Sinn FéinIrish “We Ourselves” or “Ourselves Alone”political wing of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). Sinn Féin, organized in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, is a nationalist party in Northern Ireland, representing Roman Catholics who want to achieve a united Ireland through whatever means are necessary, including violence. The party was led by Gerry Adams from 1983.

The early history of Sinn Féin is closely associated with Arthur Griffith, leader of the Society of Gaels (Cumann na nGaedheal). At a meeting in Dublin in October 1902, the Society formally adopted Griffith’s policy of “Sinn Féin,” which included passive resistance to the British, withholding of taxes, and the establishment of an Irish ruling council and independent local courts. By 1905 the name Sinn Féin had been transferred from the policy to its adherents.

Sinn Féin was of little importance until the Easter Rising in Dublin (1916), after which it became the rallying point for extreme nationalist sentiment, referred to as Republicanism. The unequivocal demand by Sinn Féin’s leader, Eamon de Valera, for a united and independent Ireland won the party 73 of the 105 Irish seats in the British Parliament in 1918. Sinn Féin members of Parliament met in Dublin in January 1919 and declared themselves the parliament of an Irish republic, setting up a provisional government to rival Ireland’s British administration.

The ensuing Irish War of Independence (1919–21) between the IRA and the British army was ended by the Anglo-Irish Treaty (1921), which was negotiated by representatives of Sinn Féin—most notably Michael Collins—and British officials, including Prime Minister David Lloyd George. The treaty did not grant Ireland full independence, however. Twenty-six of the 32 counties of Ireland became the Irish Free State, which held dominion status within the British Empire until its withdrawal from the Commonwealth in 1949; the remaining six counties, sometimes referred to as the province of Ulster, continued to be part of the United Kingdom. The treaty split Sinn Féin into two factions, one supporting the treaty under the leadership of Collins and the other opposing the treaty under Eamon de Valera. The two sides fought against each other in the Irish Civil War (1922–23), which ended in the defeat of the anti-treaty forces.

In 1926, after a dispute concerning the conditions under which Sinn Féin would take part in elections for the Dáil, de Valera resigned as Sinn Féin leader and founded the Fianna Fáil party, which absorbed most of Sinn Féin’s original membership. In the election of 1927, Sinn Féin earned only 2.7 percent of the seats in the Dáil and did not campaign again until 1957, when it won 2.6 percent of the seats—which it refused to take—in the Dáil of the Republic of Ireland.

Reacting to sectarian violence in Northern Ireland beginning in the late 1960s, local units of the IRA were organized to defend Catholic communities in the province. Following a party conference in Dublin in 1969, Sinn Féin split again over the question of whether to support the IRA’s use of violence to protect Catholics in Northern Ireland and end British control there. Whereas the “Official” wing of the party, which was later renamed the Workers’ Party, emphasized political and parliamentary tactics and rejected violence after 1972, the “Provisional” wing, or Provos, believed that violence—particularly terrorism—was necessary and justified. This split was paralleled in the IRA, which also divided into official and provisional factions.

Although a registered party in Ireland, Sinn Féin was banned in the United Kingdom until 1974. Because many of its leaders were thought to be members of the IRA, the party was subject to expulsion orders and broadcasting bans in both the United Kingdom and Ireland. In the early 1980s Sinn Féin began to emphasize political and parliamentary tactics, adopting a strategy later known as “the ballot and the Armalite” (rifle). In 1981 the party decided to take the seats it had won in local councils in Northern Ireland. In the same year a series of dramatic hunger strikes by Republican prisoners in which 10 men died (8 7 of whom were IRA members) generated sympathy for the Republican cause and helped to increase Sinn Féin’s popularity among Catholics in Northern Ireland. The election of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands to the British Parliament demonstrated the popularity of Republicanism. In elections for the Northern Ireland assembly in 1982, Sinn Féin won 10 percent of the vote, a level of support it largely retained until it won 16 percent in the 1997 general elections. In 1983 party leader Gerry Adams, a principal architect of the ballot-and-Armalite strategy, was elected president of Sinn Féin.

