McGuinness follows Emmet to Trinity

Sinn Féin cumainn in colleges across the 32 Counties play a vital role in the party's political project. This was the message Martin McGuinness brought to the weekly meeting of the Uí Chadhain/Tone Cumann on his visit to Trinity College in Dublin last week. In both their role in providing an important activist base on the ground in colleges and bringing a youthful perspective on politics to the party, the importance of student republican activists cannot be overemphasised, he said. This, he claimed, gave Sinn Féin a radical campaigning edge over other political parties, especially in the 26 Counties, where corruption and consensus politics have become the order of the day. McGuinness paid tribute to those who had attended that day's USI-organised march against government cutbacks in third level education, which was addressed by Seán Crowe TD.

He said the recent elections have made it inevitable that the DUP would have to either share power with Sinn Féin or else consign themselves to the political wilderness. He said Sinn Féin's tally of 24 seats is a huge endorsement from the electorate of the Sinn Féin peace strategy and the party's performance in the Assembly as well as in negotiations with the two governments and unionism. Sinn Féin is well on the way to becoming the largest party in the North, he said. When asked by cumann members about the issue of the Policing Board, Guinness said he saw the election results as an endorsement of Sinn Féin's position on policing and a rejection of that of the SDLP. The key issue now was the devolution of justice and security powers to the new Assembly. "Sinn Féin will not be signing up to a police force controlled by securocrats in London," he said.

The meeting also discussed issues south of the border and the upcoming local and European elections in June. McGuinness told the meeting that these elections gave the party the opportunity to bring their message to a European audience The local elections, he predicted, would see substantial gains for the party and would put Sinn Féin and republican politics firmly on the political radar in Dublin.

Afterwards, Martin McGuinness made his way to the Graduate Memorial Building, where he addressed a packed room of around 200 students, for a meeting organised by the Trinity College Historical Society, well in excess of the 20 or so Enda Kenny attracted on a recent visit. "The Hist", as it is popularly known in Trinity, was founded in the 1740s by Edmund Burke. However, the Society has also played host to many famous republicans, including Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet, John Blake Dillon and the former auditor of The Hist, Thomas Davis. Indeed, in 1794 the college authorities, under pressure from the British government, banned the Hist as it was feared that the society was being used by members of the United Irishmen such as Emmet to spread their radical republican message. They haven't gone away, you know!