Gerry Adams on Hard Talk…
On BBC ‘s Hard Talk programme, Stephen Sackur grills Gerry Adams on his party’s performance in the last year… Adams does reasonably well, though Sackur clearly gets under his skin once or twice. I’ve clipped some of the most memorable bits… He argues strongly that there had always been a pro settlement line of thinking inside the Republican movement. He refers to a speech he made at Bodenstown back in 1977 arguing that his party’s fight with the British was a political problem and that it could not be solved by military means…
To connote the success of the process he described Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness as Siamese twins, although I suspect the real point he was driving at was the joint character of the two offices McGuinness is not a Deputy in the usual sense of that term…
Much of the rest of the programme focused on Sinn Fein’s poor showing in the May elections in the Republic… Although interestingly Adams admits that Irish unity is not inevitable, and that his party is engaged on more of a journey: “come back and talk to me in a decade or two and we’ll talk about it then…”
Sackur: “Face reality in Europe you are part of a tiny far left rump block with 7 national communist parties. There are 750 examples of Foreign Direct Investment, growth rates of 5%, some of the lowest taxes in Europe… SF policies do not match the reality of the Celtic Tiger… Ireland has changed unbelievably, SF has not…”
Adams: “SF has. What we have to do is to find a way to communicate our message.”
Sackur: “Do you think that the Irish people find attractive a party that affiliates itself with communist parties across Europe?”
Given the southern electorate’s abandonment of anyone but it’s historically strong parties, it’s an important question. Sackur then went on to quote (16.50 in) my own analysis from the Guardian’s Comment is Free…
Paradoxically for a party founded with the explicit purpose of getting rid of “foreign” political influence on the island, in this election at least, it came across as foreign.
It did not go down well. Although Adams went on, correctly as it happens, to point out that a lot of pundits got the election campaign wrong (including me: just scan this thread at Irishelection.com, in which I rated Adams best performer in the minor debate).
I hold no torch for Sinn Féin but there were genuine mitigating circumstances for their poor performance in the last election. Usually in a PR election ‘plumpers’ can vote for the party that best represents them ideologically. That space disappeared in the last election, whose dominant issue was which block was going to form a government, and with whom. The fact that Sinn Féin were effectively ruled out by all the potential coalitions made them irrelevant to the theme of the election. The issue was government and Sinn Féin were completely sidelined.
The forthcoming local elections will tell us more about the longterm viablility of the Sinn Féin project. People will vote more freely. Even those not completely comfortable with Sinn Féin in government could vote for good local candidates secure in the knowledge that not much is at stake. The big question is do Sinn Féin actually have good candidates?
I think that the real test for Sinn Féin is going to be the local elections
Mick
Why do you keep up this pretense that you want SF to move to the right for its own good, you are well aware that ground is already taken down south and if they were to do so there only hope would be to merge with FF.
. As to the follow quote,
“Paradoxically for a party founded with the explicit purpose of getting rid of “foreign†political influence on the island, in this election at least, it came across as foreign.” How so or are you saying that equality, a decent Irish health care system free at point of use is some how foreign, if so that smacks of McCarthyism to me and the type of nonsense the US right use to deny their people universal health care, by claiming the British NHS is socialist etc.
What do you base your claim that SF came across as foreign? that despite Mr Adams the shinners went to the electorate with a progressive program? Surly common decency does not make it foreign, simple unusual and different as far as the two main parties are concerned and anathema to big business.
How you have the cheek to call SF ‘foreign’ when half the bloody cabinet and opposition are in hock to multi national corporations is beyond me. Before you say prove it, neo-liberal globalization benefits the multi nationals above all others including national interest [and that is without the dreadful brown envelope culture they poison the world with]
If your multinational low tax economy is such a success why are more people falling into poverty than since the 1960s. Do you not feel you should get out more and look just a little at the have-nots amongst us.
By the way, out of impartiality and as I am a long time Sluggerite why not link Organized Rage to Slugger, I have kept it going for some time now and I would be more than happy to do the same for Slugger O’Toole.
Adams “… and you see, all of the smart Alecs in the Sunday Independent, in the Irish Times or, indeed, this guy [Mick Fealty] whom I don’t even know …”
Is he doing a St Peter/Arlene Foster routine, Mick?
MH, surely the brown envelope culture is an ancient Irish tradition that long predates the globalisation that you refer to?
