Monday, March 09, 2009
“the best judge of how I address that community..”
Brian’s already noted some of Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams, MP, MLA, statements on the Today programme. But the Guardian’s Andrew Sparrow adds Adams’ response to criticism of Sinn Féin’s clinical, belated, response to the weekend murders. Apparently, “The Sinn Féin statement was totally and absolutely unprecedented” [Historic, even.. - Ed].
“We have been very successful at how we have brought the broad republican community to where we are. I have to be the best judge of how I address that community.”
[Gerry knows best? - Ed] Indeed. Although there are alternative views..
Adds As I mentioned in the comments zone to the linked post above
Odd use of “deliberately” in the sign-off question in Eamon’s otherwise very good analysis.
The obvious answer to the question posed is that the Special Reconnaissance Regiment were requested by Orde because he needed their specialist counter-terrorism knowledge since his own police service has been reduced in its own capability.
And he didn’t tell the Policing Board because he either didn’t trust them not to leak that information and/or he knew that if that information was made public it would undermine Sinn Féin’s efforts to portray those other republican paramilitary groups as criminal.
He’s canny, politically, like that.
And from what we can tell, if Vincent Kearney hadn’t reported it, no-one would have known about it.
That Sinn Fein want to portray those other republican groups as criminal, in order to justify their opposition to them, is merely another attempt at revisionism on their part.
Not to mention part of an ongoing battle for control..
Pete Baker @ 08:48 AM
Just a pity that SF have to be so staid and machine like in their response. It lacks sincerity when you hear one spokesperson after another say ‘It was wrong and counter-productive’. Sounds like they are talking about a chess move not the loss of human life…...now that’s a thought.
Posted by on Mar 09, 2009 @ 10:09 AMI have to be the best judge of how I address that community.”
Just wondering Pete - who would you suggest knows better than Gerry Adams how Gerry Adams should address anyone?
Posted by on Mar 09, 2009 @ 10:14 AMAlthough using similar wording, Marty comes across as a lot more sincere than Adams does. As usual, it is excruciatingly nauseating to listen to Adams’ anti-British vitriol.
Posted by on Mar 09, 2009 @ 10:26 AMIt doesn’t take a genius to work out which political party will get concessions from this cowardly attack on our forces. Every time the Shinners’ whims are not met, the so-called dissidents step up their murdering campaign.
Is this the type of ‘normality’ we have to live with, until everyone on this island pledges allegiance to a 32 county socialist Republic?
Posted by on Mar 09, 2009 @ 10:29 AM6CP
Although using similar wording, Marty comes across as a lot more sincere than Adams does. As usual, it is excruciatingly nauseating to listen to Adams’ anti-British vitriol.
What the MMG that was considered the hardliner a decade ago, the MMG that was presented as a bogeyman when he was going to run education? How times have changed.
This is difficult for SF. It is also worth pointing out that if SF were anythign other than clinical, Pete would be the first to produce some encylopedic list of quotes from the Troubles.
Posted by on Mar 09, 2009 @ 10:37 AMAdams is right. There was a tone to be struck and he did it.
This is ultimately a challenge to the Sinn Fein leadership of the republican community. The stakes are higher for Adams and he has a greater responsibility in the situation than any other leader.
No other leader has to worry about overdoing it. Adams does and people should have enough cop-on to understand his situation.
Gerry Fitt danced to the tune people are whistling now and damn the bit of good it did anybody.
Posted by on Mar 09, 2009 @ 10:54 AMHenry,
Getting the tone right now, ie after the fact, is also a bit of shutting the door after the horse has bolted though… Criminals before; patriots now?
The mains differences now are that: two men are dead with others fighting for their lives; and this whole business of what politican dissent amongst Irish Republicans constitutes is now being conducted rather more in the open than it was heretofore.
Posted by on Mar 09, 2009 @ 11:03 AMMick
?? If his statement came out before the attack it would have been very strange indeed.
Criminals before; patriots now?
If that’s a straightforward question for your target audience then you don’t have a problem.
Posted by on Mar 09, 2009 @ 11:06 AMI don’t really see how this is difficult for the Provos. We know they don’t like the Real IRA, as shooting one of their members in Belfast some years ago demonstrated. We know they are opposed to their violence. We know that the Provos have condemned previous attacks, and have condemned this one too. The fact that the victims were British soldiers has not changed the condemnation. This seems like a storm in a teacup to me.
Posted by on Mar 09, 2009 @ 11:08 AMGaribaldy
I think it’s more an issue for people who want Adams to express their feelings but who wouldn’t vote for him in a million years.
