Sinn Fein Ard Fheis: a и

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FINNEEN

LAST WEEKEND Sinn

Fein held its Ard Fheis (conference) in Dublin. It was a watershed Ard Fheis which brought the changes of the last three years to a logical conclusion by electing an entirely new national leadership.

Those who founded the Provisional Republican movement and have led it for the last-13 years, men like Rory O'Brady and David O'Connell, have been replaced by younger, left-wing, populist radicals from the North whose policies have carried the • at the last two Ard Fheisnea.

Now Gerry Adams, Westminster MP for West Belfast, replaces O'Brady as President.

Some of the bitterness of the dispute between the old Southern-based leadership and the Northerners over issues such as federalism came out at the conference, though both sides deny that a split has taken place or is likely to.

In the discussion on abstentionism - the principle which forbids elected Republicans to take their seats in the 'Partition Parliaments' in Dublin or Belfast, or at Westminster O'Brady recalled previous disputes in the Republican movement on this issue.

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seats. Martin MeGuinness said that not to fight the election on the basis of taking seats would be 'madness', , because this was the best opportunity ever' to beat the SDLP.

It is widely believed that the Adams group wants to abandon abstention generally. Such a move, however, would imply a split.

Other decisions of the conference were:

• A reference to 'Christian principles' in Sinn Fein's statement of aims was replaced by:

Irish Republican Socialist principles in accordance with the Easter proclamation of 1916 and the Democratic Programme of the first Dail in 1919'.

• Removal of the word total' from the expression of Sinn Fein's opposition to abortion. Now it is merely 'opposed'.

•Reaffirmation of last year's decision to reject federalism.

• A motion reaffirming the constitutional ban on discussion of abstention was defeated with both Adams and O'Brady voting for it.

One of the new Sinn Fein vicepresidents, trade union official Phil Flynn, once Trotskyist.

One of the most interesting points was made by Adams when he implicitly criticised the leadership and the movement in the South:

"Outside of its nationalist policy Sinn Fein has, to a great extent, been isolated in the 26 counties and, because of our almost exclusive concentration on the national question, we have failed to develop the social and economic momentum which our party began during the '60s. Othere [the Official Republicans, now the Workers Party] who abandoned central question of partition have been able to make political capital on those issues".

Thus Adams explicitly proposes to go back and pick up the threads of social policy, North and South, which the Provos who split the Republican movement in 1969-70 reacted against, in favour of old-fashioned physical-force militarist Republicanism.

The ideas of 1969-70 were represented most clearly at the conference by O'Brady when he said:

'I don't mest us to start discresing converting a revolutionary movement into a constitutional party...

«These things weigh very heavily with me as I sat on • 1978 Sinn Fein Ard Fheis Sinn Fein Ard Fheis platform as chairman with people who you road that led to it. know very well, who were later killed because of feuding between different fragmentations of this movement.

"I think people should try to educate themselves into the basic nature of this movement - we are a revolutionary move- favour against Britain. ment. We can't have one foot in enemy parliaments...

'We have those principles.

Stick by them and we'll stay together"

one central question - parti ion, 'national unification Adams and his colleagues, in contrast, hope to combine the parliaments was a matter of turn to social and community principle, and so was commitpolitics with a maintenance of ment to the idea that only physithe military struggle in the cal vet, eir gopolitics' ', would North, and thus avoid the imbalance that fractured the Republican movement in 1969-70 and prejudices and assumptions reled to the emergence of the Provos, the Officials (now Work- land at the height of the cold ers Party) and then the INLA/ war.

IRSP.

The national question, however, is to be central, and the axis of everything else.

in England and Ireland, it launched a military campaign mainly against customs posts and RUC stations in the North. The activities were very small-scale by the standards of the "70s, but they mobilised a lot of support. Abstentionist deputies were elected not only in the North, but also in the South -something Sinn Fein could not repeat today even during the hunger strike. Rory O'Brady was one of two Sinn Fein TDs.

The Fianna Fail government introduced internment in the South in 1957 to deal with the Republicans. By the end of the '50s the Border Campaign' had run out of steam. A formal ceasefire was declared in 1962.

Many activists - like David O'Connell - dropped out. The remainder analysed their defeat and reached conclusions rather like earlier Republicans of the '20s and '30s and like Adams and his colleagues today.

The concentration on the Border and on the pure military struggle alone would never call forth and organise the forces to gain a united Ireland. They began to discuss social policies and socialism, and to move both to the left and away from narrow militarism. Timidly they edged towards a break with the principle of abstention. necessary to look back over the The Republicans did this partly under the influence of former The Republican movement for perhaps undercover) memwas crushed and pulverised in bers of the British Communist World War 2, subjected to ter- Party and its Irish 'front' , the ible repression Nort and Connolly Association - Roy outh. It was discredited by it Johnstone and Tony Coughlin. active alliance with Germany, The strong Stalinist coloration in from which it hoped for aid and the Workers Party today dates Then, the '40s and from this period. early '50s, it began to revive They turned to housing action Essentially indifferent to poli Catholic civil rights in Protest- committees and agitation over tics, it was concerned with just ant-ruled Northern Ireland.

At the same time they expelled and purged traditionalists Not to go into the partitionist throughout the country, evolvWing a thoroughly Stalinist regime. Opposition to the Republican leadership often took the form of a reflex defence of militarism. (For example, the practice the movement's first dissident An Phoblacht' was a duplicated sheet publish-.

Ire- ed after 1967 from Cork by people who seem eventually to have. made their way to the IRSP).

After a series of raids for arms Then the North blew up. In