An Irish political party dedicated to the creation of a united Irish republic. Originally founded by Arthur Griffith in 1902 as a cultural revival movement, it became politically active and supported the Easter Rising in 1916. Having won a large majority of seats in Ireland in the 1918 general election, Sinn Féin Members of Parliament, instead of going to London, met in Dublin and proclaimed Irish independence in 1919. An independent parliament (Dáil Éireann) was set up, though many of its MPs were in prison or on the run. Guerrilla warfare against British troops and police followed. The setting up of the Irish Free State (December 1921) and the partition of Ireland were rejected by a minority of Sinn Féin members, who kept the party name. The party abstained from the Dáil and the Northern Ireland parliament for many years. In the late 1960s Sinn Féin re-emerged as the political wing of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. In 1994, following a peace initiative by the Irish and British governments, Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams announced a complete IRA ceasefire. This was broken in February 1996, when Sinn Féin refused to commit the IRA to decommissioning weapons as a precondition to negotiation, and the party was excluded from talks on the future of Northern Ireland that began in June. They were admitted to the talks in 1997, following a further ceasefire, and in 1998 were parties to the Good Friday Agreement. Sinn Féin members participated in the assembly and executive established by this agreement. In the 2003 assembly elections Sinn Féin became the largest nationalist party, and in 2007 formed a power-sharing executive with Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party. Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness was Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland from 2007 until his resignation in 2017. The party has also increased its representation in the Republic of Ireland, gaining 14 seats in the 2011 elections and 23 in 2016, overtaking the Labour Party as the third largest party. In the 2016 and 2017 Northern Ireland Assembly elections, it remained the second party, just behind the Democratic Unionists. Adams stepped down in February 2018 and was replaced by Mary Louise (Lou) McDonald.