Irish Sinn Fein Members Claim Parliament Offices

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, January 22, 2002

Irish Sinn Fein Members Claim Parliament Offices

Nineteen years after he was first elected to the House of Commons, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams and three colleagues picked up the keys to their Parliamentary offices Monday.

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Nineteen years after he was first elected to the House of Commons, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams and three colleagues picked up the keys to their Parliamentary offices Monday.

While accepting their expense money and other perks of office, the Sinn Fein members still refuse to take their seats in the Commons �� because that would require an oath of allegiance to the British crown, whose authority they reject.

"There will never, ever be Sinn Fein (lawmakers) sitting in the British House of Commons," Adams told reporters in a conference room at the Houses of Parliament.

But the acceptance of a House of Commons office �� and the British Parliamentarians' willingness to have him �� showed how far Northern Ireland's peace has progressed from the days when Adams was branded as a terrorist and barred from entering Britain, or even having his voice carried on its airwaves.

Adams was first elected to the British Parliament in 1983, but refused to take his seat and lost it in 1992. He was re-elected in 1997 along with McGuinness, but neither tried to claim office space until after Northern Ireland's landmark 1998 Good Friday peace accord.

The former speaker, Betty Boothroyd, ruled that they had to take the oath first.

Sinn Fein won two more seats last year, Boothroyd retired, and Blair's government persuaded lawmakers to allow Sinn Fein to use its office as a reward for participating in Northern Ireland's power-sharing government.

The use of office space and access to $150,000 each in annual expense money gives Sinn Fein a convenient base in London. But Adams was clear his party's participation in British politics would go no further.

Adams, McGuinness and Sinn Fein Parliamentary colleagues Pat Doherty and Michelle Gildernew met with Prime Minister Tony Blair before heading to the Commons.

Adams said they'd discussed Protestant paramilitaries' recent killings of Catholics. He accused Northern Ireland's authorities of tolerating the attacks and doing little to stop Protestant extremists from demonstrating outside the Holy Cross girls' primary school in north Belfast, where a monthslong standoff has sometimes turned violent.

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