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Showing posts with label Gerry Adams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gerry Adams. Show all posts
Belfast Telegraph ✒ Three bombing victims have sued former Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams. Recommended by Carrie Twomey.

Brian Farmer
Three mainland bombing victims have accused former Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams of seeking to “close down any public hearing in which his membership of the Provisional Irish Republican Army might be evidenced and established”.

John Clark, a victim of the March 1973 Old Bailey bombing in London; Jonathan Ganesh, a victim of the February 1996 London Docklands bombing; and Barry Laycock, victim of the June 1996 Arndale shopping centre bombing in Manchester, have sued Mr Adams and the Provisional IRA and want “nominal” – £1 – damages.

A barrister leading Mr Adams’s legal team told a High Court judge in London on Tuesday that damages claims brought against the Provisional IRA should be struck out.

But a barrister leading the three claimants’ legal team argued Mr Adams’s application to strike out the claims against the Provisional IRA should be dismissed and said a trial should be progressed.

Mr Justice Soole is considering Mr Adams’s application at a High Court hearing in the Royal Courts of Justice complex.

The hearing is due to end on Wednesday and the judge is expected to deliver a ruling in the near future.

Continue reading @ Belfast Telegraph.

Gerry Adams ‘Trying To Stop Any Attempt To Establish Links To Provisional IRA’

Bleakley ✍ looks at how the senior Provisional IRA Gerry Adams was perceived through the eyes of the press in the first five years of the Northern conflict.

Belfast News Letter 26 March 1969: Sympathy Sit-In For 'Homeless'

A protest "sit-in" by members of Belfast Housing Action Committee will take place at Belfast Corporation Housing Estates office at No. 10. Linen Hall Street. at 11-45 a.m. today. Mr. Gerry Adams, a member of the committee, said last night that the protest would be in support of the Campbell and Sherlock families, of Colin Street, who had been on the Corporation housing list for years, and who had so far not been given houses.

"Both these families are living in condemned houses damaged in a fire two weeks ago." Mr. Adams said. "The houses have no roofs… The Sherlock family of nine are living in a two-bedroomed house, and they are not allowed to light a fire, in spite of the cold weather. Mr. Sherlock is now in hospital because of the conditions in which he has been living, for the past two weeks. "The Campbell family of eight are also in a two-bedroomed house," Mr. Adams said.

Belfast Telegraph 17 April 1969: Eviction order for 'squat' family

A Belfast family continues to occupy a Housing Trust flat despite an eviction order given to them today. Mrs. Rosaleen Campbell aged 40, her family of six and six members of the Belfast Housing Action Committee, say they will continue their protest "siting at the two-bedroom ground floor flat at Whitehall Path. off Divis Street, until the family is rehoused… A deputation of two from the Housing Action Committee. Mr. Anthony Doran and Gerry Adams handed in a letter to the Trust calling on them to find accommodation immediately for the Campbell family.

Irish Independent 19 July 1971: Brutality accusation

British troops in Belfast yesterday heard speakers at a Sinn Fein meeting accuse them of brutality. The troops, in landrovers and an armoured personnel carrier. stood by while the open-air meeting took place in the Andersonstown Estate. Special Branch detectives were among the audience of about 400 people.

The meeting was organised by the Cathal Brugha Cumann of Sinn Fein. A Fianna colour party carried the Tricolour, the Starry Plough and the Fianna flag. One speaker, Mr. Gerry Adams, from the Ballymurphy Estate, said many youths had been brutally beaten by soldiers stationed at the Henry Taggart Hall on the Springfield Road.

Belfast Telegraph March 15 1972 Detained Trio Named

The Three Top Provisional IRA suspects detained during raids in Belfast on Monday night, were still being questioned today. They have been named as Gerry Adams, said to be the commander of the second (Ballymurphy) battalion and "one of the most wanted men in Belfast"; Brendan McNamee, said to be commander of A Company of the second battalion; and Joseph Conlan, described as an explosives officer with the Ardoyne company of the third battalion.

Belfast News Letter 16 March 1972: Captures strike fierce blow at Provisionals

The capture on Monday of three leading members of the Provisional IRA has struck another fierce blow at the already decimated command structure of the organisation in Belfast. The detention of one of the men, Gerard Adams, was of particular value to the security forces. He had been the commander of the Provisionals' second battalion based in Ballymurphy for the past year and was the most wanted man in the city next to the overall Belfast commander, Seamus Twomey . . . Monday's swoop by the Army, which culminated in the arrest of the three officers and IRA a number of volunteers, has given the authorities great satisfaction. "It was a top class capture," The men are now being questioned by Special Branch officers.

Belfast Telegraph July 17 1972: IRA man in truce talks was detainee

One Of the top IRA men who met Secretary of State Mr. Whitelaw before the ceasefire was scrapped had been released from Long Kesh internment camp four weeks earlier. Gerry Adams, commanding officer of the 2nd Battalion (Ballymurphy) Provisional IRA, had been detained during raids in Belfast in mid-March. He was released by Mr. Whitelaw around the beginning of June and a short time later was part of the controversial delegation from the Provos which met the Secretary of State in a stately Chelsea mansion. At the time of his capture along with two other top IRA men Adams was high on the wanted list of the Security Forces.

Cambridge Evening News September 5: Speculation on end to bombings

There is increasing speculation in Republican circles, particularly in Belfast, that the Provisionals are considering ending their bombing campaign in the very near future… The speculation is being heightened by continuing reports that Seamus Twomey, officer commanding the Belfast brigade has, or is about to be, ousted by Gerry Adams, a former internee. Although this has been strongly denied by the Provisional IRA it is known that Adams, a leading member of the Belfast brigade staff, is well favoured by the army council.

Daily Mirror 28 November 1972: The Most Wanted Man In Ulster

Former barman Gerry Adams last night became the most wanted man in Ulster. He was appointed leader of the Provisional IRA's 1,500 armed men in Belfast. In just eighteen months, 24 year old Adams has rocketed through the IRA ranks and has spent time in Long Kesh detention . . .  Adams takes over the Belfast command from 54-year-old Seamus Twomey, who is needed to stand in for the Provisionals chief-of-staff, Sean MacStiofain, now held in Eire . . . The Provisionals' top brass probably want him to halt the terror bombing in Ulster and concentrate on a political offensive. But the sniping war against British troops is likely to go on.

