When Garret FitzGerald died last month, in the midst of the Queen of England’s trip to Dublin and points south, it was accompanied by what was, even by Irish standards, an excessive degree of exaggeration and distortion of the man’s true role in the defining event in recent Irish history, the Troubles in the North and more particularly how they ended.
Garret FitzGerald
The sheet had hardly been pulled over his head before his successor as Fine Gael leader and Coalition Taoiseach, Enda Kenny was proclaiming him as “a true patriot” whose “commitment to peace and reconciliation on the island and between Ireland and Britain had reached fruition” with Her Majesty’s Irish jaunt while his opposite number in Fianna Fail Micheẚl Martin, echoed him – minus the Queen bit – and praised FitzGerald as a “politician who made an immense and lasting contribution to peace and reconciliation on this island”.
To read and hear those as well as remarks from others – Martin McGuinness, who a few years ago might well have had someone shot for saying a kind word about FitzGerald, said the former Taoiseach had taken “great delight” in the progress of the Northern peace process – one could be forgiven for thinking that the peace process was nothing less than the outworking of all he had striven to achieve and teach on solving or at least putting aside the Northern conflict.
There’s no doubt that the way in which the Troubles have ended, with all shades of Irish Nationalism on both sides of the Border accepting the principle of consent, i.e. partition, is something that politicians of Garret FitzGerald’s ilk have long yearned for. That sort of endgame is what he and they were all about and he was never short of company under that tent. The real question is whether we would have got to where we are now if we had all followed Garret’s teachings on the North to the letter.
If there was one thing that defined his stance on the North it was an utter detestation of all things Irish Republican. It lay behind his famous, jaw-dropping denunciation of Charles Haughey when he was made Taoiseach in December 1979. Haughey was, in the eyes of Dublin Four – as FitzGerald’s political camp was less than fondly known in those days – responsible for the creation of the Provisional IRA and by extension had hands dripping with the innocent blood of the North’s dead.
His words in the Dail were: “Deputy Haughey presents himself here, seeking to be invested in office as the seventh in this line, but he comes with a flawed pedigree.” Remember that one of those seven earlier Taoisigh in whose footsteps Haughey intended to follow included Sean Lemass who was one of Collins’ Twelve Apostles, the band of IRA assassins who cold-bloodedly executed fourteen British secret agents, some shot dead in their beds, on Bloody Sunday, November 21st, 1920 – shootings which then led to the massacre at Croke Park – while Lemass’ predecessor was Eamon de Valera whose deviousness and dishonesty were probably responsible more than anything else for the Irish civil war. I would have thought that in the ‘flawed pedigree’ department those two gents could have shown Charlie a thing or two.
He was also the classic victim of his own propaganda. There’s little doubt in my mind that when he and his faithful minions in the Department of Foreign Affairs set out to cajole Margaret Thatcher into signing the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, he truly did believe that left alone Sinn Fein would have gobbled up the SDLP and all that was decent around them and having conquered the North, then made the whole island into an offshore Cuba from which to export revolution and the downfall of Christian civilization to the rest of Europe.
Garret FitzGerald and Margaret Thatcher - Agreed the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement
There was one incident during the hunger strikes of 1981 that stands out as symptomatic of the FitzGerald paranoia about the Provos. It happened one night when a bearded, hairy and doubtless very smelly tramp called at chez FitzGerald in South Dublin, knocked the door and was about to beg for money. His wife Joan FitzGerald answered the door and nearly fainted with fright. That night RTE announced that Gardai were investigating reports that members of the Provisional IRA had attempted to attack the Taoiseach’s family and Mrs FitzGerald was suffering from shock in the aftermath. In other words in the world inhabited by les FitzGeralds there was no distinction between the threat offered by one of Dublin’s indigent poor and an IRA terrorist.
The one thing that obsessed him for years was the fear that the British would talk to the Provos and come to some deal to withdraw, leaving Ireland at the mercy of bloodthirsty IRA gunmen and rampaging UVF bombers. His paranoia in this regard reached a peak during the extended IRA ceasefire of 1974-1975.
