History rarely records that when Sinn Féin was founded exactly 100 years ago, it was not a republican party.
Indeed it was a group of northern hardliners with close links to Co Tyrone that agitated for the party's conversion to republicanism.
Arthur Griffith founded Sinn Féin in 1905 and adopted a policy of dual monarchy based on the Austro-Hungarian model – earning the new party the nickname of the 'Green Hungarian Band'.
However, the influx into the new party of a group of staunchly republican northerners called the Dungannon Clubs changed the direction of Sinn Féin – and with it Irish history.
The Dungannon Clubs was founded by Belfast republicans Denis McCullough and Bulmer Hobson in 1904 to promote an independent Irish republic.
Between 1905 and 1907 a series of amalgamations between other republican groups such as Cumann na Gaedheal and the National Council led to the creation of a new party based around the principle of 'sinn fein' ('we ourselves').
Despite the name and a number of senior personnel being inextricably linked to Tyrone, the Dungannon Clubs was mostly Belfast-based and had among its members republicans from across Ulster, according to historian Pat John Rafferty of the Donaghmore Historical Society.
Mr Rafferty said the group had named itself after the original 'Dungannon Clubs' – organised after the Convention at Dungannon in February 1782 at which the Irish Volunteers demanded – and were subsequently granted – legislative independence for Ireland.
"The group emanated from Ulster so they were looking for a suitable name. There were a number of organisations with similar aims and policies. They were disparate but eventually they all came together under the aegis of Sinn Féin," Mr Rafferty said.
Brian Feeney, historian and author of Sinn Féin: One Hundred Turbulent Years, said the link to the earlier Dungannon Clubs and Ireland's short-lived legislative independence between 1783 and 1801 was central to later republican thinking.
('Grattan's Parliament' was granted legislative independence in 1783 but following the United Irish rebellion of 1798 Ireland was brought under direct Westminster rule with the Act of Union of 1801.)
"A lot of the thinking behind Sinn Féin was that the Act of Union was illegal and that Grattan's parliament still should hold sway," Dr Feeney said.
"Arthur Griffith thought that [dual monarchy] might make it possible for the unionists of the northeast to give their allegiance to a parliament in Dublin."
However, the most strongly republican activists in Ireland were the very neighbours of those northern unionists – though they rejected the word itself.
"They didn't like to call themselves republicans for fear of scaring people away. They called themselves separatists," Dr Feeney said.
Bulmer Hobson, a Holywood-born Quaker, and city-based Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) member Denis McCullough, were the leading lights of the movement – though Co Tyrone had some key players too.
"The principal people in Tyrone were people like Patrick McCartan, who was a native of Carrickmore," Mr Rafferty said.
"He had been involved with Joseph McGarrity, who was another native of Carrickmore but who spent most of his life in America."
In 1890 Joseph McGarrity left Carrickmore for Philadelphia, where he made his fortune and became head of the influential Irish-American Clan na Gael organisation.
McGarrity helped fund pro-independence movements back in Ireland including the IRB and the Dungannon Clubs.
Indeed, before the modern Troubles the IRA signed its statements 'Joseph McGarrity', before changing to its modern nom de guerre, P O Neill.
Back in Ireland, McGarrity's close associate Patrick McCartan divided his time between Carrickmore and Dublin, where he was studying medicine.
"[McCartan] was a real activist. He constantly wrote to McGarrity in America to keep him informed of the progress of the new movement," Mr Rafferty said.
"He was very much taken by the Dungannon Clubs, which was the public voice of the IRB.
"[The Dungannon Clubs] were hard line. In Carrickmore there were 31 members of the Dungannon Club there. In one incident they put up posters in the town but the RIC took them down and they were denounced by the parish priest from the altar."
Mr Rafferty said the Dungannon Clubs were essentially a pressure group that led the pro-independence movement in a more militant direction.
"They had a big effect on Sinn Féin. The Dungannon Clubs made Sinn Féin a republican party. When they achieved that, they became redundant as an independent group," he said.
Sean MacDiarmada, who would go on to become one of the seven signatories of the 1916 Proclamation of Independence, was enlisted to
the Dungannon Clubs and the IRB during his time working as a barman in Belfast.
By 1907 though, the Clubs had been completely subsumed within Sinn Féin. Dr Feeney said people like Hobson and McCullough were considerably more republican than Griffith.
He stressed that the Dungannon Clubs was just one of several groups founded in the 1904-06 period, at a time of extreme political uncertainty.
"There was a general election coming up in 1906, by which time it would have been 20 years since the first Home Rule bill. The attitude a lot of people had at the time was, 'this thing is going nowhere'," he said.
Meanwhile, unionists in the north-east were also watching events closely.
"There was great twitching among unionists as well. They knew the Liberals might be elected and they felt like, 'here we go again, another Home Rule bill'," Dr Feeney said.
"The Ulster Unionist Council met for the first time in 1905, so both sides had the bristles rising on the backs of their necks. It was in the air.
"There had been 20 years of Conservative rule, except for a brief period in 1892. One of the reasons was that the Liberals were associated with being the prisoners of the Irish home rule party. In order to form a government they always needed the Irish home rulers, who always insisted on home rule as the price."
As it turned out, Henry Campbell-Bannerman's Liberals won such a complete victory that they did not require any Irish help in forming a government.
Home rule disappeared from the agenda until 1911 when, after the Parliament Act stripped the House of Lords of its right to veto Commons legislation indefinitely, a minority Liberal government did indeed do a deal with John Redmond's Irish nationalists and introduced a new Irish home rule bill.
