Supporters of the peace process in the leadership of the provisional wing of the republican movement were "lost souls", who had been overcome by pride, arrogance, conceit and self-importance, a leading member of the rival Republican Sinn Féin (RSF) claimed at the weekend.
Mr Seán Ó Brádaigh told the annual RSF commemoration at Wolfe Tone's grave in Bodenstown, Co Kildare yesterday that the objective of the "so-called peace process" never was to achieve permanent peace, but to bring "the armed struggle for Irish freedom" to an end.
He said many people were "coming to realise that they were misled by the hype with which the Stormont Agreement was put before them. Apart from its flagrant sell-out of Irish national rights, it institutionalises sectarianism and it cannot, even on a practical or pragmatic level, deliver justice and peace."
He claimed the 1998 Agreement had "updated and secured" British rule in the North, and that "former republicans" had collaborated in this. "In helping to bring all this about, these lost souls, we are told, had been infiltrated by English agents. There is scarcely a doubt about this, but they were already infiltrated, from deep within, by an overweening pride and arrogance, which has been the downfall of many before.
"No Irish patriot died for a new Stormont or a new-style English Crown police force. But some are so conceited in their self-importance that they think they can ignore this truth," he said.
Mr Ó Brádaigh was addressing 250 people who had marched from Sallins to the graveyard, led by a colour party in paramilitary-style uniform. RSF split from the provisional wing of the republican movement in 1986, over the abstention from Dáil Éireann policy. Security sources regard RSF as the political counterpart of the Continuity IRA.