Room

The following piece is the last part of a 4 part review of Great Hatred Little Room

A political memoir is often a dry affair for the reader, but Jonathan Powell has interjected sufficient wit, vignettes and anecdotes into his that the mind does not become parched and croaked with the minutiae of detail and negotiations. An oiled mind doesn’t choke on the dryness of footnotes. There is only so much political humdrum the average reader can be expected to swallow without the aid of a lubricant.

One such moment of wit emerges when Powell reveals that at the height of the Garvaghy Road dispute both sides gathered to meet ‘at the appropriately named Nutts Corner.’ During that same dispute there was a crazy moment when the loyalist solicitor Richard Monteith accused Tony Blair of lying. Powell reached across the table to choke Monteith but apparently thought better of it. Powell was outraged that Monteith would hurl such an accusation at the Prime Minister of Britain. But if Powell was to choke everyone who said what they thought about Blair’s ratings in the honesty market he would need to be more octopus than human. Were Monteith for his part to get upset at lying politicians spoofing, he may emigrate to Mars and from there read about the political class denouncing him for having set up home on Saturn.

David Trimble, who is not renowned for his sense of humour, nevertheless has a moment, perhaps unintentional, attributed to him by Powell. The then UUP chief summed up his own dilemma wittily enough when rejecting advice to make friends in other parties; ‘why should I make friends in other parties when I have none in my own?’ Tough at the top for Davy no Mates.

What political players think of each other makes for a valuable addition to the historical record. It enables a better construction of the political map the reading public uses to guide it through incomprehensible terrain. Overlain with human interest and accounts of human foibles the map loses its dull sterility. It is no longer a flat surface guided by the straight and predictable but assumes three dimensional qualities, revealing depths, contours, crannies, nooks and crooks. Another lubricant to oil the wheels of intake.

A paradoxical feature of the map Powell draws is that he keeps its dips for the Sinn Fein president. The odour of pure disdain wafts from the pages for Gerry Adams alone. It is not extended, to the same extent, to other political leaders. Paisley comes through okay. Powell may have found David Trimble ‘irritating’ but he felt history would remember him kindly.

Why he reserved his more caustic comments for the Sinn Fein boss who he felt always disappeared at moments of difficulty puzzles because it collides with a sense of something else that Powell entertains about Adams. He has publicly called Adams his friend, as well as inviting him to his wedding.

Powell in his book describes Adams as something of a bully who hectored to get his own way and behaved ‘rather sneakily.’ At one point he told the British ‘he wanted to avoid history lessons and then proceeded to give us one.’ His voice was like treacle, ‘both wheedling and threatening.’ Negotiations for him had always to be a drama. Powell noted that even Martin McGuinness mercilessly teased his boss about being a tree hugger. Nor did anyone believe that his pleas on the killing of Robert McCartney were genuine. Powell also contemptuously commented that Adams’ ‘first demand in any negotiations was normally to be fed’ and then he would complain about the quality of the dish. The memoir also likened the Sinn Fein president to a political hagfish – a creature once described by Richard Dawkins as extremely slimy. The disdain for Adams is as unmistakable as it is palpable.

Now depending on your perspective on these matters Adams could be all of these things or none of them. But the lack of symmetry between memoir and musings prompted me to raise the issue with Jonathan Powell on the one and only occasion that our paths crossed. He flatly denied holding Adams in contempt. I resisted a Monteith moment, feeling Powell was opting for diplomacy rather than dishonesty.

Later I found myself driven to reflection when reading in the memoir that Adams had challenged Powell to a TV debate, promising to wipe the floor with him. Powell must surely have licked his lips when he watched the Sinn Fein leader taken apart on RTE’s party leaders debate prior to the 2007 general election in the Republic and silently muttered ‘no contest.’

What probably made for an uncomfortable moment for Sinn Fein devotees was the Powell revelation that Adams had requested him to help draft a keynote address to the party faithful. Powell professed to being absolutely amazed when Adams ‘delivered the speech … with the draft passage contained within it pretty much unchanged, saying the IRA would disappear.’ The delivered speech was so close to what Powell wrote that the British mandarin facetiously commented on a television documentary that he did not know whether to be delighted or sue Adams for plagiarism.

