Paisley puts the fear of God into Adams

Paisley puts the fear of God into Adams (Derry News, 13th December 2004)

The IRA saved Gerry Adams’ skin last Wednesday by pulling out of the agreement that would have led to the most unstable government in the history of Ireland.

That is the only conclusion that anyone can come to in relation to the failure of Sinn Fein to sign the agreement that that they undoubtedly were willing to sign before the IRA got scared. I don’t accept that the two governments had not told the IRA about the photographs of decommissioning. That’s just waffle for the republican masses.

Suddenly now Adams is looking for direct talks with Ian Paisley, as if to confirm that his real fear for the agreement was to do with his relationship with Paisley. There was no trust there, only instability, and didn’t Adams know it. Well, he seems to know it now.

He now wants to sit down and have a wee chat with big Ian so that they have the opportunity of warming to each other with the potential of making the Agreement a little more stable.

Why? Because Adams knows that he has a lot riding on the peace process in both parts of Ireland. He knows that he still hasn’t delivered the final blow to the SDLP in the North and so they have the potential to come back and wreak havoc on his plans for dominating politics on the island of Ireland.

Failure of the government of the North within weeks, which is really what every commentator but the most wishful thinking ones would have given his alliance with Paisley, would have put the ball back in the SDLP’s court and left Sinn Fein with the egg of a real humiliation on its face.

If anyone thinks that this is a flawed analysis, you only have to look at the date on which the government was to begin to operate. It was to begin to operate in March 2005, giving it just enough time to hold together until the May 2005 local government and possible General Election when they were to wipe out the SDLP.

Now that looks less of a likelihood. More likely now is that the electorate will examine the failure of Gerry Adams to sign up to an agreement he had already agreed, and then examine his subsequent murmurings to Ian Paisley and realise that they have made a big mistake in voting Sinn Fein.

The mistake is that they have given Sinn Fein a mandate to succeed in defeating the DUP and yet that event cannot happen this side if a civil war. The electorate will realise that they simply cannot have the victory and partnership combination some of them seem to think is available.

Many people vote Sinn Fein, they tell us, because they give out a more clear definition of where they are going. Any claim that could have been made in relation to that kind of clarity existing ended last week. Sinn Fein’s future became obscure again and it became a party of weakness and frailty. For anyone who has an insight into these things, it is clear that all the clarity that Sinn Fein show is for an audience. They haven’t really had a clue where they’re going since they ended the IRA campaign. Before that they had even less of a clue.

Just because Gerry Adams thinks he is a Moses-like figure, leading his people to the promised land, doesn’t mean that they’ll ever get there, or even if they do arrive somewhere, that it will be the promised land.

Gerry Adams is showing his true face now. The mask has slipped. His fear of Ian Paisley is apparent now, as is the damage Paisley can do to his prospects for leading his people to a unitary state. So now he wants to sit down and talk things over with the DUP leader. He realises that he has met his match, and that there is a certain equality between him and the big man.

I agree with him. There is a certain equality. Both have been equally culpable in turning this small part of Ireland into a bloodbath, and both are absolutely without any sense of goodness that would have allowed a decent compromise to emerge in the early 1970’s when their bloodbath was at its height.

They both needed to wait to see the evidence then that evil begets evil and that death and destruction would achieve nothing. They needed to see the photographs, to mention a relevant topic, of the Troubles that dominated my and many people’s childhoods before they would realise that it wasn’t a game and that real people were suffering because of their vanity. They needed to see the television pictures before they came to their senses.

John Hume didn’t need to see the results of violence to arrive at the conclusion that it was wrong and completely pointless. Mark Durkan didn’t need to see the charred remains of human beings caught up in bomb blasts to know that violence would achieve nothing. But Adams did. And Paisley will never forgive him.

*John O’Connell is Derry-based author.

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