Everywhere through the RDS rooms housing the Shinners' shindig, the air was thick with pain, suffering and struggle. Like in Faulkner's Deep South, the past with Sinn Fein isn't dead, it isn't even past.

Across the walls of the makeshift restaurant, the war and its brutal fallout . . . for one side at least . . . was on display.

The hunger strikes had pride of place. Twenty five years on, the battle continues to keep remembering.

A pictorial exhibition drags those days back into the present. All manner of paraphernlia was on sale. There is even a "historic perspective of the hunger strike, " the form of protest that originated on this island.

Curiously, the perspective doesn't include the latest proponent, the put-upon Mr Hussein of Baghdad.

At least the focus on the past might straighten out any wobbles. On Friday evening, Martin McGuinness warned of wobbling in the face of media speculation that there was dissent in the ranks. If in doubt about the future, the Shinners turn to the past to keep the foot soldiers in line. Nobody has gone away, you know, as the legend on one t-shirt, "IRA Undefeated Army", proclaimed.

Another t-shirt doing a brisk sale, and conforming to the theme, bore the statement: "I still hate Thatcher". Ah lads, come on, will youse not let the old bat go senile in peace.

Perusing the merchandise with a "Visitor" tag on his chest was one James Monaghan, the man known in yesteryear as the mortar, but better remembered these days as one who went in search of rare Colombian birds. For a man whose plight was such a cause celebre among the Shinners a short while ago, he cut a lonely figure among his own. A request for a private chat about birds was met with a polite refusal.

Inside the Concert Hall, there was still a reluctance to let go. Caitriona Ruane, formerly she who wanted to Bring Them Home, was thundering from the stage. "Commemorate the dead and fight like hell for the living, " she said, and boy, did they love her for it.

She spoke from behind a podium which bore the number 1916. Here the past was being invoked not just to keep their own in line, but to ward off Bertie's crowd from trying to reclaim it. It started out in the GPO, but the last stand would be made here, in the RDS.

Ruane was followed by others, including Dublin city councillor Daithi Doolin, who spoke about workers' rights, but forgot to mention Joseph Rafferty, the man shot dead by a Provo last year, whose family had beseeched Doolin to intervene. Some elements of the recent past are obviously best left unsaid.

Then it was time for Caoimhghin O'Caolain to take the stage. The air relaxed, as if it had been sprayed with an intoxicating sedative. It was time to let the rousing orator's seductive delivery cart you off to the land of nod.