Gerry Adams

Gerry Adams MP MLA
President of Sinn Féin
In office 1983–present
Preceded by	Ruairí Ó Brádaigh
Constituency	Belfast West
Personal details
Born	(1948-10-06) October 6, 1948 Belfast
Political party	Sinn Féin
Spouse	Collette McArdle
Website	Sinn Féin - Gerry Adams

Gerard Adams (Irish Gearóid Mac Ádhaimh; born 6 October, 1948) is an Irish Republican politician and abstentionist Westminster Member of Parliament for Belfast West. He is President of Sinn Féin, which became the largest nationalist, republican or pro-Belfast Agreement political party in Northern Ireland in the 2005 UK general election.

Adams is a spokesman for the Irish republican movement or the "Provisional movement" which encompasses Provisional Sinn Féin and the Provisional Irish Republican Army (Provisional IRA), an illegal paramilitary organisation in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. He is widely regarded as playing a pivotal role in getting the PIRA to give up its "war" against the UK in return for devolved government for Northern Ireland. Senior political, security and media figures, including the Minister for Justice in the Republic of Ireland assert that, from the 1970s until mid-2005, Adams is alleged to have been a member of the Provisional IRA's governing army council. He has also been accused of being the IRA commander in Belfast during the 1970s. Adams has denied that he has ever been a member of the IRA.

From the late 1980s, 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 subsequently with the Irish and British governments and then other parties. In 2005, the Provisional IRA indicated that its war was over and, barring hard line elements, the republican movement is now exclusively committed to democratic politics. Under Adams, Sinn Féin changed its traditional policy of abstentionism towards Leinster House in 1986 and later to take seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly, although the party retains a policy of abstentionism towards Westminster. For three years, it participated in the power-sharing executive committee (cabinet) in Northern Ireland, where it shared powers with the Ulster Unionist Party and the SDLP. (The Democratic Unionist Party appointed two ministers but did not sit in the committee in protest at the presence of Sinn Féin.)

Background

Gerry Adams was born in West Belfast into a nationalist Catholic family, consisting of 10 children who survived infancy, 5 boys, 5 girls and their parents, Gerry Adams Sr. and Annie Hannaway.

Gerry Sr. and Annie came from strong republican backgrounds. Adams's grandfather, also Gerry Adams, had been a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) during the Irish War of Independence. Two of Adams's 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, in his widely respected book, The Secret Army: The IRA 1916 (Irish Academy Press), states that Dominic Adams was a senior figure in the IRA of the mid-1940s. Gerry Sr. joined the IRA aged 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's 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 Eamon 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.

Yet as a result of the IRA being outlawed north and south of the border, and the many difficulties faced by its members - trouble finding work, lengthy terms in jail, lack of support among the larger Irish community - hardcore republicans were isolated and shunned even with their own community: "West Belfast republicanism was dominated by three families: the Adamses, the Hannaways, and the Burnses. They were all intermarried, the consequence of the imprisonment of their male members. When figures like Gerry Adams Sr. emerged after having served their jail terms, they found girls of a marriageable age either already spoken for or reluctant to marry into the IRA. Inevitably they drifted into relationships with the sisters of their IRA comrades.... The IRA in places like West Belfast... grew heavily dependent on a small, often interrelated network of extended families... the result was that republican involvement tended to be an inherited rather than acquired activity...[Adams's parents] would pass on to their children their political views as well as a special, exclusive sense of shared suffering".

Adams attended St Finian's Primary School on the Falls Road where he was taught by the De La Salle Christian Brothers. He then attended St Mary's Christian Brothers Grammar School after passing the eleven-plus exam in 1960. He left St. Mary's with six O-levels, and became a bartender, but became increasingly involved in the Irish republican movement, joining Sinn Féin and Fianna Éireann in 1964.

When Third Way Magazine asked Adams whether he was a Christian he said: 'I like the sense of there being a God, and I do take succour now from the collective comfort of being at a Mass or another religious event where you can be anonymous and individual – just a sense of community at prayer and of paying attention to that spiritual dimension which is in all of us; and I also take some succour in a private, solitary way from being able to reflect on those things.'

Early republican career

In the late 1960s, a civil rights campaign developed in Northern Ireland. Adams, it is reported, was an active supporter. Instead of leading to change, the civil rights movement was met with protests from Loyalist counter demonstrators. This culminated in August 1969, when 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). Against this backdrop, the Provisional IRA and its political counterpart in Sinn Féin, emerged.

