Kevin — 'A FARTHER SHORE' Ireland's Perennial Outsider: No Confession, No Apology
Topic(s): BookReview | Comments Off on Kevin — 'A FARTHER SHORE' Ireland's Perennial Outsider: No Confession, No ApologyJanuary 20, 2004
BOOKS OF THE TIMES | ‘A FARTHER SHORE’ Ireland’s
Perennial Outsider: No Confession, No Apology
By BRIAN LAVERY
For all his adult life Gerry Adams has fought to reunite the Republic of Ireland with the six counties of Northern Ireland, which remained part ofBritain when the rest of the island won its independence 80-odd years ago.
The Irish Republican Army’s violent struggle to achieve that goal has wound down, but not without lingering effects on modern marketing. In the republic most people first hear about a new book by Mr. Adams through reports that broadcasting regulators have banned advertisements for it.The reasoning is that Mr. Adams is so well known as president of Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.’s political wing, that ads for his books are equivalent to political statements. That policy is also the legacy of a censorship law that until 1994 required actors’ voices to be dubbed over Sinn Fein politicians, so that a generation of Irish people grew up without knowing what they sounded like.
The prolific Mr. Adams is still something of an outsider, even now that he has become internationally known and the deep tones of his Belfast accent are unmistakably familiar. The latest of his dozen books, “A Farther Shore: Ireland’s Long Road to Peace,” is his version of how Sinn Fein came in from the cold, and ofthe peace process that halted the 30-year sectarian conflict that claimed nearly4,000, mostly civilian, lives.
The book begins in the late 1970’s, when Mr. Adams, now 55, was released from prisonand began moving through the ranks of Sinn Fein. Like his previous memoir, “Beforethe Dawn,” it does not acknowledge the commonly held belief that he led the I.R.A.in Belfast in the 1970’s. Mr. Adams denies ever being a member of the I.R.A. andrepeatedly emphasizes the distance between the paramilitaries and the politicians.
His critics dwell on whether that denial undercuts the reliability of his account,but the distinction is largely irrelevant. Top Sinn Fein politicians like MartinMcGuinness have publicly admitted being former I.R.A. leaders, and the connectionbetween the organizations — including Mr. Adams’s role — is well documentedelsewhere.
“A Farther Shore” is not intended as a confessional or apology, and the denial is anexpected formality — albeit one widely regarded as a fundamental untruth — thatallows Mr. Adams to get on with his political chronicle. When he does, he tends tosound intelligent, reasonable and surprisingly convincing. No wonder Irishauthorities still want his voice on the airwaves as little as possible.
The book follows the more thrilling moments of Mr. Adams’s career, from theassassination attempt he survived in 1984 to the rapturous rock-star-style welcomehe received in New York 10 years later, after being granted a visa by President BillClinton over the strenuous objections of the British government.
Its intensity peaks during the late 80’s, when Belfast was the center of a bloodymaelstrom, and it seemed that not a day could go by without another horrific outragebeing committed by any one of the groups capable of savagery: Protestantparamilitary organizations, the police and the British Army, or the I.R.A.
During that period no politicians would reply to letters from Sinn Fein, let alonebe seen making contact with it. With the assistance of a Roman Catholic priest, Mr.Adams began secret talks with the mainstream nationalist leader, John Hume of theSocial Democratic and Labor Party, and eventually with representatives of theBritish government.
On few occasions does he admit to being frustrated with the slow pace of those yearsout in the cold, and the tenacity of all those involved is often astounding. Peoplewho wonder what it felt like to be such a pariah get the simple answer that Mr.Adams never knew it any other way.
His thoroughness in describing these and later discussions bogs his story down withunnecessary detail, like subtle shifts in party or government policy, makingsignificant stretches of the book less accessible. It feels like extremeunderstatement when he writes, “This was a long game, played slow.”
In his telling, playing that game meant trying and failing many times, until theconditions were right for an I.R.A. cease-fire and the 1998 Belfast peace accord,which set up a local government to share power between Catholics and Protestants,and created some links between Ulster and the Irish Republic. The legislature hasfunctioned only sporadically — in large part because of the I.R.A.’s failure todisarm fully — but bloodshed has remained a small fraction of what it was.
Thankfully Mr. Adams has a surprising tendency to goof around, and humorousanecdotes spice up the book’s drawn-out passages. These occasional glimpses of hishuman side and his thoughtful defense of republican politics will do little topersuade those who see him as permanently tainted by violence.
That view, that his resolve and sense of duty only rationalize acts of terror, isanticipated by the Seamus Heaney verse play that Mr. Adams quotes in hisintroduction to the book. Elsewhere in the work, “The Cure at Troy,” Mr. Heaneywrites:
No poem or play or songCan fully right a wrongInflicted and endured.
Mr. Adams expresses regret and sadness over times when the I.R.A., which killed morethan half of the victims of the “Troubles,” claimed civilian lives, but alsorepeatedly says that he had no influence over its bloody acts. This two-step shouldmake readers feel distinctly uneasy.
But Mr. Heaney and Mr. Adams share a desire to believe that the guns will staysilent, and that their country has reached the moment when, in the poet’s words:
once in a lifetimeThe longed-for tidal waveOf justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
Given the transformation of Northern Ireland in the space of a generation, it is nothard to understand their optimism.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company