Sinn Féin

Sinn Fein (Irish, "we ourselves"; "ourselves alone") is an Irish Republican political party committed to the unification of [[Republic of Ireland, breaking all ties with the United Kingdom. It has strong links with the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and is sometimes referred to as its political wing.

It is now strongest in Northern Ireland, where it polls around 15% of the vote, competing with the constitutional nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) for the overwhelmingly Catholic anti-Unionist third or more of the electorate.

Formed in November 1905 as an all-Ireland movement, Sinn Fein gained massive support among Ireland's Catholic majority following the backlash against the British authorities' execution (May 1916) of most of the leaders of the Republican Easter Rising. It won 70% of Ireland's seats in the British parliament at the election of December 1918, but subsequently underwent successive splits (1922, 1926 and 1970).

Following the conclusion (December 1921) of the Irish Free State Agreement for the independence of 26 of Ireland's 32 counties within the British Empire, Sinn Fein divided into "pro-treaty" and "anti-treaty" factions, which fought the brief but bitter Irish Civil War (June 1922-April 1923]]. The victorious pro-treaty "Free Staters" subsequently formed their own party, Cumann na nGael, merging in the 1930s into Fine Gael.

Forced to abandon armed action in the Free State, the movement split again with the departure (March 1926) of its leader Eamon De Valera and fellow advocates of participation in constitutional politics, who subsequently founded the Fianna Fáil party and entered the Irish parliament (Dáil Eireann) the following year, forming a government in 1932.

After offmore (January 1970), with a more militant Provisional wing (complemented by the newly-formed Provisional IRA) forming in opposition to the Dublin-based Official Sinn Fein, later the Workers Party.

With the Officials' repudiation of armed action in 1972, Provisional Sinn Fein became the political voice of northern Republicans who saw IRA attacks as the means of forcing an end to British rule, domination by the overwhelmingly Protestant Ulster Unionist Party and discrimination against the northern Nationalist (in effect Catholic) community.

Nationalist revulsion at the deaths of ten IRA hunger-strikers in British prisons in 1981 gave Sinn Fein a springboard into electoral politics in the north. Under the presidency (from November 1983) of Gerry Adams, its leaders sought to explore wider political engagement, resulting in the 1990s Northern Ireland peace process. The Provisionals meanwhile became simply Sinn Fein with the Officials' abandonment of the name.

The party has been committed to constitutional politics since the Good Friday Agreement of April 1998, though the failure of the IRA to decommission its arms in a manner acceptable to Unionist leaders led to repeated suspensions of the peace process. The IRA finally started decomissioning arms after the attacks of September 11, 2001 resulted in increased United States pressure to move the process on and the evaporation of much of the support previously enjoyed in the U.S.