Ever since Sinn Féin has been seen as a prospect to form a government in the 26 counties, comparisons have been made with Fianna Fáil in the 1932 general election, which saw the party propelled to power for the first time.
Some of the fear tactics adopted by opponents of Sinn Féin in the last election, which were similar to tactics adopted by Cumann na nGaedheal against Fianna Fáil in 1932, have by and large been jettisoned so far this time, mainly due to their ineffectiveness, as was the case almost a century ago.
The February 1932 general election was one of the most significant in the history of Ireland.
Just nine years after the ending of the Irish Civil War, Fianna Fáil’s victory resulted in the peaceful transfer of power between the two opposing sides of that conflict.
Given the retreat from democracy many European nations were experiencing in the 1930s, this was no mean feat.
Beforehand, Cumann na nGaedheal, using extremely negative tactics, tried to prevent Fianna Fáil from attaining power, painting the party as beholden to the IRA, most famously captured in its poster “The Shadow of the Gunman: Keep it from your Home”.
During the campaign, one of the government party’s candidates, sitting TD Patrick Reynolds, was shot dead in Leitrim while canvassing, as was a garda accompanying him, Patrick McGeehan.
Even though both were killed by an ex-RIC officer, Joseph Leddy, who Reynolds knew, Cumann na nGaedheal erected a poster in Claremorris in Mayo saying “Government candidate and Civic Guard shot dead in Co Leitrim. Vote for the government Party and secure peace”, implying that Fianna Fáil was somehow responsible.
Fianna Fáil issued a counter-poster describing Cumann na nGaedheal’s poster as “Unscrupulous Propaganda”.
While the tactic of painting Fianna Fáil as lawless had been partially successful in the September 1927 general election, just months after the Free State government’s Minister for Home Affairs, Kevin O’Higgins, had been assassinated, by 1932 Fianna Fáil had been the official opposition in Dáil Éireann for five years and was considered by many as more than “a slightly constitutional party”, to coin Seán Lemass’s phrase.
Cumann na nGaedheal’s charge of Fianna Fáil as a party of dangerous revolutionaries also rang hollow as it too had spawned from rebellion, with most of its senior members being comrades of Fianna Fáil members before the split that developed after the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty.
Its efforts to take advantage of the “red scare” prevalent in much of Europe at the time by linking Fianna Fáil to communism were also unsuccessful.
It claimed: “The Gunmen are voting for Fianna Fáil, the Communists are voting for Fianna Fáil”.
In one poster, Cumann na nGaedheal claimed that Fianna Fáil would introduce Bolshevism to Ireland by making “futile experiments at State Control of Industry on the Russian Model”. Another depicted Fianna Fáil’s leader Éamon de Valera working with the communist political group Saor Éire, formed by IRA members in 1931, to cheat the Irish people.
The thrust of Cumann na nGaedheal’s proposition to the electorate was that it had brought stability and law and order to the Free State after its turbulent beginnings, which would be destroyed by giving the reins of power to the people who caused that turmoil in the first place: “A Vote for the Government Party is a Vote for National Sanity. A Vote for Fianna Fáil is a Vote for National Suicide”.
While Cumann na nGaedheal dwelled on the past and its 10-year governmental record, Fianna Fáil focused on the future, proposing solutions to bread-and-butter issues affecting people, albeit many of the commitments were almost as vague as Donald Trump’s promise to fix all the problems Americans face now.
Cumann na nGaedheal’s answer to the loss of trade triggered by the 1929 Wall Street crash and the very high unemployment levels in the Free State was to claim conditions were worse in other countries.
The Labour Party’s William Norton stingingly rebuked that it was an insult to their intelligence to say “they ought to be hungry because there was hunger in China or America”.
WT Cosgrave’s party offered little in the way of how it would resolve the main issues people cared about and was duly punished at the polls, with Fianna Fáil, with the help of the Labour Party, going on to form its first government.
The 2024 election is a very difficult one to predict as the electorate is very fractured, as demonstrated by huge swings to and away from Sinn Féin in opinion polls since the last contest in 2020.
The momentum Sinn Féin experienced then – at the time of writing – appears to have, if not stalled, not gathered the same pace this time round, as have the attacks by its main rivals, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, focusing on Sinn Féin’s links to the IRA and claims of shadowy figures in Belfast retaining a vice-like grip on the party.
The fear tactics did not work in 2020 and are unlikely to do so again in 2024.
Sinn Féin has seen its popularity collapse from lofty heights of over 35% in opinion polls in 2022, best illustrated by its very poor showing at the recent local and European elections when it received less than 12% in both contests.
Undoubtedly, a large factor in the election being called and held now, instead of in early 2025, is due to the series of self-inflicted scandals that have engulfed Sinn Féin in recent weeks that have unquestionably tarnished the party’s reputation.
Sinn Féin cannot be ruled out, though, as being the largest party after the election.
As other electoral contests have shown us this year, incumbents are finding it hard to get re-elected, with cost-of-living issues bearing large in deciding the outcomes.
And as Simon Harris’s presidential-style campaign is showing, Fine Gael possesses an enormous capacity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Like 1932, people in 2024 will pay less attention to political parties who are perceived to have more skeletons in their closets, but to the parties that they believe will help them deal with their current problems.