Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, Ireland’s Provisional Sinn Féin party – more commonly known as simply just Sinn Féin – has been hailed internationally as a revolutionary, anti-imperialist organisation, one whose military wing had brought the British Government to heel following three decades of guerrilla conflict, obtaining equal rights for the north of Ireland’s Nationalist community and laying the groundwork for a United Ireland in the process.
Events over the past several years however, such as the party’s attendance at a St. Patrick’s Day celebration in the White House amidst the “Israeli” genocide in Gaza, and their response to protestors demonstrating against ultra-liberal immigration policies in the southern Irish state, have begun to shine a light on the true nature of the party whose name translates to “We ourselves.” A nature that I intend to explore in this article
In 1969, the north of Ireland was in the grip of increasing violence. Three years beforehand, on the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Rising, in which Irish rebels seized the General Post Office and other key sites around Dublin, Loyalists – those who wished to remain under British rule and who were descended mainly from English and Scottish settlers planted in the region in the 17th century – formed the Ulster Volunteer Force in response, fearing that Republican commemorations would see a resurgence from the IRA, an effectively dormant organisation at the time. As such, Nationalist civilians were the ones who bore the brunt of UVF attacks, being murdered in drive-by shootings and other random attacks in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
The campaign to achieve civil rights for the north of Ireland’s Nationalist community, inspired by the US civil rights campaign and student protests taking place in France at the time, was established the following year in 1967, being beaten and pepper-sprayed by Unionist police forces every time it took to the streets. With the northern statelet effectively acting hand-in-glove with the Loyalist death squads through a state-sanctioned policy of collusion also, the situation was fast becoming untenable for the Nationalist community. The southern Irish state, having called off a planned military intervention to protect Irish communities due to a lack of adequate military infrastructure, left the besieged Nationalist community in the north of Ireland to look towards the IRA as their last remaining line of defence. Amidst the outbreak of violence, the organisation would soon split on what path to take.
One camp, possessing a more Trotskyist ethos, envisaged both communities in the north of Ireland uniting on the basis of socioeconomic class in a prelude to the establishment of a Workers Republic; a scenario that, in the context of the time, was unfeasible to the point of delusion.The other favoured a more militant, nationalistic approach, settling for nothing less than full British withdrawal from Ireland and the establishment of an Irish Republic in line with the 1916 Proclamation.
In December 1969, the IRA split on the issue of abstentionism, the traditional Republican stance of refusing to take seats in either parliament in Ireland, seeing both of them as neo-colonial pro-British institutions. The former camp voted in favor of ending the policy, going on to form a faction known as the Official IRA, whereas the traditional Republicans voted to retain it, reorganising the IRA as the Provisional IRA (in reference to the Provisional Government declared in the 1916 Proclamation) in the process. One month later, at the annual Sinn Féin Ard Fheis (“high assembly” the annual party conference) Sinn Féin also split on similar lines, with both Official and Provisional Sinn Féin aligning themselves to their respective military wings in the aftermath.
As the violence in the north of Ireland continued, it would be the Provisional IRA who began to attract new members. This was mainly due to the organisation taking on a far more offensive role than the Official IRA, who sought mainly to only use force in the defence of Nationalist communities. British repression and atrocities, such as the August 1971 Ballymurphy massacre in Belfast, in which ten civilians were shot dead by the British army over the space of 36 hours, continued to inadvertently serve as a recruiting tool for the Provisionals. The policy of collusion between the British state and Loyalist death squads became more entrenched in December of that year, when the Military Reaction Force, a clandestine British military unit, organized for security cordons to be cleared in the New Lodge, a Nationalist area of Belfast, in order to allow a UVF team to bomb a local pub, McGurk’s Bar, killing 15 civilians.
The MRF’s purpose was to spark a conflict between the IRA and Loyalist paramilitaries, thus drawing Republicans attention away from Crown Forces. To carry this strategy out, the unit murdered Nationalist civilians in drive-by shootings whilst posing as Loyalists. The McGurk’s Bar bombing marked the beginning of a formal relationship between British security services and Loyalist death squads however, in a conflict that was soon set to escalate even further.
In January 1972, the British Parachute Regiment opened fire on a civil rights demonstration in the city of Derry. Of the 26 people shot, 13 died on the day, with more than half of them being teenagers aged between 17 and 19. Another man succumbed to his injuries four months later. Many of the victims sustained gunshot wounds to the back as they had been shot while running away or assisting others. Bloody Sunday proved to be a turning point in the conflict, marking the end of the civil rights campaign and the full-on embrace of militant Republicanism by the north of Ireland’s Nationalist community.