His other main task will be to heal the breach between the breakaway Provos and the IRA's official wing In Ulster. Members of the Official IRA are known to trust him. An Army spokesman said in Belfast last night: “We know that the Provisional IRA command is being reorganised. Intelligence now indicate that Adams is the most important IRA man in Ulster."


Belfast Telegraph December 21 1972: O'Connell looks to be the new Provo leader

ALL THE indications are that David O'Connell, who claims he is on the run from the police in Eire, has taken over as chief of staff of the Provisional IRA in the absence of Sean MacStiofain, serving a jail sentence. O'Connell went into hiding after what he believes was an attempt to arrest him in Dublin a few days ago. The police have denied that they were seeking to arrest him. It is understood that O'Connell's appointment has the full approval of the Northern Command, including Seamus Twomey and Gerry Adams. O'Connell has a history of guerilla activity and is by no means purely the political figure he is thought by some to be.

Belfast Telegraph January 29 1973: Adams to head IRA in Ulster?

Gerry Adams, the former commander of the Ballymurphy battalion of the Provisional IRA and who has been the Provos boss in Belfast in recent months, may soon assume overall leadership of the IRA in Northern Ireland. Sources in both Belfast and Dublin said today that. Adams, a 24-year-old ex-barman, was in the running for post of military leader, now that Sean MacStiofain was in prison at the Curragh Camp. It is understood the Provisional IRA leadership will now be divided in two parts. David O'Connell will assume leadership in the South, with Adams leading the military campaign in Northern Ireland. The president of Sinn Fein. Mrs. Maire Drumm will continue her role of being in charge of political leadership of Sinn Fein (Kevin Street). Adams succeeded Seamus Twomey (54) as the Provo boss in Belfast. Both are members of the Provo's army council… Adams has the advantage of not being well-known to the public. His face has rarely been seen in public.

Birmingham Post January 30 1973: Two Ulster IRA men are jailed after Dublin trial

Sunday Mirror March 11 1973 'Bombers Plan Fresh Terror'

A Secret commando-style group has been set up to organise more IRA bombings in Britain. Sources close to the Provisionals said yesterday that the group is part of an operation which started with the London bomb outrages on Thursday... Hand-picked young men and women volunteers from Belfast would carry out the raids, linking up with IRA cells already set up in London and other British cities. The volunteers have been chosen for their youth, their fanaticism and because they are unknown to security forces. Republicans throughout the north were delighted by the shock which the London bombings produced... The London bombings came as a complete surprise to most of the rank-and-file IRA membership. According to one source, they were organised by former internee Gerry Adams and the director of operations was the only man to ever escape from Long Kesh. Francis McGuigan.

Liverpool Daily Post April 12 1973: Welsh soldier killed in Ulster

…And in Belfast, security chiefs in Northern Ireland have ordered a new search for two top Provisional IRA men. They are convinced that Seamus Twomey, the Provos commander in Belfast, and his assistant Gerry Adams are in the city, investigating reports that thousands of pounds of the movement's "fighting fund" have been misappropriated.

The Liverpool Echo May 14 1973: One killed, three hurt by IRA mine

Sources close to the IRA in Ulster were reluctant early to-day to comment on reports of a Belfast-inspired take-over of the complete Provisional network. According to the reports, Seamus Twomey and Gerry Adams, both now acknowledged as hard liners, were among those in control. Twomey and Adams have been closely identified with the violence in Belfast.

Daily Mirror May 25 1973: Hunt For IRA Terror Boss

A Former Belfast barman became Ulster's Public Enemy No. 1 last night. Army chiefs named 25-year-old Gerry Adams as the man behind a new wave of IRA killings. Adams, latest head of the Provisionals' underground army in the city is believed to have set himself a target of 200 British deaths before the Ulster Assembly elections next month. The Army's death toll since the emergency started in 1969 now stands at 180. An Army spokesman said last night: "We would like very much to talk to Mr. Adams."

Belfast Telegraph June 15 1973: 3 injured as 'Duke's' is hit by bombers

A 54-year-old man suffering from facial lacerations and a 34-year-old woman. with superficial injuries were two of the three people taken to hospital after the huge blast outside the Duke of York's… the bomb… had been left in a hijacked television supply firm's van in narrow Commercial Court, close to the bar where Provisional IRA leader Gerry Adams once worked as a barman. The blast, about 20 minutes later, wrecked the old building and extensively damaged adjoining property. None of the injured was reported to be seriously hurt.

Belfast Telegraph July 19 1973: Gerry Adams Is Held By Troops

Gerry Adams, the Chief of the IRA in Belfast, and two brigade officers, were arrested by security forces in the Falls area of the city this afternoon. The two top Provos arrested with their leader are understood to be Brendan Hughes and Tom Cahill, brother of former Belfast Chief of Staff, Joe Cahill. Details of the security forces' biggest coup were not being immediately released but it is understood the three were detained without a struggle.

Belfast Telegraph July 20 1973: Blow To Provos As 18 Top Men Are Held

A Severe Blow was dealt to the Provisional IRA command structure yesterday when 18 men including some of the top brigade staff were detained in Army swoops. News of the coup broke after three top ranking IRA officers - ex-Belfast barman Gerry Adams (25), described as the most wanted man in Ulster, Brendan Hughes and Tom Cahill, brother of former Belfast chief of staff Joe Cahill - were caught in a house at Beechmount, in the Falls area of the city. Acting on tip-offs, four military units swooped on houses in different parts of the city and arrested the men in one of the most successful operations since the terror campaign began in 1969.

Today an Army spokesman said: "It was a very satisfactory day, but only one step on the long road." Despite this modest view the Army must feel they are now getting to the top.

Adams, who was captured by a ten-man patrol of the 2nd Light Infantry, was believed to be the brain behind the campaign in Belfast… Brendan Hughes (23) thought to have planned many of the recent bombing campaigns in Belfast.




The Irish People (NORAID) 28 July 1973: Adams, Hughes, Coogan Kicked, Beaten And Burned By British Soldiers

A report smuggled out yesterday from Cage Six in Long Kesh Internment Camp alleges that the Belfast Provisional I.R.A. Leader, Gerry Adams, was subjected to "considerable ill-treatment" in Springfield Road Barracks, Belfast, last Thursday, before his removal to Castlereagh interrogation centre. The report says that Adams, who was arrested at 2:30 p.m. on Thursday was not, despite reports by the media, removed to Castlereagh at 3:30 p.m., but was in fact held in the Springfield Rd. Barracks until 11:30 p.m. During the nine hours spent in the barracks it is alleged he was knocked unconscious by British soldiers, and revived by having buckets of water thrown over him. He was reportedly struck on the body and on the genitals, and had his hand and body burned with cigarettes. The report also claims that Brendan Hughes, who was captured with Adams, was subjected to kicking and was made to sit on spikes during his period in the barracks.