Mick,
“How you have the cheek to call SF ‘foreign’”
Can you do me the kindness of not misquoting what I have written? What I actually said: “in this election at least, it came across as foreign.” In other words, it’s about wider perception: it has nothing to do with what I think the party should, or should not, do. Or, indeed, what the party is or is not.
Nevin:
No comment.
I was soooooo embarrassed for adams!!! He hadn’t a clue. Imagine not knowing who mick fealty was???
Sakur had adams on the ropes, no way did adams lead the republicans to where they are today alone. That man was led.
MH we all have blogs, mick does his best.
Sackur: “… Paradoxically, he said, for a party founded with the explicit purpose of getting rid of “foreign political influence on the island of Ireland, Sinn Fein came across to voters in that election as foreign.” – and primarily he’s talking about you ..”
‘Don’t be silly’ Sackur invited Adams to tell the truth about his IRA membership but the boul’ Fenian man is still in denial.
Unionism will take much heart from Adams’ remark that reunification is not inevitable.
He can never again pretend that St Andrews has brought Ireland to the threshold of total freedom.
His recent book launch in Dublin attracted almost no-one.
Indeed the next decade will prove Adams to be a hasbeen, flop and all round slink- not to be confused with the genuine article…
“Unionism will take much heart from Adams’ remark that reunification is not inevitable.”
Not that they hang on his every word or anything, though.
Continued partition ad infinitum is not inevitable either.
The only thing that is inevitable is change.
Adams ” .. but what the Good Friday Agreement does and what the St Andrew’s Agreement does is start a process of deinstitutionalising sectarianism and eradicating it ..”
Really? I thought the Chuckle Brothers were two faces of the sectarian coin – and I expect to see see loads of sectarian horse-trading … in this ‘sectarian statelet’.
If Adams were to admit to IRA membership, never mind being Chief of Staff, would he be liable for prosecution?
An Lochlannach, to prosecute or not to prosecute is in the gift of the authorities. Presumably, there are various reasons as to why some folks appear to have and to have had immunity.
Paid- “Unionism today is in the strongest position many of us have ever seen in our lives. After decades of demoralisation and defeat, unionism has risen off its knees and is standing tall again.
The constitutional position within the UK is secure – with Dublin ministers forced to admit that the pursuit of a united Ireland has been parkedâ€- DUP MLA Simon Hamilton.
Adams’ ill-timed gaffe the day after the above quote was made that (in his view) “re-unification is not inevitable” has bolstered unionist confidence even further.
Republicans are a long way away from the An Phoblacht headlines of ’76- Year of victory, ’77- Year of victory, ’78 Year of victory ad infinitum.
There won’t be too many cars drivin around West Belfast today blaring there horns after Adams’ latest announcement unlike the one he made in Septmeber ’94….
Is Hamilton deluded? Didn’t his leader confess that the Chuckle Brothers marriage was forced on him [my paraphrase]? Wasn’t the choice between this hideous double act and, essentially, shared sovereignty?
Your paraphrase or not- union secure…
Are you sure, CTN?
Policing, justice and other non-devolved matters I understand are ‘managed’ by London and Dublin officials based in Windsor House, Bedford Street, Belfast. They deal with policy and with ‘sensitive’ day-to-day decisions.
Aren’t major infrastructure decisions taken by the North-South Ministerial Council? Isn’t tourism marketing outside the island of Ireland carried out by Tourism Ireland?
Where are the ‘balancing’ institutions linking NI to the rest of the UK and what major projects are they tasked with?
Stormont is subservient to London not Dublin- check the flag on top.
British sovereignty remains unfettered.
UK law applied within state.
The republic’s government is not involved in policing which will be devolved to a unionist minister under de hont- although some disarmed republican/nationalist british MLAs will have a say on the committee.
North/south council feeble- all Ireland tourism is not an all Ireland state.
Check a map of the world 6 co’s under UK jurisdiction….
Why did the PSNI not tell Michelle Gildernew which Loyalists were threatening her if all these Irish Govt. guys are busy at work in Bedford House?
Why did she not contact Bedford House to complain instead of goin to Dublin?
Sounds like yer crankin up the flop here Nev!
“The republic’s government is not involved in policing …”
CTN, I’ve given you the where and what. As for the when, think AIA 1985.
hib, the bosses are in Dublin, not Bedford Street. I’m not privy to exchanges between MG and the PSNI.
‘Crankin up the flop”s a new one on me!!
AIA 1985 replaced by GFA 1998.
I reiterate the Irish Govt is not involved in policing- your ludicrous claims that they have been since 1985 if true would then implicate them in colluding or covering up for collusion with loyalists in the murder of hundreds of people since then.
