Gerry Adams

For other people named Gerry Adams, see Gerry Adams (disambiguation).

Gerry Adams Gearóid Mac Ádhaimh TD
Gerry Adams in 2013
President of Sinn Féin
Incumbent
Assumed office 13 November 1983
Preceded by	Ruairí Ó Brádaigh
Teachta Dála
Incumbent
Assumed office February 2011
Preceded by	Arthur Morgan
Constituency	Louth
Member of Parliament for Belfast West
In office 1 May 1997 – 26 January 2011
Preceded by	Joe Hendron
Succeeded by	Paul Maskey
In office 9 June 1983 – 9 April 1992
Preceded by	Gerry Fitt
Succeeded by	Joe Hendron
Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for Belfast West
In office 25 June 1998 – 7 December 2010
Preceded by	Constituency created
Succeeded by	Pat Sheehan
Personal details
Born	(1948-10-06) 6 October 1948 Belfast, Northern Ireland
Nationality	Irish
Political party	Sinn Féin
Spouse	Collette McArdle
Children	1
Occupation	Politician
Website	Official website

Gerard "Gerry"Adams (Template:Lang-ga; born 6 October 1948) is an Irish republican politician, president of the Sinn Féin political party, and the Teachta Dála (TD) for Louth since the 2011 general election.

From 1983 to 1992 and from 1997 to 2011, he was an abstentionist Westminster Member of Parliament (MP) for Belfast West.

He has been the president of Sinn Féin since 1983. Since that time the party has become the third-largest party in the Republic of Ireland, the second-largest political party in Northern Ireland and the largest Irish nationalist party in that region. From the late 1980s onwards, Adams was an important figure in the Northern Ireland peace process, initially following contact by the then-Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) leader John Hume and then subsequently with the Irish and British governments.

In 2005, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) indicated that its armed campaign was over and that it was exclusively committed to democratic politics. Under Adams, Sinn Féin changed its traditional policy of abstentionism towards the Oireachtas, the Parliament of the Republic of Ireland, in 1986 and later took seats in the power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly.

Family background and early life

Adams was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Adams' parents, Gerry Adams, Sr. and Anne "Annie" Hannaway, came from republican backgrounds. Adams' grandfather, also called Gerry Adams, had been a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) during the Irish War of Independence. Two of Adams' uncles, Dominic and Patrick Adams, had been interned by the governments in Belfast and Dublin. Although it is reported that his uncle Dominic was a one-time IRA chief of staff, J. Bowyer Bell states in his book, The Secret Army: The IRA 1916 (Irish Academy Press), that Dominic Adams was a senior figure in the IRA of the mid-1940s. Gerry Sr. joined the IRA at age sixteen. In 1942, he participated in an IRA ambush on a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) patrol but was himself shot, arrested and sentenced to eight years imprisonment.

Adams' maternal great-grandfather, Michael Hannaway, was a member of the Fenians during their dynamiting campaign in England in the 1860s and 1870s. Michael's son, Billy, was election agent for Éamon de Valera in 1918 in West Belfast but refused to follow de Valera into democratic and constitutional politics upon the formation of Fianna Fáil.

Annie Hannaway was a member of Cumann na mBan, the women's branch of the IRA. Three of her brothers (Alfie, Liam and Tommy) were known IRA members.

His cousin Kieran Murphy was abducted and killed by the Ulster Volunteer Force in 1974.

Adams attended St Finian's Primary School on the Falls Road where he was taught by De La Salle brothers. Having passed the eleven-plus exam in 1960, he attended St Mary's Christian Brothers Grammar School. He left St. Mary's with six O-levels and became a barman. He was increasingly involved in the Irish republican movement, joining Sinn Féin and Fianna Éireann in 1964, after being radicalised by the Divis Street riots during that year's general election campaign.

In 1971, Adams married Collette McArdle, with whom he has one son, called Gearoid Born 1973.

Early political career

The Easter Lily is a badge worn at Easter by Irish republicans as symbol of remembrance for Irish combatants who died during or were executed after the 1916 Easter Rising.