Nor was this an isolated incident:

I gave them a draft of a section of a speech I had written on the future the IRA. ... It was an odd sensation to hear it coming out of Martin McGuinness’s mouth later that evening at the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis.

There are a number of errors in the book. Powell mistakenly thought Dave O’Conaill was chief of staff of the IRA in the 1974-75 period. It was a position the late IRA senior figure never held. Of greater magnitude was the erroneous dating of the IRA killing of Frank Kerr, an incident he cited as evidence that the IRA was up to no good despite its commitment to a complete cessation of armed activity. Although the killing occurred in 1994, a few months into the ceasefire, Powell placed it in 1995 at a time when there was much more evidence courtesy of the IRA’s killing campaign against drug dealers under the cover name Direct Action Against Drugs. Powell also got the date of the murder of Robert McCartney wrong by a matter of weeks.

That killing provided a window on Powell’s thinking of IRA members on the ground. Robert McCartney, he claimed, was ordered killed by a local IRA capo. This served to reinforce his view of IRA volunteers at local level as little more than thugs who drove around in four wheel drive jeeps terrorising the community. This type of activity combined with the Northern Bank robbery and other money making schemes led Powell to conclude that it should be a British objective to get the IRA onto the right path and prevent it degenerating into a mafia. Most would imagine that this should have been the task of the Sinn Fen leadership and not the British.

Yet on the grounds of expediency Powell admits to turning a blind eye to IRA activity including those aspects he viewed as unalloyed criminality. This underlines the extent of British collusion in undermining their own laws. And it makes a mockery of British claims today that the law should prevail. Clearly during the peace process the British were quite willing to see the laws they demanded everybody else uphold, subverted for their own political reasons.

Jonathan Powell has written a valuable political memoir which adds to our understanding of how the British state both overcame the challenges posed to it from republicanism and brought the violent Northern conflict to a close on its own terms. Powell, in spite of his efforts to mask the extent of the republican defeat, nevertheless unveiled the very real shortcomings of the Adams strategy as a republican project.

The lessons we are invited to learn from the Powell memoirs are simple. There was no republican outcome to the republican struggle. At the close of the IRA campaign the British state had conceded no ground. Its conditions for leaving Ireland were the same as they were prior to the IRA campaign: only with the consent of a majority of people in the North. The British also secured the internal solution republicans vowed never to buy into, and through the Good Friday Agreement ensured the intellectual hegemony of the internal conflict model as the explanation for the turbulence that had beset the North for the previous three decades. With the two warring tribes perspective projected onto the world stage the British in true colonial fashion drastically minimised their own responsibility.

The British state’s self-serving case that throughout the conflict it was merely a neutral facilitator, going along with any outcome so long as both ‘tribes’ agreed with it, found more validation than it ever deserved when on the 20th anniversary of the Loughall ambush Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley competed to tell jokes. If ever the contrast between republican sacrifices made and non-republican goals secured, was captured in one still shot it lay in that moment of laughter; a moment far removed from the laughter of our children predicted by Bobby Sands.

With this in mind, at a conference in England two years ago, I put it sharply to a senior British official long at the heart of British state strategy that ‘you shafted republicans.’ His parry, as simple as my thrust had been sharp, was, ‘no, republicans shafted republicans.’ At that point we could agree not to differ. Whatever the cause, republicans had, without doubt, been shafted.

Great Hatred, there was a lot of it. But at the end there is Little Room for doubt who emerged victorious.



Jonathan Powell, 2008. Great Hatred Little Room. The Bodley Head: London
Book Review in four parts:
1. Great
2. Hatred
3. Little
4. Room

34 comments:

  1. Excellent review. For the life of me I will never understand what the people of West Belfast see in Gerry. The guy is just a total snake beyond anything I've ever seen. I've often thought that the Irish could teach us Yanks a lot about how to live life but if there was ever one thing we could teach republicans it's toss the bums out every now and then. It's the same clowns running the show for the past 30 years. This guy is the Sinn Fein president for life and will be probably for another 30 years and there is seemingly nothing anyone can do about it. Its like the Politburo under Stalin. How depressing.

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  2. Grma Anthony... the reviews were just go hiontach... gave me insights into stuff i have often wondered about... Whilst i ain't the sharpest knife in the drawer re. political games this really honed some understanding in me of what went down that shaped the now... Much apprec.