If your point had any merit then why not answer hib’s questions?
The exchange was headline TV last week Nev.
So who are these “bosses” in Dublin?
Nev I’ll ask again- if the Irish govt subservients are working in Bedford house so diligently then why are the PSNI not giving Michelle Gildernew the detail she requires?
CTN, where would you expect the bosses to be? Department of Justice? Department of Foreign Affairs?
“AIA 1985 replaced by GFA 1998.”
and Maryfield moved to, er, Bedford Street. The ‘ludicrous’ information came from an SDLP source many moons ago. Why don’t you question one of their MLAs?
Neither the Department of Justice nor Foreign in the 26 co’s has no influence over the PSNI- your mystical SDLP source is a moonman alright.
hib, I can’t answer that question; I don’t have the requisite information. Remember that there are London officials involved too and there may be issues of ‘national security’. Also, SF is an opponent of the current Dublin administration. I can only shed a little light on this murky world.
Well I don’t believe NI is run from Dublin, not one little bit of it.
Gordon Brown, an iron unionist, is the man in charge at the moment.
As for the Union being ‘secure’, well that’s debatable. No one’s in charge of the future.
Gerry Adams knows what he doesn’t know in Cheneyspeak – and that’s a strength in my book.
I’ll ask again if these guys in Bedford Street are so diligent why did MG make the complaint?
Sinn Fein should consider joining with the SDLP and Fianna Fail in a new nationwide constitutional republican movement. As thins stand they are not trusted by the majority in the south or by the unionists in the north.
They can’t expect to unite the country while they are dispised by thoose two key groups and they must avoid having their supporters sidelined in the future.
Paid- the contrived majority in 6 co’s are in charge if and when the prod unionist majority runs out then the taig unionist minority will give them a leg up for another decade or two.
UI of the agenda for a long long time- IMHO.
CTN, Jeffrey Donaldson and Peter Robinson are, or should be, familiar with non-devolved matters. I supplied them with lots of background information all those moons ago.
You can read also the Common Chapter in Ireland’s NDP 2000-2006 for further enlightenment.
I posted the Dick Spring July 1996 briefing earlier on Slugger; it was kindly supplied by the DFA in Iveagh House. It shows how the controversial rerouting decisions were proposed by Dublin and more-or-less rubber-stamped by London, after taking advice from the security people. Jeffrey Donaldson can fill in some of the blanks.
That’s a question for MG, hib.
Why haven’t the BBC and UTV informed us about the shared roles of London and Dublin post-1985?
BTW, these actions are not subject to parliamentary scrutiny as they are intergovernmental.
Your claim that Jeffery Donaldson will state that the Dublin Govt are involved in an internal UK security matter such as RUC/PSNI Scrutiny is beyond belief.
Nowhere have the Dublin government stated that they have executive influence over for policing in the 6 co’s.
Whatever recommendations they have made about marches have had no executive effect.
The Dublin govt has no executive authority in the 6 co’s in any context.
Areas of mutual co-operation are not a precursor to unity any more between the north and south in Ireland or any other jurisdictions in the world which share land or water borders.
Stop dodging the question which I have put to you!
No-one would love a real role for Dublin in the north than me but fantasy futuring or spoofin up the toothless north/south council isn’t goin to deliver unity.
Perhaps if FF venture northward and duplicate some services we might speed up the process but as it stands at the minute the arrogant and disconnected McGuinness/Adams autocracy have blown it of the radar for 40 years.
Don’t believe me check out Paddy Powers the shortest they’ll give is 10/1 for 2027 although that was before FF started talkin 32…
I just can’t approve of any praise for Gerry Adams, and the way they opened up the program, saluting him for his role in what they call an extrordinary process. The process that led up to the restoration of devolved government in the past year is extrordinary. Extrodinarily drawn out, convoluted, deadly, costly, tramautising? For the same deal they coulda got in 76. Paisley and Adams should be in jail.
Point there Ab but its time for me to vamoos- adios!
hib, I’ve already said I don’t know the answer; I’m not going to make one up.
“Whatever recommendations they have made about marches have had no executive effect.”
“Excerpt from Briefing given by the Tanaiste to Media,
Wednesday 10 July 1996
Enright[BBC]: I have to ask you about Northern Ireland and the current situation
there obviously is a matter that preoccupies peoples minds during trouble. What’s
your view of the current situation and just how dangerous is it?
