Sinn Féin Ard Fheis: Reaching the future through the past

Would the real Sinn Féin please stand up? Anybody visiting the party’s Ard Fheis in Dublin’s Covention Centre at the weekend might well have asked the question, writes Michael Clifford

The party has, by all accounts, a relatively bright future, yet it clings to the past like a comfort blanket. Nine seats were won in the recent election but the question of the leadership hung over the gathering. And Sinn Fein likes to portray itself as anti-establishment, yet the weekend could have been lifted straight out of a Fianna Fai of Fine Gael conference.

The Ard Fheis was designed to fall on the actual anniversary of the 1916 Rising.