The quest for respectability—and votes—has transformed Sinn Fein

THE CONFLICT had been bloody, with no end in sight. But many in the Irish Republican Army (IRA) wanted to keep trying to drive the British out of Northern Ireland by force. They had no interest in its sister party, Sinn Fein, contesting elections, believing that this would legitimise the status quo. But the party’s leader, Gerry Adams, wanted to open a second front in the fight—one that didn’t involve guns.

In 1981 one of his advisers, Danny Morrison, asked a question at a Sinn Fein meeting: “Who here really believes we can win the war through the ballot box?” And a second: “Will anyone here object if, with a ballot paper in this hand and an Armalite [rifle] in the other, we take power in Ireland?” This two-fold strategy held until the peace accord signed on Good Friday 1998. Today Sinn Fein is the largest and wealthiest party on the island of Ireland. If and when Ireland is ever reunified depends on much more than its electoral performance. But the ballot box’s ascendancy over the Armalite has reshaped both the party, and politics and policy on both sides of the border.