The IRA’s leaders and Garret FitzGerald did share one characteristic, loath though both would have been to admit it: they were both conned by the British into believing that the secret talks during that ceasefire were a preamble to withdrawal rather than what they really were, a largely successful effort to debilitate the IRA with a long cessation while preparing the ground for a deadly new security policy – criminalization – which came tantalizing close to finishing off the IRA for good.
So alarmed was FitzGerald by what he and his officials were picking up that he went as far as recruiting Henry Kissinger, then President Gerald Ford’s National Security Advisor and Secretary of State – and the moral giant of his age – to intervene on his side against the British if it really came to the bit and the Brits did indeed start to board their ships in Belfast Lough.
Of course that never happened because the British never intended to do anything like that, not only because they were ideologically indisposed to such a thing but because they had happened upon a whizz of an idea which they thought could really bury the Provos for once and for all. What is astonishing about the episode is that there was an abundance of evidence at the time about the real British intentions but none of it was picked up by FitzGerald and his advisors. That’s the problem with idees fixes – you can’t get rid of them. Another characteristic he and the then IRA leadership shared, an inability to see what was in front of their nose.
Charlie of the Flawed Pedigree - Actually Did Get It Right
So imagine that if instead of knocking on Charlie Haughey’s door in 1986/1987, Fr Alex Reid and Gerry Adams had called round to the Fitzgerald household to ask him if he would interested in talking about peace. The odds are that they would have been given the same reception as that unfortunate tramp back in 1981 and Ireland would still be living with the Troubles. And isn’t it ironic that the man who actually did agree to start talking to them, and by so doing launched the peace process, was the guy with the flawed pedigree? And along with it came a more convincing claim than Garret FitzGerald could ever stake to having made a contribution to peace and reconciliation on the island.
Thanks to the Cedar Lounge for this link. It’s an RTE radio documentary called ‘Dogfight: Conor and Charlie’, that zeros in on one constituency, Dublin South-West during the recent general election campaign and the re-election bid of the area’s two former Fianna Fail TD’s, Conor Lenihan and Charlie O’Connor. Lenihan is the scion of a distinguished Fianna Fail family. His brother Brian was the finance minister in the FF-Greens coalition and the point man for the economic meltdown; his late father, also called Brian, was Charles Haughey’s ill-fated Tanaiste, and his aunt is Mary O’Rourke, a three time minister in Fianna Fail administrations.
Conor Lenihan, Charlie O'Connor and new FF leader Micheal Martin in happier days
It is a great piece of radio and is required listening because it graphically illustrates why the general election went the way it did. What comes across as Lenihan and O’Connor separately canvass housing estates in places like Tallaght, is the sheer venom of so many of the voters towards Fianna Fail. The verbal abuse directed at the two men, the sheer anger at what the Fianna Fail government did to the Irish economy and the damage done by people like Brian Lenihan to ordinary lives is extraordinary. There are a couple of instances in the documentary where the two, soon to be ex-TD’s, are lucky to escape physical violence on the doorstep.
That anger became quantifiable on February 26th. Between them Lenihan and O’Connor barely ended up with half a quota and the contrast with 2007 could not be greater. Four years ago Lenihan topped the poll, exceeding the quota on first preference votes and O’Connor was not far behind. This time O’Connor outpolled Lenihan (evidence, surely, that being a brother of the finance minister did him only harm) while Labour and Sinn Fein took their seats, improving their share of the first preference votes respectively by 81% and 41%.
The documentary gives colour and atmosphere to the wider message coming from the general election result, which is that it was not a judgement about other parties’ policies, ideas and competence as alternatives but overwhelmingly an opportunity, grasped eagerly by the voters, to give Fianna Fail a severe kicking. Fine Gael, Labour and the independents, notably the left-wing ones, all benefited enormously from this revenge factor in the voters’ minds and so did Sinn Fein. In fact one of the striking features of the documentary was how some of the angriest voters saw voting for Sinn Fein as the best way of doing the most damage to Fianna Fail.
