Piecework

“If a section of the Irish people chose to resist by use of arms the British presence in Ireland, as needless to say they have chosen to do, generation after generation, then politically I will, of course, defend their right to do so.”

He is obviously aware of the terrible excesses of the war, the often murderous stupidity and carelessness, the outrages of the bombing campaigns. “I would certainly not attempt to justify any action in which civilians are killed,” he has said. “I naturally regret very much all such deaths. But since it’s not the policy of the IRA to kill civilians, I could not condemn them for accidental killings. In any war situation, civilians unfortunately suffer and die.”

And he adds: “The presence of the gun in Irish politics is not the sole responsibility of the Irish. The British were responsible for putting it there in the first place. And they continue to use it to stay in Ireland. No amount of voting will get them out.”

When Pope John Paul came to Ireland and delivered a homily on the need to end the violence, Adams said:

“I believe the Pope left a bigger, greater challenge to the Catholic Church than he did to the republicans. In principle, most republicans would agree with what the Pope said, but republicans don’t see themselves involved in violence. They see themselves involved in a perfectly legitimate struggle. I’m sure that if the Pope was asked for an opinion on an armed Communist takeover of some country, he would say it was quite legitimate to use force to resist it, and our opinion is that it is quite legitimate to resist the armed takeover of our country.”

Adams has spent most of his life in resistance to the British presence in Ireland. He lived as a child in Leeson Street in one of the worst Belfast slums, went to St. Finian’s primary school, St. Mary’s Christian Brothers School, and first saw action in 1964, when he was involved in the Divis Street riots. These were triggered by the display of a forbidden Irish tricolor in a window, an act that provoked a brutal attack by the RUC in which many civilians were injured. Soon he was deeply involved in republican politics, reading the literature of Irish revolution while working as a bartender at the Duke of York pub on Donegal Street. In those same years, he joined committees trying to alleviate housing and employment problems in Belfast and became a founding member of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association. At the time, there were almost no IRA members in the North; the organization had virtually ceased to exist. Then in August 1969, Belfast exploded, and Adams joined the self-defense teams in the Catholic ghettos. In March 1972, he was interned without charges, along with hundreds of other young Irishmen, and sent to the prison camp at Long Kesh. He soon found himself in the notorious Cage 11, from which many IRA leaders were to emerge. Adams does not, however, agree with the widely held theory that Long Kesh was the university of Irish republicanism.

“Maybe I’m wrong,” he said one recent morning. “But I think that aspect was very much exaggerated. They’ve got to explain this so they say, ‘Well, they were all stupid, they all got arrested, they all went to jail, and in jail they all got very clever, and then they got out and caused all this trouble.’ I don’t agree with that.”

But for Adams and his friends, much of the time in Cage 11 was well spent. “It was really a matter of putting in order whãt people already knew. That was my experience. Cage 11 was actually a wee bit different from all the other cages, because it was a wee bit crazy. It was sort of a M* A*S*H camp. The rest of the camp was militaristic, regimented, like a British Army thing, with officers of the day and so on.” Adams smiled. “Cage n didn’t have any of that.”

Today, Adams works most days in Connolly House, the headquarters of Sinn Fein in the Andersonstown section of Belfast. In a large room on the ground floor, local people wait to see Sinn Fein volunteers for help with problems. Sometimes the problems involve domestic disputes, erring husbands, disturbed children, other casualties of the war. Some visitors might have problems with government agencies or conditions in government-owned housing.

“We always did some of this work,” Adams says. “But now, with electoral legitimacy, we can call up on behalf of a constituent and do the same work with some clout.”

Connolly House is located in a small area of shops and two-story houses, and it was here that Martin Galvin of Queens came to speak last year in defiance of a British ban on his presence in the northern democracy. As soon as Galvin appeared at the side of Adams, the RUC charged, smashing into Irish and American members of the crowd. One RUC man fired a plastic bullet at a 20-year-old Irishman named John Downe and killed him. The American visitors, most of whom were members of Irish Northern Aid, which supports Sinn Fein and the IRA, were shocked by the viciousness of the assault. Adams was not.