In the late 1960s, a civil rights campaign developed in Northern Ireland. Adams was an active supporter and joined the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association in 1967. However, the civil rights movement was met with protests from loyalist counter-demonstrators. In August 1969, Northern Ireland cities like Belfast and Derry erupted in major rioting and British troops were called in at the request of the Government of Northern Ireland (see 1969 Northern Ireland Riots).

Adams was active in Sinn Féin at this time, siding with the Provisionals in the split of 1970. In August 1971, internment was reintroduced to Northern Ireland under the Special Powers Act 1922. Adams was interned in March 1972, on HMS Maidstone, but was released in June to take part in secret, but abortive talks in London. The IRA negotiated a short-lived truce with the British government and an IRA delegation met with the British Home Secretary, William Whitelaw at Cheyne Walk in Chelsea. The delegation included Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, Sean Mac Stiofain (IRA Chief of Staff), Daithi O'Conaill, Seamus Twomey, Ivor Bell and Dublin solicitor Myles Shevlin. The IRA insisted Adams be included in the meeting and he was released from internment to participate. He was re-arrested in July 1973 and interned at the Long Kesh internment camp. After taking part in an IRA-organised escape attempt, he was sentenced to a period of imprisonment. During this time, he wrote articles in the paper An Phoblacht under the by-line "Brownie", where he criticised the strategy and policy of Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and Billy McKee. He was also highly critical of a decision taken in Belfast by McKee to assassinate members of the rival Official IRA, who had been on ceasefire since 1972. After his release in 1976, he was again arrested in 1978 for alleged IRA membership, the charges were subsequently dismissed.

During the 1981 hunger strike, Adams played an important policy-making role, which saw the emergence of his party as a political force. In 1983, he was elected president of Sinn Féin and became the first Sinn Féin MP elected to the British House of Commons since Phil Clarke and Tom Mitchell in the mid-1950s. Following his election as MP for Belfast West, the British government lifted a ban on him travelling to Great Britain. In line with Sinn Féin policy, he refused to take his seat in the House of Commons. Sinn Féin retains a policy of abstentionism towards the Westminster Parliament, but since 2002, has received allowances for staff and takes up offices in the House of Commons.

On 14 March 1984 in central Belfast, Adams was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt when several Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) gunmen fired about 20 shots into the car in which he was travelling. He was hit in the neck, shoulder and arm. After the shooting, he was rushed to the Royal Victoria Hospital, where he underwent surgery to remove the three bullets which had entered his body. An off duty non-commissioned officer from 10 (Belfast) UDR battalion and an off-duty police officer drew their personal protection weapons and arrested three suspects who were later convicted and sentenced. One of the three was John Gregg, who would be killed by rival loyalists in 2003. Adams claimed that the British army had prior knowledge of the attack and allowed it to go ahead. The UDR NCO subsequently received the Queen's Gallantry Medal for chasing and arresting the assailants.

Allegations of IRA membership

Adams has stated repeatedly that he has never been a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). However, authors such as Ed Moloney, Peter Taylor, Mark Urban and historian Richard English have all named Adams as part of the IRA leadership since the 1970s. Adams has denied Moloney's claims, calling them "libellous". At a dinner for his Fine Gael party on 29 September 2012, Taoiseach Enda Kenny accused Adams of having not only been a member of the IRA, but a member of the Army Council, calling for Adams to "be absolutely truthful about this" in response to Adams' calls for a truth and reconciliation commission in Northern Ireland.

Former IRA member Sean O'Callaghan has claimed he was at an IRA Revolutionary Council meeting in 1983 which was also attended by Adams. O'Callaghan gave his account in testimony to the High Court in Dublin. Former IRA members Anthony McIntyre and Richard O’Rawe have claimed Adams was a key figure in the IRA. Adams said "I’m very, very clear about my denial of IRA membership but I don’t disassociate myself from the IRA.” Former IRA member Peter Rogers has alleged that Adams and his Sinn Féin colleague Martin McGuinness ordered Rogers to transport explosives to Great Britain in 1980. Sinn Fein said Rogers' allegations were untrue. Rogers was jailed for the 1980 killing of Detective Garda Seamus Quaid in the Irish Republic, and was later released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

Father Gerry Reynolds, who facilitated secret meetings between SDLP leader John Hume and Adams, has said that asking Adams about his IRA membership “is such a stupid question” as the IRA was “a secret society and the raison d’etre of the secret society is that it is secret”.