In that respect Fianna Fail’s tactic of leafletting constituencies with warnings that Sinn Fein’s vote could increase unless the party faithful answered the call on election day badly backfired since it served only to alert voters that this was the outcome most feared by FF.
Protest vote or not the results were translated into bums on seats in the Dail chamber and in that department, Sinn Fein saw its group of TD’s more than triple to fourteen even if the first preference vote rose by less than 45%. This was the result that Sinn Fein had hoped for and expected in 2007 but had it come about then, the Provos would almost certainly be political toast now. With fourteen seats under its belt in 2007, Sinn Fein would, in all likelihood, have taken the place of the Green Party in coalition with Fianna Fail and now would probably be in the same place as that party: utterly destroyed and without a single TD to its name.
With a result like that four years ago, the Shinners would have been able to boast that the peace process strategy had reached its medium term goal, even if the holy grail of Irish unity was still out of reach. That goal was to have SF bums nestling on chairs around cabinet tables in both parts of Ireland and a voice in the formulation of all-Ireland policies in each jurisdiction.
The chief architect of the process on the Republican side, Gerry Adams would have hailed this as a vindication of the decision to dump armed struggle and the IRA – and of all that preceded and enabled this, especially the controversial offers, deals and non-deals that accompanied six of the ten deaths during the 1981 hunger strike and the consequent foray into electoral politics.
Sinn Fein’s surprisingly poor showing in 2007 deprived Adams of that triumph but fortuitously so, as it turned out. However, luck, one of the biggest housing bubbles in economic history, the Anglo-Irish Bank and the most stupid, incompetent and possibly corrupt Fianna Fail government in the history of the State combined in the period since then to give Sinn Fein a second chance.
It seems pretty clear that for Sinn Fein to achieve in 2015 or 2016 what it failed to obtain four years ago, a certain set of conditions would have to exist. The major prerequisite would be that in four or five years time the Irish economy is every bit as damaged and derelict as it is now. That’s a distinct possibility but the downside for Sinn Fein is that if this were so then emigration would in all likelihood have returned to the distressing levels last seen in the early 1980’s and many of those leaving Ireland’s shores would be natural SF voters and therefore no longer available to the party (hence, I suspect, the reason for SF’s demand that emigrants be given the vote).
Another set of requirements would be that the recently elected Fine Gael-Labour coalition would be every bit as venal and bungling as Fianna Fail was, that when the next general election is called the voters are as angry as they were last month and, last but not least, that Sinn Fein has shown itself as a talented and inspirational opposition. Again, all three of those preconditions are by no means impossible, but neither are they anywhere near certain.
Then there would be the question of whether Sinn Fein should aim, as it did in 2007, to be the junior partner in the post 2015/2016 coalition government or the senior one. Since the election campaign would be focussed on attacking the FG-Labour government, coalition with either of those parties would be automatically ruled out (just as FG could not now contemplate a partnership with Fianna Fail).
That means that if Sinn Fein wants to be in government in four or five years time, its likely partner, possibly the only one available, will be Fianna Fail. Here’s where it starts to get tricky for SF. If Sinn Fein’s support is going to grow in the next four or five years it will in the main be at the expense of Fianna Fail yet it will need Fianna Fail to have recovered a lot of the support lost in the recent election for such a government to be viable. How to balance those competing demands will be a challenge.
If Sinn Fein’s participation in the next government is dependent upon Fianna Fail’s recovery, where then would SF’s extra votes come from except from the many independents who were elected last month, or the Labour party? The other option would be to set out to absorb as much of Fianna Fail’s support as possible, effectively replacing it as the Republican party of Ireland, and then cobble together a coalition from the remnants of FF and the scattering of independents.
