Some 2,000 delegates and visitors attended the annual gathering. They came from across Ireland, ranging from long-term fighters against British rule to members of Ogra Shinn Fein, the youth group of Sinn Fein, the party leading the fight for the withdrawal of British troops from the north and for a united Ireland.

The days leading up to the gathering were marked by shrill propaganda attacks on the nationalist organization in the Irish media. Irish prime minister Bartholomew Ahern claimed that Adams was a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which is still officially illegal.

“The growing ferocity of the criticism is not unrelated to the imminent European elections and local elections,” stated an editorial in Dublin’s Sunday Business Post.

In his keynote address, Adams condemned the British government’s suspension of the assembly—established in 1998 under the Good Friday Agreement—and its obstruction of further negotiations. The agreement “has been too big a challenge for the British government,” he said.

The Sinn Fein leader pointed to the hypocrisy of London’s insistence—echoed by the pro-British unionist parties—that the IRA must surrender all its weapons to get the so-called peace process back on track. “Where stands the promised demilitarization of our society when the British Army is still in occupation of republican heartlands?” he asked.

“The murder of citizens through collusion with unionist death squads has been and remains British state policy in Ireland,” said Adams. “The apparatus is still in existence.” He welcomed to the platform several relatives of those killed by the unionist death squads that have operated with London’s collusion, and pointed to the importance of the An Fhirinne (the truth) campaign that they have organized. Through pickets and protest rallies, the relatives have continued to demand that London come clean about its involvement in the murders.

Despite London’s stalling, said Adams, “we are still in a far better place than we were 10 years ago. Remember, this party was censored, denied the use of municipal buildings in Dublin, and party members were killed.”

The plans of the British rulers for the “peace process” had gone awry, he said. They had hoped that the so-called moderate parties—the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) on the nationalist side and the Ulster Unionist Party on the side championing British rule—would build a dominant popular following.

Instead, the situation has become more polarized, with Sinn Fein extending its support at the SDLP’s expense and the Democratic Unionist Party, led by rightist demagogue Ian Paisley, replacing the Ulster Unionists as the main pro-British party.

Michelle Gildernew, the party’s member of British parliament for Northern Ireland’s Fermanagh and South Tyrone, reinforced Adams’s point about the British military presence. Her area “is still blighted by spy posts both overt and covert and huge military bases,” she said. The cops “travel round in armored jeeps and operate from military barracks…. The apparatus of war is staring us in the face every day of the week,” she said.

One participant at the Ard Fheis described the recent increase in daily stop-and-search harassment operations by British soldiers.

With their eyes on the Republic as well as the north, speakers touched on some aspects of developments there.

Many delegates commented on the influx of immigrant labor. Like most European cities, Dublin now has a substantial immigrant population. The Independent reports that 40 percent of workers in horticulture are from Eastern Europe, most holding work permits only. Delegates from the north told this reporter that large numbers of Portuguese and East Europeans work in the meatpacking plants there.

The Sinn Fein candidate in the European elections for the north of Ireland, Bairbre de Brun, discussed the bitter reality of the vaunted economic growth in the Irish capitalist economy. “Farming incomes, north and south, are lower now than they have been in a decade,” she said. Many small producers can only survive with grants from the European Union, price supports, and other aids through the Common Agricultural Policy.  
 
 
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