President of Sinn Féin

In 1978, Gerry Adams became joint vice-president of Sinn Féin and a key figure in directing a challenge to the Sinn Féin leadership of President Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and joint vice- president Dáithí Ó Conaill.

The 1975 IRA-British truce is often viewed as the event that began the challenge to the original Provisional Sinn Féin leadership, which was said to be Southern-based and dominated by southerners like Ó Brádaigh and Ó Conaill. However, the Chief of Staff of the IRA at the time, Seamus Twomey, was a senior figure from Belfast. Others in the leadership were also Northern based, including Billy McKee from Belfast.

One of the reasons that the Provisional IRA and provisional Sinn Féin were founded, in December 1969 and January 1970, respectively, was that people like Ó Brádaigh, O'Connell and McKee opposed participation in constitutional politics. The other reason was the failure of the Goulding leadership to provide for the defence of nationalist areas. When, at the December 1969 IRA convention and the January 1970 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis the delegates voted to participate in the Dublin (Leinster House), Belfast (Stormont) and London (Westminster) parliaments, the organisations split. Gerry Adams, who had joined the Republican Movement in the early 1960s, sided with the Provisionals.

In Long Kesh in the mid-1970s, and writing under the pseudonym "Brownie" in Republican News, Adams called on Republicans for increased political activity, especially at a local level. The call resonated with younger Northern people, many of whom had been active in the Provisional IRA but had not necessarily been highly active in Sinn Féin. In 1977, Adams and Danny Morrison drafted the address of Jimmy Drumm at the Annual Wolfe Tone Commemoration at Bodenstown. The address was viewed as watershed in that Drumm acknowledged that the war would be a long one and that success depended on political activity that would complement the IRA's armed campaign. For some, this wedding of politics and armed struggle culminated in Danny Morrison's statement at the 1981 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis in which he asked "Who here really believes we can win the war through the Ballot box? But will anyone here object if, with a ballot paper in one hand and the Armalite in the other, we take power in Ireland". For others, however, the call to link political activity with armed struggle had been clearly defined in Sinn Féin policy and in the Presidential Addresses of Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, but it had not resonated with the young Northerners.

Gerry Adams at the Fermanagh Commemoration

Even after the election of Bobby Sands as MP for Fermanagh/South Tyrone, a part of the mass mobilisation associated with the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike by republican prisoners in the H blocks of the Maze prison (known as Long Kesh by Republicans), Adams was cautious about the level of political involvement by Sinn Féin. Charles Haughey, the Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland, called an election for June 1981. At an Ard Chomhairle meeting, Adams recommended that they contest only four constituencies which were in border counties. Instead, H-Block/Armagh Candidates contested nine constituencies and elected two TDs. This, along with the election of Bobby Sands, was a precursor to a big electoral breakthrough in elections in 1982 to the Northern Ireland Assembly. Adams, Danny Morrison, Martin McGuinness, Jim McAllister, and Owen Carron were elected as abstentionists. The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) had announced before the election that it would not take any seats and so its 14 elected representatives also abstained from participating in the Assembly and it was a failure. The 1982 election was followed by the 1983 Westminster election, in which Sinn Féin's vote increased and Gerry Adams was elected, as an abstentionist, as MP for Belfast West. It was in 1983 that Ruairí Ó Brádaigh resigned as President of Sinn Féin and was succeeded by Gerry Adams.

