Never Give Up: E-Book

Gerry Adams

• Herausgeber: Mercier Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Seitenzahl: 383

Beschreibung

Gerry Adams is known as a man of strong opinions and a quirky sense of humour . Never Give Up is a varied compilation of selected, reworked pieces that Gerry has written since 2009. They cover many issues. Some are fairly serious, others are very serious indeed. A few are whimsical. All will be enjoyed. The book gives an insight into the manoeuvring behind the scenes of political events, and how he became wrapped up in moments of history, both in Ireland and abroad, such as the funerals of Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro. The book provides an insight into the private life of Ireland's best-known politician, including some very turbulent times in Gerry's life, such as his move from West Belfast to Co. Louth, and his passions, like hiking and the Antrim GAA teams. The book opens with a heartfelt tribute to his close friend and political ally, the late Martin McGuinness.

Leseprobe

MERCIER PRESS

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© Gerry Adams, 2017

ISBN: 978 1 78117 537 8

Epub ISBN: 978 1 78117 538 5

Mobi ISBN: 978 1 78117 539 2

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

For Bernie McGuinness

and in memory of Martin

Réamhrá/Foreword

This book is a compilation of selected pieces I have written since 2009. I have slightly reworked or edited some of them to make them more suitable for this format. They cover many issues. Some are fairly serious. Others are very serious indeed. A few are whimsical. I hope you enjoy them all.

The period covered includes some very turbulent times in my life, including my move from west Belfast to Co. Louth. I was honoured to represent west Belfast as a Member of Parliament (MP) and a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) at Stormont for decades. I will always be grateful to the fine citizens of that outstanding community for choosing me to represent them, especially because the great and the good told them not to.

I am equally grateful to the people of Louth and East Meath, who sent me to join Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, the first Sinn Féin TD, who took his seat twenty years ago. There were fourteen of us elected in 2011. I am indebted to former TD Arthur Morgan and to a very fine group of councillors and activists, including Olive Sharkey, Declan Murphy, who managed us all, Máire Grogan, who led us, and Stephen McGlade, who managed the enlarged Sinn Féin Oireachtas team. I was delighted to be re-elected in 2016.

This time I was joined in the Dáil by another local Sinn Féin TD, Imelda Munster, and twenty-one other republicans from throughout the state. Our representation was also increased by seven seanadóirí in Seanad Éireann, bringing our Oireachtas total to thirty. In the meantime, our electoral strength has increased in the North and in councils in both states. Sinn Féin also has four Irish MEPs in the European parliament, representing the entire island of Ireland. Their role in opposing Brexit and promoting equality, solidarity and freedom is very significant.

Some of the issues and campaigns I write about are still unresolved at the time of publication, years after I put pen to paper. These include the search for justice and equality for so many in Ireland and throughout the world. Some of these campaigns are decades old. They are still winnable. The secret is to persevere. Convert the opposition. Win them over. Or wear them down. But keep going. Never give up.

This is an especially important element in the continuing struggle for Irish unity. There is now a peaceful way to end partition. That has been hard won. There is an onus, a duty, on those of us who believe in this objective to persuade those who don’t that unity is the only feasible alternative to division and the only way to end all the disadvantages associated with this division for the people of the island of Ireland. The unity of Ireland is an entirely legitimate objective. It is also an economic and social imperative. In these days when Brexit challenges the well-being of our island, people are beginning to see that an all-island approach is the only way to offset this dreadfully myopic English policy.

I am grateful to the Belfast Media Group, the Irish Echo and other publications, which first printed some of these articles. My thanks also to Richard McAuley (RG), the great, innovative, incorrigible and constant presence in my activism, especially since he accompanied me on the road to Louth, the Dáil and everywhere else. Go raibh maith agat RG.

Thanks also to all at Mercier Press, to Colette and our family for putting up with me, and to our friends and comrades for humouring me.

Tá mé fior buioch daoibhse go leir.

Le gach dea mhéin,

Gerry Adams

8 June 2017

Friends and Comrades

Martin McGuinness – A Life Well Lived

23 March 1917

On Monday 20 March, just after 9.25 a.m., Bernie McGuinness, Martin’s wife, texted me from Altnagelvin Hospital where she had been keeping vigil faithfully during Martin’s stay, to say that he ‘was just the same’.

