As the implementation of Home Rule continued to be postponed due to the ongoing war, and the British threatened to impose conscription in Ireland to aid the war effort, nationalist support rapidly came to be channeled into the revolutionary Sinn Féin movement.

Sinn Féin won 73 out of 105 seats in Ireland at the general election held in December 1918, and in January 1919 organised themselves as the First Dáil, which then declared an independent Irish Republic.

They soon gained a reputation for brutality, as the RIC campaign against the IRA and Sinn Féin members was stepped up and police reprisals for IRA attacks were condoned by the government.

Evidence given by Martin McGuinness, a senior member of Sinn Féin and now the deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, to the inquiry stated that he was second-in-command of the Derry City brigade of the Provisional IRA and was present at the march.

In response McGuinness rejected the claims as " fantasy ", while Gerry O ' Hara, a Sinn Féin councillor in Derry stated that he and not Ward was the Fianna leader at the time.

With the Official IRA and Official Sinn Féin having moved away from mainstream Irish republicanism towards Marxism, the Provisional IRA began to win the support of newly radicalised, disaffected young people.

The Irish Republican political party, Sinn Féin is also known to have close political links to the Cuban government.

Maguire had also been contacted by supporters of Gerry Adams, then and now President of Sinn Féin, and a supporter of the change in the Provisional IRA constitution.

In a 1986 statement, he rejected " the legitimacy of an Army Council styling itself the Council of the Irish Republican Army which lends support to any person or organisation styling itself as Sinn Féin and prepared to enter the partition parliament of Leinster House.

These changes within the military wing of the Republican Movement were accompanied by changes in the political wing and at the 1986 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis ( party conference ), which followed the IRA Convention, the party's policy of abstentionism, which forbade Sinn Féin elected representatives from taking seats in the Oireachtas, the parliament of Ireland, was dropped.

The traditionalists, having lost at both conventions, walked out of the Mansion House, met that evening at the West County Hotel, and reformed as Republican Sinn Féin ( RSF ).

A senior source from Republican Sinn Féin said: " We would see them purported new leadership as just another splinter group that has broken away.

The left wing republican party Sinn Féin is a party which opposes the current structure of the European Union and the direction it is moving in.

Sinn Féin objects to the limitations and restrictions European Union membership has placed on the Republic of Ireland, as well as the European depletion of Irish sovereignty.

It shares some common views on Europe with Sinn Féin.

Sinn Féin vice-president Gerry Adams said of Mountbatten's death:

In December 1918, republicans ( then represented by the Sinn Féin party ) won 73 Irish seats out of 105 in the 1918 General Election to the British Parliament, on a policy of abstentionism and Irish independence.

In January 1919, the elected members of Sinn Féin who were not still in prison at the time, including survivors of the Rising, convened the First Dáil and established the Irish Republic.

The Gaelic Athletic Association, the Gaelic League and the cultural revival under W. B. Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory, together with the new political thinking of Arthur Griffith expressed in his newspaper Sinn Féin and the organisations the National Council and the Sinn Féin League led to the identification of Irish people with the concept of a Gaelic nation and culture, completely independent of Britain.

The Conscription Crisis of 1918 further intensified public support for Sinn Féin before the general elections to the British Parliament on 14 December 1918, which resulted in a landslide victory for Sinn Féin, whose MPs gathered in Dublin on 21 January 1919 to form Dáil Éireann and adopt the Declaration of Independence.

The Sinn Féin MPs withdrew from the British Parliament and declared an Irish Republic, with themselves as the legitimate government.

* In Northern Ireland, all 18 MPs are from parties that only contest elections in Northern Ireland ( except for Sinn Féin, which contests elections in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland ).

Sinn Féin has a policy of abstentionism and so its MPs refuse to take their seats in Parliament.

Category: Sinn Féin MPs ( UK )

On 21 January 1919, Sinn Féin MPs ( who became known as Teachta Dála, TDs ) refusing to sit in the British House of Commons at Westminster, assembled in Dublin and formed a single chamber Irish parliament called Dáil Éireann ( Assembly of Ireland ).

Replaced by Sinn Féin MPs, they immediately declared an Irish Republic.

On 21 January 1919, Sinn Féin's MPs who were not imprisoned assembled in the Round Room of the Mansion House in Dublin and formed themselves into an Assembly of Ireland, known in the Irish language as Dáil Éireann.

These were the only MPs to attend the opening of the House in 1921 since Sinn Féin candidates in the twenty-six counties were returned unopposed and took the other 128 of the 132 seats.

All 128 MPs elected to the House of Commons of Southern Ireland in 1921 were returned unopposed, and 124 of them, representing Sinn Féin, declared themselves TDs ( Irish for Dáil Deputies ) and assembled as the Second Dáil of the Irish Republic.

An Irish Republic had been proclaimed by the parliament known as Dáil Éireann, formed by Sinn Féin MPs elected from Ireland in the United Kingdom general election in 1918.

Once elected the Sinn Féin MPs chose to follow through with their Manifesto's plan of abstention from the British parliament and instead assembled as a revolutionary parliament they called " Dáil Éireann ": the Irish for " Assembly of Ireland ".

Three Sinn Féin MPs were elected in the counties that are now Northern Ireland.

Along with other Sinn Féin MPs he refused to take his seat in the British House of Commons.

Sinn Féin's MPs decided not to take their seats in the British House of Commons but instead set up an Irish parliament, Dáil Éireann ; the Irish War of Independence followed almost immediately.

Like his fellow Sinn Féin MPs Ryan refused to attend the Westminster Parliament.

In January 1919, Sinn Féin MPs refused to recognise the Parliament of the United Kingdom and instead assembled at the Mansion House in Dublin as a revolutionary parliament called Dáil Éireann.

Sinn Féin candidates were elected in 73 constituencies but four party candidates ( Arthur Griffith, Éamon de Valera, Eoin MacNeill and Liam Mellows ) were elected for two constituencies and so the total number of individual Sinn Féin MPs elected was 69.

The Sinn Féin MPs refused to take their seats in Westminster, 27 of these ( the rest were either still imprisoned or impaired ) setting up their own Parliament called Dail Éireann in January 1919 and proclaimed the Irish Republic to be in existence.

Twenty-seven of the newly elected Sinn Féin MPs assembled in Dublin on 21 January 1919 and formed an independent Irish parliament, or First Dáil Èireann of the thirty-two counties.

At the 1918 general election, Markievicz was elected for the constituency of Dublin St Patrick's, beating her opponent William Field with 66 % of the vote, as one of 73 Sinn Féin MPs.

Like all Sinn Féin MPs, Gildernew follows a policy of abstentionism and does not take her seat in the Westminster Parliament.