Adams was active in Sinn Féin at this time; it is reported that he was also a key figure in the Belfast IRA. In August 1971, internment without trial was introduced in Northern Ireland under the Special Powers Act. Adams was interned after this on HMS Maidstone. In late June and early July, 1972, the IRA negotiated a short-lived truce with the British and an IRA delegation met with William Whitelaw. The delegation included Sean Mac Stiofain (Chief of Staff), Daithi O'Conaill, Seamus Twomey, Ivor Bell, Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams. 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 Long Kesh (Maze) internment camp. After taking part in an IRA-organised escape attempt he was sentenced to a period of imprisonment, which was also served at the Maze.

In 1983, he became the first Sinn Féin MP elected to the British House of Commons since 1918. Following his election (as MP for Belfast West) the British government lifted a ban on him travelling to Britain. In line with Sinn Féin policy, he refused to sit in the House of Commons.

On 14 March 1984, Adams was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt when several Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) gunmen fired about twenty shots into the car in which he was travelling. After the shooting, under-cover plain clothes police officers seized three suspects who were later convicted and sentenced. One of the three was John Gregg. Adams claimed that the British army had prior knowledge of the attack and allowed it to go ahead.

Alleged IRA Membership

Adams has stated repeatedly that he has never been a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). This is a controversial position given much evidence to the contrary:

• In January 1973, Adams was photographed at the funeral of IRA man Francis Liggett dressed in the IRA's black beret marching alongside the coffin with other IRA members. In 2002, Marion Price, convicted for being part of a bomb team that attacked London in March 1973, said in public that Gerry Adams was "my commanding officer" at that time.

• In early 1977, Adams went to the home of a Belfast journalist who lived near Turf Lodge and worked for the BBC Spotlight program. He presented himself as representing the Belfast Brigade of the Provisional IRA.

• He was arrested after the La Mon Restaurant Bombing in February 1978 and was charged with IRA membership. Adams denied the membership charge, threatened to sue reporters who repeated the charge, and applied for bail. The case went to court but the charges were dismissed. Many senior Republicans at that time were surprised by Adams's denial of membership, for they had usually taken the approach of offering no comment to such a charge. In this fashion, they offered no information and did not contribute to speculation (see for example pp. 265-66 in Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, The Life and Politics of an Irish Revolutionary}.

• In 1980, an undercover Special Branch officer followed Adams across the border during an investigation into an IRA counterfeiting operation.

• Sean O'Callaghan, a former IRA member, Garda and MI5 informer from County Kerry, has claimed he spoke to Adams at IRA meetings in the 1980s. He states that Adams was a battalion quarter-master responsible for weapons, then the age of 22 Adams became Officer Commanding of the Second Battalion, Belfast Brigade IRA.

• On 20 February 2005, Irish Minister for Justice Michael McDowell publicly named Adams as a member of the seven-man ruling IRA army council during a radio interview. According to the British government, he has been a member for over 20 years, although he has never been convicted of IRA membership and continues to deny it. In July, McDowell said that, according to senior police sources, three Sinn Féin leaders, including Adams, had stepped down from the IRA command in a prelude to a peace move. Adams denied the report. "We can't stand down from a body of which we were not members", he said.

• In Memoirs of a Revolutionary, the autobiography of Seán Mac Stíofáin, Provisional IRA Chief of Staff during 1969-72, Adams is described as commander of the Belfast Brigade (albeit only in the caption of a photograph).

President of Sinn Féin

In 1978, Gerry Adams became joint-vice-president of Sinn Féin and he became a key figure in directing a challenge to the Sinn Féin leadership of President Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and joint-Vice President Daithí O'Conaill. Others who supported Adams and were from Belfast included Jim Gibney, Tom Hartley, and Danny Morrison. Some characterize the different approaches as a conflict between a more pragmatic northern leadership which surrounded Adams and the more traditional nationalist leadership of Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, who was President of Provisional Sinn Féin from its inception until 1983. This view misses the complexity of the situation.

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 O'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. Adams (allegedly) rose to become the most senior figure in the IRA Northern Command on the basis of his absolute rejection of anything but military action, but this conflicts with the fact that during his time in prison Adams came to reassess his approach and became more political. It is alleged that "provisional" republicanism was founded on its opposition to the communist-inspired "broad front" politics of the Cathal Goulding-led Official IRA, but this too is disputed.