Birmingham Post December 27 1973: Kangaroo Court Theory in Ulster Killing

Four detained Ulster terrorist suspects made an unsuccessful Christmas attempt to escape from The Maze, it was disclosed on Christmas Day. One was Gerry Adams, once reputed to be leader of the Provisional IRA in Belfast. They got no further than the edge of their own compound, and were nowhere near to making a complete getaway.

Belfast Telegraph May 10 1974: Top IRA Escaper Caught

Continued from Page 1… Dark-haired Hughes is reported to be a hard-liner who prefers the military approach. A close friend of Gerry Adams, he was a former operations officer for the Provisionals in Belfast. Details of how the security forces picked up Hughes and how they knew where he was staying were not immediately known.

Belfast Telegraph 27 July 1974: Adams Escape Bid: Police Question Men

A Number of people. were being interviewed by the RUC today following yesterday's abortive escape from the Maze Prison of top Provisional IRA man Gerry Adams. They were being questioned by detectives after Adams (26) tried to swap places with a man in one of the prison's visiting cubicles. But a prison warder became suspicious and all visiting was immediately suspended. Adams, a former barman and once chief of the Belfast brigade, was wearing a wig and false beard he had shaved his own off when the escape bid was intercepted. He also had his hair cut in an attempt to deceive warders.

One of the people being quizzed today was the man Adams intended changing places with. Adams has been detained since his capture in the Falls area of Belfast just over a year ago when he was caught with two other hard-liners. And his bid for freedom yesterday is believed to have been the second he has made within the last two months. He is believed to have been one of six Provos, who tried to walk out of the prison dressed in mock Army uniforms and carrying wooden weapons. Meanwhile the Northern Ireland Office has refuted allegations that visitors were ill-treated and food parcels were interfered with after Adams was hurriedly removed from the cubicle.

Belfast Telegraph August 23 1973: Adams escape bid charge

An 18-Year-Old Belfast woman alleged to have taken part in the attempted escape by IRA leader Gerry Adams from the Maze prison, was released on continuing bail at Armagh court today. Earlier this week, Cottette McKenna (18), of Creeve Walk, was granted bail totalling £2,500 by the High Court. But when Miss McKenna appeared in the dock this morning along with Elizabeth Anne O'Neill (24), of Westrock Drive, and Eileen Owens (20), of Dunmisk Park, both Belfast, the clerk of petty sessions, Mr. James Weir, said that the bail documents were not in his possession.

Belfast Telegraph September 7 1973 Man Is The Double Of IRA Terrorist'

Alfred Noel McNeice looks uncommonly like "notorious IRA terrorist Gerry Adams," the High Court was told this afternoon. Crown counsel told Mr. Justice Kelly that a bid had been made to substitute McNeice "for a notorious IRA terrorist Gerry Adams," and McNeice had made a full statement… Counsel for McNeice said it was perhaps because of his job he had to follow a regular routine and his undoubted similarity to Adams that he was chosen as a substitute to enable the escape to take place. He understood that McNeice was uncommonly like Adams and this had led to a number of embarrassing positions he had found himself in, particularly with the arrival of a new Army regiment.

⏩Bleakley is an IT consultant currently living in the south of Ireland. Covid-19 boredom spurred an interest in the nitty gritty of Irish history.

Gerry Adams Through The Eyes Of The Press 1969-1974

Anthony McIntyre ☠ A couple of weeks ago my wife drew my attention to a Sunday Business Post headline.

It stated 'Most voters don’t want either Adams or Ahern for the Áras.'

Slightly more people would opt for the former taoiseach over the former Sinn Féin leader in a two-way run off for the presidential election in 2025, but 59 per cent would vote for neither, the latest Business Post/RedC poll reveals.

It would be quite the contest, acerbic thrusts and acidic return serves, sparks aplenty. Not mainly because the unbridled ambition of both contenders will have each kick and gouge the other for advantage, but more due to the type of questioning each is likely to face in the run in. One will be dogged by questions about economic crime, the other quizzed about war crime. 

The speculation about their mutual interest in adding the Aras to their list of properties has been fuelled most recently by the reappearance on the political scene of Bertie Ahern whose membership application was accepted by Fianna Fail. This is something that was not processed as 'somebody here looking to join'. Considerable strategic thought was invested in that one before Party HQ gave the green light.

While it might at first appear mindboggling as to why Fianna Fail, dogged by scandal pertaining to financial impropriety, would court the embers being raked over once again as a result of what might seem an injudicious move. Cui bono? Fianna Fail might.

Welcome back Bertie might be seen as cute hoor maneuvering by the Soldiers of Destiny. The party's strategic intelligence suspects that the former Sinn Fein and IRA leader Gerry Adams is considering furthering his career ambitions by seeking the keys of the one place left open to him in his mid seventies, Aras An Uachtarain. Fianna Fail must also be reasonably confident that Adams would not get across the line on the strength of a vote in Ireland alone. Even if the North were to be allowed to participate the unionists would come out just to vote against him, cancelling out any top-up he might have expected from a northern nationalist electorate.

Adams has been persistent in trying to have the vote in presidential elections extended to the Diaspora.  Fianna Fail calculations are likely to be that enough Irish Americans could either be eye-wiped by Adams or simply don’t care enough about his past not to vote in huge numbers for him. In that scenario there is only one man to pitch against him – the former Taoiseach who acquired a reputation in the US as a result of how he helped usher in the Good Friday Agreement. Adams has already taken a hit in the US as a result of Patrick Radden Keefe's book Say Nothing. The issues raised in that prize winning work are likely to pipe into the mood music of any campaign amongst the diaspora, and Fianna Fail are certain to pump up the volume.  

For Irish society it will be a bumpy ride. Both men who would aspire to be President will have to lie about their pasts. Their mendaciousness will be played out in an international arena to the background of flashing bulbs and media scrums from which all sorts of embarrassing questions will be asked and uncomfortable accusations made. 

This society deserves better than a vanity contest between two huge egos eager to erase or rewrite their past, reinventing themselves in the process for their own good, not ours. Irish society needs a President who will promote it, not one who will use society to promote himself. 

