The Unbearable Lightness of Timing in Northern Ireland

By AM Friday, May 23, 2014

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Guest writer Gareth Rice shares his thoughts on the arrest of Sinn Fein leader, Gerry Adams.  "Gareth Rice is an academic and journalist from Belfast. He has lectured in urban geography in the UK and in Finland. He has written for Monocle, National Geographic, Runway, Counterpunch, Helsinki Times and Six Degrees magazines. He is currently working on a memoir about growing up during 'the Troubles.' 

People in Northern Ireland are all too familiar with the unbearable lightness of timing. Almost everything which happens there can be explained as being politically motivated. Sinn Féin and Republicans are of the view that the recent arrest of their President, Gerry Adams, was timed to damage the party’s campaign in the run up to local and European elections later this month. Adams made the trip up from Dublin to the PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland) barracks in Antrim on Wednesday 30th April to talk about the case of Jean McConville. He was later arrested. The timing of his arrest has been hyped up to be as controversial as the case itself, which also embroiled an oral history project at Boston College in a bitter dispute about evidence relating to Northern Ireland’s troubled past.

McConville was kidnapped by the IRA (Irish Republican Army) in 1972, interrogated, shot in the back of the head and then secretly buried over 40 years ago - becoming one of the so-called “Disappeared” victims of the Troubles. She was suspected of being an informer for the British Army. The body of the 37-year-old mother of ten was not found until 2003 on a beach in Co Louth. Adams denies any involvement in her killing and instead claimed there was a “sustained, malicious, untruthful campaign” against him.

Press statements became threatening. Martin McGuinness, Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister and Sinn Féin politician implied that his party would “review everything” including their support for the PSNI if Adams were to be charged with the McConville murder. This would have wider destabilizing effects since Sinn Féin’s support of the PSNI is a key plank of the Good Friday Agreement, which has largely ‘held’ since 1998.

The First Minister, Peter Robinson came out in defense of the PSNI and raised concerns about Sinn Féin’s “Republican bully boy tactics”:

The PSNI must not be the subject of republican bullyboy tactics. They must be completely free to follow any and all evidence regardless of where it takes them and to decide free of political considerations whether suspects will be charged or not.

A group of protesters waving Union flags and donning hoodies had gathered and blocked the road outside Antrim barracks. They hoped to be amongst the first to hear the news that Adams would be charged for his role in the McConville murder. “Cheerio Cheerio Cheerio…” they chanted, confident that Adams’s “bloody past” had finally caught up with him. What they didn’t know was that custody officials were in the process of smuggling Adams out the back gate of the barracks.

Adams was released without charge. His first stop was a news conference in Belfast. He claimed that the PSNI could have used discretion and that 'they did not have to use pernicious, coercive legislation to deal with a legacy issue even one as serious as this, which I was voluntarily prepared to deal with.' He was arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 which means that he could have been held for up to 28 days, but was released after four days, during which he claimed that he was questioned for up to 18 hours on each of those days. And on the timing issue he said that, “They [the PSNI] did not have to do this in the middle of an election campaign.” According to a recent poll, Sinn Féin is in contention to win three of the Irish Republic’s 11 seats in the European parliament and to surge ahead in local elections on the island.

As with everything political in Northern Ireland, progress doesn’t come before some accusations are made or thorns are twisted in the sides of authority. Adams accused the PSNI and others of using the same old dirty tricks:

The old guard which is against change, whether in the PSNI leadership, within elements of Unionism or the far fringes of self-proclaimed but pseudo Republicans. They can’t win. The dark side of the British system cannot be allowed to deny anyone, any of our people Catholic, Protestant or dissenter – to their entitlement to a rights-based citizen society as set out in the Good Friday Agreement.

Adams said that what he was put through was a “sham.” Other Sinn Féin members also attacked the PSNI. Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday Politics Northern Ireland programme, hours before Adams’s release, Gerry Kelly MLA churlishly said that, ‘Sinn Féin will not be intimidated by the action of a small cabal in the PSNI who are opposed to the peace process and political change.’

Adams holds that he will continue to work with the PSNI, though it is not clear what his other options might be. When Sinn Féin signed up to The St. Andrew’s Agreement in 2006 they committed their full support for the rule of law and policing in Northern Ireland. The unequivocal Democratic Unionist Party’s stance on this was encapsulated by Jeffery Donaldson, who said that Sinn Fein 'need to get on the right side of the line when it comes to law, no one is above the law regardless of who they are.'

One day after his release from custody Adams told an election rally in West Belfast that Sinn Féin will continue to back the PSNI to bring about “genuine civic policing that can respect every man, woman and child.” As Adams squinted into the blizzard of camera flashlights and gloated on the rapturous applause, he looked more like an awkward rock star than a man, who is believed by many to have the blood of McConville and other “Disappeared” on his hands.

The record shows that Adams contacted the PSNI two months before his arrival at Antrim barracks through his solicitor, Mr. Seamus Collins, who will later decide if the evidence is suffice to charge Adams. This could be seen as an attempt by a pressured Adams to get things moving quickly on the McConville case enabling him to carry out his election campaigning without seeing the inside of a jail cell. But there is an avoidable contradiction for Sinn Féin when they insist on the timing of their President’s arrest. In 2013, Gerry Kelly launched his book called The Escape, about his role in the Long Kesh breakout. The book details the H-Block Prison Breakout when Kelly and 37 other republican prisoners escaped the high security facility on 25th September 1983. His choice to release the book on the 30th anniversary of the breakout also happened to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the Shankill bomb - the IRA’s botched attempt to assassinate loyalist paramilitary leaders in a room above Frizzell’s fish shop. Ten people including the bomber, Thomas Begley, lost their lives in that tragedy. When asked about the timing of launching his book, Kelly coyly replied that 'it wasn’t relevant to the Shankill bombing.'

The Jean McConville case remains one of the most controversial in the history of “the Troubles” and for a long time it formed an integral part of the induction seminars for armed forces that were being prepared to serve in Northern Ireland. It is believed by some that, on December 15th 1972 the mother of ten ended up being wrongly accused after she was seen helping a dying British soldier, who had been fatally wounded at Divis Flats in West Belfast. He was bleeding out and calling for his mother. Acting on her natural motherly instincts, McConville went to his aid and sat by the young man’s side to comfort him while he died. It is not known who all initially witnessed the scene, but as rumours started to spread it would only be a matter of time before the IRA saw McConville’s act of compassion as the work of an informant. However, until the war diaries of the British Regiments active in the Divis area in 1972 remain embargoed and closed to public access, the chronology of events cannot be known until they have been declassified by the British government.

“PEACEMAKER. LEADER. VISIONARY” are the words which appear on the recently revealed mural of Adams in West Belfast. It may come to a surprise to some that they refer to the same man, who in a recent press statement uttered the following words:

I have never dissociated myself from the IRA and I never will. But I am glad that I and others have created a peaceful and democratic way forward for everyone. The IRA is gone, it is finished.

The mural has already been paint bombed, a sign that Adams continues to be a divisive figure. The file on Adams, which the PSNI has sent to the Public Prosecutions Office in Belfast, includes evidence from the so called “Boston Tapes.” This Boston College oral history project includes damaging claims by former IRA commander Brendan Hughes that Adams ordered Jean McConville’s murder in 1972. The consideration of these tapes and other incriminating evidence will surely become the litmus test for Adams, who many believe has gotten away with murder time and time again. For many people across Northern Ireland, especially the McConville family, this is the only sort of justice which will feel like a more bearable lightness of timing.