The party leadership has its own difficulties trying to sell the radical shift on policing it is considering, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor
About 250 people were at Conway Mill in west Belfast on Monday night and most of them were vehemently opposed to Sinn Féin signing up to policing, although there were senior republicans present to argue the party line.
Declan Kearney, a senior Sinn Féin member who was involved in debriefing the subsequently murdered Denis Donaldson when he admitted he was a British agent, was speaking about overall "republican strategy" as a motor for change on policing and other issues.
"Sinn Féin strategy," corrected Marion Price tersely from one of the front rows, to applause from the crowd.
She was imprisoned in the early 1970s for her part with her sister Dolours in the IRA London bombings of 1973. She was making a point that whatever Sinn Féiners might say, the true republican strategy, so to speak, was to oppose current moves.
An apparent Sinn Féin loyalist sitting a row ahead turned around to reprimand her for interrupting Mr Kearney. She fierily told him she would not be deflected from making her point.
"I was proud to be a Provisional IRA member," she said when the meeting concluded shortly before 10pm, but now, a member of the 32 County Sovereignty Committee, she was bitterly opposed to the policies pursued by Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.
In the Conway Mill hall, you could taste her bitterness and the bitterness of many in the audience. The meeting was not organised by Sinn Féin but by other Belfast republicans.
Just as Ian Paisley has his internal detractors over his expressed conditional willingness to share power with Mr McGuinness, so too has the Sinn Féin leadership its own difficulties about the radical shift on policing it is considering.
This was the first public manifestation of rank-and-file republicans debating policing with a small number of media present. Sinn Féin has held several republican "family" meetings on the issue, but with the press excluded.
There was talk that Sinn Féin policing spokesman Gerry Kelly would be one of the speakers, but the only debaters at the top table initially were Francie Mackey of the 32 County Sovereignty Committee, which is linked to the Real IRA, and Willie Gallagher of the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP), which is linked to the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA).
Independent chairman and trade unionist Brendan Macken said the SDLP had initially said it would be present but due to the "labelling of the meeting" it was not attending. This was a reference to how the public meeting was portrayed as a dissident republican event. Yesterday, Mr Kelly said dissidents "bussed in" supporters from all over the North to swell numbers.
Mr Macken told the crowd that Sinn Féin had also been invited, appearing to suggest no one from the party would be there, but just then Mr Kearney made his way to the table to argue the party line.
The subject was "Policing: a bridge too far?" and Mr Gallagher posited a simple argument. Until a 32-county sovereign socialist republic was declared, there could never be an acceptable police service in Northern Ireland. To loud applause, he said: "We are never going to support the PSNI. We are not going to give them any allegiance."
He did not offer a policing alternative in the current circumstances. That could be a debate for another day.
Mr Mackey too played to a basic republican argument. "Issues such as policing are beyond resolution until the issue of [ Irish] sovereignty is solved."
He warned Sinn Féin that it must not contemplate offering support for the PSNI. "The visual spectacle of republicans donning the uniform of once perceived legitimate targets blinds them to the depths of malaise such an act would actually represent," he said.
Mr Kearney stressed that nothing was agreed on policing and negotiations were continuing. The function of Sinn Féin was to end the power of the "political detectives" and shift responsibility for policing to Northern Ireland politicians.
"It is apparent that incrementally, steadily, those who dominated in this state, just as unionists dominated, just as the Orange Order dominated, are increasingly being placed on the back foot," he said.
As well as acceptable policing, Sinn Féin was also focused on a united Ireland. "The question that comrades in the room - activists, friends, interested individuals - need to reflect on is, are we closer today to a united Ireland or Irish independence than we were 10 or 15 or 20 years ago?" "No," shouted many in the crowd. "Wake him up," said one man.
But, Mr Kearney persisted, "the reality is that we are", triggering guffaws from many in the audience.
Tony McPhilips, a republican from Co Fermanagh, said there "wasn't a hair's breadth of difference" between the positions of Sinn Féin and the SDLP on policing. He accused Mr Kearney of being "full of spin" and said that even if responsibility for policing and justice were devolved to a Northern Executive, it would not negate that "the first tenet of the PSNI would be to be the defenders of the [ British] state".
Tomás Gorman, an IRSP member, said that while Mr Kearney could talk about Sinn Féin going "to-to-toe" with its political opponents, signing up to policing would be conceding a "unionist demand rather than a republican manoeuvre". Another speaker was applauded for saying that just as the ANC in South Africa ended up "on the side of the cops", so too would Sinn Féin end up "on the other side".
While outnumbered, Sinn Féin speakers also rose to defend party strategy. Seán Mac Uidhir, a party member and editor of the North Belfast News, said the reality was that issues such as policing must be addressed in the immediate term, not "when we have that glorious day and won the revolution and thrown the Brits out into the sea".
Mr Kearney, portraying what he felt were the views of his more vocal opponents in Conway Mill, said the policing issue would not be settled by a "flat earth" policy.