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There
has been much commentary here and elsewhere in recent
weeks about Ed Moloney’s book “Secret
History of the IRA”.
What
intrigued me most after reading the book was Moloney’s
description of Adams as a ‘strategic genius’,
especially when set against the content of the book,
which is sharply critical of the Adams leadership
and which makes clear the manner in which Adams has
effectively hoodwinked the Provo grassroots, while
leading the movement away from Republicanism and to
an accommodation with British rule in Ireland.
Clearly
Adams is no fool, but is he a ‘strategic genius’?
Firstly,
does Adams, as a leader of Republicans, have a discernable
strategy for ending British rule in Ireland? As a
member of SF for several years during the unfolding
of the peace process I repeatedly asked members of
this leadership what was their strategy for ending
British rule in Ireland. Not once, either at the time
or since, was I able to discern anything remotely
resembling a clearly thought-out strategy for attaining
the core Republican objective of British withdrawal.
Instead, like many other Republicans, I was constantly
fobbed off with clichés about ‘moving
the process forward’, ‘making politics work’,
and ‘trusting the leadership’, the latter
being another way of saying ‘Don’t ask questions,
just do as you are told and leave the politics to
the big boys at the top’.
If
we judge the Adams’ leadership in terms of results,
it is quite clear that while the electoral strength
of SF as a political party may have increased, this
has occurred in tandem with one defeat after another
for Irish Republicanism, all of which have been represented
as ‘strategic advances’ to a Provo grassroots
seemingly paralysed by a combination of loyalty and
a fatalistic resignation to their inability to exercise
any influence over the actions of their leaders. A
checklist of the ‘achievements’ of this
leadership would include:
- An
increasingly ineffective armed struggle, culminating
in the ceasefire of what had been one of the world’s
most effective guerrilla organisations
-
Two splits and the disillusionment of countless
individual Republicans
- The
recognition of the legitimacy of British rule in
Ireland through the GFA
- The
acceptance of the Unionist veto over constitutional
change through the endorsement of the principle
of ‘consent’ as per the GFA
- The
deletion of articles 2 & 3 of the Irish constitution
- The
transformation of opponents of British rule into
administrators of British rule, from which they
have now been ignominiously excluded
- Being
completely out-negotiated by the Unionists and the
British and signing up to a GFA with laughably flimsy
and trivial cross-border institutions considerably
weaker than those established at Sunningdale
- Decommissiong
of IRA weaponry (“Never in a thousand years”
“Line in the sand” blah blah)
- Ongoing
movement towards the inevitable disbandment of the
IRA and SF taking their seats on the Policing Boards
as soon as a suitable fig-leaf can be found to enable
SF to claim they are participating in ‘transitional
structures’ to a new police force
From
the above list, which remains very much work in progress,
it is clear that wherever Adams’ alleged genius
lies, it certainly does not lie in advancing the cause
of Irish Republicanism.
Adams’
main ‘achievement’ has been to convince
a significant number of genuine Republicans to ‘trust
the leadership’ and, ignoring the evidence in
front of their eyes, to follow Adams on his journey
away from Republicanism and to an accommodation with
British rule. The strength of Moloney’s book
lies in his identification of the consistent pattern
of subterfuge and deception by which this leadership
was able to say utterly contradictory things to their
governmental negotiating partners and corporate backers
on the one hand and to their own grassroots on the
other. The two ‘truths’ being peddled were,
of course, utterly irreconcilable, the only question
was to whom were the lies being told.
It
is quite clear from the evidence that the version
of reality that prevailed was that which Adams told
to the British and it was the Provo base (and, indeed,
many in leadership positions) who were hoodwinked
on the long journey to acceptance of the notion that
“British rule is easily digestible, once you
get the taste for it.”
Insofar
as any strategic genius can be identified in Adams
actions and “achievements”, it lies not
in his strategically advancing Republicanism, whose
cause he has irreparably damaged; rather it lies in
his ability to manage a Republican base as they are
led by the nose away from the principles for which
they had both endured and inflicted so much.
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