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.

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.

In 1978, Gerry Adams became joint vice-president of Sinn Féin and a key figure in directing a challenge to the Sinn Féin leadership of President Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and joint vice-president Dáithí Ó Conaill.

In 1926 when de Valera left Sinn Féin to found Fianna Fáil, O ' Kelly returned to Ireland and was appointed a vice-president of the new republican party.

* 28 Oct 1976: The RHC and " Ulster Freedom Fighters " claimed responsibility for killing former Sinn Féin vice-president Máire Drumm.

In the aftermath of the 1975 Truce, the Ó Brádaigh / Ó Conaill leadership came under severe criticism from a younger generation of activists from Northern Ireland, headed by Gerry Adams, who became a vice-president of Sinn Féin in 1978.

In his later years as honorary life vice-president of Sinn Féin he was a strong supporter of Gerry Adams and the Good Friday Agreement.

* Phil Flynn, former vice-president of Sinn Féin, businessman.

The second panel featured The Irish Times columnist and writer John Waters, former Progressive Democrats minister Liz O ' Donnell, Fergus Finlay, former chef-de-cabinet of the Irish Labour Party and current chief executive of Barnardos, solicitor Catherine Ghent, and vice-president of Sinn Féin Mary Lou McDonald.

Sinn Féin vice-president and leading Cumann na mBan member Máire Drumm was killed by loyalists in 1976.

McGirl served as vice-president of Sinn Féin.

* 1984 – Gerry Adams, head of Sinn Féin, is seriously wounded in an assassination attempt in central Belfast.

Donaldson had been entrusted by Gerry Adams with the running of Sinn Féin's operations in the U. S. in the early 1990s.

This came as Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams admitted one of the men was the party's representative in Cuba.

* March 14 – Sinn Féin's Gerry Adams and 3 others are seriously injured in a gun attack by the UVF.

The 1982 election was followed by the 1983 Westminster election, in which Sinn Féin's vote increased and Gerry Adams was elected, as an abstentionist, as MP for Belfast West.

It was in 1983 that Ruairí Ó Brádaigh resigned as President of Sinn Féin and was succeeded by Gerry Adams.

* Gerry Adams Sinn Féin profile

On Monday 26 March 2007, the date of the British Government deadline for devolution or dissolution, Paisley led a DUP delegation to a meeting with a Sinn Féin delegation led by Gerry Adams, which agreed on a DUP proposal that the executive would be established on 8 May.

and a later Prime Minister John Howard refused to meet Gerry Adams from Sinn Féin on a visit to Australia in 2000.

On 20 January 2011, Gerry Adams submitted a letter of resignation to the Speaker, but did not apply for a Crown office, which would be politically unacceptable for a Sinn Féin politician.

After announcing his intention to resign from the United Kingdom Parliament in order to stand in the 2011 Irish general election, Sinn Féin MP Gerry Adams was appointed Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead.

Bruton also established a working relationship with Gerry Adams of Sinn Féin, however both were mutually distrustful of each other.

Other attacks were made upon then-Greater London Council leader Ken Livingstone inviting Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams to visit London in 1982.

This story is accompanied by a clip of Steve Coogan impersonating a Gerry Adams-esque Sinn Féin leader, spouting rhetoric while inhaling helium to detract credibility from his statement.

This awakened the Sinn Féin leadership under Gerry Adams to the possible gains they could make in future elections and by a political, as distinct from " military ", strategy.

Many republicans in Northern Ireland, including Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams, learned Irish while in prison.

* In February 2005, he accused the Sinn Féin leaders Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Martin Ferris of being members of the Provisional IRA Army Council.

The RHD successfully separated itself from the UDA in February 2003 with the murder of UDA member John Gregg, who had attempted to kill Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams almost 20 years before.

He is a long standing supporter of a United Ireland, inviting Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams to London in 1984.

O ' Hanlon was a Sinn Féin official and an aide to Gerry Adams.