By the time the next election comes around it will be fourteen years since a woman held the office of President. One compelling reason to think it time for another. Someone of the integrity of Bernadette McAliskey - because she has no interest in the pomp and ceremony of high office, because she never has been a career politician - would make an ideal president. Nobody is going to ask her about secret graves or secret accounts. And unlike the covetous Adams or Ahern, she would present perfectly as the Irish presidential equivalent of Uruguay's frugal Pepe Mujica. The voting public can decide if it wants radical dissenting women or cynical dissembling men. Faced with a candidate of the probity of McAliskey would the crowd shout give us the Barabbas Brothers?

If it is to be a two-hyena race between the former leader of Fianna Fail, and the former leader of Sinn Fein, Irish society, whether assailed by the stink of corruption or the stench of decomposition, will have as its man in the Aras, President Pong.
 

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

President Pong

Matt Treacy ✒ on the call by Eoin O'Broin for Gerry Adams to apologise.

Waterford Local Radio has broadcast an interview with Dublin Mid-West Sinn Féin TD Eoin Ó Broin in which he suggests that it “might be helpful” if former party President Gerry Adams apologises for making a Christmas video which had been found to be offensive by families of victims. “It would have been better if it had not been made,” according to Ó Broin.

WLR introduced the interview by stating that the video had been withdrawn but it was still on the Ógra Shinn Féin Twitter feed this morning. How long before someone from Árd Oifig tells them to take it down?


The whole thing hangs on a kind of insider joke where the young Shinner turns to the camera, winks and says, “They haven’t gone away you know.” Which is a quote from Gerry Adams himself who used it to assure a heckler at a rally in Belfast in August 1995 who had demanded that he “bring back the IRA.”

Of course, the IRA was shortly afterwards put out to pasture in what amounted to a humiliating historical surrender and tearing up of its own constitution which committed it to remaining in existence until the achievement of a 32 county Republic. Recognising the northern state and administering it through Stormont would have been considered treachery with all of the penalties attendant upon that if you were a member of the IRA prior to 1998.

The video is not particularly funny. Adams has gotten in trouble for previous social media attempts at humour, but at least he has a sense of one, which is not a common ailment among some of the latter day po-faced puritans in Sinn Féin who are afflicted with deep sensitivity – about themselves obviously, and chosen victim groups, so all the more impervious to others.

When this is highlighted, they tend to panic, and we have seen other party representatives being hauled over the coals when their social media posts have been attacked by the sort of voter now attracted to Sinn Féin. Laois/Offaly TD Brian Stanley, and Dublin Bay South TD Chris Andrews, have previously been forced into humiliating apologies.

The bottom line of course for the carpet baggers and Machiavellian puppeteers in the background is power and the acquisition thereof. That is why people like Ó Broin and others are annoyed over the Adams video because it potentially interferes with their becoming ministers. Sin é.

What is interesting of course is that Ó Broin has the temerity to even suggest that someone of Adams’ stature ought to apologise. It will also perhaps cause some disquiet among the Machiavellian old boys who earlier in the year clashed, and apparently lost, in a head-to-head with Mary Lou over the demotion of Martina Anderson the Derry MEP.

Will Gerry apologise? Will the Boys of the Old Brigade persuade him that it is a good idea? Or will they tell “Mr. Know-it-all” – as he was described to me by a certain chap who would fit that bill – to get back in his box. They haven’t any intention of going anywhere, you know.

The vox pop on WLR, incidentally, would indicate that most people really do not see the video as an issue.

Another interesting part of the interview was where Ó Broin distanced himself from Sinn Féin councillors in Waterford who voted against the extension of a traveller accommodation site. This is not the first time that he has publicly criticised party councillors over their voting in line with popular sentiment on housing issues.

Which in fairness is to his credit, whether one agrees with him or not. And I mostly do not. It is all an interesting insight into the fragile coalition that post-revolutionary Sinn Féin is both in terms of elected representation and its voter base.

Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of 
the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland. 

Ó Broin Says Gerry Adams Should Apologise For Christmas Video



Anthony McIntyre ✒ Gerry Adams might not be causing controversy again but has been placed at the centre of one all the same. 

His latest outing has drawn the noisy flak of some people whose concern about the past has always been expressed silently anytime the violent role of British state forces and prison staff has fallen under the strobe. The heavy thump of applause for denunciations of the IRA quickly assumes the sound of one hand clapping when it comes the turn of the British to feature in Rogues' Gallery. 

It is difficult to tell with Adams whether he plans controversy or is caught in its web. Designed or not, he is unable to plead not wittingly M'Lord to Miriam or anybody else about the consequences of his schemes and scams, whereby he invariably manages to be the centre of attention without being the centre of attention.

With multiple motives driving his actions, including quirky behaviour, allowing for multiple outcomes beneficial to him, he knows in advance the likely outcome of his public posturing and utterances, and calculates accordingly. Eoin Ó Broin alluded to this in a public rebuke of his former leader over his appearance in the Christmas video skit, which some have claimed was a mockery of their loved ones whose lives were snuffed out by the Provisional IRA during the Northern conflict. Ó Broin, calling on his former boss to apologise, also pointedly referred to the:

hurt or pain or trauma that republicans, including some people I have worked with directly and very closely for many years, have caused.

Ó Broin's point: Adams could have foreseen the fall out. But not any more than Ó Broin could have predicted Adams behaving precisely as he did. It is in his nature.

Other party figures have expressed the view that Adams has nothing to apologise for including Matt Carthy and David Cullinane, himself forced to walk the apology plank some time back for shouting Up the Ra, while party leader Mary Lou McDonald has thus far remained silent. 

Ó Broin has form for refusing to publicly kowtow to Adams and is not therefore an indication of what way the current leadership cat will jump. I do not subscribe to the Matt Treacy view that Ó Broin is "annoyed over the Adams video because it potentially interferes with ... becoming ministers. Sin é." The impulse toward political careerism is arguably much stronger among those who have backed Adams on the issue than it is evident in Ó Broin, who at least seems to believe in something.  Nevertheless, McDonald is astute enough to discern that the party's phenomenal rise in popularity cannot be dissociated from the public perception that it has left Adams behind it. In her view, best for him to stay on the margins in the past rather than be part of the present.  

