IN June 2016, Mid and East Antrim council employed contractors to enter the majority nationalist village of Carnlough on the Antrim coast in the middle of the night and destroy a republican monument that had been illegally erected a few months previously to mark the centenary of the Easter Rising.

At the time, the Sinn Féin MLA for the area, Oliver McMullan, bitterly condemned the incident.

The unionist majority on the council had never countenanced destroying any of the plethora of loyalist memorials dotted across the area.

Indeed, just a few years earlier, the same unionist parties on the then Larne Borough Council (before it merged to form the new authority) had voted to erect a large crown at a roundabout without any prior planning approval.

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The Carnlough decision amounted to a statement by unionist parties to nationalists that they really should know their place.

There are few – if any – personalities from the conflict in the latter half of the 20th century held in greater esteem amongst the broad republican community than Bobby Sands. Only Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams would be viewed as an equal in terms of historical status.

Sands’s leadership during the hunger strike period, his election as an MP, and ultimately the manner of his death make him an iconic figure. The political and electoral legacy of the hunger strike he led was the rise of Sinn Féin, the Anglo-Irish Agreement and political talks that lead to the ceasefires.

The furore over the Bobby Sands statue caught republicans unaware because they naively continue to ignore the extent to which political unionism is committed to both fighting a war on our past and ensuring unionism retains a dominant position within northern Irish society.

Pointing out the sheer scale of unionist hypocrisy is not difficult. Illegal loyalist memorials and monuments abound across the city of Belfast and beyond, with some loyalist bands that accompany unionist politicians on loyal order parades also involved in explicitly UDA, UVF and RHC parades to these memorials and monuments at various times of the year.

The nationalist and republican base is growing restless because they perceive the DUP and TUV to be in a state of constant agitation against nationalism, with Sinn Féin appearing to be either unwilling or incapable of effectively countering this aggression.

The ‘First Minister for All’ mantra has been carefully cultivated by Michelle O’Neill not simply because it is the right thing to do in a divided society, but also because it helped electorally expand Sinn Féin’s support, which remains apparent in polling as comfortably the most popular party in the north.

But it should not come at the expense of blunting the party’s capacity to strategise effectively to counter unionism.

Warning bells should be ringing for a number of reasons. Sinn Féin has experienced a sharp drop in polls from around 30% to now below 25%, and, more importantly, there is a persistent and growing murmur of discontent within its grassroots and membership about the perceived failure to effectively articulate and develop policy at Stormont and also critique the performance and positions of unionist ministers.

Sinn Féin’s media strategy is simply bizarre. They are absent too often from public debates and have not been effective at shaping the daily media narrative, nor consistently being present and vocal to counter unionist attempts to do so.

Change is needed, and there is a sense that the change must involve personnel – both public-facing and in the engine room of advisors and policy personnel – to breathe new life into the party.

Sinn Féin is fortunate enough to be able to ponder taking such steps at a time when it remains, unquestionably, in a healthy electoral position, not least relative to others.

But the fear must be that a failure to act now, and to do so decisively, could lead to a further erosion in its electoral base, leaving it having to move on addressing the evident need for change at a later time, when its mandate and political power and influence has been diminished.

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© The Irish News