The dual stance of Sinn Fein

When Gerry Adams was asked recently whether Sinn Fein, the Irish republican party he leads, would take its seats in the UK parliament after the May 7 general election, his answer was simple: "No". The former political wing of the IRA has absentionism at Westminster enshrined in its ideology. Sinn Fein does not recognise British sovereignty over Northern Ireland.

Sinn Fein's stance in Northern Ireland differs sharply from the position it adopts in the Republic of Ireland. There, it has 14 seats in the Dail, the Irish parliament, including Mr Adams, who is the MP for Louth, the county between Dublin and the border. It is competing with Fine Gael, the centre-right party that leads the coalition government in Dublin, at the top of the opinion polls. It could gain more seats in the next election in the Republic, due within a year.

Sinn Fein is in government in Northern Ireland, where it shares power in the devolved executive with the Democratic Unionist party, and in opposition in the Republic. That is a difficult double act to pull off - it is in theory imposing austerity measures in Belfast while fiercely opposing austerity in Dublin. Yet the dual stance is an accommodation it is willing to accept until it realises its aspiration to one day form a majority government across the whole of Ireland.

Brian Feeney, a historian of Northern Ireland's "Troubles" - the 30 years of violence that scarred the region between the 1960s and the 1990s - says the Good Friday Agreement that imposed a brittle but enduring peace in 1998 has led Sinn Fein to focus its political energies in Northern Ireland on its role in the executive in Belfast. Today, that takes precedence over aspirations to Irish unity.

"Their big issue is on the back burner for the moment," Mr Feeney says. "It has been superseded by the Good Friday Agreement. To a large extent Westminster is irrelevant."

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"Sinn Fein might prefer to have a government in power in Westminster which ignores Northern Ireland even more than the current one, if such a thing is possible," says Eoin O'Malley, a political scientist at Dublin City University.

Despite its aloofness towards Westminster, however, Sinn Fein campaigns assiduously across Northern Ireland, as does the DUP. For both parties, the number of votes each receives confirms the continued relevance of their ideologies of loyalism and republicanism. This is one of the enduring facts about politics in the province that the Good Friday Agreement has not changed.

"There is a strong element in Northern Ireland campaigns of sectarian head-counting," Mr Feeney says. "Fundamentally that is what it comes down to."

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