Piecework

“That’s the way they are,” Adams says. He likes to point out that the British have “a political code disguised as a moral code; they can use force and nobody else can.” Noting the current discussion of “widespread alienation” in the North, Adams says, “Thatcher’s way of dealing with alienation is to shoot the alienated.”

Adams clearly wants the support of Irish-Americans, but doesn’t believe Sinn Fein or the IRA should alter their goals to please potential supporters. He is, for example, frank about being a socialist, and doesn’t accept the conventional analysis that the Northern Ireland struggle is just a tribal conflict between Catholics and Protestants. He certainly doesn’t want a “Catholic Ireland” and has clashed on a number of occasions with the Catholic hierarchy. The Sinn Fein vision of a united Ireland is decidedly nonsectarian.

“Historically, the church was always in the position of being fairly divorced from the people and not being involved with them in any social issues,” Adams says. “There are all sorts of examples of absolute stupidity here. Ballymurphy, here in Belfast, has a fantastically high rate of unemployment and poverty, and it had visited upon it a multi-thousand-pound church that the people had to pay for, which didn’t even have dwellings for a priest. So now they have this big mausoleum in the middle of Ballymurphy, but the priest is still two miles up the road.”

As it did in 1916, the church has repeatedly come down hard on the IRA. “It’s a conservative church, there’s no doubt about it,” Adams says. But there have been some changes — in Irish terms, very big changes. The fact that so many priests could come out against the Reagan visit, so many nuns and sisters oppose the Central American policies — that’s a change, a big one. And there are a sprinkling of radical priests about the place. But you have to distinguish between the church and the hierarchy. I mean, I’m a member of the church, as is every other Catholic in Sinn Fein; the hierarchy is only part of the church, too.”

Religion is not, however, the critical problem. Adams says the first order of business is independence, and from that would flow an independent Irish foreign policy, built on “positive neutrality,” unaligned either with NATO or the Warsaw Pact: A socialist economy would include nationalization of natural resources, banks and major industries; limits on the ownership of large tracts of land; most of all, a planned economy.

“The present economy,” he says, “which is called a free-enterprise economy, is actually a planned economy, but it’s planned in favor of the small minority who control the wealth.”

He says charges that Sinn Fein and the IRA plan to create “another Cuba” in Ireland at the point of a gun, or institute some sort of totalitarian government on the Eastern European model, are absurd. The IRA gunmen are here for the moment, Adams says, “but once independence is secured, armed struggle is finito. Sinn Fein would then figure in an Irish democracy — which is denied us at present — for the things we want. But it would be up to the Irish people to say yea or nay. If the people accept it, fair enough. If they accept part of it, fair enough. If they reject it, fair enough.”

Adams doesn’t believe that such independence will come easily. The British, in his analysis, will not leave the North of Ireland quietly because “many of the reasons why Britain colonized in the first place still stand.”

One major reason, in Adams’ view, was national security. “She was always concerned that her opponents like France and Spain would form an alliance with the Irish and come in through the back door. That still comes up with NATO, still comes up with some of the right-wing Tories.” Adams believes there was also an ideological reason for the initial British conquest; Britain at the time was a feudal society, while Ireland was decentralized, somewhat radical, with communal ownership of lands and sharing of labor.

“That’s what they fear now,” Adams says. “A victory for Irish freedom, if it led to the radicalization of Ireland, would have an effect on Britain itself. You can see what the Tories are afraid of in the way they’re treating their miners. They would just have nightmares if people like me had something to say about the way this country is governed.”

In addition, there is British jingoism and racism. “We are the first and the last colony of Britain. And there is almost a racist attitude about Ireland. It probably would be simpler if we were black. We’re only 20 miles from their shores at some points. If we were in Cyprus, or Rhodesia, or Hong Kong, it would be much easier. And finally, although everybody doubts it, I believe there’s an economic factor, too. We are a market for their goods. Whatever industry is here is still majority-owned by the British. All the clothes I wear, the wallpaper on the walls, the tea I drink, everything comes from Britain.”