Republicans had long claimed that the only legitimate Irish state was the Irish Republic declared in the Proclamation of the Republic of 1916, which they considered to be still in existence. In their view, the legitimate government was the IRA Army Council, which had been vested with the authority of that Republic in 1938 (prior to the Second World War) by the last remaining anti-Treaty deputies of the Second Dáil. Adams continued to adhere to this claim of republican political legitimacy until quite recently — however, in his 2005 speech to the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis he explicitly rejected it. "But we refuse to criminalise those who break the law in pursuit of legitimate political objectives. ... Sinn Féin is accused of recognising the Army Council of the IRA as the legitimate government of this island. That is not the case. ... do not believe that the Army Council is the government of Ireland. Such a government will only exist when all the people of this island elect it. Does Sinn Féin accept the institutions of this state as the legitimate institutions of this state? Of course we do."

As a result of this non-recognition, Sinn Féin had abstained from taking any of the seats they won in the British or Irish parliaments. At its 1986 Ard Fheis, Sinn Féin delegates passed a resolution to amend the rules and constitution that would allow its members to sit in the Dublin parliament (Leinster House/Dáil Éireann). At this, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh led a small walkout, just as he and Sean Mac Stiofain had done sixteen years earlier with the creation of Provisional Sinn Féin. This minority, which rejected dropping the policy of abstentionism, now nominally distinguishes itself from Provisional Sinn Féin by using the name Republican Sinn Féin (or Sinn Féin Poblachtach), and maintains that they are the true Sinn Féin republicans.

Adams' leadership of Sinn Féin was supported by a Northern-based cadre that included people like Danny Morrison and Martin McGuinness. Over time, Adams and others pointed to Republican electoral successes in the early and mid-1980s, when hunger strikers Bobby Sands and Kieran Doherty were elected to the British House of Commons and Dáil Éireann respectively, and they advocated that Sinn Féin become increasingly political and base its influence on electoral politics rather than paramilitarism. The electoral effects of this strategy were shown later by the election of Adams and McGuinness to the House of Commons.

Voice ban

Adams's prominence as an Irish Republican leader was increased by the ban on the media broadcast of his voice (the ban actually covered eleven republican and loyalist organisations, but in practice Adams was the only one prominent enough to appear regularly on TV). This ban was imposed by the then prime minister Margaret Thatcher on 19 October 1988, the reason given being to "starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend" after the BBC interviewed Martin McGuinness and Adams had been the focus of a row over an edition of After Dark, a proposed Channel 4 discussion programme which in the event was never made.

A similar ban, known as Section 31, had been law in the Republic of Ireland since the 1970s. However, media outlets soon found ways around the ban, initially by the use of subtitles, but later and more commonly by the use of an actor reading his words over the images of him speaking. One actor who voiced Adams was Paul Loughran.

This ban was lampooned in cartoons and satirical TV shows, such as Spitting Image, and in The Day Today and was criticised by freedom of speech organisations and British media personalities, including BBC Director General John Birt and BBC foreign editor John Simpson. The ban was lifted by British Prime Minister John Major on 17 September 1994.

Moving into mainstream politics

Sinn Féin continued its policy of refusing to sit in the Westminster Parliament even after Adams won the Belfast West constituency. He lost his seat to Joe Hendron of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) in the 1992 general election, regaining it at the following 1997 election.

Under Adams, Sinn Féin appeared to move away from being a political voice of the Provisional IRA to becoming a professionally organised political party in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

SDLP leader John Hume, MP, identified the possibility that a negotiated settlement might be possible and began secret talks with Adams in 1988. These discussions led to unofficial contacts with the British Northern Ireland Office under the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Peter Brooke, and with the government of the Republic under Charles Haughey – although both governments maintained in public that they would not negotiate with terrorists.

These talks provided the groundwork for what was later to be the Belfast Agreement, as well as the milestone Downing Street Declaration and the Joint Framework Document.

These negotiations led to the IRA ceasefire in August 1994. Irish Taoiseach Albert Reynolds, who had replaced Haughey and who had played a key role in the Hume/Adams dialogue through his Special Advisor Martin Mansergh, regarded the ceasefire as permanent. However, the slow pace of developments contributed in part to the (wider) political difficulties of the British government of John Major and the consequent reliance on Ulster Unionist Party votes in the House of Commons, led the IRA to end its ceasefire and resume the campaign.

