SINN FEIN and the IRA have suffered a series of resignations in the past month, amid growing complaints over a lack of internal democracy in the organisations.

The latest to step down are Oliver Hughes and Patsy Groogan, two Sinn Fein councillors in Magherafelt, who resigned last Friday. Both denied they had policy differences with the party leadership, but their loss will be a blow to the republican organisation in south Derry.

Hughes, a brother of the hunger striker Francis Hughes, said: “My colleague Patsy Groogan and I have resigned. It is purely a domestic issue within the republican movement in south Derry. I won’t be elaborating on it.” Groogan said they had not been expelled, but would not comment further. Both will remain on Magherafelt council as independents.

Republican sources say the councillors were annoyed by the party’s lack of internal democracy. “The leadership have been parachuting in men from Antrim to run the place,” said one local republican. “Anyone who doesn’t like it is pushed aside.”

The same issues appear to be behind the resignation last month of Bernard Fox from the IRA’s seven-strong army council and the resignation of a former jail-breaker in Belfast from the republican movement.

Fox joined the council in May 2005 as part of a reshuffle in which leading figures such as Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Martin Ferris left.

Fox has been ill and some IRA members have been told this is why he stood down. But others claim his decision was taken because McGuinness and Adams effectively controlled the council from the outside.

There has also been ill feeling over the decommissioning of IRA weapons, completed in September 2005, and the recent moves to recognise the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

In an interview last week, Gerry Kelly, Sinn Fein’s justice spokesman, said he could foresee the party meeting within weeks to review the policing issue. He said: “If things went well, you are talking about having achieved a new beginning to policing”.

Before becoming a member of the army council, Fox was the IRA’s director of engineering with responsibility for developing weapons. This work has now been abandoned by the IRA.

Sources said he is unlikely to join any other organisation or support a return to violence. The other senior figure to resign is a well-known jail-breaker who is believed to have become disillusioned with the IRA. Sources say he is not prepared to join any new organisation.

The latest resignations show the discontent among IRA veterans, but they constitute a gradual drift away from the organisation rather than a split.

Earlier this year, up to 40 IRA members and active supporters in south Derry, almost all of the local brigade, stood down in protest at what they saw as the reformist drift of the leadership.

Last night a member of the IRA who left the organisation this year said he did not believe any of the dissident groups were capable of mounting a challenge to the leadership.

“It’s easy to give a knee-jerk reaction, but you can’t have a military solution to a political problem,” he said. “I have one life to live and I’ve already lost a lot. I can’t throw the rest away on something that isn’t thought out.

“At this point I can’t see any more walking (out of the IRA). The leadership has pretty good control now and I don’t see anyone putting down an alternative strategy.”

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