Posted by on Mar 09, 2009 @ 11:16 AM“Is this the type of ‘normality’ we have to live with, until everyone on this island pledges allegiance to a 32 county socialist Republic?”
The sad answer to your question is yes, although it might not be a socialist republic. Whilst Britain holds a part of Ireland by force of arms, there will be Irish people who will oppose them with arms, as they find the current arrangement unbearable. This is a fact and we can stamp our feet as much as we like but it will not make it any less so.
You cannot wipe away 700 hundred years of history because a British prime minister persuaded a man like Gerry Adams to recognize the writ of British rule in the six counties. Others think differently and will continue to do so.
If SF, the unionists and the British government had brought about changes which would prove there is the possibility of a united Ireland by peaceful means, SF would have had a powerful argument to use against those who give armed republican groups support.
Not only has this not occurred, cross border arrangements between the two Irish jurisdictions appear to be all but dead in the water, by building a fall back headquarters in the North, MI5 is sending out a message we are here for good; and the British army special forces are once again active on the ground. This alone is a massive betrayal by the UK government of SF and those who voted for them, many of whom have suffered in the past at the hands of these outfits.
For the peace process to have worked it needed to bring about a continuos process of change which made life on the ground better for both nationalists and Unionists. It also needed to increase at all levels contacts between the North and south.
In reality what we have had has been years of stonewalling, anything that would have bettered the lives of the people in the north and further integrate the North and the South has become bogged down, often in the most petty manner.
As to the British State, with the financing of the massive MI5 building they have proved once again to be a dishonest broker, as their aim is clearly not to reintegrate the six counties into the southern state, but make the North as British as Finchley.
It all makes your heart weep.
Posted by on Mar 09, 2009 @ 11:17 AMMick
I agree with you that delivery has been slow and disappointing. But that has nothing to do with the reasons for the shooting.
There are no decisions that could come out of the Executive that would make the people behind this shooting change their minds. They are outside democratic politics (as understood by the vast majority of nationalists)
The problem with the Assembly is the DUP. Their agenda is entirely negative. That’s their mandate of course. Nationalists need to knock them of their perch by winning more votes and getting out more votes.
Dull workaday political grunt-work is what we need to put unity on the agenda.
You might not think that will lead to a united Ireland. But the rira have to explain how shooting a pizzaman will. I doubt they can.
It’s not sufficient to say people have always taken up arms and always will. We are entitled to a view on the sense of doing so today.
Posted by on Mar 09, 2009 @ 11:33 AMQuote: “Whilst Britain holds a part of Ireland by force of arms, there will be Irish people who will oppose them with arms, as they find the current arrangement unbearable.”
Wrong from the very start. Britain does not hold part of Ireland by force of arms, but by the democratic wish of the people there. It really is amazing that you still refuse to recognise this blatantly obvious fact. Once it is recognised, the rest of your rant crumbles to dust.
Posted by on Mar 09, 2009 @ 11:34 AMHatred is the obvious driver for these individuals…
Posted by on Mar 09, 2009 @ 11:40 AMActually some of the points here are very valid.McGuinness was excellent on Hearts and Minds. He seemed honest and sincere and struck the right tone. The open statemnt of ‘I was a commander in the IRA’ was refreshing compared to the weasly lies or evasions of others’.
Adams on the other hand has been wooden and given the impression of a machine politician coldly calculating every syllable to wring maximum advantage out of it.
That approach is very damaging to process, his party and to his own credibility. More and more, as time goes on, Adams seems too rooted in the past, unable to cope with changing circumstances and with the political demands of a different era. The arrogance of ‘I have to be the best judge .....’ is a prime example.
An increasing hindernace to the process and a millstone to the party, perhaps it now time to borrow another phrase from the past Gerry, “Time to go”?
Posted by on Mar 09, 2009 @ 11:41 AMMI5 is sending out a message we are here for good
No Mick they are here until we collectively vote otherwise…which is much the same thing but democratically different. Its also what we collectively voted for
Posted by on Mar 09, 2009 @ 11:45 AMWhat I think Mick and Peteb have failed to pick up on is the need for Adams to “shepherd” republicans through another difficult time in the peace process, and keep people on board.
Which is what he’s doing.Henry94 has a much better grasp.
Posted by on Mar 09, 2009 @ 11:58 AM“For the peace process to have worked it needed to bring about a continuos process of change which made life on the ground better for both nationalists and Unionists.”
For the vast majority, it has done just that. Since the shootings, the one thing I’ve heard over and over again is that people don’t want to go back to how it was. That in itself is a sign of a fundamental shift.
