They
are two of the most intriguing questions swirling
around Gerry Adams. Why does he keep on denying
that he was and is in the Provisional IRA, something
that the proverbial dogs in the street, from Ballymurphy
to Ballyholme, know full well? And why does he keep
attacking those in the media with the temerity to
say so?
The
first of those questions is the more difficult to
answer for it requires a journey deep into a mind
that not every investigator would wish to explore,
an expedition not for the faint-hearted!
It
can’t be because of fear of self-incrimination,
for those days have gone forever. Indeed it would
not be stretching credulity too far to suggest that
if tomorrow the British or Irish governments were
to stumble upon a filing cabinet stuffed with signed
confessions of IRA membership, the Great Bearded
One would never have to stand in front of a judge
and the filing cabinet would be disappeared as quickly
and completely as.......well, Jean McConville.
The
reason the GBO denies any connection to the IRA,
that he disavows responsibility and deeds that other
comrades are obliged, and occasionally happy to
admit, can only be speculated upon but there can
be little doubt that he does so because it suits
his interests.
It
enables him to lie during negotiations with Unionists
and the British about his influence over issues
like decommissioning and to take refuge in the fiction
that he must "go to the IRA” to get approval
for every concession.
As
important, it creates a public relations-friendly
image of a peaceful political activist who intervened
to escort misguided colleagues out of the cul-de-sac
of violence, an image that goes down well with the
“useful idiots” who fawn over him in places
like Hollywood. Would Martin Sheen and Fionnuala
Flanagan be so eager to host cocktail parties for
the GBO in their Beverly Hills homes if they thought
this is the man under whose leadership the Belfast
IRA developed and perfected the car bomb now used
by Jihadists around the world? Or that this is the
man who was disappearing people when General Pinochet
was only a faint glint in Henry Kissinger’s
eye?
And
it sets the stage for that day, perhaps in seven
years or so, when he makes his bid to become tenant
of that mansion in Phoenix Park currently occupied
by Mary McAleese. To win the presidency of Ireland,
to take his place alongside Dev as the modern giant
of peace, the GBO must by then have completely bleached
his image of any association with Jean McConville
or the devices that wrought such carnage in Donegall
Street or on Bloody Friday.
That’s
where the second question comes in, the reason why
he bullies the media every time one of its number
raises the issue of his links with the Provisional
IRA. He does this, quite simply, because bullying
the media per se in these days of the peace process
works. It works because the Irish media are terrified
of being labelled “unhelpful” to the process,
terrified of being accused of aiding dissidents
or weakening the Provisionals’ peace camp by
asking awkward questions.
A
startling example of the GBO’s growing ability
to bend the Irish media to his will has come in
a dispute between Gerry Adams and the Irish Times’
Northern Editor, Gerry Moriarty over that journalist’s
use of the tag “Provisional” when writing
about Sinn Fein and/or the IRA.
Last
July 20th, Adams sent an angry letter to the paper’s
editor, Geraldine Kennedy, protesting Moriarty and
the paper’s practice. He wrote: “My position
is straightforward and consistent. A paper of record
should be just that. There is no such organisation
as Provisional Sinn Fein. Gerry Kelly is not a Provisional
Republican. He is a republican, full stop. He is
also a North Belfast MLA. A paper of record should
reflect that.”
Leaving
aside the fact that if the Irish Times were
truly a paper of record it would also report that
Adams sits on the Provisional IRA's Army Council
and that Gerry Kelly is a very recent Adjutant-General
of that body, it is clear that Adams’ admonition
of the paper and its Northern Editor had a quite
remarkable effect.
The
evidence is there in a simple Lexis-Nexis search
of the Irish Times before and after Adams’
wrote his ill-tempered missive.
In
the three months before Adams’ letter, that
is between April 20th and July 20th 2004, Moriarty,
either by himself or in a joint byline, wrote 56
articles about Sinn Fein and/or the IRA of which
9 used the term “Provisional” or “Provisionals”
- that is 16 per cent of the time.
Now
the dispassionate observer might wonder what Adams
was making all this fuss about, after all using
the “P” word in sixteen out of every hundred
articles is not exactly excessive.
But
nonetheless the Irish Times reacted as if
it had been accused of advocating the planting of
firebombs in Clery’s department store in O’Connell
Street. In the three months following the receipt
of Adams’ letter Moriarty, either by himself
or in a joint byline, wrote 55 pieces about Sinn
Fein and/or the IRA - about the same as in the three
months prior - and guess how many times the “P”
word was used?
It
appeared exactly once - that is 1.8 per cent of
the time. Adams’ angry letter had produced
a near ninefold decrease in the paper’s use
of the term which had so offended the president
of Provisional Sinn Fein.
The
story doesn’t end there. The sole occasion
on which the word “Provisional” was employed
was in a piece on the life of the recently deceased
former Chief of Staff and Belfast Commander, Joe
Cahill. Now, it would be pretty difficult not to
use the "P" word in a credible account
of Cahill’s IRA career. I mean how would you
describe what Cahill did at the time of the 1969
split in a way that would not offend Gerry Adams?
Like this, perhaps: “When the IRA and Sinn
Fein split into the IRA and Sinn Fein, Joe Cahill
went with the IRA and Sinn Fein”? I think not.
What that article demonstrates is that if Cahill
had not died the word “Provisional” would
have been totally erased from the Irish Times’
lexicon.
A
sad chapter for the Irish Times (perhaps
the paper should tell us whether such a decision
has indeed been made and if so where, in Belfast
or Dublin?) but a significant feather in the cap
for Gerry Adams. Anyone willing to put money on
the chances that by the time the Provisional Sinn
Fein and Provisional IRA leader is running for the
Park not a journalist in Ireland will dare breathe
a word about you know what?