What matters here is that in either scenario, aiming to be the junior or senior partner in the next coalition government, Sinn Fein would have to grow and develop – and be led – like a normal political party. The problem for Sinn Fein is that it is not a normal political party. It came to life as an offshoot of the IRA and it continues to behave, particularly in the way it handles its internal affairs, as an offshoot of the IRA, where obedience to an all-controlling leadership comes before all else.
The symptoms of this were visible in the years after the 2007 electoral setback with a series of resignations from party ranks in both parts of Ireland – perhaps twenty in all – and most damagingly in Dublin. Perhaps the most telling of these was the defection of Dublin councillor Killian Forde to the Labour Party in January 2010, a rising star who many predicted would go far. He chose his words carefully when he resigned but their import was unmistakable:
“The leadership of the party appeared to not recognise or were unwilling to accept that changes are long overdue. These changes were essential to transform the party into one that values discussions, accommodates dissent and promotes merit over loyalty and obedience. It is only logical that if you disagree with the direction of the party and are unable to change it there is no option but to leave.”
He didn’t put a name to the problem but we all know who he was talking about. Last week Gerry Adams was chosen as leader of the new, expanded Sinn Fein group in the Dail, replacing the dull but dependable Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin. He was picked for the job in the same way as Sadam Hussein was in Iraq, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Josef Stalin in Soviet Russia, with no rival or dissent worthy of the name and success absolutely assured. His selection has to be ratified by the Sinn Fein Ard Comhairle and it surely will be, as all his wishes have been.
Gerry Adams - President of SF since 1983 and now leader of the party in the Dail.
In assuming leadership of the Dail party, Gerry Adams may well have missed one of those opportunities that the great leaders recognise when they come along, that for the good of the party and the project for which they have struggled, it is time to stand aside for newer, younger and fresher blood.
Now it may be that Gerry Adams does see the reality of his situation and that when the new Dail sits, he will be leader in name only, that in practice he will let the Pearse Doherty’s shine and get their way in charting the party’s direction and shaping its decisions. If he does then Sinn Fein will have a betting chance of growing and, more importantly, attracting talented and ambitious people to its ranks and by so doing significantly improve the chances that it will end up in power in 2015 or 2016.
But it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks. Even harder when there’s a great temptation to see the election result, and his own performance in Louth, as a massive vote of confidence in the way he goes about politics. Gerry Adams’ problem, as Killian Forde implied, is that he sees little difference in leading Sinn Fein and leading the IRA.
Surviving at the top of the IRA, as he did for so many years, required being on constant guard against dissent and brooking no disobedience of, or divergence from the leadership strategy, no matter how trivial, for fear that it will bloom and grow into a significant and even life-threatening challenge. (If you don’t believe this is how he ran the IRA, go ask Ruairi O Bradaigh, Ivor Bell or Micky McKevitt) That may be an acceptable style of leadership for an armed group waging a revolutionary war – or for a revolutionary leader intent on leading his army in a completely new direction – but it’s fatal for a political party in a democratic, parliamentary system.
It means, inter alia, that there’s a natural tendency for such leaders to surround themselves with untalented sycophants, valued mostly for their trustworthiness and dependability, or carpetbaggers who stare lovingly into their eyes and murmur compliments about standing on the shoulders of giants. These are precisely the sort of people who are not needed in a party that wants to flourish and expand.
In two years time, Gerry Adams will have been leader of Sinn Fein for thirty years. I can’t think of any European or Western party with a leader who’s been in office even half as long as he has. But over in North Africa there is one leader just as unwilling as he is to pass on the reins of power to others. Muammar Gaddafi, long time patron and sometime paymaster of the IRA, has been ruling Libya for forty years and is, as I write, stubbornly – and violently – resisting efforts to dislodge him from office. The two men’s lives intersected constantly over the last four decades and it looks like they will continue to do so till the bitter end.
Not too long ago anyone who publicly doubted the honesty and integrity of Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams was, in some quarters south of the Irish border, risking the sort of response usually reserved for child molesters and war criminals. Few could be more withering and condemnatory, especially behind one’s back, than Fianna Fail, although to be fair the Department of Foreign Affairs always gave them a run for their money.