Posted by on Mar 09, 2009 @ 12:15 PMcorrect daisy
some here actually “live” these events, others are but intellectuals and find themselves commenting, writing, composing but not really “understanding”.Posted by on Mar 09, 2009 @ 12:24 PMIs Pete your real name or is it Paul?
Posted by on Mar 09, 2009 @ 12:35 PMI don’t agree there is much shepherding necessary at all. I think that the vast majority of supporters of Adams feel no ambiguity about this incident at all, being opposed to it. Still, such a line allows Gerry to look important again. These murders are no threat to the process as a whole.
Posted by on Mar 09, 2009 @ 12:41 PMThere are no decisions that could come out of the Executive that would make the people behind this shooting change their minds. They are outside democratic politics (as understood by the vast majority of nationalists).
The people in the executive had their minds changed. The people who are out to kill soldiers may not be as politically sophisticated as SF, but they are simply a continuance of the armed struggle. They are the ones who have continued, who’s minds have not changed. In this way they are at least not hypocritical.
The idea that Adams statement ‘...best judge of how I address this community’, as Kensei points out, who else is supposed to know better than Adams how he should address anyone? Is there someone other than PeteB who knows how Pete should communicate with someone? Obviously not.
Also, having seen Marty ‘I refuse them the right to do this’ (i.e. kill), I have to say that Adams sounds reasonable by comparison. Are there no Unionists who ‘refused’ Marty the right to kill? What fucking difference did it make?
My own opinion as a Republican is that while I will always hope to live to see the day where Ireland is unified, I couldn’t justify the death of a single father/brother/son. However I feel that the Sinners are hypocritical in the extreme, while I have no pride, support or fondness for RIRA that is the one thing they are not.
Posted by on Mar 09, 2009 @ 12:46 PMSinn Féin took 14 hours to issue a response to the killing of two soldiers at Massereene barracks on Saturday night. The party said that the attack was “wrong and counter-productive” and that, because Sinn Féin had a “responsibility to be consistent”, therefore “the logic of this is that we support the police in the apprehension of those involved”.
That’s quite a push for Gerry, and I suspect that it’s a lot further than he wanted to be pushed by his handlers at this point. At any rate, he has now been forced into saying that attacks on British military targets are also criminal acts and it is also okay for republicans to act as informers about these acts against the State just as it was deemed okay by the Shinners to inform on the dissidents when their actions were deemed purely common criminality. So, much like Slab Murphy, the good republican who wasn’t a criminal, the Shinners are conceding that even their own attacks on military targets were simply criminal acts after all, and a good republican is a good criminal.
Incidentally, the SDLP had a line in Stormont today to the effect that the presence of the British army in Ireland wasn’t an affront to the Irish people but that the murder of the two soldiers was. It’s true that the murders were repugnant, and that that repugnantly is being cleverly used to justify the first part of that sentence. It seems the SDLP are also being pushed to endorse the presence of the British army (reversing their earlier outcry), deeming it wholly legitimate.
It may be legitimate in Northern Ireland, of course, because they have all agreed that Northern Ireland is legitimately under British sovereignty (and there is “no going back” on that), but I wish these puppets would confine their propaganda to Northern Ireland rather than extend it into the Republic by using the unqualified ‘Ireland.’
Posted by on Mar 09, 2009 @ 12:56 PMDave
‘It may be legitimate in Northern Ireland, of course, because they have all agreed that Northern Ireland is legitimately under British sovereignty (and there is “no going back” on that), but I wish these puppets would confine their propaganda to Northern Ireland rather than extend it into the Republic by using the unqualified ‘Ireland.’
Have not the people of the ROI also agreed to the legitimate existence of Northern Ireland under British Sovereignty. I seem to remember a referendum regarding articles 2 & 3 of Bunreacht na hÉireann.
Just a thought.
Posted by on Mar 09, 2009 @ 01:12 PMNei;
The people in the executive had their minds changed. The people who are out to kill soldiers may not be as politically sophisticated as SF, but they are simply a continuance of the armed struggle. They are the ones who have continued, who’s minds have not changed. In this way they are at least not hypocritical.
There has to be more to a strategy than consistency. “This is the way we have always done it” is never a justification to continue doing it. Not when people are paying with their lives for the integrity of the principle.
Can an armed struggle be justified today, is the question.
Is the oppression serious enough and the state inflexible enough?
Is there a chance of success?
Is their popular support or the prospect of it?
I don’t see a yes for any of those questions. To be quite honest I haven’t even seen an argument advanced by any of the dissidents that even addressed them.
Posted by on Mar 09, 2009 @ 01:23 PM
