Local government history will be made in Northern Ireland tonight when a Sinn Fein councillor is elected mayor of Derry for the first time.
Mr Cathal Crumley (41), who was convicted of IRA membership in 1976 when he was 18, will get the backing of the SDLP as well as his party's support when he is proposed as mayor.
The father of three joined the IRA's "blanket protest" when he was jailed in 1976 for four years. In August 1982, two years after his release, he was arrested, charged and remanded in custody, based on the evidence of so-called Derry supergrasses, Raymond Gilmour and Robert Quigley.
Mr Crumley was convicted on their evidence in May 1984 and received eight life sentences for conspiracy to murder, one life sentence for attempted murder and an additional 300 years in jail for other terrorism-related offences.
However, after the convictions were quashed, Mr Crumley was released from prison in 1986.
He is one of eight Sinn Fein members of Derry City Council. His election as mayor is expected to be a formality following a decision by the SDLP, which has 14 of the 30 council seats, to support his nomination under the d'Hondt system of election.
However, a former loyalist paramilitary leader in Derry has added his voice to growing unionist claims that Mr Crumley's election would set back community relations in the city.
Mr Glen Barr, a former UDA member and one of the leaders of the Ulster Workers' Council strike in 1974, who is now a community worker in Derry's Waterside area, said he would refuse to accept Mr Crumley as mayor.
"I have worked with numerous mayors in Derry down through the years, both nationalist and unionist, and I have never had a problem with any of them. But a Sinn Fein mayor is both a step too far and a step too soon in the eyes of my community," said Mr Barr.
"It would be unacceptable to the Protestant community and set back community relations in the city for a long time and it will also put a tremendous strain on many business, community and voluntary organisations which traditionally invite the mayor to various functions.
"So much has happened to my community in terms of their suffering at the hands of the IRA over the last 30 years that the bona fides of Sinn Fein are seriously in doubt.
"They will have to go through the cleansing process of proving there is no threat from their weaponry or from their Semtex. They will have to acknowledge their role in terrorism before they are acceptable to the Protestant community," Mr Barr said.