In 1986 Sinn Féin chose to take the seats it had won in the Dáil, though it continued to abstain from participation in the British Parliament. Two years later the party began sometimes secret negotiations with John Hume, leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), Sinn Féin’s chief rival as the voice of Irish nationalism, and in 1993 Adams and Hume issued a joint statement of principles for a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Northern Ireland. The statement presented Sinn Féin in a new light, though the party continued to be associated with high-profile acts of paramilitary violence. In 1994 Adams was granted a visa by U.S. President Bill Clinton, a decision that encouraged the IRA to declare a cease-fire later that year, according to Adams. Eventually, Sinn Féin was permitted to establish a branch in the United States, Friends of Sinn Féin, and to raise money there on the basis of its professed commitment to democracy and nonviolence. In 1997, after the IRA reinstated a cease-fire it had declared in 1994, Sinn Féin was permitted to join multiparty peace talks.

The talks resulted in the Good Friday Agreement (April 1998) on steps leading to a new power-sharing government in Northern Ireland. The IRA made some critical concessions, including its agreement that the Republic of Ireland should change its constitution to remove a territorial claim to Northern Ireland and that Northern Ireland should remain part of the United Kingdom for as long as the majority of its population so desired. Sinn Féin endorsed the agreement and campaigned aggressively for its acceptance in referenda that were passed in Northern Ireland and the republic in May. In elections to the new Northern Ireland Assembly, Sinn Féin won nearly 18 percent of the vote and took 18 seats. The party’s participation in the Northern Ireland Executive Committee, the new executive body of the province, was impeded by conflicts over the timing and extent of IRA decommissioning (disarmament), which had been a key provision of the Good Friday accords. In May 2000 the IRA agreed to permit international inspection of its arms dumps, thereby clearing the way for Sinn Féin’s full inclusion in the Executive when it was granted authority by the British government in June. As the fourth largest party in the assembly, Sinn Féin held two ministerial positions in the Executive.

Sinn Féin’s participation in the political process boosted its support among Northern Ireland’s Roman Catholics, many of whom were impatient with the pace of political change. Traditionally the second largest nationalist party, Sinn Féin secured more votes than the SDLP and captured four seats in the House of Commons in 2001. Subsequently, its members of Parliament, who refused to take an oath of allegiance to the British monarch and thus could not take their seats in the House of Commons, were granted the use of parliamentary offices for the first time. In May 2002 Sinn Féin had its best showing in elections in the Republic of Ireland, winning five seats and 6.5 percent of first-preference votes. The following month Sinn Féin’s Alex Maskey was elected Belfast’s first Republican lord mayor.

In subsequent elections Sinn Féin solidified its status as the largest nationalist party. In the elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2003, Sinn Féin won 24 seats to the SDLP’s 18, and in the British general election in 2005 it increased its seats in the House of Commons by one, for a total of five. In a landmark vote in January 2007, Sinn Féin members agreed to support Northern Ireland’s Protestant-dominated police force. In the subsequent elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly in March 2007, Sinn Féin easily outdistanced the SDLP, increasing its share of the vote to 26 percent (to the SDLP’s 15 percent) and winning 28 seats (to the SDLP’s 16); the Protestant Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) finished first overall with 36 seats. Sinn Féin and the DUP later reached a historic agreement to form a power-sharing government. On May 8, 2007, Ian Paisley of the DUP and Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin were sworn in as first minister and deputy first minister, respectively. Later that month, however, Sinn Féin fared poorly in the elections to the Dáil, capturing just four seats.

Policy and structure

Sinn Féin seeks the unification of the 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland and the six counties of Northern Ireland in a democratic-socialist Irish republic. Beginning in the 1960s, the party advocated British withdrawal from and demilitarization of Northern Ireland and protested the treatment of nationalists in the province by the British government, the British army, and the largely Protestant police force. Throughout its history Sinn Féin supported freedom fighters in other parts of the world, and until the late 1990s it condemned the trend toward European unification. As the political component of the Republican movement became more important, the party developed positions on a number of issues, including women’s rights, the environment, the economy, agriculture, and prisons.

Sinn Féin is represented in all counties of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and is extremely well-organized at the local level. Its annual conference (Ard Fheis) brings together delegates from all local branches to discuss party policy and to elect officers. The party’s regular business is handled by a central committee (Ard Chomhairle), which meets at least once a month and consists of party officers and nine members selected at the Ard Fheis (one-quarter of the Central Committee’s members must be women). The Central Committee has an eight-member standing committee, known as the Coiste Seasta. Most of Sinn Fein’s supporters are relatively young.