The British Embassy in Dublin was burnt to the ground in the aftermath. The Official IRA bombed the Parachute Regiment’s Aldershot headquarters three weeks later in retaliation, botching the operation, resulting in the deaths of civilian staff rather than the intended target of British military officers. The organization declared a permanent ceasefire shortly afterwards. Recruitment to the Provisional IRA, already on the increase in the preceding years, grew exponentially.
Receiving significant arms shipments from Irish-American support networks and Colonel Muammar Gadaffi’s fledgling Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, the IRA significantly stepped up its campaign to end British rule in the north of Ireland in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday, launching a highly-effective bombing campaign in Britain targeting political, military and economic targets. The aim being to make it financially untenable for Britain to remain in Ireland.
Knowing that countering this strategy militarily would play into the IRA’s hands, the British adopted a three-pronged approach, Ulsterisation, Normalisation, and Crimininalisation.
Ulsterisation saw the heavily-militarized RUC police force in the north of Ireland, alongside the locally-recruited Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), given the main role in tackling the IRA in the north of Ireland rather than the British Army. In turn, this allowed the British government to implement Normalisation i.e the portrayal of the conflict as a provincial dispute rather than a war on the British state by the IRA. To complete this strategy, captured IRA Volunteers were stripped of their de facto recognition as political prisoners, with Secretary of State Merlyn Rees signing a decree in 1976 that ended Special Category status for Republican prisoners in the north of Ireland and Britain.
In response, prisoners in Country Antrim’s Long Kesh prison began the Blanket Protest, in which they refused to wear the prison-issued uniforms, seeing it as criminalisation of their struggle, and used their cell blankets to clothe themselves instead. The intransigence of the British state in dealing with the prisoners’ demands, as well as the inhumane treatment they were subjected to, eventually culminated in a hunger strike in late 1980, in which seven Republican prisoners refused food for 53 days, with their protest called off before Christmas that year. This was due to an intervention by the Catholic Primate of Ireland and a deal supposedly on the table that would have met the majority of their demands. When it soon became apparent that this would not be the case, a second hunger strike was launched in March 1981, this time gaining worldwide attention.
Over the course of several months, the world looked on as ten Republican prisoners, seven from the IRA and three from the INLA – a militant Marx-Leninist offshoot of the Official IRA formed in 1974 – died in agony rather than be labelled as criminals. It was a protest that would garner sympathy worldwide. It would also send the IRA’s political wing on the reformist trajectory that is seen today.
One month after beginning the hunger strike, Bobby Sands, the most well-known of its participants, was elected as an MP on the traditional Republican basis of abstaining from taking seats in Stormont. It would prove to be a massive propaganda-coup, resulting in Britain passing the Representation of the People Act, which forbade anyone serving a prison sentence of more than one year from standing in a British election. Noticing the impact of Sands’ electoral success, an emerging cadre in Sinn Féin, led by Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, pushed for the adoption of the “Armalite and Ballot Box” strategy at that year’s Ard Fheis, held weeks after the official end of the hunger strike in October 1981.
Envisaging the political campaign for a United Ireland to be given the same standing as the military campaign, the strategy was adopted by the Republican Movement. Another motion passed at the event calling for the dropping of the Éire Nua (New Ireland) policy, which envisaged a decentralised Federal Ireland based on its four provinces, in an Ard Fheis that would see the sidelining of Sinn Féin President and Vice President, Ruairi Ó Brádaigh and Dáithi Ó Conaill, authors of the Éire Nua document and two of the main architects behind the re-organisation of the IRA following the 1969 split.
Indeed, both Ó Brádaigh and Ó Conaill would ultimately resign from their leadership positions following the dropping of Éire Nua, being replaced by Adams and McGuinness in 1983, who continued to lead the Movement on an incrementally reformist path.
Three years later, a motion was put forward at the 1986 Ard Fheis to drop the policy of abstentionism towards the southern Leinster House parliament – seen as a neo-colonial pro-British institution by traditional Republicans – and for Sinn Féin members to take seats if elected. Despite fierce protest from Ó Brádaigh, who gave an almost prophetic speech at the event, outlining how entering Leinster House would eventually lead to entering the northern Stormont parliament and creating an internal political settlement in the six counties rather than a British withdrawal, the motion passed.
