an interview with Stephen Walker on BBC Northern Ireland’s The View, one of Sinn Féin’s five MPs, Francie Molloy from the Mid-Ulster constituency, categorically denied that any such move was planned. Interestingly, the interview was conducted at the Palace of Westminster and, when asked if the policy would be reviewed in the event of a hung parliament, Molloy said: ‘No, definitely not... It’s not up for the ardfheis. It’s not up for review. It’s not up for a decision at this point in time.’
The use of the phrase ‘at this point in time’ was remarked upon later in the same programme by Peter Kellner, of the polling and market research company YouGov, who commented that ‘it allows you to say “times have changed”.’5
In his biography of former Sinn Féin president Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, American academic Robert W. White writes that, during an ardchomhairle (national executive) meeting in the early 1980s, Molloy had suggested that Owen Carron should take his seat at Westminster. Carron had won the Fermanagh-South Tyrone by-election of August 1981, which was caused by the death of hunger striker Bobby Sands.6 In response to a query from myself, Francie Molloy, who is currently Sinn Féin MP for Mid-Ulster, said he made the suggestion ‘when Owen was an Anti H-Block Armagh MP’. Carron later got elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly as a Sinn Féin candidate and, when he sought to retain his Westminster seat, without success, in the 1983 UK general election, he ran on behalf of Sinn Féin. Molloy told me he had previously proposed that Sinn Féin end its policy of abstention towards Dáil Eireann at Leinster House. This body was seen as usurping the true Irish parliament, the First Dáil, established in 1919, and the Second Dáil, which was elected in May 1921.
On Saturday 10 January 1970, two historic events took place in Dublin. One was a major anti-apartheid protest against the presence of the all-white South African rugby team at the stadium on Dublin’s Lansdowne Road.7 The present writer was one of about 10,000 people who took part in the march and, walking past a nearby hotel on the way home, someone pointed out that a Sinn Féin ardfheis (annual conference) was being held there. I did not realise it at the time, but it was an occasion that would have wide and fateful ramifications for both parts of the island.
The ardfheis continued the next day, with a debate on a motion to drop abstentionism. This continued until 5.30pm, when a vote was taken. A two-thirds majority was required under the party constitution but support for the motion fell short, at 153 votes out of 257.8 However, when asked to back a motion of allegiance to the anti-abstentionist leadership of the movement, thereby implicitly endorsing the new policy, about one-third of delegates walked out and announced the setting-up of what became known as Provisional Sinn Féin.9 A secret convention of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) had already been held the previous month in Boyle, County Roscommon, where a motion to drop abstentionism was approved 28-12, and the minority split away to set up an alternative IRA headed by the ‘Provisional Army Council’ – the 1916 Proclamation was issued by the ‘Provisional Government’. A statement issued by this new body urged republicans not to be ‘diverted into the parliamentary blind alleys’ of Westminster, Leinster House and Stormont’.
The statement outlined the background to the split from the Provisionals’ point of view: ‘The adoption of the compromising policy referred to is the logical outcome of an obsession in recent years with parliamentary politics, with consequent undermining of the basic military role of the Irish Republican Army. The failure to provide the maximum defence possible of our people in Belfast and other parts of the six counties against the forces of British imperialism last August is ample evidence of this neglect.’10
In between the two meetings, leading pro-abstentionist Ruairí Ó Brádaigh visited seventy-seven-year-old Tom Maguire at his home in County Mayo. Maguire had been a member of the First andSecond Dáil Éireann, regarded as the only legitimate assemblies in Irish republican ideology. In December 1938, Maguire was one of a group of seven people elected to the Second Dáil (which was never formally dissolved) who signed over what they regarded as the authority of government to the IRA Army Council. That body henceforth considered itself the only legitimate government of Ireland. In a statement issued on 31 December 1969, Maguire said:
An IRA convention, held in December 1969, by a majority of the delegates attending, passed a resolution removing all embargoes on political participation in parliament from the Constitution and Rules of the IRA. The effect of the resolution is the abandonment of what is popularly termed the ‘Abstentionist Policy’. The ‘Abstentionist Policy’ means that the Republican candidates contesting parliamentary elections in Leinster House, Stormont or Westminster give pre-election pledges not to take seats in any of those parliaments. The Republican candidates seek election to the 32-county Parliament of the Irish Republic, theRepublican Dáil or Dáil Éireann, to give it its official title. The declared objective is to elect sufficient representatives to enable the 32-County Dáil Éireann to be reassembled... Accordingly, I, as the sole survivingmember of the Executive of Dáil Éireann, and the sole surviving signatory of the 1938 Proclamation, hereby declare that the resolution is illegal and that the alleged Executive and Army Council are illegal, and have no right to claim the allegiance of either soldiers or citizens of the Irish Republic... I hereby further declare that the Provisional Executive and the Provisional Army Council are the lawful Executive and Army Council respectively of the IRA and that the governmental authority delegated in the Proclamation of 1938 now resides in the Provisional Army Council and its lawful successors.11
The statement from Maguire probably helped to prevent the anti-abstentionists from securing the vital two-thirds majority. The two competing wings of the republican movement came to be known as the Official IRA/Official Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA/Provisional Sinn Féin. Republicans wear an Easter lily badge every year to commemorate the 1916 Rising. When the ‘Officials’ produced one which used adhesive instead of the traditional pin, their branch of the movement quickly became known at street level as the ‘Stickies’ while the Provisionals were called simply the ‘Provos’.
The Officials were led by Cathal Goulding and Tomás MacGiolla,the Provisional leaders included Ó Brádaigh, Dáithí O’Connell and Seán Mac Stiofáin. Although abstentionism was the formal reason for the split, there were other issues involved. The Goulding-MacGiolla leadership was seen as having let down the nationalist community in Belfast by failing to put preparations in place for the onslaught by loyalist mobs the previous August. Some nationalists in Belfast reportedly equated the letters IRA with ‘I Ran Away’.12
The Ó Brádaigh-O’Connell-Mac Stiofáin faction, on the other hand, was depicted as consisting of conservative Catholics and right-wingers. Years later, reflecting on the split, Gerry Adams wrote that ‘For many of the dissidents the issue was not abstentionism itself but what it had come to represent: a leadership which had led the IRA into ignominy in August [1969].’13
But apparently this was not the case south of the border.14 The Officials were variously portrayed as reformists or crypto-communists who had abandoned the ‘national struggle’. The Provos felt vindicated when, on 29 May 1972, the Official IRA called an indefinite ceasefire while reserving the ‘right to defend any area under aggressive attack by the British military or by sectarian forces from either side’. 15
The Provisional movement was at first dominated by southern-based individuals, but the balance of power began to shift after the extended ceasefire that took place from February to September 1975, although it continued to exist, in theory, until the following January. As part of the truce, seven ‘incident centres’ were set up in nationalist areas of Belfast, Derry and elsewhere. These were staffed by republicans, with a direct phone line to the Northern Ireland Office of the British Government to resolve any issue which jeopardised the ceasefire. Republican leader Máire Drumm said they were a ‘power-base for Sinn Féin’. Afterwards, Ó Brádaigh said that republicans were told by the British Government that it ‘wished to devise structures of disengagement from Ireland’. For his part, Secretary of State Merlyn Rees insisted this meant that, if paramilitary violence came to an end, then the British would reduce security to a ‘peacetime level’. 16