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  3. Excellent series of reviews there Mackers, one that all republicans should read with an open mind, whether or not they agree with it all. It is important that the recent past gets discussed openly from as many perspectives as possible. As Connolly once said in relation to his wee ideological spat with the Church.... out of such discussion comes clarity of thought! (hopefully!)

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  4. Aye Anthony whilst still unsure of what to make of Powell, your review as Sean Mor states makes the reading of it almost compulsory,I totally agree with you re the outcome of those negotations, but it will be interesting to read his version of the maneuvering that went on,and if Sean Mor doesnt mind I to would like to quote James Connlly,"Yes, ruling by fooling is a great British art with great Irish fools to practice on"so adept when talking of the psf negotation team

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  5. I,ve just got a hold of the book, and I notice how Blair talks of the principle of consent,he states N.I. is part of the united kingdom because that is the wish of the majority who live there, well a question I would have put to him is ,if the majority of the population of say Bradford which is I believe predominantly muslim stated that they wished to cede from that part of Britan ,would he have been so comitted to the consent principle, then we are told Mc Guinness uses his special phone after Canary Wharf to say they had problems apparantly a rouge active service unit had acted without authority,question who was undermining who in the prm, why was Blair such a committed unionist and why have the brits so determined to appease a group of people who since the foundation of this state have treated their fellow citizens so abysmally, mind you Powell worked (we are not told what department)in the brit embassy in the United States and Trimble regarded him a friend in court, and finally I see Adams tried to chat up Trimble in the toilets,I suppose given the family history old habits die hard, and I,ve only got to page 17,I think I,m going to enjoy this book

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  6. “Powell in his book describes Adams as something of a bully who hectored to get his own way and behaved ‘rather sneakily.”

    Powell may well be correct in viewing Adams with distain and probably more accurately with distrust and viewing him as a bully is probably in political etiquette a nice way of saying thug?
    Unfortunately for Adams he faced off with the masters of shrewdness elite well primed negotiators who would tolerate and even entertain their less than equal counterparts.
    I sincerely doubt the British considered Sinn Fein as a reasonable political party in order to completely weaken Sinn Fein only one thing was necessary and with true blue manipulation they succeeded.
    Prior to decommissioning Sinn Fein held the war is on again off again card so it is understandable they could act abrasive and less than cordial to the stiff upper lip polite Brits.
    Although decommissioning is played down by the British as they have more troops and better weapons than you game. British military strategists not only seen the future but made sure it was essential to remove the weapons as the psychological impact would be greater than the actual surrender or “putting beyond use.”
    In essence the British would accept Sinn Fein under the one condition that being Sinn Fein pacifies the Provisional’s? If nothing else the British successfully brought Sinn Fein into the false powers of Northern Ireland.
    For the pro Sinn Fein camp it was indeed their first political victory. For the British camp it was a triumph and a tribute to their tenacity setting republicanism back into the dark ages.

    Anthony I think I said out of context as I have not read the book although after reading the reviews I probably would skip reading it.

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  7. In describing his altercation with Monteith, Powell says: "I don't know what came over me, but I could easily have hit him. Some splinter of Northern Ireland must have entered my soul."

    That Powell would resort to such a crude social stereotype, and expect his readers to nod approvingly, betrays a profound level of ignorance and arrogance about the north.

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  8. Good point Mike the British attitude towards Northern Ireland has always been one of superiority as they have always viewed the Irish as less than intelligent. Fortunately Powell’s remarks are tame compared to what has been said before. Cleary I don’t think some splinters of Northern Ireland hit his soul considering his soul would be black with British violence past and present. Though it is a nice excuse for a polite member of British society after all the British don’t engage in violence they only quell it.

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  9. But they do it so well Tain Bo, when they are finished the victim usually apoligises

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  10. Powell is not the only person to describe Adams as a bully, anyone who ever fell foul of him within the jurisdiction of the movement would bear testimony to that.

    Wonder is the picture of Gerry and Ginger in the Brian Mor cartoon taken at Powell's stag do?

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  11. Below is a list of Ard Fheis speeches given by Adams since 1994 until 2009...
    http://www.sinnfein.ie/ard-fheis-presidential-speeches

    Guess which one is missing...

