The 1981 hunger strikes and accompanying mass mobilizations marked a turning point in the struggle to get the British military out of occupied Northern Ireland. Led by Sinn Fein, republicans are fighting for a united and independent Ireland.

The Dublin rally was an important action given the growing pressure on republican forces from British and U.S. imperialism. In turn, pro-British loyalist groups in the occupied six counties of Northern Ireland have stepped up their violent attacks against Catholics and demanded London sideline Sinn Fein in the negotiations process.

In a September 29 speech at the party's Ard Fheis, or annual conference, Gerry Adams said, "While loyalist paramilitaries threw 250 bombs, while their murder campaign intensified on a daily basis, while young Catholic schoolchildren were blockaded on their way to and from school, there was an unrelenting agenda to pressurize, marginalize, and blame Sinn Fein" for the lack of progress in negotiations.

"The whole truth is that resistance to change in the north of Ireland comes not only from those within unionism, but from within the British system also," he told the 2,000 delegates and guests at the September 29–30 meeting.

The day before the conference, for example, 600 rightists mobilized in Belfast as part of a campaign of violent protests against the right of Catholic families to take their children to school along Ardoyne Avenue. The loyalists fired 50 shots, two bursts of automatic weapons fire, six blast bombs, and 125 petrol bombs, injuring 33 cops in the process. Also on the eve of the Ard Fheis Martin O'Hagan, a Catholic journalist, was murdered by loyalists.

"Our own peace process is in a mess," Adams said, "and it must now be obvious to everyone that the political institutions established under the Good Friday Agreement are going to collapse unless the unionists lift their threats and work with Sinn Fein and the other parties, as they committed themselves to under the Agreement."

The 1998 Good Friday Agreement between London and most political parties in Northern Ireland established a 108-person Northern Ireland Assembly, an elected body with limited self-government powers. The agreement registered the weakening of British imperialism and the fact that it had failed to subdue the Catholic population in the six counties.  
 
Smear campaign
London and its unionist backers in Northern Ireland have used a smear campaign charging that three Irish men arrested August 11 in Colombia were Irish Republican Army (IRA) members giving bomb training to a rebel group there. After the September 11 attacks in the United States, Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) leader Jeffrey Donaldson condemned London for "offering amnesty to IRA terrorists who are on the run" while "declaring war on international terrorism."

UUP chief David Trimble is now demanding London remove Sinn Fein's two representatives from the assembly until the IRA starts to disarm. Trimble, who stepped down as head of the Northern Ireland Assembly to pressure the IRA to surrender its arms, indicated he will bring further pressure by withdrawing his own ministers from the executive in the coming week.

The "issue of IRA weapons has been made a precondition for progress on all other issues. This is a direct breach of the Good Friday Agreement," Adams told the Sinn Fein conference. Moves by the IRA and Sinn Fein to move ahead on the question stand "in stark contrast to the continued use of loyalist and British weapons. IRA guns are silent and the IRA cessations are now into their eighth year," he said.

Adams said the offensive against republicans could be traced to last June, when Sinn Fein scored substantial electoral victories, replacing the pro-imperialist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) as the main nationalist party in the British-occupied north of Ireland. At the same time participants in a referendum in the Irish Republic voted by a majority to reject the European Union Nice Treaty. Sinn Fein was central to this campaign. The referendum was one sign of growing support for Sinn Fein in the Irish Republic, leading Dublin's Sunday Business Post to raise in a September 30 article that the Irish Labour Party's "traditional working-class base is slowly being colonized by Sinn Fein."

"Could it be that what all elements have in common is a fear of the growing strength of Sinn Fein?" Adams asked in his speech. "Could it be that in June of this year they saw their worst nightmare starting to become a reality, and seized upon other events in an unprincipled and opportunistic attempt to batter us and to unnerve our support?"

In an October 4 statement, John Reid, the British government's Northern Ireland Secretary, signaled the British rulers' intention to continue the campaign to isolate Sinn Fein. "Terrorism does not just appear in a desert carrying a Koran," he told delegates at the British Labour Party conference. "It appears in Omagh in the name of nationalism." In 1998 an explosion in Omagh, Northern Ireland, attributed to a group called the "Real IRA" killed 29 people. Reid used the speech to increase the pressure on the IRA to surrender its weapons.

On September 28 Reid warned the rightist Ulster Defence Association (UDA) that he would take action if they continued their violent campaign in Belfast, saying he had held off doing so on the basis that he had been assured by its leadership the trouble would end. The same evening journalist Martin O'Hagan was assassinated by the Red Hand Defenders, a name used by both the UDA and Loyalist Volunteer Force to avoid directly claiming responsibility for attacks. Reid did not follow through on his warning to the UDA.  
 
British not demilitarizing
Several delegates at the Ard Fheis expressed their anger at these developments. Brendan McFarlane, a former leader of Republican prisoners and now living in north Belfast, said that it is "no coincidence that when Trimble presses the destruct button, loyalist attacks are stepped up." McFarlane pointed to how "the British government does nothing about the UDA" because "the UDA is a creation of the British government." For example, Brian Nelson, the UDA's former head of intelligence, was a paid British agent.

Another delegate, Pat McNamee from Crossmaglen in Armagh, raised that in his area "the demilitarization of the British has not happened," describing how there were still 31 British Army spy posts with helicopters permanently patrolling overhead.

Speaking for the leadership of Sinn Fein, Gerry Kelly signaled his party's continued refusal to agreed to a new policing service set up by the British rulers with support from the UUP and SDLP. Kelly charged that this new police force would be no different in content from the current Royal Ulster Constabulary, which he said was "the paramilitary arm of unionism." Kelly called for delegates to leave the Ard Fheis "ready to campaign vigorously against recruitment" to the new police service.

The report to the Sinn Fein conference by Adams reviewed economic conditions facing working people in Ireland. He noted that 21 percent of Irish workers live on low incomes and the "26 Counties also has the second largest gap between rich and poor in the EU [European Union]. The income inequalities in the Six Counties are just as pronounced." Adams said there are "1.1 million people on the island who can be categorized as education poor" and that "24 percent of the adult population north and south had literacy difficulties."

Adams welcomed steps being taken by the Irish government to re-inter 10 IRA Volunteers buried in Mountjoy jail and to urge people to attend their state funeral on October 14 in Dublin. The 10, including Kevin Barry who was accused of killing three British soldiers, were executed by the British rulers in 1920 and 1921 during the Irish war of independence. They have never had a funeral.

The Sinn Fein president also announced that he will travel to South Africa September 30 to meet Nelson Mandela and leaders of the African National Congress, and that he will go at an appropriate time to Cuba.

Delegates gave an enthusiastic ovation to Ali Halimeh, a representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and welcomed Joseba Alvarez from the Basque organization Batasuna. Alvarez told the meeting, "The French and Spanish states are using the current atmosphere to criminalize the Basque people. They propose a security response rather a political one. But we won't give up."  
 
 
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