Discussion for article #222365
I was surprised that Gerry Adams was actually arrested, and not surprised that he is now being released without charges.
It’s a sad day for those hoping for justice. This man is a terrorist in the eyes of so many, and yet he has evaded payment for his sins and still enjoys freedom and the respect of many. He reminds me of Ariel Sharon or Dick Cheney in this respect, although Dick never got his hands dirty–by using proxies.
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Rep Peter King (R-IRA) was so upset by this British action that he temporarily suspended his Committee hearings on the Evils of Islamic Terrorism
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I certainly assume that Adams was IRA, though given his open role in sinn fein it’s sort of a distinction without a difference. All that said, conflicts like this don’t get ended without at least a de facto amnesty for combatants. The Good Friday accords did not, as far as I know, include such. But it certainly seems the better part of wisdom not to go looking to reopen these wounds. South Africa, in a great lesson to the world, got this one point right. What post-conflict nations need is truth and accounting more than punishment. Just my POV.
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The wounds you mentioned are deep, enduring and affect everything in Ireland, north and south. Memories are very long in that country. And the hatred of the British is absolute among many there. And with good cause. The difference between Sinn Fein and the IRA is semantic . I see the Sinn Fein as the political wing of the IRA considering many are members of both organizations.
I think as you do that a truth and reconciliation type of commission may be the only way forward for Ireland and Britain. The enmity between Britain and Ireland has roots hundreds of years old and can’t be solved easily.
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That is utter tosh. The people of Britain and Ireland are intrinsically linked through all manner of cultural and social interaction.
Our common enemy is men of violence.
I’m an English Catholic (though I long ago eschewed all of their fairy stories) married to a Northern Irish Protestant (ditto), and I’ve literally just returned from a day out with people with English/Irish ancestry and enmity was the very last thing on our minds.
Adams needs to face scrutiny.
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Unlike the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where I have deep personal, familial and ideological commitments, I have none to the Anglo-Irish one. That’s not to say I’m indifferent to it. Just that I don’t have a personal connection to it. If anything I’d say, I have separate affinities for both sides. But I do have some sense about how conflicts get ended. And to say that this conflict is somehow just a thing of the past just doesn’t bear out.
I quite agree that for the average person living in the UK and the average person living in Ireland it’s not like this is a big burning issue. But it’s clearly there and still very real in Northern Ireland.
Clearly Adams was part of the armed violence of the IRA, even if he wasn’t a formal member of the IRA, which I think he must have been. But he was also for a long time one of the people trying to find a way to end the violence. Both are true. Now, if I had families who’d been killed by the IRA I probably wouldn’t be too keen forgive, certainly not to forget. Where does his role in ending IRA"s armed struggle fit in? Or the decision to permanently decommissioning the arms dumps? I don’t pretend this is simple. But, as I said above, I think one really needs to think long and hard before reopening these things in a criminal context.
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I agree with Josh.
But to GledhoitUK, respectfully, I am an American because of the fact that my family left Ireland due to activities between the British and the IRA. My family had land in Roscommon and they were forced to watch while their cattle and sheep were appropriated and sent to England. I had relatives who (a very long time ago) reacted rather angrily to being forced to subsist on cabbage and potatoes while their protein went elsewhere w/o any remuneration. Now, this occurred in the early 1800’s. My family was forced to flee Ireland because they tried to fight the British because of what happened to them My relations were followed to America by British agent bent on either taking them back to the islands or killing them. Had they not escaped into the Ohio country I would not be posting this. I agree that those days are long gone. I agree that for many people there are very good relations between the people of Britain and Ireland, But for others…they remember the “troubles” they harbor hatred for the violence of the past and the bad things that happened. I harbor no hatred for the british because it wasn’t me who fled. Nobody has done a wrong to me. When I visited Ireland in 1968 I found distant relations. We recalled the events of that time and compared storied that had been handed down the generations. So I contend that indeed the memories are deep and long. And I have no problem with Adams being investigated.
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This makes a lot of sense to me. But I should add - and not in a way that diminishes @darrtown point I don’t think - that most of the people in Northern Ireland over the age of say 45, and others younger, have very real and immediate memories. Obviously only a relative minority had relatives who were killed. But a whole climate of fear hung over both communities. And obviously in addition to the RUC there were Protestant paramilitaries. That stuff doesn’t go away. It settles over time. But there’s probably only so far this generation of people in Northern Ireland can get. And you restart that cycle of grievance and it can run out of control really fast.
There were nasty events in Northern Ireland from mid 1968 until pretty much the peace accords in the mid 90’s. And even today relations between the various parties is not all sweetness and light. My visit to the Irish Republic was just prior to the riots that began the most recent cycle of violence there. I did not visit N. Ireland, just the Republic. Because the violence, the shootings and bombings and provocations from both sides are within the lifetime of many still living I would think that the memories are still rather raw. I have seen my own unrelated bit of violence in places far removed from Ireland and I assure anyone reading this that those feelings for me in my own head are never far away. If it’s that way for me then I expect it could be the same for residents in Belfast and other places in N. Ireland who have had nasty things happen to them. We need to find a way past conflict, any conflict in any country if we are ever to progress as a species. Josh’s idea of truth and an accounting (S, Africa’s Truth and reconciliation Commission as an example) is an excellent way to begin.