As for the video, a friend sent it to me seemingly more in a gesture of ridicule than an outpouring of exasperation. The one comment I remember making was that Adams is a bigger bore than Covid. The video did not seem mocking. If anything, there was a touch of the self-deprecatory to it all, more a parody of his claims never to have been in the IRA, than insensitivity towards victims.



As such, there should be no need for Adams to apologise to victims' groups. To insist that he should is to trivialise the meaning of apology in political discourse. Times have moved on from when Gerry Adams knocking on your door one dark December evening was a cause for grave concern.


⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

No Cause For Grave Concern

Anthony McIntyre ✒ broke with habit and listened to a Gerry Adams podcast.

At one time I would avidly follow the outpourings of Gerry Adams. Not because I liked what he had to say or believed it, but simply in order to keep abreast of the Provisional Movement’s trajectory and where in the political discourse he was seeking to position himself. It was also a means to understand better how the Movement was being molded to dovetail with the needs of his political career.

That was when I had a keen interest in the party’s lurch away from the Provisional republican ethos that had guided its radical years as a social protest movement. With that journey long since completed and the IRA war machine quietly rusting in the Knackers Yard – in his day, only a possible destination that had so alarmed Bobby Sands - my interest has attenuated. The IRA campaign to coerce the British out of Ireland failed. The British strategy of coercing Sinn Fein into accepting the unity only by consent formula succeeded. I have long grown philosophical about it. These days, I rarely read Gerry Adams, even less listen to him on podcast. An incorrigible bullshitter, he proffers little that would interest me either in terms of insight or probity.

There is an exception to every rule and  I came across my wife listening to his podcast. My sole comment - “brave woman.” She suggested I too listen to it. I did largely because it was in the midst of the amnesty proposal brouhaha, but not with any great degree of attention. Just enough to faintly detect a slur in the Adams voice. He might of course have been sucking on a sweet while speaking which causes what in Belfast was once called the marley mouth (marbles in the mouth) effect. As I had come to the podcast late I missed most of the polemic against the British state statute of limitations proposal, vaguely heard something about a climb for unity, and then some cock and bull story about a Rooster having a go at his henry halls, as he put it.

Later this afternoon I was out for a walk. Unlike Adams I do not profess to be an animal lover, but I walked the dog anyway. Many years ago, I bumped into him when walking my dog through the Falls Park while he was with his. He offered advice about how to help the dog become a bit more serene. Nothing about bouncing naked with it on trampolines, something more sensible than that which has since been lost in the mists of time. The chance encounter came back to me as I ruminated on what I was listening to on the Leargas podcast while walking, something he seems to put out on a frequent basis.

Adams sought to eviscerate British reasoning around the intended halt to legacy inquests, judicial reviews, due process, prosecutions and legal civil cases involving British soldiers. He identified the British calculations quite adroitly and logically. He was nothing if not convincing, outlining how the Tory government is following a long line of colonial tradition of cover up and lies. He spoke of rank hypocrisy and duplicity, double standards, a hypocritical view of the world that accountability only applied to everyone else. His concluding comments expressed admiration for the courage of people to pursue truth.

It would have been a great analysis had it been made by, say, Colum Eastwood. The type of excoriation employed only works when the speaker has an unstained moral authority with which to carry it over the line. Gerry Adams does not have that. Unlike Eastwood he was a combatant, which although admirable in many ways, does not allow a free pass when it comes to speaking ethically on the injustice experienced by victims.

The upshot is that Adams with every utterance on legacy is reduced to calling on the British to be as honest about their past as he is about his own. And the British are only too eager to oblige in spades. He should take note of the title of a recent book in which he featured prominently and Say Nothing. 

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Better To Say Nothing

Suzanne Breen ➨ 'Loughgall? I heard reports it was a set-up by Gerry Adams but never saw evidence it was true,' says former NI Secretary Tom King as memoirs are published.

Former NI Secretary Tom King on the IRA’s armed struggle during his time in Northern Ireland and how the SAS wiped out one of their top units.

A former Northern Ireland Secretary of State has said he believed Sinn Fein leaders were committed to ending the IRA’s armed campaign from the late 1980s, but were concerned they could be assassinated by fellow republicans.

In an exclusive interview with the Belfast Telegraph ahead of the publication next week of his memoirs, Tom King recalled surviving two IRA attempts to wipe out the British cabinet.

He also insisted he had no advance knowledge of the 1987 Loughgall ambush in which the SAS shot dead eight members of the IRA’s East Tyrone Brigade.

King (87) said that he had heard reports that Gerry Adams had set up the men because some of them were hostile to the Sinn Fein president’s political strategy and had threatened to kill him, but he never saw anything to indicate that this was true.

Continue reading @ Belfast Telegraph.

Loughgall, Tom King & Gerry Adams

Anthony McIntyre muses on why an alleged party member asked for clearance from the Sinn Fein leadership before assisting Gardai in a murder investigation.

The conviction of Crossmaglen man Aaron Brady for the capital murder of Garda Adrian Donohoe sparked a wave of public commentary which saw Sinn Fein caught in the wash. There was no compelling reason for the party to find itself immersed in controversy about a killing for which it bore no responsibility. Yet as the product and prisoner of its own history, it is not unremarkable that it should find a media microphone planted right beneath its nose just before a question was fired about its attitude to law enforcement. 

According to the now retired senior Garda detective Pat Marry, during the murder inquiry he approached a Sinn Fein TD to establish if a party member would be free to assist the force in its pursuit of Adrian Donohoe's killers. The member allegedly had heard Aaron Brady boasting of his exploits.  

Darren O’Rourke, an East Meath TD for the party, said it was his belief that the Garda approach was made to the then Louth TD Gerry Adams. Adams would at the time have been President of Sinn Fein but Marry in making his move would have been aware that he was talking to a former Provisional IRA chief of staff and a person who sat on the body’s ruling army council for decades. The significance would not have been lost on Marry, nor the distinction between monkey and organ grinder. Marry needed to obtain assurances from the power behind the throne that there would be no sting in the tail for the potential witness. 

Darren O’Rourke waxed puzzled as to why Marry might feel the need to get the nod of approval from Sinn Fein in the first place:

The party has been very clear that in so many cases and so many instances that people should come and make statements and if they have information bring to the guards or the PSNI.

