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Their day has come: Sinn Féin’s success in the Irish General election

A political earthquake has taken place in Ireland and surprisingly it was almost completely unexpected up until a few weeks ago when all commentators agreed that the election would be a contest between the two centre right parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael who have dominated Irish politics since the foundation of the state in […]

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Irish voters reject the Right: a new opportunity for the Left?

Sinn Féin, a nationalist party that sits with the left/far-left group in the European parliament and from the 1970s to ’90s was attached to an armed insurgency in Northern Ireland, won the most first-preference votes in this month’s general election in the Republic of Ireland. It now has about the same number of parliamentary seats […]

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Sinn Féin and the land issue: notes on the 2020 Irish general election

A century ago a change began in Ireland but some radical change can take centuries. An Irish Countess (married to an undocumented polish immigrant) was elected Minister for Labour for Sinn Féin. This was a first as women had yet to gain the right to vote. The US-based Irish Republican Brotherhood had pushed through an […]