    Yes the 2002 speech which was partly drafted by Powell.

    Powell's draft is in page 213 of his book.

    This part is interesting and don't forget Powell wrote it...

    "The IRA is never going to disband in response to ultimatums from the British Government or David Trimble. But I do believe the logic of the peace process puts us all in a different place. So if you ask me do I envisage a future without an IRA? The answer is obvious. The answer is yes."

    Powell said in the book that he, "was absolutely amazed when he [Adams] delivered the speech on 26 October with the draft passage contained within it pretty much unchanged, saying the IRA would disappear."

    He said he that he was then terrified someone other than Tony Blair would find out he had written it.

    Shortly afterwards McGuinness declared, "My war is over."

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  12. Ryan
    It is Irish Republican democracy at work having the same leadership is not confined to Sinn Fein.
    Unfortunately it is a trademark of Northern Irish politics.
    Simply it is the same old soup adding any new ingredients would definitely upset the mix.
    Though it is interesting to speculate what a change in the regime would bring.

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  13. Tain Bo- Hume stepped down. Paisley finally stepped down. Trimble gets booted. Robinson loses seat and will step down presumably. Other parties seem to have some degree of change. SF =Adams and McGuinness for life. New regime might bring fresh ideas, new strategies, creative thinking. Two men at the head of a party for 30 years is a big part of why Irish republicanism is where it is right now.

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  14. Dixie,

    I don’t think Sinn Féin held an ard fheis in 2002. Powell’s words appear in a speech that Adams gave on 26 October 2002 to the inaugural conference of Sinn Féin elected representatives. Some of the words reappear in Adams’s presidential address to the 2003 ard fheis.

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  15. Touche Ryan
    I understand your point I was just being fair in my comment that it’s not exclusive to Sinn Fein. It would create an interesting debate as you point out the absolute power they have over the party.
    On one hand it may be viewed as cohesive and for public appearance this would indicate strength and a clear objective of where they want the party to go.
    Behind closed doors this may indicate the severe lack of direction and a weakness as sooner or later the leadership will have to change.
    I don’t believe Mc Guinness and Adams have the same vision for the future of the party which maybe one reason they hold on. This is a risk and a gamble changing the leadership could well fracture the party as within the ranks there are those loyal to Mc Guinness and those loyal to Adams.
    I have no idea who would be in the running to lead the party and considering the leadership has held the reins for so long I would think they are not confident in the subject either.

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  16. The build up to the Report from the Saville Inquiry on Tuesday has begun. According to today's Guardian it will give a verdict of unlawfull killing which will realy put the cat among the para pigeons. Also Radio 4 are broadcasting dramatised testimony from the Inquiry at 9 pm tonight (Thursday). Here is the link:
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b008vbc0

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  17. If the early leaked reports from the Saville inquiry are true I hope the people of Derry and futher afield remember Mc Guinness,s statement in Powells book i.e. an apology re Bloody Sunday would have been enough,and act accordinly, if a S.D.L.P spokesperson had issued such a statememt you can bet your ass the psf,ers would have had rent a mob outside the house,wouldnt it be nice if he were to recieve a taste of their own medicine

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  18. Marty the problem with attacking one of their homes is actually pining down which one.
    Gerry Kelly's house was attacked in North Belfast, proved a futile though considering he now lives with the rich and dare I say infamous in 'Provo Valley'

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  19. Now just a wee update Nuala the latest report is that the junior minister Mr Kelly no long longer resides with the riff raff up in provo heights, he has relocated to a much more respectable area ie, Old golf course Dunmurry, and one wee step away from the Malone rd,where one does find a much better class of gangster altogether

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  20. Marty, I stand corrected Kelly is living off the Malone.
    Last year they attacked a property and it was one he rented out.
    I suppose if you are going to sell your soul you are entitled to ask for the going rate!

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  21. so the saville inquiry into bloody sunday is to be published next tuesday,we can expect more leaks before that,this will be a testing time for the familys,with the world cup in full swing and the worlds gaze elsewhere,the brits think that this is a good time to bury bad news,the only positive that i can see is that the brits are treating this like it is bad news for them, a long wait over a big bad lie.