Tanaiste: The current situation is very serious. I think we have all seen over the last
number of days the inherent risks in what is happening in Northern Ireland. My request
would be the same as has been made by the British Government and indeed by the Chief
of Police in Northern Ireland – a call for restraint, a call for I think recognition that if
people proceed down this line certainly the future is very bleak. We were a very short
time ago quite optimistic about the opening of discussions and negotiations. We have
seen a possible return to Northern Ireland at its worst in the last number of days. Coming
up to 12th July it would be I think very important that leadership is shown, that restraint
is shown and that we avoid plunging back into the abyss.
Enright: Are you satisfied that Unionist leaders have done everything they
can to calm the situation?
Tanaiste: I think it beholds leadership on all sides to ensure that nothing is said or
that nothing is done that creates any further difficulties. The police and the security
forces in Northern Ireland are working under extreme difficulties, have been for the last
number of days and nights, and I think it beholds leadership now to ensure that the
situation is not compounded or exasperated and restraint should be called.
Enright: Do you regret that the Government here have taken such a strong
view on the routing of marches, do you think perhaps it was a mistake to reroute
this march?
Tanaiste: No. I have to say to you that the view that we have taken and the view
that is now supported by the British Government is that you have to have [balance?] -
the test is reasonableness. We respect the right of people to engage in marches. They
also have to respect the right of people who do not wish marches going through their
areas and the balance was the British Government advised by the security forces set out
to achieve a balance and obviously balance involves compromise. And there was a
compromise sought and my view is that that compromise should be respected. There is
tension, there are serious risks but one would hope that people would show the restraint
that is necessary. And if there is leadership I think the ultimate compr[om]ises can be
worked out.
Enright: Do you support the Chief Constable’s view that this march should
have been rerouted?
Tanaiste: Yes we do support that, yes.”
It’s a bit convoluted but the message is clear: Dublin proposed that the parade be rerouted and London, after taking advice from the Chief Constable and others, acquiesced.
The briefing was broadcast that morning on the BBC but within hours a different version of events was given ie the briefing was rapidly buried.
Mick Fealty aka – A Smart Alec!
Mick Fealty,
Respect is to be earned and in no way do I believe I misinterpreted the meaning of your wording and you know it. That you failed to answer to the meat of my post is par for the course as far as I am concerned. [I will email you off list what I feel about your failure to link O/R]
CNT
For Gerry Adams refusal to confirm he was a senior volunteer, I have no problems with that as we all know how governments behave when the wind blow in the other direction. It is just that many Republican feel he should say ‘no comment’ or why does the questioner asked Paisley about Ulster Resistance or ask George Bush about his time in a certain US military unit.
To put it bluntly we would like Gerry to say none of your business, I served my country as I saw fit, I may have been mistaken in some of my believes but they were honorably held full stop!
CTN
I am no Sinn Fein (or Adams) supporter but his remark about a UI not being inevitable struck me as being extremely sensible.
As another commentator said – the only thing that is inevitable is change.
A UI certainly is not inevitable (personally I think it’s extremely unlikely for the foreseeable future). However, the maintenance of the Union is not inevitable either.
I do have to laugh when Unionist posters claim that Unionism is in a strong position. It has very little support in the UK electorate (the vast majority of whom couldn’t care less about NI).
It’s pretty obvious that successive UK govts (Labour or Conservative) are fed up with paying out billions to NI and are engaged in gradual disengagement.
The Union is fragmenting anyway with Scots, Welsh and English! nationalism on the rise.
The single big thing that seems to reassure Unionists that the UK “cares” is the new MI5 building. Has it occurred to you that it will be a major terrorist target? – if it was based in England, Scotland or Wales and was attacked, this would be a major issue for the UK govt especially if there were fatalities.
The plain truth is that this wouldn’t have the same impact if it happened in NI – UK people are used to hearing about violence here and they tune it out – remember the Ulsterisation policy.
I don’t know what the future holds and neither do you. However, with the growing Catholic population, the financial investment from the RoI being warmly welcomed by the UK govt and FF moving to organise in the North, it’s pretty clear that RoI influence in NI is only going in 1 direction.
Given the control of NI that Unionism had 35 years ago and the state it’s in now, it beats me how anyone can claim that it’s in a strong position.
Mick, I am not demanding respect. Accuracy though is a basic requirement, if you want to engage.
The two quotes are side by side in plain English. I did not say what you claim I have. As for what I want SF to do, I have never asked any political party to take up any given position, even if as I may have sketched out difficulties that may lie ahead of them.
