A super-selective memory
C. D. C. Armstrong
HOPE AND HISTORY by Gerry Adams Brandon, £20, pp. 406, ISBN 0863223176 Hope and History is the second volume of autobiography by Gerry Adams; together with the first volume, Mr Adams's memoirs now come to 700 pages. This is a lower tally than those for the autobiographies of such other world-historical figures as Henry Kissinger and Margaret Thatcher, but Gerry Adams is only 55. Doubtless we can expect a few volumes more. The last was called Before the Dawn, a title redolent of a romantic novel. This time Adams has found a literary source superior to the works of Dame Barbara and her imitators. 'Hope and History' is taken from Seamus Heaney's 'The Cure at Troy', a poem which is in Ireland at least in danger of becoming (like 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' and 'This Be the Verse') too much quoted for its own good. Before the Dawn was published in this country for a reported advance of f100,000; it was also reported that sales were poor, which suggests that the British public has not lost all sense of taste or discrimination. Hope and History is, however, published on this side of the Atlantic by Adams's usual Irish publisher; in America the rights have been handled by Andrew (`-the Jackal') Wylie. As before, the vulpine grin of Adams stares out from the cover: a not entirely reassuring symbol of continuity. This reviewer cannot but be reminded of the reaction of George Salmon, the lateVictorian Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, on seeing a portrait of his colleague, Samuel Haughton. 'Excellent! Excellent!' the Provost said. 'You can just hear the lies trickling out of his mouth.' It is indeed questions of truth and hon
esty that Hope and History prompts in the mind of its reader. Some reviewers — this one included — thought Before the Dawn less than candid. Roy Foster remarked that the absence of the IRA from the account made reviewing the book 'rather like reading a biography of Field-Marshal Montgomery that leaves out the British Army'. Adams has also had problems with recollecting his personal life no less than his public one; in an interview with the Guardian four years ago he made the laddish confession that all of my children have been conceived in cars'. 'All' implies plurality, yet, curiously, published sources (Before the Dawn among them) credit Adams with but one child, a son. No mention of his other children — Saoirse and Emmet, Pearse and Markievicz one fancies they are called — is to be found in here.
But it is in his capacity as a Republican leader rather than as a parent that Hope and History raises the most questions about Gerry Adams. His own autobiographical writings are neither the' only nor the most authoritative sources for his career. To compare Hope and History with such works as Man of War, Man of Peace? The Unauthorised Biography of Gerry Adorns by David Sharrock and Mark Devenport (1997), or Ed Moloney's A Secret History of the IRA (2002) is an informative exercise.
Adams unsurprisingly mentions neither of these works, nor indeed many of the other books touching upon his part in the Troubles. In the introduction to Hope and History he writes that he does not propose to give an objective account of events, but 'only my version, my tnah'.
He tells us that he was 'sorry' for the loss of life caused by the Brighton bomb of October 1984. He does not remind us that at the Sinn Fein party conference the following month he called the bomb 'a blow for democracy'. Nor does he tell us that Patrick Magee, the Brighton bomber, was his friend. He states that the bomb which exploded at Enniskillen on Remembrance Sunday 1987. killing 11 Protestant civilians, was in fact targeted against the army. What he does not say is that the wall of the building in which the bomb was placed, which collapsed onto the victims, was a gathering place for those who attended the service.
We are informed that Corporal Woods and Corporal Howes, the two soldiers shot by the IRA in West Belfast in March 1988 after they were kicked by a local crowd, were 'armed undercover operatives', implying that the men posed some danger to the crowd. He fails to mention that Howes did not use his weapon, and that the single shot fired by Wood was directed into the air, Nor does he comment on the remarks made at the time by the journalist Mary Holland, implying that Adams was present when the crowd attacked the soldiers and that he did not intervene. Furthermore he does not record that one of those convicted for the assault was his friend the late Terence 'Cleaky' Clarke.
