42 Facts About Sinn Fein

Sinn Fein is an Irish republican and democratic socialist political party active throughout both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Original Sinn Fein organisation was founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith.

For several decades the remaining Sinn Fein organisation was small without parliamentary representation.

Sinn Fein is the largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly, having won the largest share of first-preference votes and the most seats in the 2022 election, the first time an Irish nationalist party has done so.

Sinn Fein members have been referred to colloquially as "Shinners", a term intended as a pejorative.

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Sinn Fein was founded on 28 November 1905, when, at the first annual Convention of the National Council, Arthur Griffith outlined the Sinn Fein policy, "to establish in Ireland's capital a national legislature endowed with the moral authority of the Irish nation".

In 1914, Sinn Fein members, including Griffith, joined the anti-Redmond Irish Volunteers, which was referred to by Redmondites and others as the "Sinn Fein Volunteers".

At the 1955 United Kingdom general election, two Sinn Fein candidates were elected to Westminster, and likewise, four members of Sinn Fein were elected to Leinster House in the 1957 Irish general election.

Sinn Fein took off as a protest movement after the introduction of internment in August 1971, organising marches and pickets.

In May 1974, a few months after the Sunningdale Agreement, the ban on Sinn Fein was lifted by the UK Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

Sinn Fein was given a concrete presence in the community when the IRA declared a ceasefire in 1975.

Sinn Fein polled over 100,000 votes in the Westminster elections that year, and Adams won the West Belfast seat that had been held by the Social Democratic and Labour Party.

At the 1983 Ard Fheis the constitution was amended to remove the ban on the discussion of abstentionism to allow Sinn Fein to run a candidate in the forthcoming European elections.

Sinn Fein then joined the talks, but the Conservative government under John Major soon came to depend on unionist votes to remain in power.

Donaldson told reporters that the British security agencies who employed him were behind the collapse of the Assembly and set up Sinn Fein to take the blame for it, a claim disputed by the British government.

On 2 September 2006, Martin McGuinness publicly stated that Sinn Fein would refuse to participate in a shadow assembly at Stormont, asserting that his party would only take part in negotiations that were aimed at restoring a power-sharing government.

Sinn Fein members began to sit on Policing Boards and join District Policing Partnerships.

Sinn Fein supported a no vote in the referendum on the Twenty-eighth Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2008.

Sinn Fein were opposed to Northern Ireland leaving the European Union together with the rest of the United Kingdom, with Martin McGuinness suggesting a referendum on the reunification of Ireland immediately after the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum results were announced, a stance later reiterated by McDonald as a way of resolving the border issues raised by Brexit.

However, in the 2020 Irish general election Sinn Fein received the greatest number of first preference votes nationally, making it the best result for any incarnation of Sinn Fein since the 1922 election; Nonetheless, Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and the Green Party formed a coalition government in June 2020.

Sinn Fein lost their numerical advantage in February 2022 following the resignation of Violet-Anne Wynne.

Sinn Fein retorted that engaging with dissident republicans draws them into the democratic process and political solutions instead of violent ones.

Sinn Fein is the largest Irish republican political party, and was historically associated with the IRA, while having been associated with the Provisional IRA in the party's modern incarnation.

Robert White states at that time Sinn Fein was the junior partner in the relationship with the IRA, and they were separate organisations despite there being some overlapping membership.

The IRA were widely blamed for the robbery although Sinn Fein denied this and stated that party officials had not known of the robbery nor sanctioned it.

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On 10 February 2005, the government-appointed Independent Monitoring Commission reported that it firmly supported the PSNI and Garda Siochana assessments that the IRA was responsible for the Northern Bank robbery and that certain senior members of Sinn Fein were senior members of the IRA and would have had knowledge of and given approval to the carrying out of the robbery.

Sinn Fein has argued that the IMC is not independent, and that the inclusion of former Alliance Party leader John Alderdice and a British security head was proof of this.

Conservatives and unionists put down amendments to have the Sinn Fein MPs evicted from their offices at the House of Commons but these were defeated.

Sinn Fein is an Irish republican, democratic socialist and left-wing party.

The party has been classed as left-wing nationalist and left-wing populist in academia, noting that while Sinn Fein engages in the "us vs them" dynamic of populism, it does so by engaging in the language of "the people vs elites" without resorting to using anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Sinn Fein believes in immigration, both to fill up vacancies in employment, if the system can properly integrate new immigrants and has the resources to do so, and to "protect people fleeing persecution and war", but not in "open borders".

Sinn Fein have been accused of hypocrisy over their positions on abortion in Northern Ireland.

Sinn Fein has longstanding fraternal ties with the African National Congress and was described by Nelson Mandela as an 'old friend and ally in the anti-apartheid struggle'.

Sinn Fein opposes the United States embargo against Cuba and has called for a normalization of relations between the two countries.

Sinn Fein was on the same side of the debate as the DUP and most of the Ulster Unionist Party in that they wanted to pull out when UK had its referendum in 1975.

Sinn Fein succeeded in winning 59 seats in the 1985 local government elections, after it had predicted winning only 40 seats.

Sinn Fein increased its share of the nationalist vote in the 2003,2007, and 2011 Assembly elections, with Martin McGuinness, former Minister for Education, taking the post of deputy First Minister in the Northern Ireland power-sharing Executive Committee.

All Sinn Fein MPs increased their share of the vote and with the exception of Fermanagh and South Tyrone, increased their majorities.

Sinn Fein lost some ground in the 2016 Assembly election, dropping one seat to finish with 28, ten behind the DUP.

The withdrawal of the DUP party whip from Jim Wells in May 2018 meant that Sinn Fein became the joint-largest party in the Assembly alongside the DUP, with 27 seats each.

Sinn Fein pledged to be a strong opposition to the new coalition.

Sinn Fein made a breakthrough in the Dublin constituency in 2004.