Party watch: Sinn Fein

Rosie Cowan

Friday, 25 May 2001

# UK general election 2001

Political life does go on beyond the big three

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Sinn Fein will not settle for anything less than the new start to policing promised in the Good Friday agreement, Gerry Adams said yesterday.

At the launch of his party's election manifesto, he called on voters to strengthen the republican mandate so he could secure amending legislation to change the police reform bill, which nationalists do not think goes far enough.

As Sinn Fein geared up for a polls battle with John Hume's Social and Democratic Labour party (SDLP), Mr Adams reaffirmed his party's commitment to the agreement, claimed that it was the only all-Ireland party and that it would win at least one new Westminster seat on June 7.

The party already has two MPs, Mr Adams in West Belfast and Martin McGuinness in Mid-Ulster, but its ambition is to eventually topple the SDLP, which has three seats, from its position as the largest nationalist party in Northern Ireland.

Both Sinn Fein and the SDLP have high hopes of capturing the key West Tyrone constituency from Ulster Unionist, Willie Thompson. Mr Adams said: "We're certainly going to win West Tyrone."

The reform of the overwhelmingly Protestant RUC is a major issue for both nationalist parties, although the SDLP seems more likely to join the new police board after the election and continue its fight for change from within the system.

Immediately after the election, all sides in Northern Ireland will re-enter crunch talks with the British and Irish governments to try to secure the province's fledgling political institutions and overcome the stumbling blocks threatening the peace process - decommissioning, demilitarisation and policing.

Mr Adams said: "We are totally committed to the full implementation of the Good Friday agreement in all its aspects. It is our contract with the people, and like every other contract we have entered into, we will honour it."

He dismissed as rubbish an Ulster Unionist document which said Sinn Fein had signed up to partition when it signed the Belfast peace deal, and insisted republicans would continue to press for representation in the Dublin parliament and use of offices at Westminster, although its MPs will not sit in the Commons because they will not swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen.

Other key points in the Sinn Fein manifesto include:

• An all-Ireland approach to health, education, the environment, agriculture and the economy;

• A ban on plastic bullets;

• Abolition of the 11-plus primary-to-secondary school transfer exam; and

• An overhaul of the civil service to eradicate "institutionalised discrimination".

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