MOST of you will not have heard the interview with Gerry Adams on the BBC Radio Four Today programme. Sections of a prerecorded interview with me about the Gerry Adams biography, Before the Dawn, were broadcast by Radio Four before the Adams interview with John Humphreys, which ran:
Humphreys: But you're saying that you were never responsible in any way for anybody's death, even though Kevin Myers himself has an account of how you were heard in an Irish pub ...
Adams: Well, Kevin Myers.
Humphreys: . . . telling somebody to go and kill somebody.
Adams: Well, Kevin Myers is patently telling lies in . . . in that context ...
It's not often that I agree with Gerry Adams, but here he was nearly telling the truth; though the word lies is perhaps a little strong. For it is untrue that I overheard Gerry Adams ordering anybody to be killed. What I said in a Spectator article two years ago, though not in my radio interview, was that I had been in a pub in Andersonstown - when a fight broke out between two men, one of whom was beaten terribly.
Meeting IRA contact
I was meeting an IRA contact who told me that it was time to leave; an IRA unit had arrived to sort the problem out in that rough and ready constabulary way they have. I left, and walked past Gerry Adams talking to a group of men outside. I wrote in the Spectator that I heard Adams say: "Shoot him".
I wrote then that I did not think these words meant that anybody was to be killed; my assessment was that the man was to be knee capped and, I wrote two years ago, as I write now, that it is more than possible that the words were instantly revoked and the assailant's kneecaps were not even tickled by the cold breath of gunmetal.
Let us admit something further; maybe Gerry Adams's words were all in jest. But those two words, "Shoot him", were uttered. This I know. And there is no point to the story other than this. Gerry Adams had authority with the IRA in those days; he certainly had authority with my friend, who regarded him as a figure of awe.
What I do not understand is this: why does Gerry Adams deny he was in the IRA? For I admit that I have made a grave error in my assessment of Gerry Adams; though I detest much of what he stands for, and I detest armed republicanism in all its forms, I recognise that he is personally committed to ending, not merely this phase of the armed struggle, but also the tradition of armed republican conspiracy. This requires great courage as. It would be churlish not to recognise and honour such courage.
Responsible action
He is doing this from within the ship of armed republicanism. I think his efforts are doomed; but they are worth making. If he were to bale out, he would have no control over the vessel as it ploughs its futile and bloody furrow through a boundless sea of war. He is, if you like, taking the responsible and statesmanlike action; and his credibility, and his power, depend entirely on the fact that he was authentically in the heart of the republican struggle, that is, he was in the IRA.
Does this vitiate what he is doing now, trying to end the armed struggle? It does not. It adds stature. For me to argue that the IRA use of violence is wrong is meaningless, mere twittering. But for someone like him, trying to end violence as a means of securing republican aims, is quite another. His is a voice with power from the depths of the armed struggle. His audience is the real audience which conducts the war, and will stop it when it is persuaded to. That persuasion will come not from outside the republican movement, but from within it.
Alas, I do not believe that Gerry Adams has the persuasive; powers to convert the militarists to peaceful means. They understand only guns; and the more guns fail to get what they want, the more guns they use. The generals of the IRA are like the stereotypical generals of the Great War; if certain tactics do not work, keep on trying them. So instead of one ton or two ton bombs, the IRA is now playing with 10 tons of explosive.
Ten tons of explosive - have you the least idea what 10 tons of explosive would do to a city like London, with its thousands of acres of plate glass and its hundreds of thousands of employees toiling behind those vast and shining cliff faces? No police force in the world is organised enough to evacuate such numbers of people from the blizzard of glass shards which sweeps streets after a city bombing. Twice, the IRA has brought this form of warfare to English cities this year: the toll, 500 injured and two dead.
Bomb warnings
And there will always be this toll, always, while the IRA chooses to let off bombs in city centres with limited warnings. Why such limited warnings? Because the bombs could be defused if the warnings were longer. And it is all so purposeless, for there is no causal connection between what the Provisionals want and the means they employ to get it.
Bomb the heart out of London; slay Cockneys by the barrow load; bring fire and ruin to its commercial heart - and you will not make a ha'pence worth of impression on the Northern loyalists, the fine fellows who gave us Drumcree: Their position is non negotiable; and if they are, expelled from the United Kingdom, they will not ease their exile by entry to a united Ireland. It simply will not happen.
The militarists in the IRA live inside some logic distorter which prevents them from seeing this simple but central truth. They regard the British presence as some malign magnet which orients Northern loyalists away from their true identity. This is nonsense. Everything we learn from the Northern unionists tells us it is nonsense. I believe Gerry Adams now accepts that it is nonsense. Let him say so and say it, moreover, as a man who was what I believe him to have once been - a commander of the IRA in Belfast.