The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal 1966–1995 and the Search for Peace

by Tim Pat Coogan

The secret rift in the IRA became a public split in Sinn Fein on 11 January 1970 when the party met in open session at the Intercontinental Hotel in Dublin to ratify the December decisions on abstention and the formation of a National Liberation Front. Ruairi O’Bradaigh, Daithi O’Conaill, Sean MacStiofain and their followers, at that stage numbering less than half the delegates, walked out, and convened another meeting at a hall in Parnell Square named after Kevin Barry, who had been executed by the British in 1920. This meeting set up a provisional caretaker executive of Sinn Fein, which would function from premises in Kevin Street, Dublin, close to Kevin Street Station, one of the Republic’s largest police barracks. The Gouldingites continued to occupy the Official headquarters in Gardiner Place, near Belvedere College, the Jesuit institution where James Joyce went to school. All things considered, the Provisionals’ proximity to the police was probably the more appropriate location.