As to why I believe they came over as foreign, some of it may have been as visceral as his accent; his lack of understanding of the economic ecology of the Republic; his status as a UK tax payer. All of these things, of course, came attached in the Comment is Free piece.
There was, too, the perception that someone cannot simply go back and back to the common purse to pay for a given project. It just does not scan in a small independent country, like the Republic. But that does not necessarily equate with abandoning a ‘left’ position.
Perhaps somewhere, from some place, some political project on the left in Ireland will articulate a practical vision for the kind of public infrastructure investment that Fintan O’Toole talks about regularly in the Irish Times in order to make it happen.
But, I suspect, a little bit like Gordon Brown in Britain, Fianna Fail (or Fine Gael, since they are every bit as post ideological as their old sparring partners in government) will nip around the back and bolster their own political position with popular ideas fashioned for them by another political project.
Well at the risk of sounding like Teacher’s pet, that’s a perceptive post, Mr Fealty.
Outside of the 3 Ulster Counties, Belfast accents sound ‘foreign’ in the South, and unless you live in the State, like the McAleeses did, you lose a lot of the nuances.
The Republic’s voters are conservative. It’s easy demanding money from across the water. But south of the border, money spent has first to be earned and taxed. Come over as a simple spender, and you’ll be punished.
“Outside of the 3 Ulster Counties, Belfast accents sound ‘foreign’ in the South, and unless you live in the State, like the McAleeses did, you lose a lot of the nuances.”
It’s nonsense. In the US the [President might have to be au fait with the politics of 50 states. The accusation against Adams was that he didn’t have a grasp of the fundamentals, not the nuance.
It’s a mix of his personality and his politics that make him seem ‘foreign’ to southerners. The two are a deadly combination in Adams because his aloof and disconnected persona accentuates how disconnected and aloof his politics are from modern Ireland. To hear Adams bluffing his way through the party leader’s debate on RTE in response to a question concerning how wealth is to be created with a dogmatic sentence straight out of the bluffer’s guide to socialist rhetoric (“The people create the wealth”) was to hear somebody stuck in a time warp, knowing nothing of how to manage the complex economic issues that he was asking the electorate to recklessly entrust to his party. The electorate know that countries with a lot of people do not necessarily have a lot of wealth; and that there was, therefore, more to the dynamics of wealth creation simply conducting a headcount to determine the amount of correspondingly available wealth, as Mr Adams assumed. That ‘aloofness’ may wash when the British exchequer is underwriting your political career in the north, but it is alien to the south.
Irrespective of his personality, his politics are utterly repugnant to southerners – and that’s without considering the ethics of the fascist methods that PSF applied to achieving power in the north, and before they even realise that the stated aim of PSF is to overthrow the Irish Republic and replace it with a quasi-communist state, or even wonder why they should entertain a traitor to the Irish state asking for their votes when his party doesn’t even recognise the legitimacy of the Irish Republic or the electorates’ right to freely elect their own government. I think PSF have led the northern nationalists down a path that takes them in the opposite direction to southern nationalists, making southern and northern nationalists more ‘foreign’ to each other than either have yet begun to realise.
yeah dubliner we will accept your verbose analysis because we know your impartiality
I’m guilty of verbosity – no point in denying an obvious absence of precision. Impartiality in the sense of contempt for PSF? In common with the rest of the south, I’m guilty there, too.
However, I think I’m spot on. Southerners and northerners of the PSF ilk will mix as well as oil and water. One group is subversive, seeing itself as a vehicle to force an unreconstructed socialist agenda on the south under the guise of a unity agenda, without realising that proffering the socialism as part of the unity agenda will cancel out any prospect of success for either agenda. The further PSF lead northerners to the left, the further they lead them from their southern counterparts. In the end, you’ll become a group of extremist wackos on the fringe of politics, having no relevance to anything outside the LaLaLand of British Subsidy that sustains you. The other group has embraced the free market and a pluralist agenda, and is prepared to offer unity on its terms – which, you will find, doesn’t include outdated Marxist dogma or using low-level sectarians to gain votes.
From Mick
“some political project on the left in Ireland will articulate a practical vision for the kind of public infrastructure investment that Fintan O’Toole talks about regularly in the Irish Times in order to make it happen.”
Practical example High Speed Rail Link Dublin to Belfast. If anyone is ever in York it’s woothwhile looking at the Bullet train display which shows pictorially the development of train line stops pre, and 10 years after bullet train introduction. Astonishing.