Writing of the Shankill Road bomb which killed nine Protestants in October 1993, Adams implies that the fish shop in which the bomb was placed was empty at the time; in fact it was crowded. The bomb exploded prematurely, as he points out, but he does not say that the device's timer could have been set for a maximum of 11 seconds, hardly enough to permit the shop or the surrounding area to be cleared. He states that he learned of the end of the IRA's ceasefire in February 1996 only from journalists; Sharrock and Devenport tell us of sources who believe that he was aware in advance of the decision to end the ceasefire and of the bomb which exploded at Canary Wharf the same day.
On the subject of Mrs Jean McConville, Adams is entirely silent. Mrs McConville was abducted by the IRA in December 1972 and later murdered; remains believed to be hers were recently exhumed. Last year, Ed Moloney claimed that Mrs McConville was kidnapped and killed by an IRA cell which Adams had founded. Some years ago, Adams told Mrs McConville's daughter that he had been in prison at the time of the abduction; in fact, he was free.
What Hope and History does tell us, at least indirectly, is how much Adams has changed since the early years of the Troubles. The young Adams was, he tells us with a degree of pride, a revolutionary. The Adams of today is more than a little star-struck by his meetings with the wealthy and famous. He is only too eager to let us know about his presence at a Beverly Hills party attended by Sean Penn, Martin Sheen, Angelica Houston and Barbara Hershey. Nor does he mix only with the representatives of Hollywood radical chic. Chuck Feeney, the duty-free billionaire, is characteristic of 'all the things that are good about America'. Adams is no less keen to write of his meetings with Bill Clinton. America is indeed, as he says, 'the one region in which there was a natural hinterland for the Irish cause'. What he does not say is that An Phoblacht, Sinn Fein's Pravda, has published dozens of articles over the last decade attacking American foreign and domestic policy; nor that America has been condemned in motions passed at Sinn Fein party conferences, Evelyn Waugh once wrote that for the Irishman there are only two realities, Hell and America; for Sinn Fein those realities are one and the same.
On the subject of Sinn Fein's shifts in policy regarding constitutional changes over the last few years, this book is reveal ing. Adams presents the Downing Street Declaration, issued by Albert Reynolds and John Major, as marking a stage in British disengagement from Northern Ireland. But he misquotes and misunderstands the Declaration. It does not state that the British government has no 'selfish or economic' interest in Northern Ireland, but that it has no 'selfish strategic or economic interest"; in short, it has an interest which is not selfish in character.
Adams declares that the Good Friday Agreement dealt a severe blow to the Union because the Union now depends on the will of the majority in Northern Ireland. But the principle that the Union depends on the majority of the electorate was embodied in legislation as long ago as 1973. He mentions a meeting of Sinn Fein held at the Europa Hotel. Belfast, as the party entered the negotiations which led to the Agreement; he omits to mention that on this occasion he declared that his party would never enter a Stormont Assembly — which it did within a year. This is the measure of his failure; on both sides of the border he has led his anti-partitionist party into partitionist legislatures.
The measure of his success, though, is that he has made his party larger than it has been since the start of the Troubles, It is generally expected that, after the next elections to the Assembly, Sinn Fein will be the largest nationalist party in Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein's electoral achievements make it inescapable for Unionists to deal with Republicans — a lesson David Trimble has learned and Paisley's DUP is learning.
But Hope and History gives us little reason to believe that Adams understands Unionism; it is hardly (to use a term employed by Trimble and Blair) a confidence-building measure. Adams's attitude to Unionism remains negative. He writes with surprise that 'many Unionists saw the IRA war against the British as a war against them'. His surprise is hardly warranted. Many of the IRA's victims came from the ranks of Unionism: both politicians and ordinary members of the public were murdered by Republicans. And (though he does not mention this) his own attitude was once devoid even of feigned sympathy. After the murder in January 1981 of Sir Norman Stronge, Bart, the 86year-old former Speaker of the Parliament of Northern Ireland, Adams said, 'The only complaint I have heard from Nationalists or anti-Unionists is that he was not shot 40 years ago.' This statement puts into context — does it not? — Adams's complaints about impoliteness on the part of David Trimble.
Hope and History leaves us with one abiding message. Gerry Adams's faults are still all too easy to find and detect. No opponent of his need fear that he will be impressed by the man's sincerity, confuted by his arguments, or defeated by his rhetoric.
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