Michelle O’Neill and Mary Lou McDonald strode into the Magherafelt count centre on Saturday like republican royalty trailing a retinue of cheering admirers and activists, all eager to bask in this moment of Sinn Féin’s triumph.
A road that arguably started in 1981, when the IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands won a Westminster seat and set the party on an electoral path, led to this cavernous sports arena in County Derry, when the party that wants to abolish Northern Ireland became its biggest party. The Armalites long discarded, it was the ballot box alone that gave Sinn Féin victory in the assembly election.
