Dublin, Ireland – Sinn Fein members overwhelmingly voted Sunday to begin cooperating with the Northern Ireland police, a long-unthinkable commitment that could spur the return of a Catholic-Protestant administration for the British territory.
The result – confirmed by a sea of raised hands but no formally recorded vote – meant Sinn Fein, once a hard-left party committed to a socialist revolution, has abandoned its decades-old hostility to law and order.
The vote, taken after day- long debate among 2,000 Sinn Fein stalwarts, represented a stunning triumph for Sinn Fein chief Gerry Adams, the former Irish Republican Army commander who has spent 24 years edging his IRA-linked party away from terrorism and toward compromise.
It strongly improved the chances of reviving power- sharing, the long-elusive goal of the 1998 Good Friday peace pact, by Britain’s deadline of March 26.
Many speakers said that for decades they had dreamed of defeating the province’s mostly Protestant police force and forcing Northern Ireland into the Irish Republic.
Some IRA veterans recalled beatings inflicted on them by detectives during interrogations. Others noted they had served long prison sentences for attacks on police, more than 300 of whom were killed during the IRA’s failed 1970-97 campaign.
But nearly all speakers said they were voting to dump their party’s anti-police position for the sake of peace.
“This shows that the war is over. And if the war is over, we have to build the peace,” Adams said.