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  22. Not a religious person myself hon the opposite would be true,but Kelly with a soul is like Adams with a conscience not a mission!!

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  23. Marty, it was just a figure of speech. Just like saying, we all thought michaelhenry had gone away you know.
    I think you are judging the shinners very harshly, must be some fete keeping a track of all that money!
    Five million was the price for Garvaghy Road and the people told them to sling it.

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  24. Stupid f##kers I.d have taken the £5 million and then told the others to go f##k themselves

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  25. One of the lads from Thatcher house was telling everyone in the club the other evening,that he and Bob doh Brains were away on an intelligence officers meeting, Bob doh Brains was booking into the guest house, and looking around he noticed a sign on the wall,He said to the owner"Doh an what time do YOU get in by?" the confused owner replied"Well I am the owner I live here why do you ask ?" Bob doh Brains said"Doh that sign on the wall says guests have to be in before you" the owner replied "you thick git! it says Guests must be in before 1 am!!

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  26. Marty

    You put your finger on my thoughts in your last post, myself I have nothing against comrades plundering the British exchequer, some of the moralising from anti SF republicans on this has been as bad as that of SF on other issues.

    If when Betsy come's waving a wad, it is worth considering whether it is viable to play her at her own game. Not easy for sure, as doubly dealing comes natural to these folks, but if it can be done, I see no reason why republicans should not play betsy at her own game.

    Instead the shinners have used much of this cash to featherbed they're middling ranks with jobs, etc. Which is exactly what Betsy wanted.

    Not surprisingly such a system was first trialed by the Thatcher government in England in the early 1980s. It was first designed to head off the trade unions who through the trades council movement had set up at a local level unemployed workers centres across the country to help organise the unemployed to campaign against mass unemployment. At first these were staffed by TU activists working as volunteers.

    Of course once they took government money, political activity was banned and these centres became little more than advice centres.(remind you of any thing?)

    Those activist who refused to bend the knee were gradually filtered out by fair means of foul. Not incidentally by the government, but by the trade union leaders and their local gofers, who successfully argued if they were not removed they would jeopardise the very existence of the centres, and the jobs of those who worked in them, etc.

    As soon as the militants were removed and the high point of opposing unemployment had passed, Gov. funding was stopped.

    Mick

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  27. Again Mick is the man we should rename you Mick the Oracle , we used to sing when we were younger to the tune of the red flag"the working class can kiss my ass I,ve got the foremans job at last"

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  28. where did all the militants go mick hall,did they fight on from there arm chairs or the bar stools, a militant fights for what is right,nobody can push a militant around whith out a fight back,a huff is not a militant,thats maybe where you are getting mixed up with,the huff and the militant.

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  29. To echo many others - great review. I've enjoyed each part. Now want to read it for myself.

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  30. Marty, do not beieve that all Irish people view British money as a panacea or indeed some type of retribution for past ills.
    Not moralising just giving my opinion.

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  31. I agree hon but its nice to be miserable in comfort,and anyway the compensation claims havent went in for the plantation theft yet, so anything those fuckers give is just a downpayement

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  32. Ryan,

    ‘if there was ever one thing we could teach republicans it's toss the bums out every now and
    Then’

    So essential if any political movement is to avoid suffocation from above.

    Saint?MaryHedgehog

    Glad you enjoyed it.

    Marty,

    I wasn’t trying to sell books for Jonathan Powell!! It is a book well worth having.

    Consent is a necessary feature of any democratic polity. The area of contention is the unit of consent. The British view completely trounced the republican one in the negotiations dealt with by Powell.

    Tain Bo

    'In essence the British would accept Sinn Fein under the one condition
    that being Sinn Fein pacifies the Provisionals?'

    This seemed pretty obvious to me from early on in the peace process but the leadership were having none of that type of view.

    I think the book is well worth reading. How many British officials ever devote anything more than a chapter to the North in their memoirs?

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  33. Ryan,

    ‘ Two men at the head of a party for 30 years is a big part of
    why Irish republicanism is where it is right now.’

    It can’t be a healthy situation in any polity.

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  34. Room

    Seán Mór, one of the problems that have long dogged republicanism is that clarity of thought was something to be shunned in favour of fudge.

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