To Brendan Hughes or Dolours Price or Marian Price or Anthony McIntyre, Sinn Féin’s tendency to brook no opposition seemed self-interested, illiberal and cruel. But perhaps, as the Villiers report appeared to suggest, it was only through such ruthless discipline – and the insistence that Irish republicanism must be a monolith, with zero tolerance for outliers – that Adams and the people around him had managed to keep the lid on a combustible situation, and prevent the war from reigniting.