To Josh and darrtown - firstly, thanks for the considered and polite replies to my somewhat intemperate (literally!) post.
I get a little frustrated at tribalism when I have a long and personal history of entirely fantastic relationships with Irish people, North and South.
I am, of course, aware of the troubled history of our islands, but what often gets missed is that my English ancestors suffered at the hands of imperialism in pretty much the same ways as those directly occupied. They were either cannon fodder or mill fodder (I live in a northern industrial time once dominated by textiles and, later, chemicals) and generations of them lived under the yoke.
What will ultimately heal the wounds between Britain and Ireland may be shaped by politicians (the peace process), but will endure through the sharing of culture and empathy. I hope so anyway.
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Gerry Adams is probably the single biggest reason there’s peace in Northern Ireland today–nobody else could have talked the IRA into laying down its arms. He wasn’t dragged from his home by the police–he walked into police headquarters and said “Here I am, question me.” They did–for five days, without once letting him leave to go home and sleep in his own bed.
This because a woman who hates Adams precisely because he ended the armed struggle said he ordered a woman to be killed–that’s the only evidence. The word of someone who hates him, and approved of the violence of that era, and participated in it.
It’s a sad day for people who want peace–which you do not. You want revenge. But if everybody who participated in illegal violence back then gets tried and sentenced, that would mean a very large number of Unionists–including many police officers–not to mention British soldiers.
In the meantime, they let him go–because they had no evidence. Would you like it if somebody who hated you could send you to jail just by saying something about you? Is that what you call law and order?
Nelson Mandela called Adams a friend, and was likewise involved in terrorism before his long imprisonment.
Why don’t you think before you type? Peter King is a hypocrite, yes–hard to find anybody in politics who doesn’t have at least a few hypocrites supporting him. You’re being rather hypocritical yourself.
Just being in the IRA (which still remains unproven, but I agree it’s possible he had some kind of role) wouldn’t be enough for them to charge him–which they obviously want to do, very very badly. There are factions in the British and Northern Irish governments who want to silence Adams, who is becoming a more and more powerful political voice on both sides of the Irish border. That’s what this is about. Finding a way to connect him to a specific criminal action for which they can say amnesty doesn’t apply.
But Adams was always opposed to this kind of thing–it made his job as head of Sinn Fein harder, because people were revolted by such actions–he wanted to push the movement towards winning by the ballot not the bullet. It’s hard to believe he’d give such an order. And there’s no credible evidence that he did. And he simply isn’t a bloody-minded person. Nobody would have gone to the lengths he did, taken the risks he took to end the war in Northern Ireland if he wasn’t sickened by the violence, and appalled at the wedge it was driving between people–and what does this latest attempt to get him behind bars achieve? More wedges. And potentially more violence.
That this is happening a few weeks before an election is, to say the least, suggestive. And Adams, typically, met the challenge head-on, and walked right into police hands, and answered all their questions–for five days straight.
And they let him go.
And it’s possible this little tactic could backfire.
What the bloody hell do you think he just did? They didn’t come to get him. He walked right into police headquarters and presented himself for questioning.
If Adams is a man of violence, so are we all–we all support armed conflicts of one kind or another. But Adams ENDED a long armed conflict, and that’s something most of us have never done.
I think that’s the very last thing the British or the Unionists want, Josh. They want all attention on the IRA, and as little as possible on their own actions. Never gonna happen. And certainly not with a Tory PM in office.
The “Protestant paramilitaries” were, in some cases, little more than serial killers with a cause. They took people away for nothing more than walking through a Catholic neighborhood–in some cases, Protestants were mistakenly killed. There was a bloody-mindedness to them that the IRA never could match, though I would agree they did come close with cases like McConville’s. I just don’t agree that we apply different standards to the different sides involved here–and dragging this all up again just doesn’t strike me as well-advised, but if it’s going to happen, it has to happen across the board. Catholics well remember the days when they could have no involvement in any sort of politics, and they still had to look over their shoulders and wonder if they were next.
For a long time, for Catholics, Belfast was a city where you felt LESS safe when you saw a cop. Though I imagine that’s sometimes true for minorities in American cities. And that’s what we’re talking about here. Only worse. A lot worse. Most Americans don’t get how much worse. They think of Britain as being more liberal than America. But in so many ways, that is an illusion.
Why not investigate Peter Robinson as well? There’s actually more evidence he was involved with paramilitary activities–Adams was never photographed wearing an IRA uniform.
Oh, and did I mention he’s a homophobe and an all-around bigot? Good reading there. Some people need an education about what Northern Ireland politics is really like–and just how far to the right the people who are trying to get Adams really are. They’d be too extreme for the Tea Party–put it that way.
Thanks GledholtUK,
I try to be civil. I fail sometimes when emotionally invested in something. From my perspective Ireland has earned some peace. I hope they get some.
Paisley, …that guy gives me the creeps big time.