I am of course speaking of the days of the peace process, especially pre-Northern Bank robbery, when to suggest that Gerry Adams was anything less than a fountainhead of truth and candour was on a par with concocting a breakfast recipe that featured fattened Protestant babies in the main course.
Now it may have been the case that people like the then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and his Northern point man Martin Mansergh truly believed that Adams was being sincere and straight in his peace process dealings but I seriously, seriously doubt it. Something as difficult as getting the IRA to end its war on the terms that were finally accepted was not the sort of project that could be steered to success without a considerable amount of falsification and dissembling. And Bertie and Martin would have known that very well.
So when Gerry Adams or his nom de guerre, P O’Neill, would routinely assure the troops that IRA decommissioning was just not on the cards, my hunch is that Bertie and Martin would look at each other and wink. They would, or should have known via Garda Special Branch that this was nonsense and that plans to do just this were already being laid just as they knew that Adams was aware that decommissioning was the price he’d have to pay to get Unionists to share power with him.
But they would also have been acutely conscious of another peace process reality: lying to and deceiving the Provo grassroots in this way was the only assured route to eventual success. It kept the IRA rank and file content and quiet, lulled into a false sense of security until it was too late for them to do anything about it. In the same way, Bertie and Martin would, I suspect, have grinned and borne it whenever Adams or P O’Neill denied that the IRA robbed this or that bank, knowing this would also keep the grassroots bamboozled, convinced that their leaders were trustworthy, had once again successfully hoodwinked the Irish government and that the IRA would never go away.
Bernadette McAliskey once compared the peace process to pushing a fly down the neck of a wine bottle. Eventually a point would be reached when there was no traction left and the fly would fall, helpless, to the bottom of the bottle where it would drown in the dregs. Mendacity was the stick that pushed the fly down the neck of the bottle.
In fact it would be no exaggeration to say that the ability of Gerry Adams to lie and fool so expertly was the peace process’ most valuable asset. Had Adams been straight and honest with his people about where the IRA was going to end up, he would have been found long before 2005 in a ditch somewhere in South Armagh, trussed up like a Christmas turkey with several bullet-shaped holes in his skull. Without his talent for dissimulation we would never have got to 2005 when the IRA, finally divested of its Semtex and AK-47’s, declared its war against Britain to be over.
The corollary of all this was that a special venom was reserved by the Irish state for anyone in the media who dared suggest that the Sinn Fein leadership had less than a monopoly on the truth. Everyone knows the fable of the Emperor’s new clothes, how a child shames the crowd into admitting the truth, that the Emperor parading in front of them supposedly clothed in finery is actually stark naked. There is a special Irish version of the story with a very different ending. When the child cries out ‘the Emperor is naked’, the crowd reacts by turning on the child and beating it to death.
It is, of course, the job of government to lie and deceive or to connive at others’ lies in the pursuit of implementing policy. And many will say that telling lies in the quest for peace in Northern Ireland was not only excusable but laudable. But journalists are not politicians, or at least they shouldn’t be. They – we – have a special duty to the truth, even if that causes discomfort or difficulty. Whenever I was assailed by government officials, or more often by fellow hacks, for writing stories deemed ‘unhelpful’ to the peace process my response was simple: if this process cannot survive one of my stories then it’s doomed no matter what I write or do not write. Joining in the deception, either by commission or omission, wouldn’t make a jot of difference except to devalue the trade of journalism, to render it a useless and unconvincing charade.
So, I have to say that when I heard that the new Fianna Fail leader Micheál Martin had challenged Gerry Adams to tell the truth about his past membership of the IRA, to “come clean” about his “baggage from the past” as he put it, I have to confess that I laughed out loud and long. “There is a fundamental problem for Gerry when he continues to deny his membership of the IRA”, said the bold Micheál, “because every time he talks in this debate during the election about honesty . . . it jars very much with his own position about the past.” Indeed it does Micheál but you didn’t have that problem back in 1998, did you?
