Sinn Fein

Fighting rebel Sinn Fein members, Dublin, 1922. Following the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, a bitter civil war ensued between the faction of the IRA that accepted the partition of Ireland, and the more radical splinter group that was against it.

Irish political party founded in 1905, whose aim is the creation of a united republican Ireland. The driving political force behind Irish nationalism between 1916 and 1921, Sinn Fein returned to prominence with the outbreak of violence (‘the Troubles’) in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s, when it split into ‘Provisional’ and ‘Official’ wings at the same time as the Irish Republican Army (IRA), with which it is closely associated. From the late 1970s ‘Provisional’ Sinn Fein took on a more active political role, putting up candidates to stand in local and national elections. Sinn Fein won two seats in the 1997 UK general election and one seat in the 1997 Irish general election. In the 2001 UK general election, it increased its number of seats to four. Gerry Adams became party president in 1978. Sinn Fein took part in the multiparty negotiations (known as the Stormont Talks) and became a signatory of the agreement reached on Good Friday, 10 April 1998. The party gained 17.6% of votes in the June 1998 elections to the 108-seat Belfast assembly. In September a historic meeting between Gerry Adams and the Ulster Unionist leader, David Trimble, took place at Stormont; Sinn Fein also agreed to appoint a contact with the international body overseeing the decommissioning of arms – the party's chief negotiator, Martin McGuinness. In October 2001 Gerry Adams made an unprecedented plea to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) to proceed with decommissioning in order to save the peace process and the devolved power-sharing administration of Northern Ireland from collapse; on 22 October it was verified that the IRA had put some arms beyond use.

Sinn Fein was founded by Arthur Griffith (1872–1922). Éamon de Valera became its president in 1917. Sinn Fein MPs won a majority of the Irish seats in the 1918 UK general election, set up a secessionist Dáil (Irish parliament) in Dublin, and declared Irish independence in January 1919. The party split over the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty which created the Irish Free State and partitioned Ireland. The refusal of a section of Sinn Fein, led by de Valera, to accept the terms of the treaty, led to armed conflict between his followers and the forces of the new Free State. In the aftermath of the Irish Civil War, Sinn Fein pursued a policy of abstention from the Dáil. The party rapidly declined in importance after Éamon de Valera resigned the presidency of Sinn Fein to form his new Fianna Fáil party in 1926.

Talks in 1993 between Provisional Sinn Fein and the moderate nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) on achieving a non-violent political settlement in Northern Ireland were followed by the Downing Street Declaration by the British and Irish prime ministers (December 1993), and the IRA ceasefire of August 1994. In May 1995 Sinn Fein involved in the first talks with British government officials since 1973, but ‘peace process’ remained deadlocked over Sinn Fein's refusal to accept the demands of the British government and the Ulster Unionists, that all-party talks could not proceed until the IRA had begun decommissioning their arms. The IRA ceasefire ended in February 1996 with a renewed IRA bombing campaign in London.

Sinn Fein won the seats of West Belfast and Mid-Ulster in the May 1997 UK general election, though neither of their elected MPs, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, was permitted to take up his seat in the Westminster Parliament because of their refusal to swear the traditional oath of allegiance to the British crown. Sinn Fein won a further seat (Monaghan) in the June 1997 Republic of Ireland general election, when Caoimhghin O'Caolain became Sinn Fein's first Dáil TD (MP) since IRA hunger strikers won seats in 1981 and four abstentionist candidates won seats in 1957. The British Labour government made clear its wish for Sinn Fein to participate in all-party talks on the political future of Northern Ireland, provided that the IRA declared another ceasefire. A second IRA ceasefire was duly declared in July 1997, though Unionists remained opposed to Sinn Fein participating in all-party negotiations without the IRA having first decommissioned their weapons. Although the IRA maintained that its ceasefire was intact, the killings of loyalists resulted in Sinn Fein's temporary exclusion from the all-party talks in early 1998. In February, however, the party returned to the negotiations (known as the Stormont Talks) and became a signatory of the agreement reached on Good Friday, 10 April 1998. It secured 18 of the 108 seats in the new Northern Ireland Assembly, elected in June 1998.

Sinn Fein on 10 May 1998 decided to opt for involvement in a new Northern Ireland government. A special ard fheis (conference) voted overwhelmingly in favour of changing the party's decades-old constitution. The vote cleared the way for Sinn Fein members, for the first time in their history, to take their seats in the new Belfast assembly which would be established under the Good Friday agreement. The party also decided, by a large majority, to call for a ‘Yes’ vote in the two referendums, north and south, which were to be held on the agreement on 22 May.

The Sinn Fein executive appealed to the hearts as well as the minds of the delegates, charging them up with a series of emotional welcomes for freed prisoners and others on temporary release. The conference gave a rapturous welcome to four members of the Balcombe Street gang, who had been released for the day from an Irish jail where they had recently been transferred after serving 23 years in England. All of the freed prisoners made strong speeches in favour of the agreement. On 22 May the agreement was voted in by the people of Ireland in the north and the south.