In response, both Ó Brádaigh and Ó Conaill staged a walkout from the event, arguing that as the Sinn Féin constitution expressly forbade the promotion of entering either parliament in Ireland, the Adams and McGuinness faction had effectively expelled themselves from the organisation. They re-organized the party as Republican Sinn Féin, which still promotes the Éire Nua document to this day. However, as has already been stated, in general Irish political discourse, the name Sinn Féin is usually associated with the larger Provisional Sinn Féin faction, who continued to direct grassroots Republicans on an incrementally reformist path.
Six months after the 1986 Ard Fheis, in May 1987, eight Provisional IRA Volunteers were summarily executed by the SAS on their way to attack an RUC barracks in the village of Loughall, County Armagh. Two civilians who passed by the scene were also gunned down by the British unit, with only one surviving. It later emerged that British intelligence had advance knowledge of this attack, likely through an informant, and had ample opportunity to arrest the men in advance.
This would be significant as it would later emerge that the IRA Volunteers killed on the night were some of the organisation’s most militant, and had planned for a massive escalation of the conflict intended to make rural parts of the north of Ireland ungovernable. It appeared that a plan was in place to remove members of the Republican Movement that would be the most likely to be vehemently opposed to the reformist trajectory it was being directed upon.
Indeed, one year later in March 1988, three more IRA Volunteers were gunned down by the SAS on the British island colony of Gibraltar. Similar to Loughall, the opportunity to arrest the Republicans was present beforehand, and the three were also regarded as particularly militant.
Six short years later in 1994, the Provisional IRA declared a ceasefire, something that its political wing presented as a victory, in spite of the fact that no guarantee of a British withdrawal was presented. Although this was temporarily suspended in 1996, with a devastating truck bomb in London’s Canary Wharf, the organisation went on permanent ceasefire in 1997. This came as a result of its adoption of the Mitchell Principles, a commitment to non-violence named after US Senator George Mitchell, heavily involved in the negotiations that led to the Provisional IRA’s surrender. The following year, Provisional Sinn Féin signed the Belfast Agreement, commonly known as the Good Friday Agreement, which legitimized British rule in the north of Ireland. They entered the newly re-established Stormont parliament shortly afterwards, where they would administer British laws alongside Unionists. Ruairi Ó Brádaigh’s predictions from twelve years previously had come to pass. In 2005, the Provisional IRA decommissioned its vast arsenal of weaponry.
Provisional Sinn Féin continued on its reformist path, becoming unrecognisable to the party of the same name from decades earlier. In 2007, they officially recognized the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the same heavily-militarized police force that their military wing had targeted just two decades earlier, and would go on to sit on policing boards in the occupied six counties. In 2009, Provisional Sinn Féin Vice President Martin McGuinness – long suspected of being a British agent – stood side-by-side with the head of this very force and denounce Republicans as “traitors to Ireland” following two separate military operations in the north of Ireland that resulted in the deaths of one RUC member and two British soldiers. Three years later, he shook the British Queen’s hand at a meeting in Belfast as part of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations.
Aligning themselves to British interests would subsequently lead to Provisional Sinn Féin also becoming cheerleaders of the globalist interests promoted by both Downing Street, and the southern Irish state that they had recognized in 1986.
In 2015, Provisional Sinn Féin threw its weight behind the campaign to legalise same sex marriage in the south of Ireland, which subsequently passed in an referendum in May of that year. This was in stark contrast to the party of the same name from decades previously.
Seán Mac Stíofáin, the IRA’s first Chief of Staff following its 1969 reorganisation, was a devout Roman Catholic, notably being suspended from Sinn Féin in the 1960s for refusing to distribute copies its newspaper that carried an article criticizing the practice of reciting a decade of the Rosary at Republican commemorations. The article had been penned by Roy Johnston, an academic that was instrumental in pushing Sinn Féin towards a Trotskyite path in the run-up to the 1969/70 split, in which Johnston sided with Official Sinn Féin. A party that ironically, Provisional Sinn Féin was now becoming indistinguishable from in terms of policy.
Three years on from the same sex marriage campaign, Provisional Sinn Féin supported the George Soros-financed campaign to legalise abortion in the south of Ireland. Despite the party having a 30+ history of abandoning its principles at this stage, it was its pro-abortion stance that ultimately proved to be a step too far for some. Two parliament representatives as well as a former one resigned from the party as a result.
