Gerry Adams
Some of the main reasons that the Provisional IRA was founded in December 1969 and provisional Sinn Féin was founded in January 1970, was that people like Ó Brádaigh, O'Connell, and Billy McKee wanted new political bodies and did not want to work in or with the existing bodies such as the Parliament in London. Another was the failure of the Goulding leadership to defend nationalist areas against attacks by Loyalists and sometimes even the police. At the December 1969 IRA convention and the January 1970 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis (the Irish words for a party conference or convention) the delegates voted to participate in the Dublin (Leinster House), Belfast (Stormont) and London (Westminster) parliaments, the organizations split into Provisional and Official parts. Gerry Adams, who had joined the Republican Movement in the early 1960s, did not go with the Provisionals until later in 1970.