Ourselves Alone: Sinn Féin Behind Closed Doors

'I don't actually need to read the tell-all account of Sinn Fein. I lead Sinn Fein. I'm very much on the inside and I know what we're at' Mary Lou McDonald

What really goes on behind closed doors in Ireland’s most secretive political party?

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 ham-fisted 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.