power after the election.
His
intervention is the latest indication that the unification question has moved
into the political mainstream, regardless of how Sinn Féin performs in this
election. The U.K.’s exit from the EU has also pushed the issue to the
forefront, even among the Protestant communities that historically have wanted
to remain part of Britain.
Under the
Good Friday Agreement, it’s up to London to decide whether and when to call a
referendum on whether Northern Ireland should leave the U.K. and rejoin
Ireland. In reality, it’s a decision that would be taken in conjunction with
Dublin — with input from Washington.
Richard
Neal, a member of the U.S. Congress who co-chairs the Friends of Ireland caucus
on Capitol Hill, says that the U.S. has long had an interest in what’s
happening in Ireland. “The Good Friday Agreement is one of the most-significant
American foreign policy achievements in recent memory.”
He’s bullish
that the next chapter in Irish nationhood — unity — is not far away. “That is
where this is heading,” Neal says. “The nationalist question, which has been
debated for centuries, is going to be resolved.”
“The
nationalists have to win it, but they have to also prepare for it,” he adds. As
they do, they’re sure to be able to count on their supporters across the
Atlantic.
The
Irish-American network can be relied upon to play a key role in any referendum
on the status of Northern Ireland, says Dan Mulhall, who served as Ireland’s
ambassador in Washington between 2017 and 2022.
“I think you
can expect that funding will flow toward any campaign for Irish unity,” Mulhall
says. “The Irish in America have been a factor in movements toward Irish
independence and debates about nationhood for 150 years. I don’t see that
changing.”
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