Gladys Canavan is 71 and frightened of living in a ground floor flat in Belfast. So she turns to Sinn Fein and a young man arrives to help her. The fact that he has served six years in prison for an IRA arson attack doesn't trouble Mrs Canavan.
'He'll have learnt more about poor people than some of them at Queen's University.'
In just three years Sinn Fein has built a political machine whose grass-roots support threatens the non-violent nationalist party, the SDLP. The Northern Ireland Secretary, James Prior, is reported to fear that the Province could become 'ungovernable' if Sinn Fein's strategy succeeds. Could the political wing of the IRA win a majority of Catholic votes? And has the Government failed in its policy of isolating the terrorists?
BBC Manchester