This might ring more true today than it did seven or eight years when the situation was not so clear. Just over a year after the murder of Adrian Donohoe, when Adams himself was arrested on suspicion of involvement in the disappearance and killing of Jean McConville, Sinn Fein was at its most vociferous and venomous, labelling as touts and informers people who had not even assisted policing agencies but who had merely taken part in an oral history project that was upended by the British state. Danny Morrison and others fronted a Sinn Fein campaign of vilification against those involved. Intimidation strutted on stilts in a failed bid to force acquiescence in the suppression of any discussion the party felt deleterious to political careers. 



In such a toxic atmosphere it is understandable that a witness might be reluctant to assist the Gardai without first running it past the party leadership. 

There are other factors that any witness then might have had to consider before coming forward with evidence about the murder of a Garda. Sinn Fein had a history of not robustly opposing the deaths of Gardai. Some of its senior leaders served on the army council of the Provisional IRA, a body that claimed the lives of more than a few Gardai over the course of its armed struggle. The senior party figure Martin McGuinness, still alive and well at the time of the Donohoe murder, had been very clear in his 1985 interview in Hot Press Magazine where he specified the conditions under which IRA volunteers could kill members of An Garda Siochana.

in certain circumstances, like in Ballinamore where IRA volunteers felt they were going to be shot dead and were defending themselves against armed gardaí and soldiers.

That ruthless mindset coupled with the Morrison smearwa could only ever induce a safety first mindset of why take a chance? Much easier to have the leadership give the green light before making the offer to assist.  

O’Rourke claims also not to have known of the existence of the culture of fear in the party, which had  been routinely resorted to throughout its existence. This is in spite of the well documented litany of bullying and the activities of the online risk-averse goonda gang who thought vilifying was a safe way to conduct active service.  East Meath no doubt is hardly comparable to West Belfast where the party and the IRA were as one in intimidating and threatening people who spoke out against their more nefarious activities. Shoot to kill in broad daylight was permissible on the streets of Ballymurphy so long as those gunning down unarmed victims were linked to Sinn Fein and not the Parachute Regiment.  

There are some signs that with the autocratic Adams no longer President the party is stutteringly moving in the direction of becoming normalised. An instinctive and natural bully, he had made the party an extension of his own personality whereby the default position was to smear, malign, ostracise and intimidate. Since he stepped back into the shadows there have been calls from the party hierarchy for its members to desist from the online smearing campaigns for which it had become notorious. One smear merchant, Paul Hefferman, was forced to walk the plank after he was caught in the act.

Nevertheless, old habits die hard, and in a party that made a religious-like observance out of Elbert Hubbart's maxim If you can't answer a man's arguments, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names, the temptation to revert to form is not easy abandoned.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre

Hesitant Witness

Michael Shaw Mahoney with the second in his series on parallels between Daniel Ortega and Gerry Adams.

To those not directly affected by Daniel Ortega and Gerry Adams, the two men have a certain cache. They are talismanic, and like Che Guevara, they are the darlings of the radical chic. 

On my most recent visit to Nicaragua, I was struck by how much Ortega and Adams have in common. They are both masters of survival, and the success of their political parties, Sinn Féin and the FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional) is a testament to their consummate political skill.

 
Ortega and Adams grew up in oppressive, dysfunctional societies. Nicaragua and Northern Ireland, two countries made volatile by conspicuous inequities, became forges for the formation of young rebels. Ortega and Adams went to war against forces of oppression, but they also had to do battle with allies in the relentless leadership contests within their own organizations.

In the 1970s, the Somoza family ruled Nicaragua and owned an outlandish portion of the nation. Nicaragua has abundant natural resources, but the profits from those resources have never equitably trickled down to its beleaguered people. By the 1970s the Somoza family owned over 90% of the country. They were the elite of the elite with the patriarch Anastacio Somoza Debayle in the presidency.

Somoza had his enemies, including Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, the scion of a wealthy family from Granada and the publisher of La Prensa, Nicaragua’s newspaper of record. A man from the northern coffee growing region of Matagalpa, a man with humble origins named Carlos Fonseca, also pledged himself to fighting the Somoza regime. Fonseca became radicalized at the university in León. He became a rebel with a burning cause.
 

In time Carlos Fonseca assumed the leadership of a loose knit revolutionary movement in Nicaragua. These rebels took their inspiration from a history of homegrown resistance against domestic regimes and the United States. They also looked to the success of the Cuban revolution, to the guerrilla victory of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.

Fonseca studied hard in school. He also studied, with growing distress, the crushing poverty of his homeland. Early on he pledged himself to toppling the Somoza regime. He looked to the example of a Nicaraguan hero who cuts across all political lines, who represents the manhood of a small, underdog nation that has been at almost constant war with itself and with the United States. That hero is Augusto César Sandino. 

On the highest spot in Managua, Nicaragua, there is a massive metal cutout of Sandino. The crude piece of art casts a shadow over the steep hill where Anastacio Somoza Debayle sent many a dissenter to be tortured in little caverns cut into the hillside. Sandino was a tiny man who took on the U.S. Marines in the 1920s and 30s. Eluding capture, he built up a reputation to rival that of Emiliano Zapata in Mexico. Sandino still casts a long shadow over Nicaragua. Fonseca, searching for a name for his revolutionary group, took Sandino’s surname and added it to a quotidian Latin moniker to form the FSLN: the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional. The Sandinistas for short.


In some ways Sandino resembles several revolutionary figures in Irish history. He could be compared to Padraig Pearse in rhetorical terms or to Michael Collins as an elusive shot caller. But as an operator and guerrilla fighter he more closely resembles Tom Barry, the IRA man from County Cork who with ruthless efficiency took on the Black and Tans during the Irish War of Independence.

Fonseca revered Sandino, much as a young Gerry Adams was taught by his Irish republican family to revere the leaders of the Easter Rising of the original Irish Republican Army. In 1975, Fonseca returned to Nicaragua from Cuba where he had taken instruction from the new godfather of revolution, Fidel Castro. Fonseca hid out in Managua and then traveled north to lead a few small, rather unsuccessful attacks on outposts of the National Guard, an armed force loyal to Somoza.

Fonseca got in a tight spot near the remote settlement of Zinica in northern Nicaragua. He was trapped. Stephen Kinzer is a former New York Times reporter who knows Nicaragua probably better than any other living American. In his seminal book Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua, he writes 

Fonseca tried to cover his retreat by firing his .12-gauge shotgun, but he ran out of cartridges as Guardsman advanced . . . the founder and guiding light of the Sandinista Front was cut down by rifle fire.

