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Given
the interpretation displayed by many reviewers of
Ed Moloney’s book on the IRA a certain question
acquired shape in my mind in relation to Gerry Adams
prior to reading it. It had already been given a verbal
form of sorts elsewhere when Lord Alistair McAlpine
asked of Jeffrey Archer ‘how this consummate
conman managed to take in so many intelligent people
for so long?’ Could Moloney have veered too close
to the ‘great men of history’ method of
constructing our understanding of the past? Misgivings
soon melted.
This
book is by far the most comprehensive account, if
not of the IRA, then certainly of matters central
to the IRA. Its primary objective is to establish
who kicked the peace process off, when, and what those
behind it intended to achieve through it. The strength
of this book is that academia cannot ignore it in
the disdainful manner which so frequently characterises
its approach to ‘journalistic accounts’;
and it easily fits in with the page flicking habits
of a much wider audience who wish to read rather than
study a book. Deep without being academically dry,
fast without being journalistically shallow, the book
underscores the considerable skill the author has
at his command as he obliterates the gulf that demarcates
journalism from academia. Moloney breathes life into
history and, while not a ‘trained historian’
(whatever that may be), has produced a book on a par
with Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad. But more
importantly, Moloney stands set to achieve what Beevor
did not aim for - the creation of a new paradigm which
will for some time to come reset the lens through
which the phenomenon of Provisional republicanism
will be viewed. This book will shape the discourse
on republicanism in a way that no other has.
In
A Secret History of The IRA, Ed Moloney sets
out to trace the IRA career of Sinn Fein president
Gerry Adams. Adams of course refutes any suggestion
that he was ever a member of the organisation and
has indeed penned an autobiography which does nothing
to suggest otherwise.
Moloney
shows that Adams’s political skill and his internal
management dexterity are to be marvelled at. His ability
to present his grassroots with an abysmal failure
with bows on it so that they could then wear the bows
and shout ‘we won’ must be unrivalled in
modern times. Even football supporters know when their
team has lost. Moloney traces this process of management,
dissembling, duplicity, linguistic mazes, brazen conning
and parallel but mutually incompatible discursive
frameworks from 1982. That was when Gerry Adams and
Alex Reid first sat down in a tête-à-tête
which led to the exploration of alternatives to armed
struggle and ultimately ended with the British state
securing its strategic objectives and the IRA being
compelled to acquiesce in that.
This
is such a multi-layered book which no reviewer can
hope to convey the intricacy of - Eamon McCann and
Fintan O'Toole have come closest yet - there is so
much that is new in it. There are many people who
will be unhappy with it. Although in time to come
I suspect that Adams will be content to recommend
the book to all and sundry from the chapters where
he sat down with Alex Reid. Amongst the most unhappy
shall be those who posed as articulate political visionaries
or as competent military operatives who swore never
to allow anything remotely resembling the Good Friday
Agreement to come into being. The manner in which
they were outmanoeuvred or worse still bought off
through promotion conveys a humiliating image of the
‘big lad’ patting them on the back while
laughing up his sleeve at them. For reviewers less
generous than this one, the term ‘useful idiots’
jumps to mind.
On
finishing the book, the answer to the question I had
posed myself when I began reading it was provided
again by McAlpine. How did Adams succeed in outwitting
so many? ‘The answer in part is that they wanted
to believe in this - for it appeared to be to their
advantage to believe…’
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