Adams’ historic utterances create hostage to fortune

World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com

If you are a politician, words will always come back to haunt you – especially in this Google era. Sometimes, it’s a promise that has performed a u-turn…or an inconsistency between a current position and one held in the distant past.

Sometimes it’s just hubris, saying something in a particular situation – even in the heat of the moment – that you already know will catch up with you at a later stage.

It was Haughey telling us in 1980 that we were all living beyond our means. It was Bertie in the mid-noughties telling those predicting a crash to go off and commit suicide.

For Gerry Adams it was telling an audience of rigid republicans that the IRA “haven’t gone away you know”.

That quote has been used as a political stick with which to beat Adams every since he uttered it some years ago.

In the past week, the PSNI chief constable has said that the Provisional IRA is not involved in terrorist activities but that its structures remain intact.

The PSNI also believes that members – or former members – of the IRA were involved in the Belfast murder of Kevin McGuigan, a father of nine.

For its part, the Garda Síochána has said that individuals linked to the IRA are still involved in crime.

Those assessments created a political furore with all of Sinn Féin’s political opponents raising concerns about an extant IRA and the difficulties it posed to democracy – essentially that Sinn Féin’s approach to the political process was being guided, if not governed, by shadowy figures in the background.

Adams’ response was to attack the assessments as politically motivated. This has become Sinn Féin’s default response to any criticism that is levelled against it, particularly when an embarrassing reminder of some of its less than glorious past activities comes to the fore.

The key part of the statement he issued whilst on holidays was: “In July 2005 the IRA left the stage. Its leadership ordered an end to the armed campaign; its representatives to ‘engage with the IICD to complete the process to verifiably put its arms beyond use’ and instructed its volunteers to take part only in ‘purely political and democratic programmes’ and no ‘other activities whatsoever’.

“All of this was done as part of a genuine initiative to build a just and lasting peace and in support of the full implementation of the Good Friday Agreement.”

To his contention that in July 2005 the IRA left the stage, his detractors will try to out-trump him with ‘they haven’t gone away you know’.

The funny thing is that the assessments of the PSNI and An Garda Síochána, as well as Adams statements, do not necessarily contradict each other.

When Séanna Walsh appeared on the video in 2005 telling his Provisional colleagues to step down, there was plenty of comment that the Provisional IRA would continue to exist albeit in a form not unlike the British Legion or other retired army organisations.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.