Sinn Fein: from militant margins to cusp of leadership

For years, Sinn Fein leaders were banned from the airwaves in the UK and Ireland. Today, the nationalist party has a louder voice than ever as it targets a historic breakthrough in Northern Ireland.

Once the political wing of the paramilitary Irish Republican Army, Sinn Fein entered the political mainstream in the 1990s under long-serving leader Gerry Adams, as the IRA turned its back on decades of violence.

In 2018, Adams gave way to a new generation of leaders including Michelle O'Neill, who polls say is on course to become Northern Ireland's first premier from the nationalist, largely Catholic community.

It marks a sea-change for the party, for the UK and for Ireland, a century after the creation of what unionists called "a Protestant state for Protestant people" in Northern Ireland.

In Ireland from the 1970s, and the UK from the 80s, Adams and veterans of the IRA's armed struggle such as Martin McGuinness were barred from speaking on television and radio. 

Like them, the 45-year-old O'Neill comes from strongly republican stock. Her father was jailed for IRA offences. Her cousin was shot dead by members of Britain's elite SAS regiment.

But O'Neill, vice president to Sinn Fein's all-Ireland president Mary Lou McDonald, is from a generation that came of political age after the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement ended "The Troubles".