LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Sinn Fein
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Sinn Fein's entry into the talks today was not the first time Mr. Adams had met British officials to discuss peace. In 1972 he was released from a British jail, where he was interned as a terrorist leader, and flown to London for secret talks, with no other political parties present. The talks produced a brief cease-fire.
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[I]n that respect, Sinn Fein was very much an auxiliary of the Irish Republican Army. They were there for propaganda purposes, they were there to raise the funds, they were there to speak on behalf of the IRA, but they were very much second-cousins. They didn't command. It was the IRA who commanded. But Sinn Fein had refused to organize politcally so it was never a serious political force within the Catholic community, as evident in its refusal to stand in Parliamentary elections, whether in Westminster, Stormont or Dublin.
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[O]ver the past two years Sinn Fein has prepared its supporters for the day when the leadership will endorse the PSNI. In January Sinn Fein’s policing spokesman, Gerry Kelly, told a republican conference that ‘‘hard choices lay ahead’’ in relation to policing.
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Sinn Fein's chief burden, being identified as the IRA's "political wing," is ... the source of its strength, at least as long as the IRA's guns remain silent. Continued provocation by loyalists in the North, like the relentless pipe-bomb attacks on Catholics this past year, might still provoke the IRA to respond, though the chances are minimal. The IRA cease-fire enables Sinn Fein to compete successfully for the middle-class peace vote, especially north of the border, and to stake a claim in the South as the movement that ended the war on a just note for nationalists. Perhaps the greater burden in the South, shared by parties of the left all over the world, is how to tap the middle-class vote in a time of relative prosperity and voter comfort. For that challenge, Sinn Fein will have to find a way to link its leadership charisma and peace program to a revival of social and economic democracy.
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Adams and Sinn Fein's chief negotiator, Martin McGuinness, met with the Irish prime minister, Bertie Ahern, to say that Sinn Fein and the IRA could not do the deal. In separate interviews, the other two Irish government officials at that Dec. 6 meeting, Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern and Justice Minister Michael McDowell, said that after a three-month lull, the IRA then resumed punishment shootings and beatings. This reinforced the Irish government's view that Sinn Fein and the IRA are inextricably linked, and that violence can be turned on and off like a tap.
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The political ideas and objectives of Sinn Fein were first outlined by Irish journalist Arthur Griffith in 1905. The first Sinn Fein party (1905-1917) was a pacifist, politically insignificant party that relied primarily on the journalism of Griffith to gain support for its nationalist ideas. Foremost among these were his advocacy of a protected Irish economy, which would enable native Irish industry to flourish, and a dual monarchy, in which the British monarch would be crowned in Dublin as the king or queen of the Kingdom of Ireland. Ireland would have its own parliament in Dublin, autonomous of the British, while the two kingdoms would remain united under the British-Irish monarch.
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