A re-instituted ceasefire later followed as part of the negotiations strategy, which saw teams from the British and Irish governments, the Ulster Unionist Party, the SDLP, Sinn Féin and representatives of loyalist paramilitary organisations, under the chairmanship of former United States Senator George Mitchell, produced the Belfast Agreement (also called the Good Friday Agreement as it was signed on Good Friday, 1998). Under the agreement, structures were created reflecting the Irish and British identities of the people of Ireland, with a British-Irish Council and a Northern Ireland Legislative Assembly created.

Articles 2 and 3 of the Republic's constitution, which claimed sovereignty over all of Ireland, were reworded, and a power-sharing Executive Committee was provided for. As part of their deal, Sinn Féin agreed to abandon its abstentionist policy regarding a "six-county parliament", as a result taking seats in the new Stormont-based Assembly and running the education and health and social services ministries in the power-sharing government.

On 15 August 1998, four months after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, the Real IRA exploded a car bomb in Omagh, County Tyrone, killing 31 people and injuring 220, from many communities. Breaking with tradition, Adams said in reaction to the bombing "I am totally horrified by this action. I condemn it without any equivocation whatsoever." Prior to this, Adams had maintained a policy of refusing to condemn IRA or their splinter groups' actions.

Opponents in Republican Sinn Féin accused Sinn Féin of "selling out" by agreeing to participate in what it called "partitionist assemblies" in the Republic and Northern Ireland. However, Gerry Adams insisted that the Belfast Agreement provided a mechanism to deliver a united Ireland by non-violent and constitutional means, much as Michael Collins had said of the Anglo-Irish Treaty nearly 80 years earlier.

When Sinn Féin came to nominate its two ministers to the Northern Ireland Executive, for tactical reasons the party, like the SDLP and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), chose not to include its leader among its ministers. (When later the SDLP chose a new leader, it selected one of its ministers, Mark Durkan, who then opted to remain in the Committee.)

Adams remains the President of Sinn Féin. In 2011 he succeeded Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin as Sinn Féin parliamentary leader in Dáil Éireann. Daithí McKay is the head of the Sinn Féin group in the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Adams was re-elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly on 8 March 2007, and on 26 March 2007, he met with DUP leader Ian Paisley face-to-face for the first time, and the two came to an agreement regarding the return of the power-sharing executive in Northern Ireland.

In January 2009, Adams attended the United States presidential Inauguration of Barack Obama as a guest of US Congressman Richard Neal.

On 6 May 2010, Adams was re-elected as MP for West Belfast garnering 71.1% of the vote. In 2011 the Chancellor appointed Adams to the British title of Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead to allow him to resign from the House of Commons and to stand for election in the Dáil. Initially it was claimed by David Cameron that Adams had accepted the title but Downing Street has since apologised for this and Adams has publicly rejected the title stating, "I have had no truck whatsoever with these antiquated and quite bizarre aspects of the British parliamentary system". Officially however, Adams held the title between January and April 2011.

Dáil Éireann election

In 2010, Adams announced that he would be seeking election as a TD (member of Irish Parliament) for the constituency of Louth at the 2011 Irish general election. He subsequently resigned his West Belfast Assembly seat on 7 December 2010.

Following the announcement of the Irish general election, 2011, Adams wrote to the House of Commons to resign his seat. This was treated as an application for the position of Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead, an office of profit under the Crown, the traditional method of leaving Westminster as plain resignation is not possible, and granted as such even though Adams had not explicitly made the request.

He was elected to the Dáil, topping the Louth constituency poll with 15,072 (21.7%) first preference votes.

Controversies

In October 2013 Liam Adams, Gerry Adams' brother, was found guilty of ten offences, including rape and gross indecency committed against his daughter, Áine Tyrell. When the allegations of abuse were first made public in a 2009 UTV programme, Gerry Adams subsequently alleged that his deceased father, Gerry Adams, Sr., had subjected family members to emotional, physical and sexual abuse. On 27 November 2013, Liam Adams was jailed for 16 years for raping and abusing his daughter.