Fonseca’s death left a leadership void. Men like Tomás Borge, Jaime Wheelock, and Sergio Ramírez, a Nicaraguan intellectual who returned from Europe to join the Sandinistas, attempted to consolidate power within the FSLN. Two brothers from Managua, Humberto and Daniel Ortega, also vied for power. Huberto rather conspicuously and Daniel more patiently and quietly.

Like Daniel Ortega, Gerry Adams had his spot in a larger family tent, in his case an Irish republican family on both the paternal and maternal sides, the Adams and Hennessey families respectively. Adams grew up in a republican bubble and absorbed an education heavy on the merits of martyrdom and the insoluble perfidiousness of the British establishment.
 

When Northern Ireland imploded and lurched toward civil war in 1969, Adams was little more than a skinny kid, a puller of pints in city centre Belfast, a Catholic boy who lived where a Bull Ring slides from a mountain. A photograph from the period shows Adams marching in a funeral procession, a black beret on his head and his Buddy Holly specs so clunky they look as if they might dent his face. He does not look like a dangerous man.

Nor did Daniel Ortega in 1979 when Nicaragua devolved into complete mayhem. Early that year a group of Somoza thugs went out on a murder mission that would forever alter the course of Nicaraguan history. They followed the car of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, the editor of La Prensa. Though wealthy, members of the Chamorro family from Granada had established themselves as critics of corruption unbridled greed, and torture as a tool of coercion. Chamorro’s relentless attacks on Somoza won him a place on the dictator’s hit list.

Somoza instructed his killers to hunt down Chamorro. They pulled up alongside the editor’s car, fired multiple rounds through the windshield, and Chamorro, mortally wounded, lost control of the car as it ran off the road and rammed into a pole. He was dead at the scene. The majority of Nicaraguans simply lost it. They could take no more.

Chamorro’s murder fomented support for the Sandinistas. In the barrios of Managua and throughout the country, FSLN guerrillas clashed with members of the National Guard. The Sandinistas, much like the guajiros (rural workers) in Cuba who flocked to Castro, were predominantly poor Nicaraguans, people long accustomed to deprivation and struggle. But they were not the only ones drawn to the Sandinista cause. Many in the much smaller professional class were also incensed by the editor’s murder. In her short history of the times titled “Sueños de una Revolución” (“Dreams of a Revolution”) Marlene Rivas writes, “In January 1978, the murder of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro . . . ended up putting the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie against the ruling family and on the side of the FSLN.”
 

The Sandinista revolution that rocked Nicaragua in 1979 was a cataclysmic event in the history of the country. Although it was far more violent and costly than the events in Northern Ireland in 1969, those times of uproar had the shared effect of thrusting young men into a struggle for survival and political dedication. Ortega and Adams were two such men.

Ortega fought a guerrilla war in the rubble of a national capital still showing the signs of a terrible earthquake in 1972. A decade earlier Adams joined a revived Irish Republican Army as it defended Catholic enclaves against Protestant mobs and the security forces. Adams eventually joined the Provisional IRA after the split from the more left leaning faction known as the Official IRA, or the Sticks. Adams would eventually encourage a sympathy for left wing politics within the Provisionals and its political arm, Sinn Féin. According to Eddie O’Neill and Mark Hayes in Socialist Voice:

In this period Adams not only criticized capitalism, he was fond of quoting Connolly, while Sinn Féin explicitly identified itself with the ANC, PLO, and Sandinistas. Some commentators even detected the influence of Marxism; and though this was hugely exaggerated, there was a sense in which Sinn Féin identified itself as an integral part of a global ‘left’ movement.

Separated by a vast ocean, Ortega and Adams still became birds of a feather. Their rise to power has required a great deal of shape shifting. Today they are the men most associated with the FSLN and Sinn Féin, two parties that wield immense influence in their respective lands. Next time we will explore how these men consolidated power, how they alienated many of their former supporters, and where they stand now. For many they remain the ultimate rebels. For others they are rogues who have betrayed the revolution, broken spirits, and destroyed lives.  


➽ Michael Shaw Mahoney (MA Irish Studies, Queen’s University Belfast) is a free-lance writer from Louisville, Kentucky, USA

Nicaragua ➤ Rogues & Rebels (Part II), Daniel Ortega & Gerry Adams

From The Detail a discussion on the reaction to the decision of the UK Supreme Court to quash convictions of Gerry Adams. 

By Brian Gormally

 It was only to be expected that there would be an emotional reaction. On May 13, 2020 the Supreme Court quashed the 1975 convictions of Gerry Adams for attempting to escape from lawful custody.

The retired politician, for some a hero, for others a hate figure without comparison, was left with no criminal convictions and his internment without trial deemed unlawful.

That the highest UK court could exonerate this ‘enemy of the state’ might seem, to some, an indication of how far we have come in the past half century. To others it could be savoured as one of history’s delicious ironies but to others again, it appears to be a betrayal.

Nonetheless, the reaction of Trevor Ringland, known for peace campaigning, writing in the News Letter on May 16, seems a little extreme.

In a disturbing image, he argues that the decision:

walked on…the graves of those who, throughout the history of Northern Ireland’s Troubles, strove to uphold the rule of law, whether it was soldiers, police officers or his (Lord Justice Brian Kerr) colleagues in the legal profession … Why was he not excused from this duty?
Ringland pleaded on behalf of the judge, originally from Northern Ireland, who wrote and delivered the judgement of the court.

Continue reading @ The Detail.

Gerry Adams And The Rule Of Law

Anthony McIntyre considers a UK Supreme Court verdict delivered yesterday in London.

Wednesday morning saw the UK Supreme Court quash convictions dating back to the 1970s in the case of the former Provisional IRA Chief of Staff, Gerry Adams. The convictions in question arose out of two escape attempts Mr Adams was involved in while held in Long Kesh without trial.

Prior to his arrest in the summer of 1973 Adams was the senior element in a triumvirate of IRA figures in Belfast responsible for prosecuting the war against the British, even taking it to the heart of London. Such was the determination of the IRA to have its three key figures in the Northern Capital continue to run the war in the city that successful escapes were pulled off for the other two, although they would later be recaptured in separate British security operations in the Malone Road area of Belfast. The IRA did not lay on escapes for peaceniks.

None of that however was the purview of the Supreme Court. Restricting itself to matters of law, it ruled that because Adams had not been lawfully held, he had not therefore escaped from lawful custody. There was never a question that he tried to escape, just the lawfulness of what it was he was seeking to escape from. The custody was unlawful, and the sequitur is that the escape attempts were lawful.

