AS a young IRA activist, Gerry McGeough remembers monitoring police radio transmissions one night in May 1981. " 'The piece of meat is coming in now', I heard a voice in the police barracks announce. Then, 20 or 30 minutes later, another voice at another barracks declared, 'That lump of meat has just arrived here.'

"I didn't know at the time, but that was hunger-striker Patsy O'Hara making his final journey from Long Kesh, home across the countryside, to Derry. At every police station the hearse stopped, his body was brutalised.

Cigarettes were stumped out on Patsy's face, his nose was smashed."

McGeough's powerful oratory led to a standing ovation by the 400-strong crowd at an antipolicing meeting in Derry last week. He accused Sinn Féin leaders of being willing to do anything - including supporting a previously denounced police force - to secure political power for themselves.

A former Sinn Féin árd comhairle member and IRA gun-runner, imprisoned in Germany and the US, McGeough said: "I'm not a warmonger, nor anti-ceasefire, but we need a new political deal. The current leadership has made one u-turn after another. We've given them the benefit of the doubt for too long. It must now be said - they couldn't negotiate their way out of a wet paper bag."

Today, when Gerry Adams addresses the special árdfheis, he's unlikely to face such fierce criticism. The outcome of the vote isn't in doubt: the only question is how great his margin of victory will be. Sources predict over 70%, with some forecasting support as high as 80-90%. Anti-PSNI speakers are likely to be confined to the lower ranks - some southerners and �?gra Sinn Féin. At worst for the leadership, a handful of Northern councillors might oppose the motion or walk out.

Senior DUP figures, such as Jim Allister MEP, have challenged the Rev Ian Paisley.

There is no Sinn Féin equivalent. Over the years, internal leadership critics have walked away disillusioned, or been marginalised.

The Godfather The process of near-canonisation of the Sinn Féin president among nationalists was evident at a meeting on Wednesday in Clonard monastery, west Belfast. It was amazing theatre.

Surrounded by statues of the Blessed Virgin and Jesus, the stations of the cross at his side, the tabernacle behind him, Adams preached a new belief in policing to the faithful.

His four bodyguards, with ear-pieces, stood in the aisles. It was like a scene from The Godfather. Eighty-five-year-old Jim Keenan thought the holy setting apt. Pointing to the Sinn Féin leadership, he said: "We should be down on our knees praying for all these people doing a wonderful job. These men know what they're doing. God bless them all."

Keenan had practical reasons for endorsing policing too. He was worried about crime and was frightened to go out at night in case "somebody puts a knife in me". A young man disagreed: crime in nationalist areas was suddenly being exaggerated to suit the agenda of those keen to sign up to policing.

Another young man said it wasn't about the PSNI catching burglars and rapists, it was abut MI5 running agents and death squads. A south Belfast Sinn Féin member complained that plastic bullets remained legal and said the PSNI would be "MI5's foot soldiers", bugging houses, arresting and even killing people.

The Sinn Féin president relied heavily on the post-ceasefire, feelgood factor for nationalists.

Things had changed, he said: it was wonderful to see young folk "wearing their county geansaís, speaking as gaeilge".

Just because the previous generations had it rough, didn't mean their children and grandchildren had to. Those who disagreed with Sinn Féin policy should join the party and change it. One man said that was rubbish:

"People in your own party who weren't sheep or nodding dogs were deselected or pushed out."

But the overwhelming majority of the congregation retained faith in Adams.

Liam Andrews said "collaboration with human rights abusers" in the PSNI would be "a betrayal". Another man said Sinn Féin would "hunt out" such individuals. Clara Reilly of Relatives for Justice - who lost family members during the conflict, "some of them volunteers" - supported signing up to policing and was sure young nationalists would never accept second-class citizenship. An east Tyrone woman said she could never envisage the leadership betraying its people.

A Belfast woman said she suffered a stroke after police raided her home. Her family were regularly harassed, her children detained on the roadside for lengthy periods. "Am I going to have to tell them to now look out for Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness, in police uniforms, coming to the door?" she asked.

The Sinn Féin president told his own tale:

his mother had died after a police raid on her home, he himself had been arrested, beaten and shot. He won praise from an old enemy.

Prof Liam Kennedy of Queen's University, who had previously stood for election against Adams on an anti-paramilitary ticket, hailed this "courageous" change on policing.

In contrast, Liam Hannaway, a relative of Adams currently facing dissident paramilitary charges, was disgusted. No republican could support the PSNI. "Every man, woman and child has the right to bear arms while the British remain in Ireland, " he said, to applause.

But the reception for Adams was even louder when he said "there is only one IRA" and noted that other republican groups had killed only civilians and not "one member of British crown forces".

Surprisingly, unlike the Tyrone and Toome meetings, more anti- than pro-PSNI sentiments were expressed in west Belfast. But trust in the leadership carried the day. Mark Durkan, making the exact same arguments as Adams, would have been chased.

Disingenuous motives?

However, Adams wouldn't have won converts at the anti-PSNI Derry meeting. Ex H-block hunger striker Brendan McLaughlin, now in a wheelchair, denounced "those telling the same lies as Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera".

Davy Clinton, from a well-known republican family in Belfast's Lower Ormeau, urged an alternative to Sinn Féin leaders whom he accused of vanity: "If Gerry Adams and Gerry Kelly were Mars bars, they'd eat themselves."

Former blanket-man, Seosamh Mac an Ultaigh, said: "Ten men starved to death to beat Thatcher. Now they're asking us, who refused to wear the criminal uniform in jail, to wear the criminal uniform of the British police. How Thatcher must be laughing into her gin and tonic!"

Another man said: "My uncle, Desmond Beattie, was shot dead in this city in 1971. I became a volunteer. I've stood by the leadership but not any more. I apologise to every republican that I followed that leadership so long. Vote them out! Vote them out!"

Former Sinn Féin Assembly member John Kelly said more Catholic recruits didn't guarantee a fair police force. "As a teenage republican in Belfast in the '50s, I recall a ferocious Catholic Special Branch officer, Cathal Brugha Ramsey.

"He'd grab me by the back of the neck as I walked up Clifton Street and haul me into the barracks. He'd slap me and start shouting, 'What's my name?', wanting me to admit he was called after a great patriot. When I wouldn't, he'd thump me again and yell 'I am Cathal Brugha Ramsey.' And he'd keep hitting me as he shouted in Irish."

Dissent has been strong in Derry - around 100 ex-prisoners and relatives of dead IRA members have formed an anti-PSNI group.

But a Sinn Féin meeting on Thursday showed leadership supporters still command an overwhelming majority in the city. Both veteran and fresh voices backed Adams.

Sinn Féin talks nonsense when it says supporting the PSNI is about storming unionists' last bastion to bring Irish unity closer. Yet, it's necessary nonsense to convince a community whose gut instinct is anti-police.

The family of Robert McCartney, two years dead next week, might well wish such movement had come sooner. Sinn Féin's foot-dragging defies logic: the PSNI is no better nor worse than when McCartney was murdered.

But Adams' commitment to selling the criminal justice system, however belatedly, can't be faulted by the governments. Nuala O'Loan's report didn't cause a wobble. Neither did the British government, currently putting legislation through the House of Commons to permanently guarantee no-jury Diplock courts and emergency powers in the North.

Until now, annual parliamentary approval was required.

Of course, Sinn Féin's motivation on the PSNI is selfish: the party wants into government in the North in time for the Dáil elections. But for all bar the militant republican community, it's better late than never. Unionists should set aside sectarian begrudgery and say, 'Well done Gerry.'