One of the core reasons that the Provisional IRA and provisional Sinn Féin were founded, in December 1969 and January 1970, respectively, was that people like Ó Brádaigh and O'Connell, and Billy McKee, opposed participation in constitutional politics, the other was the failure of the Goulding leadership to 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 organizations split. Gerry Adams, who had joined the Republican Movement in the early 1960s, did not go with the Provisionals until later in 1970.

In Long Kesh in the mid-1970s, and writing under the pseudonym Brownie in Republican News, Adams called for increased political activity, especially at a local level, by Republicans. 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. 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 (It can be argued that Sinn Féin had been trying to link political activity with military activity since at least the late 1950s).

Ironically, while Adams was advocating that the Movement needed more involvement in politics, he was one of the key opponents of Sinn Féin putting forward a candidate for the first election to the European Parliament, in 1979. Even after the election of Bobby Sands as MP for Fermanagh/South Tyrone, a part of the mass mobilization 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 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. Instead, H-Block/Armagh Candidates contested nine constituencies and elected two TDs. This, along with the election of Bobby Sands, was precursor to the 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. Because of a fear of being outflanked by Sinn Féin, the SDLP with 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 increased and Gerry Adams was elected, as an abstentionist, as MP for West Belfast. 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.

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 had done twelve 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. Adams and others, over time, pointed to Sinn Féin 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

In popular consciousness in Britain, Adams is primarily remembered during the latter part of this period for the ban on the media broadcast of his voice (the ban actually covered all republican organizations and unionist terrorist organizations, 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 "deny terrorists the oxygen of publicity" after the BBC interviewed Martin McGuinness.

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.

This ban was much lampooned in cartoons and satirical TV shows, notably Spitting Image, and in The Day Today (as being required to inhale helium to "subtract credibility"), and was criticized by freedom of speech organizations worldwide and British media personalties, including BBC Director General John Birt and BBC foreign editor John Simpson. The ban was finally lifted by 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. However, he easily regained it at the next election in May 1997.

Under Adams, Sinn Féin appeared to move away from being a political voice of the Provisional IRA to becoming a professionally organized 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 consequent reliance on Ulster Unionist Party votes in the House of Commons, led the IRA to end its ceasefire and resume the campaign.

A restituted 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 organizations, under the chairmanship of former United States Senator 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, Bunreacht na hÉireann, 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.

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 Executive Council, the party, like the SDLP and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) chose for tactical reasons 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, with Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin serving as Sinn Féin parliamentary leader in Dáil Éireann, and Martin McGuinness the party's chief negotiator and effective party head in the Northern Ireland Assembly. His son, Gearoid is a primary school teacher and has represented Co. Antrim in gaelic football.

On 8 March, 2007 it was reported that Adams was re-elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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.

Fresh murder question raised

In October 2006, it was alleged that Adams's finger and hand-prints were found on a stolen car allegedly used during the murders of RUC men Cecil Cunningham (46) and John Haslett (21) in 1971. However, no link between Adams and the killings, or between the burned out car and the killings, has been shown. The link is, therefore, entirely speculative.

Published works

• Falls Memories, 1982
• The Politics of Irish Freedom, 1986
• A Pathway to Peace, 1988
• An Irish Journal
• An Irish Voice
• Cage Eleven, 1990
• The Street and Other Stories, 1992
• Free Ireland: Towards a Lasting Peace, 1995
• Before the Dawn, 1996, Brandon Books, ISBN 0-434-00341-7
• Selected Writings
• Who Fears to Speak...?
• Hope and History, 2003, Brandon Books, ISBN 0-86322-330-3

See also

• IRA Army Council
• Provisional Irish Republican Army
• Sinn Féin
• History of Northern Ireland
• The Troubles
• Northern Ireland peace process

• J. Bowyer Bell. The Secret Army: The IRA 1916 -. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1979.
• Colm Keena. A Biography of Gerry Adams. Cork, Ireland: Mercier Press, 1990.
• Ed Moloney. A Secret History of the IRA. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002.
• O'Callaghan, Sean. The Informer. Corgi. 1999. ISBN 0-552-14607-2
• Robert W. White. Ruairi O Bradaigh, the Life and Politics of an Irish Revolutionary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.
• Anthony McIntyre. Gerry Adams Man Of War and Man Of Peace?, academic lecture examining Gerry Adams' role in the Republican Movement

External links

• Sinn Féin - Gerry Adams official profile
• Guardian Politics Ask Aristotle - Gerry Adams
• TheyWorkForYou.com - Gerry Adams MP
• The Public Whip - Gerry Adams voting record

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