The vote to legalize abortion subsequently passed in May 2018, and it entered into law in January 2019. 6,666 abortions were carried out in Ireland that year. A suitably Satanic figure, and a far cry from Bobby Sands’ famed quote “Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.” Both same sex marriage and abortion were subsequently legalised in the north of Ireland in 2020, again with the support of Provisional Sinn Féin.
In November 2022, up to 400 male migrants were moved into a disused office block in East Wall, a working-class neighbourhood in inner city Dublin. In response, local residents began weekly protests at the site, citing the unsuitability of the chosen location, the lack of consultation with community representatives beforehand, and the lack of transparency on whether the men placed in the office block had been subject to proper vetting beforehand. Such demonstrations soon became a mainstay throughout the entirety of Ireland, as significant numbers of male migrants were placed into urban working-class areas and small rural villages.
As well as the devaluing of labor through market saturation, mass-immigration is also used to push a divide-and-conquer strategy amongst the working-class through the mixing of vast amounts of people from different religious, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds. An approach that inevitably leads to a breakdown in social cohesion, a pretext is then created for the government-corporate alliance to consolidate their power through the introduction of authoritarian laws in response.
Examples include the aftermath of the Dublin riots in November 2023, which followed the stabbing of three schoolchildren and their teacher in central Dublin by an immigrant previously subjected to a deportation order. In response to the unrest that swept the Irish capital following the attack, then “Justice” Minister Helen McEntee announced the introduction of Facial Recognition Technology laws, a key component of the World Economic Forum’s envisaged Fourth Industrial Revolution.
In Britain and the north of Ireland last Summer, riots also swept the streets following the deaths of three children in a machete attack by Axel Rudakubana, born in Cardiff to Rwandan parents. The sweeping response by Downing Street that followed saw arrests made for social media posts, following a directive by Britain’s leading prosecutor. In December, arch-globalist Tony Blair penned an op-ed for the Daily Mail, envisaging a mandatory Digital ID in response to immigration concerns, which in line with the Facial Recognition Laws envisaged in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, lays the groundwork the dystopian digital surveillance state that the 4IR ultimately entails.
Despite their claims of being a revolutionary Irish Republican party, Provisional Sinn Féin would join in the chorus of condemnation towards demonstrators protesting against the immigration policies of Leinster House, labelling them as “far-right” in line with the government they’re supposedly in opposition to. The party also took part in demonstrations that were in favor of current immigration policy, and which received massive support from the Irish political and media class, a stark contrast to Provisional Sinn Féin’s claims of being an anti-establishment party.
On top of their betrayal to an Ireland free of British and globalist influence, 2024 was the year it became apparent to onlookers that Provisional Sinn Féin had also abandoned its supposed commitment to the Palestinian cause. With Ireland being renowned throughout the world for its support for Palestine, owing to a strikingly similar history of occupation and plantation in both countries, an opportunity was present for Provisional Sinn Féin to perform a striking display of solidarity with the people of Gaza and by boycotting the annual White House St.Patrick’s Day celebration due to US support for the “Israeli” genocide.
Unsurprisingly, with Provisional Sinn Féin heavily reliant on US donors, the party decided to go ahead with the White House visit. This would not be the first time they refused to stand in solidarity with Palestine. In 2013, Caterpillar, the US construction firm responsible for providing “Israeli” forces with the machinery used to demolish Palestinian homes in Gaza and the West Bank, including the bulldozer used in the death of US peace activist Rachel Corrie in 2003, announced a £7m investment in its operations in the north of Ireland, with £1.2m being contributed by the Stormont government.
Not only would Provisional Sinn Féin fail to oppose this arrangement in solidarity with Palestine, they would actively support it, with Martin McGuinness officially announcing the deal on a visit to Caterpillar’s headquarters in Illinois. Three years later, the party held ‘under the radar’ meetings with Likud, drawing widespread condemnation from Palestinian activists, with Netanyahu’s party overseeing an onslaught in Gaza only two years beforehand.
Provisional Sinn Féin’s refusal to boycott the White House amidst the genocide in Gaza that followed the launch of Al-Aqsa Flood, was perhaps the most mask-off moment thus far relating to the party’s abandonment of the Palestinian cause, with perhaps the notable incident being the removal of two Palestinians from a meeting in Belfast chaired by the Palestinian Authority, a native body that colludes with the Israeli occupation to administer a proxy government in the West Bank since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. Something that bears a stark similarity to the party that Provisional Sinn Féin has ultimately become.
