Ourselves Alone: Sinn Féin Behind Closed Doors

Long defined by message control and secrecy, Sinn Féin has rarely allowed
outsiders a glimpse behind the curtain. Ourselves Alone, by former
communications adviser and party spokesperson, Siobhán Fenton, is therefore
a unique insight into its inner workings.

Fenton’s recruitment in 2020 reflected Sinn Féin’s ambition to broaden its
appeal as it pushed toward government in the Republic. A Belfast native with a
career in Northern Irish and British media, and no republican pedigree, Fenton
was an unlikely insider. What she found - watching the leadership shape policy
and strategy, dealing with the fall-out when these unravelled - was not the slick
political machine many assumed, but an organisation grappling with the same
pressures, misjudgements, and human frailties as any other, stresses that
would eventually prove ruinous for its hopes.

Charting the years when Sinn Féin seemed poised for power, with Mary Lou
McDonald set to become Ireland’s first female Taoiseach, Fenton traces how its
momentum faltered. Particularly revealing is her account of the party’s hamfisted
response to the Dublin riots, a critical turning point. With nuance and
candour, she recounts strategic missteps, the strains on its leadership, and her
own role in a project that lost its way.

Part political memoir, part insider history, Ourselves Alone is an illuminating
portrait of a pivotal moment in modern Irish politics-and of a party confronting
the limits of its own myth-making.