Sinn Fein endorse Police Service of Northern Ireland and MI5 operations

The 900 or so delegates and 2,000 observers voted by 95 percent to “participate in local policing structures in the interests of justice,” and mandated the appointment of Sinn Fein representatives to the Northern Ireland Policing Board and District Policing Boards.

The decision, opposed only by Sinn Fein’s youth wing with a mere 20 votes, gives the Sinn Fein executive the right to participate in the North’s policing structures without further reference to the party’s membership. It follows a campaign by the leadership of the benefits of a Sinn Fein Minister of Justice, with control over the PSNI.

It means that the last obstacle, on the nationalist side, to reviving power-sharing in Northern Ireland between the nationalist Sinn Fein and the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), has been removed.

The vote’s significance was immediately grasped on both sides of the Atlantic as it removes the last vestige of equivocation over Sinn Fein’s support for the Northern Ireland capitalist state.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2007/feb2007/irel-f07.shtml