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French Revolution and fought for the breaking of the political connection between Ireland and Britain, believing that only an independent Ireland could guarantee equality and prosperity for the Irish people.<\/p>\nModern Irish Republicans trace their political origins to the movement of the United Irishmen of the 1790s. They took their inspiration from the French Revolution and fought for the breaking of the political connection between Ireland and Britain, believing that only an independent Ireland could guarantee equality and prosperity for the Irish people.<\/p>\n
Most of the leading figures of the United Irishmen were Presbyterian\u2019s and Protestants and a key part of their programme was unity between Irish people of all religions in the cause of liberty. Their rebellion in 1798 was ruthlessly suppressed, but their ideas continued to inspire Irish nationalists for over a century and a half.
The separatist strand of Irish nationalism waxed and waned in the 19th Century, enjoying it\u2019s biggest popular following in the Fenian movement in Ireland and the United States in the late 1850s and 1860s, but by the end of the century, the organised demand for complete separation was almost non-existent.<\/p>\n
The name Sinn F\u00e9in (We Ourselves) first emerged in the early 1900s. It was a federation of nationalist clubs and eventually, all nationalists to the left of the Irish Parliamentary Party at Westminster came to be popularly known as Sinn F\u00e9iners. The press of the time called the 1916 Rising the \u201cSinn F\u00e9in Rebellion\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Sinn F\u00e9in party, reorganised in 1917, was based on the demand for an Irish Republic. It won the 1918 general election overwhelmingly and set up D\u00e1il Eireann (Assembly of Ireland). Following three years of guerrilla war, led by the underground republican government, the party split in 1922on the issue of the Treaty which partitioned Ireland.<\/p>\n
Throughout the 1920s, following a devastating Civil War, Sinn F\u00e9in continued as the republican party. The departure of its leader \u00c9amonn de Valera to form Fianna Fail in 1926 meant that it was to remain as a small abstentionist party for the next two decades. It\u2019s fortunes ebbed and flowed in the late 1950s and early 1960s with the IRA\u2019s border campaign, during which it enjoyed some electoral success.
In the 1960s, Sinn F\u00e9in adopted a more radical stance on social and economic affairs and campaigned politically to gain support on issues other than partition. But differing approaches to the Civil Rights Movement and to the outbreak of the present conflict in the Six Counties led to another split. One section of Sinn F\u00e9in was in the process of abandoning the republican demand for complete British withdrawal from Ireland and went on to become what are now Democratic Left and the Workers Party.<\/p>\n
The Sinn F\u00e9in which emerged in 1970 – popularly known at the time as \u2018Provisional\u2019 Sinn F\u00e9in – was to evolve through the \u201970s and \u2018 80s to the party we know today. It was to the forefront of the resistance of the nationalist people in the Six Counties, as they saw their peaceful demand for civil rights met with state violence. Sinn F\u00e9in again took on the role of the leading advocate of British withdrawal and a 32-county Ireland and campaigned on the streets throughout Ireland in the 1970s.<\/p>\n
It was only in the early 1980s that the challenge of Sinn F\u00e9in as a serious political force and central element in the republican struggle was first fully felt. The re-evaluation of strategy and reorganisation which resulted from the mass campaign in support of republican prisoners in the H-Blocks and Armagh before and during the 1981 Hunger Strike (when ten prisoners died) set Sinn F\u00e9in on its course for the 1980s.<\/p>\n
Despite the efforts of our opponents, Sinn F\u00e9in, over the past two decades has become a formidable electoral force both North and South. We have contested elections in all but two of the last 21 years, which is a unique record for any political party. Sinn F\u00e9in is now the largest Nationalist party in the six counties and is also making significant advances in the 26 counties.<\/p>\n
There are almost 200 Sinn F\u00e9in elected representatives throughout the island. <\/p>\n
Continued campaigning and the expansion of Sinn F\u00e9in reaffirms that there is a growing section of the population who are demanding and want to work for freedom, real democracy and social justice throughout Ireland.<\/p>\n
Sinn F\u00e9in\u2019s involvement in the attempts to build a peace process has its origins in the mid 1980s. It was then that Sinn F\u00e9in sought to engage in dialogue with as wide a spectrum of opinion as possible for the purposes of achieving a just and lasting peace in Ireland. These engagements initially began with the SDLP through its then-leader John Hume. They went on to include the British government through secret negotiations with Sinn F\u00e9in Martin McGuinness from 1991 – 1993, the Irish government and Irish America. It was through the engagements with the SDLP, the Dublin government and Irish America that the Irish Peace Initiative emerged.<\/p>\n
On August 31, 1994 the Irish Republican Army took the courageous and unprecedented step of calling a \u201ccomplete cessation of military operations\u201d. This provided a window of opportunity through which we could all attempt to forge a new future based on justice and peace.
The signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 and St. Andrew\u2019s Agreement in 2006, led to the establishment of the Asembly and Executive in the six counties, of which Sinn F\u00e9in is the largest nationalist party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Modern Irish Republicans trace their political origins to the movement of the United Irishmen of the 1790s. They took their inspiration from the French Revolution and fought for the breaking of the political connection between Ireland and Britain, believing that only an independent Ireland could guarantee equality and prosperity for the Irish people. Most of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}