The party of moderate progress within the bounds of the law?

Sinn Féin's decision in January 2007 to accept the legitimacy of the PSNI completed a process that fundamentally changed the nature of Provisional ideology, and radically transformed the contours of politics throughout Ireland. The hand of history was felt on a great many shoulders in this period, but, for once, the description ‘historic’ was no mere political soundbite. The logic of Provisional politics from the late 1980s seemed to lead inexorably towards this point, a process described by one Provisional as ‘moving from an historical position, strategy and culture of resistance to one of engagement, negotiation and governance’. It reflected a widely-held view that the vote signalled not merely the end of one form of Provisionalism, but, more generally, the passing of militant Irish Republicanism as a historic force.

Beginning with the abandonment of abstentionism in 1986 and ending with the vote on policing in 2007, the Provisionals had revised so many positions previously regarded as fundamental and crossed so many Rubicons that this sense of a qualitative historical shift within Republicanism seemed fully justified.