Micheál Martin was not only a minister in the Fianna Fail cabinet from 1997 onwards, during the key years of the peace process when there a special premium on Adams not telling the truth, but he is a former Minister of Foreign Affairs whose civil servants not only helped Adams hone to perfection his dissembling skills but often led the charge, employing a special sense of viciousness, against anyone who questioned the Sinn Fein leader’s honesty.
Micheál Martin, more than most people, has known for a very long time that, in relation to Northern matters, Adams and the truth have often been strangers and the fact that he chose this time to let us all in on the secret is a sure indication that in the forthcoming election the Fianna Fail party is headed down the toilet. Truth suddenly acquires virtue, one could say, when political destruction stares you in the face. There was a sense of desperation about what he said, as well as artifice, and I suspect the Irish voter picked up on it.
There was however one line in Micheál Martin’s statement that especially drew my attention and it was this: “Martin McGuinness doesn’t have a problem admitting his membership in the past but I think there is a huge problem for Gerry Adams in a credibility sense.”
Actually not entirely true, Mr Martin. Not only not the full truth but also unfair to Mr Adams. It’s unfair to Gerry Adams because in the narrative of Provo dishonesty peddled by the likes of Micheál Martin, the Sinn Fein leader is depicted as the singular voice of skullduggery in Sinn Fein whereas in fact Martin McGuinness has lied ever bit as flagrantly about his IRA history as Gerry Adams and, I strongly suspect, would have lied as comprehensively but for a few inconvenient pieces of newspaper and television archive.
The Martin McGuinness that I came to know as a journalist covering the Northern Ireland beat was rarely far from the very top of the IRA pyramid. In the mid to late 1970’s he was the IRA’s first Northern Commander, appointed to the job when on Adams’ advice a separate Northern Command was created whose effect, if not purpose, was to take power away from Southern IRA leaders. He then became Chief of Staff and held that post until 1982 when others on the Army Council insisted that he had to give it up if he wanted to run as a Sinn Fein candidate in the elections to Jim Prior’s Assembly.
He always hankered to get the job back and for years afterwards a vicious feud simmered beneath the surface between him and Kevin McKenna who took over the post and held it until he was succeeded by ‘Slab’ Murphy. McGuinness re-entered the military picture in a serious way in the mid-1980’s when, in preparation for the arrival of Libyan weaponry and the launching of the IRA’s version of the ‘Tet offensive’, he was again made Northern Commander with the special job of distributing Col. Gaddafi’s guns to the units on the ground. The task that he performed was done in such a way that it brought him into conflict with Michael McKeviit, then the QMG. McKevitt came to suspect that for whatever reason, McGuinness gave more weapons to units that were most likely to lose them, usually through the efforts of informers.
When the peace process got under way he played two key roles. One as the IRA’s (or at least Gerry Adams’) secret contact man via people like Derry businessman Brendan Duddy with British intelligence and the Northern Ireland Office; the other as Chairman of the Army Council, traditionally the IRA’s chief diplomat and representative in discussions with outside individuals and bodies. When the media would describe McGuinness as the ‘Sinn Fein negotiator’ during peace process talks they got it wrong. He was actually there representing the Army Council, as their official ambassador.
So in all the years between the mid-1970’s and 2005, Martin McGuinness was there at the very top of the IRA or thereabouts, playing a crucial role in both its military and political side.
But what does Martin McGuinness himself say about what he was doing during this period?
Well the answer to this question can be found in the report of the Saville Tribunal into Bloody Sunday, to be specific in the transcript of witness cross-examinations, pages 140-141 of day 391’s business. McGuinness was being questioned by Christopher Clarke QC, counsel for the Tribunal about the “Green Book’, which contains the IRA’s manual, statement of aims and constitution and this is how it reads:
Q. It may well be, sir, you had already left the IRA by the time this document in the form that we have it, came into existence. When did you leave the IRA?
