It’s alarming SF would even consider any alliance with Saoradh

It has in some broadcasts and campaign publicity not even mentioned such a thing.

It might that the party is in receipt of polling which finds that such political agitation for a plebiscite on the constitutional question deters more potential voters than it attracts.

Whatever the reason for the reticence, unionists including the DUP leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, have continued to insist that such a border poll is an over-riding priority for a party that was long seen as the political wing of the Provisional IRA.

That Sinn Fein has now tried to woo political apologists for the New IRA to join a peaceful push for a border poll is clear evidence that Sir Jeffrey has good reason to say that SF is utterly focused on such a referendum.

But the determination to secure a border poll, that the approach to Saoradh underscores, is not its most troubling feature. More alarming is the mere fact that SF would even contemplate an alliance with Saoradh, however narrowly-based the tactical justification for it.

Saoradh has said “we not speak on behalf of the Irish Republican Army” when it has been linked as the political allies of the murderous New IRA.

But it quite clearly espouses a dissident Irish republican world view, and refers to dissident terrorists as volunteers.

There was no justification for IRA terrorism 50 years ago. Core nationalist political demands, such as relating to the civil rights agenda, had already been met.

Republican terrorism today, when NI has such an advanced democracy and when as a society NI has such rigorous human rights and equality standards, is all the more reprehensible and unforgivable.

Anyone who justifies that kind of unjustified violence should be politically beyond the pale.