Word: northerners
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Eileen McGinley always voted Sinn Fein. She also told her five children to vote for the republican political party because "we thought they were fighting for justice" in divided Northern Ireland. That belief died along with her 23-year-old son James, who was stabbed through the heart 17 months ago in Londonderry by a member of the Irish Republican Army...
...instead finds itself under attack. For the first time, the party's supporters are challenging its relationship with the i.r.a. and calling for the group to stop bullying ordinary people. "It's definitely a turning point," says John Kelly, a former i.r.a. member who represented Sinn Fein in the Northern Ireland Assembly. "If [Sinn Fein] is on the path of politics, there's not room on that path to be riding two horses...
...real test for Sinn Fein comes at this week's by-election in the Irish Republic and in Northern Ireland in early May, when local council elections - and possibly the U.K. general election - will be held. Paula McCartney, 40, one of Robert's five sisters, is considering running for Belfast City Council. She says she favors the moderate nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party, Sinn Fein's rival for Northern Ireland's Catholic vote. Her appearance on the ballot could upset Sinn Fein's shaky hold on a seat it won in her neighborhood, Short Strand, in the last election...
...Seven Sinn Fein members accused by the victim's family of involvement in the killing have been suspended. Adams also said he would instruct his solicitor to hand over the names of people the McCartneys have implicated in the case to Northern Ireland's Police Ombudsman. This represents a huge concession for Northern Ireland's leading republican. The taboo on helping the police - blamed for collusion with loyalist paramilitaries - is still strong. Former I.R.A. member Anthony McIntyre says the McCartney murder shows they've forgotten that their objections were always supposed to be against "political policing, not policing itself...
...increasingly, people in Northern Ireland are no longer willing to turn a blind eye. "The people are trying to tell the I.R.A. they want them to go away," says Michael McConville, whose mother was killed by the group in 1972. "They're starting to stand up to them. Years ago, they would never have stood up to them." Let down by the movement they once expected to protect their rights, republican communities are beginning to rediscover their own power to protect themselves...