SINN FEIN is a party walking a tightrope. It claims it is trying to move from guerrilla war to normal democratic politics. In the chasm beneath lie repression, internment and even physical annihilation. Across the divide they see the promised land called Peaceful Settlement with bright cities that have names like Parity of Esteem, Equality of Treatment and Amnesty for All Political Prisoners.
A tightrope can also be a noose, which is exactly what its many enemies would like to put around Sinn Fein's neck. The recent discovery of a large bomb at the Sinn Fein office in Monaghan ensured that yesterday's ardfheis in the town took place under heavy security.
There were Garda checkpoints on the roads and Sinn Fein stewards to check and double-check everybody who went into or out of the hall.
Despite the constrained conditions, there was a mood of expectation in the air. Some senior party figures spoke confidently of being on course for three seats in the Westminster elections. Others conceded it might be only two but all were convinced the political landscape would change after May 1st.
There was hope too that a new Labour government in England would be more open to negotiations than John Major, who has been virtually written off. Republican memories are long and nobody has forgotten Roy Mason, but recent utterances by John Prescott and Mo Mowlam have rekindled hope in the Sinn Fein breast.
The IRA's activities at Aintree and on the motorways of England were not thought to have damaged Sinn Fein's election prospects any more than the disruption of Down Royal or a suspect package in downtown Belfast would influence voters in Britain.
Some party activists admitted to concern over the impact that the shooting of a woman RUC officer in the back in Derry might have, although they said there was no way of measuring this.
Perhaps the most reassuring sight to outside observers was that of Joe Cahill collating the tickets for the ardfheis draw. It was also interesting to hear Labi Siffre's song of liberation, Sometlzing Inside So Strong, being sung at the end: this was first used in Irish politics during a TV commercial for Proinsias De Rossa's European election campaign.
If the Provos have become Stickies, then the unionists will clasp them to their bosom. But don't bet the farm on it just yet.
The ardfheis oration by Gerry Adams was interesting as much for what it left out as for what it contained. There were no attacks on the SDLP, although Martin McGuinness had taken a swipe earlier over the absence of an election pact.
There was only the briefest mention of the IRA, referring to the controversial shooting of Diarmuid O'Neill in London and the "cessation of military operations" in August 1994. It was a long way from "they haven't gone away, you know", and provoked no hooting and cheering, which may have been the reason the reference was so low-key.
Introducing his leader, the Monaghan Sinn Fein hopeful, Caoimhgin O Caolain, said he was sometimes referred to as "Mr President", and there was a definite touch of the Bill Clintons here and there in the speech.
Adams invited his audience to take a journey with him "to an Ireland in which all the people are at peace". He told the unionists that he felt their pain When Irish republicans talked about British interference and the British presence, they did not mean the unionist community. Later he said to applause that "the Six Counties is still run by unionists for unionists and policed by unionists for unionists, but those days, brothers and sisters, are numbered".
Journalists careered around the perimeter of the ardfheis, increasingly frustrated by the lack of a "news line" or a "big story". One observer wisely, if slightly cryptically, remarked: "The story is that there's no story."
In other words, the republican movement is marking time: waiting for the election returns, the arrival of Labour in Downing Street and the hoped-for departure of John Bruton from Merrion Street.
There was considerable encouragement from the warm reception given to Mitchel McLaughlin at the previous night's Fianna Fail Ardlheis and the measured comments in Bertie Ahern's speech. But even if the results were bad and the same governments remained in London and Dublin, senior Sinn Fein sources said there would be no going back to the all-out violence of the early 1970s. They said this was because they had arrived at a new analysis of the situation which they believed to be correct.
Here and there throughout the hall you could see IRA "heroes" of yesteryear. Maybe the truth is that, like the rest of us, they are simply getting older.