Following the conviction of Liam Adams, the Attorney General of Northern Ireland, John Larkin, has been asked to review a 2011 decision not to prosecute Gerry Adams over an allegation that he withheld information in connection with the case. The request for the review has been made by Northern Ireland's Director of Public Prosecutions Barra McGrory. A statement from the DPP read: “The Director of Public Prosecutions, Barra McGrory QC, recognises that there has been considerable public interest surrounding the decision not to prosecute Mr Gerry Adams in October 2011 in relation to an allegation that he withheld information in connection with the Liam Adams case. While the director has confidence in the evidential decision taken by the PPS prior to his appointment, he has asked the Attorney General to independently review the matter. The Attorney General will be given full access to all materials that he considers necessary to complete this review.” In a statement issued in response, Gerry Adams said “With hindsight there are things I could have done differently, but I’m not on trial here. My brother was on trial. Áine has been vindicated. There is a lot of healing that needs to be done.”

Media portrayals

Gerry Adams has been portrayed in a number of films, TV programmes, and books:

• 2004 – film Omagh by actor Jonathan Ryan. The film is a dramatisation of the 1998 Omagh bombing and its aftermath.
• 2010 – TV film Mo by actor John Lynch; the story of Mo Mowlam and the Good Friday Agreement.
• 1999 – Novel The Marching Season; a spy fiction novel by Daniel Silva.
• 1996 – Novel Eureka Street by Robert McLiam Wilson, as the character Jimmy Eve.

Published works

• Falls Memories, 1982
• The Politics of Irish Freedom, 1986
• A Pathway to Peace, 1988
• An Irish Voice: The Quest for Peace
• Cage Eleven, 1990, Brandon Books, ISBN 978-0-86322-114-9
• The Street and Other Stories, 1993, Brandon Books, ISBN 978-0-86322-293-1
• Free Ireland: Towards a Lasting Peace, 1995
• Before the Dawn: An Autobiography, 1996, Brandon Books, ISBN 978-0-434-00341-9
• Selected Writings
• Who Fears to Speak...?, 2001 (Original Edition 1991), Beyond the Pale Publications, ISBN 978-1-900960-13-7
• An Irish Journal, 2001, Brandon Books, ISBN 978-0-86322-282-5
• Hope and History: Making Peace in Ireland, 2003, Brandon Books, ISBN 978-0-86322-330-3
• A Farther Shore, 2005, Random House
• The New Ireland: A Vision For The Future, 2005, Brandon Books, ISBN 978-0-86322-344-0
• An Irish Eye, 2007, Brandon Books, ISBN 978-0-86322-370-9

See also

• Public Prosecution Service of Northern Ireland v. Liam Adams
• Resignation from the British House of Commons

Bibliography

• A Testimony to Courage – the Regimental History of the Ulster Defence Regiment 1969 – 1992, John Potter, Pen & Sword Books Ltd, 2001, ISBN 0-85052-819-4
• The Ulster Defence Regiment: An Instrument of Peace?, Chris Ryder 1991 ISBN 0-413-64800-1
• Allen Randolph, Jody. "Gerry Adams, August 2009." Close to the Next Moment: Interviews from a Changing Ireland. Manchester: Carcanet, 2010.
• Keena, Colm. Biography of Gerry Adams. Cork: Mercier Press, 1990

External links

• Léargas blog by Gerry Adams MP
• Column archive at The Guardian
• Gerry Adams Sinn Féin profile
• Gerry Adams TD Louth election candidate
• Record in Parliament at TheyWorkForYou
• Gerry Adams at IMDb
• Template:Worldcat id
• Gerry Adams collected news and commentary at The Guardian
• Gerry Adams collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Gerry Adams Man Of War and Man Of Peace? Anthony McIntyre, The Blanket, 28 April 2004
• Interview with Gerry Adams February 2006
• Gerry Adams Profile at New Statesman