Because Adams is an eternal flame to perennial unionist touch paper, that type of reasoning infuriates political unionism. Before the head had time to settle on the verdict, its dark stuff was being gulped down by an assembly of the outraged, venting their displeasure at what left a bad taste in their mouths. For them the ruling is tantamount to Sawney Bean being found not guilty of unlawfully eating people after he offered a defence that he only ever lawfully dined on them. Even some liberal unionists are up in arms about it. Chronically incapable of conceding that the state they cherished so routinely behaved with malign intent, they would rather stick to what they are comfortable with: making the case that Adams has literally got away with murder and continues to have some functionary push him around in a wheelchair. There is a grave reluctance by unionism of all hues to acknowledge the scope of systemic injustice practiced on the nationalist community by the British state.

Whatever people might think, the outcome should be roundly welcomed. The issue is much wider than Adams. Flowing from the judgement is a damning indictment of the British state for having flouted due process routinely right across the board. The unlawful flouting of that process is not some fanciful notion rooted in the mists of republican theology but has its founds in British jurisprudence.

For his part Adams might well wonder on what ethical grounds a government led by a man widely believed to have been a raging paedophile and child rapist could claim the right to unlawfully deprive him of his liberty. He is however is unlikely to be interested in the justness of the verdict, justice being something that as often as not can be an impediment to the political career aspirations of a martial politician. The Supreme Court ruling will be a convenient sanitiser with which to disinfect and deodorise the odour of decomposition that has clung to the Adams brand, in anticipation of a power grab at the 2025 Irish presidential election. The fiction will be pushed that he neither directed nor was a practitioner of the political violence of the IRA – that was carried out by people who were convicted for it, people like Bobby Sands and Joe McDonnell. He has no convictions.

Ultimately, in spite of the brouhaha, the difference between this morning and yesterday morning is that today Adams is a former IRA leader who escaped from unlawful custody. Yesterday he was a former IRA leader who escaped from lawful custody. That is a simple historical fact which nothing is ever going to change.

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre

Lawfully Escaping From Unlawful Custody

Matt Treacy assess the political odyssey of former Provisional IRA chief of staff Gerry Adams.  
By Matt Treacy
Gerry Adams’ announcement that he is retiring from politics brings to an end one of the most significant public lives of the past century. 

Photo Credit: Domer48
He is without doubt a major historical figure whose influence on events in Ireland was hugely significant.

I cannot claim to have known him well. I did know him but I was not at the level where my political acumen was of much interest to him. Most of the conversations I had with him were brief ones about hurling. He used to read my GAA column at the back of An Phoblacht and when he met my daughter in the Leinster House restaurant he remembered me mentioning her in a piece I had written about the Dublin junior camogie team that won the All Ireland in 2003. That is why people like him, sometimes more than that.

I was at meetings where grown men were clearly verging on fear of him, which says more about them than Adams I suspect. I have met few people who have that kind of presence and he was the most impressive. The meetings only tangentially involved me so I did not have to deliver any sort of result, as it were. So I could observe the courtiers. Those who did were not comfortable. It was clearly his influence which produced any end result in political gains for what were once, the Provies.

Before one meeting began he was humming a song and asked me did I know what it was. Fagamuid suid mar a tá said. The Limerick Rake. My estimation had possibly increased when I knew that but I declined the invite to sing.

He is a clever chap and one with an eclectic but broad appreciation of many things. And a weird sense of humour.

Now for the bad parts. I suspect like other people of his acumen with ambition that he surrounded himself with flawed people. Some of those closest to him like Brendan Hughes the Officer Commanding the H Blocks during the first hunger strike who once professed to have loved him in the way that men do their comrades who have seen the best and worst of them, believed similar.

The fact that so many of that inner circle have been exposed as British paid informers and rapists and god knows what else, suggests either a serious misjudgement of character or a willingness to use such people for ulterior ends. I don’t know. I was never at a level where I had to make such decisions, but I suspect the latter. Sometimes it is good not to be embraced by power. Probably it is always best not to be embraced by power. Lord Acton, to quote the much abused and overused dictum, was indeed correct.

There is also the manner in which he has denied his past. Some regard that as part of his own personal reinvention. I have no idea, but for many republicans and especially for many of his own peer group his denial of having been a member of the IRA is regarded as a denigration of their own history.

Is it something to be ashamed of? As with all the other participants in the conflict the IRA did do shameful things. Does that mean that all of those who were members are tainted with some eradicable historical guilt? That we should all bow our heads in shame for eternity and deny our past as do Adams and Gerry Kelly and others?

While Adams’ denial of membership made sense when it was an indictable offence, that no longer applies. The IRA was stood down and disarmed and disavowed its historical objective under Adams’ watch. He was at one time Chief of Staff and always after that remained the main power no matter who held that position and he was at all the IRA conventions that made the crucial decisions regarding the ceasefires. They were not the sort of events that people just wandered in to.

Be all that as it may. The decision to call off the IRA campaign was correct. And there is no excuse for attempting to have another one. What happened after the ceasefires is more questionable. There was no reason that republicans should have embraced Stormont and effectively agreed to administer the British controlled part of Ireland for the British. There is a democratic alternative to that without accepting their rules.

That the party claiming the historical title of Sinn Féin and all that entails should have become part of the docile acceptance of the surrender of sovereignty to the EU is also of note. That was never put for debate before the members and never voted upon.

There is also the fact that Sinn Féin has wholeheartedly embraced a political agenda which has included the introduction of abortion by default in the north. I remember when Adams and McGuinness were infuriated over the decision by the Ard Fheis in 1985 to support abortion and ensured that this was overturned the following year. I also know current Sinn Féin TDs who promised emotionally that they would never support abortion on demand. Then I saw them arguing for this in front of television audiences.

Adams like the rest of them voted for the government legislation and in some cases for the most extreme amendments proposed by the ultra left, and against proposals by Peadar Tóibín and others that sought to ameliorate the legislation.

So. If I was ever to get to meet Gerry Adams again there are lots of things I would like to discuss with him. As I said in regard to my own personal interactions, I liked him and that is how I judge any person. History and such shall be his judge on other matters and none of us know what that will be.


Matt Treacy is a writer and a former republican prisoner.

Gerry Adams And The Embrace Of Power

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