A. Here we go again, on another trawl through the Martin McGuinness fixation.
Q. No, it is not at all, sir, not at all. May I just explain to you, because you have been very concerned, understandably, to be treated in the same way as the soldiers, and it is precisely the same question, word for word, as was asked, I think, of some seven or eight soldiers.
A. Were they asked when they left the British Army?
Q. Yes, simply because it was thought to be relevant to the way in which other people had reacted to what had happened on Bloody Sunday. You do not have to answer my question or any of them, I ask them, and I will not ask them twice, it is for the Tribunal to say whether you should answer them or not: I ask again, when did you leave the IRA, if you did?
A. I left the IRA in the early part of the 1970s.
So during all those years when we thought that Martin McGuinness was Northern Commander (twice), Chief of Staff and then Chairman of the Army Council, he was really a civilian with no connection at all to the IRA. How could he be anything else since he told the Saville Tribunal under oath that he had left the organisation in the ‘early’ 1970’s?
I can almost hear the readers’ response: “Sure, that’s bullshit but at least he admits he was in the IRA, if only for a bit!” And that’s true and it’s more than Gerry Adams has ever acknowledged. But why lie about the three decades or so after the ‘early’ 1970’s and not about the two or three years before it? Is it because there’s more to hide in the later years or because he screwed up in those early years, admitting things about his association with the IRA that he regretted later and which the wilier Adams would never have? And if he had not said or done those things would he too, like Adams, now be swearing to the world that he had never, ever been in the IRA?
Martin McGuinness at an early IRA funeral in Derry
There’s this for instance, something that falls into the rush of blood to the head category, a statement he made from the dock in Green Street courthouse, Dublin in 1973 when he was convicted of IRA membership:
“We have fought against the killing of our people. I am a member of Oglaigh na Eireann (IRA) and very, very proud of it.”
That’s something Mr Adams would never have said.
Then there’s this video of an appearance at an IRA press conference in Derry in June 1972, perhaps an example of McGuinness succumbing to the lure of the klieg lights. He is flanked by IRA Chief of Staff, Sean Macstiofain, Belfast Commander Seamus Twomey and Army Council member Daithi O Connail, and the purpose of press conference was to put forward an IRA ceasefire proposal to the new NI Secretary, Willie Whitelaw. There’s an even more famous television interview, broadcast on ITV but sadly not available on YouTube, in which a youthful McGuinness admits being the Derry Commander of the IRA. Again the shrewder Gerry Adams would have steered well clear of such exposure.
After blatant admissions like these it would be impossible for Martin McGuinness to deny he had been in the IRA in the ‘early’ 1970’s. But after that, in the subsequent three decades, he never made a similar mistake or engaged in such embarrassing frankness ever again and, thankfully from his viewpoint, it was so much easier therefore to resort to the lie.
There’s another part of the story of Adams, McGuinness and the peace process that is vital to an understanding of this period. For sure, Gerry Adams dissembled the IRA into decommissioning its weapons and ending its war with the British but he didn’t do this alone. He couldn’t have achieved it without McGuinness’ help for while Gerry was the Provos’ political leader, he never had the trust of the IRA rank and file that Martin had. The reason was simple: Martin had a military track record and Gerry didn’t. Martin had done the business and Gerry hadn’t. So when Martin would give substance to Gerry’s assurances that all was well, as in this video, it gave the whole project a crucial credibility.
In the days before my book ‘A Secret History of the IRA’ was published in the autumn of 2001, Martin McGuinness toured newspaper and television offices in Dublin and London to talk about it to editors and senior journalists. His purpose was simple, to blacken my name and label me a dissident fellow-traveller. It was partly an effort to do the book down and partly an exercise in intimidation, carrying with it the implied threat that any journalist treating my book sympathetically or seriously risked the same treatment. He even went to see my editor in the Sunday Tribune, Matt Cooper. Matt asked him did he believe Gerry Adams when he denied ever being in the IRA? “Yes” replied McGuinness, not missing a beat. “He looked me straight in the eye when he said it”, recalled Cooper.
The Broken Elbow 
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