Later that afternoon, at 2.20 p.m., she texted to say he was very weak. The doctors had just told her and their clann (family) that his organs were failing. She said no one else knew except the family. Her heart was breaking. A short ten hours later, at 12.30 a.m., Martin McGuinness died. His family were with him, except for his son, Emmett Rua, who was on his way back from the USA. I arrived in the hospital shortly after Martin died. Bernie was gracious, as always. She let me sit on my own with him.

Even if I had stayed there all night it would not have been enough time for me to gather myself, to get my emotions in check, to recall all the adventures and difficulties, the losses and gains, the ups and downs, the setbacks and advances that Martin and I had been through together for almost all of our adult lives. So I sat there alone in the hospital ward with my comrade. He was stretched out, calm, peaceful and still in death. Eventually I had to leave. I whispered a prayer and said my farewell.

Ireland lost a hero. Derry lost a son. Sinn Féin lost a leader and I lost a dear friend and a comrade. But Martin’s family has suffered the biggest loss of all. They have lost a loving, caring, dedicated father and grandfather. A brother and an uncle. A husband.

One of the very best things Martin ever did was marry Bernie Canning. One of his very best achievements was the family he and Bernie reared in the Bogside area in the city of Derry. Above all else, Martin loved his family. So our hearts go out to his wife Bernie, to their sons Fiachra and Emmett, their daughters Fionnuala and Gráinne; to Bernie and Martin’s grandchildren: Tiarnan, Oisin, Rossa, Ciana, Cara, Dualta and Sadhbh; to his sister Geraldine, who looked after him in bad times, and his brothers Paul, William, Declan, Tom and John; and to all of the wider McGuinness family.

All of us who knew Martin are proud of his achievements, his humanity and his compassion. He was a formidable person. He did extraordinary things in extraordinary times.

He would not be surprised at the commentary from some quarters about him and his life. He would be the first to say that these people are entitled to their opinions, in particular, those who suffered at the hands of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). But let me take issue with those in the editorial rooms or in the political ivory towers who denounce Martin McGuinness as a terrorist. Mar a dúirt An Piarsach – as Patrick Pearse said – at the grave of another Fenian, O’Donovan Rossa: ‘the fools, the fools, the fools’. Martin cannot answer them back. So let me answer for him.

Martin McGuinness was not a terrorist. Martin McGuinness was a freedom fighter. He was also a political prisoner, a negotiator, a peacemaker and a healer. And while he had a passion for politics, he was not one-dimensional. He had many interests. He was interested in nature. In spirituality. And he was famously, hugely interested in people. He also enjoyed storytelling and he could tell a yarn better than most, including me. In the early weeks of his illness after Christmas I tried to encourage him to write a book, and he was up for that. A book about childhood summers in Donegal, in the Illies, outside Buncrana. About his mother. His memories of his father. His brothers and sister. Schools days and much more. Meeting Bernie. Their courtship. The births of their children. Their grandchildren. But neither of us realised just how terminal his illness was – we knew he was very ill but did not predict this sudden outcome. Unfortunately, he will never write that book. He was a good writer and a decent poet, with a special place in his heart for Seamus Heaney and Patrick Kavanagh.

He loved growing herbs. He thought he was the world’s best chess player. He loved cooking, fly fishing and walking, especially around Grianán Fort in Co. Donegal. He enjoyed watching sports of all kinds. Football, hurling, cricket, golf, rugby. Soccer – he was the world’s worst soccer player. He once broke his leg playing soccer. He had a plaster from his ankle to his hip and he had to go up and down the stairs on his backside. And then two or three days later he discovered that he had also broken his arm – I could never figure that out. His mother Peggy – God rest her – told me that he tripped over the ball. He was great at telling jokes.

He liked all of these activities. But he especially loved spending time with Bernie and their family. That’s what grounded Martin McGuinness.

Martin was a friend to those engaged in the struggle for justice across the globe. And he travelled widely. He promoted the imperative of peacemaking in the Basque country, in Colombia, the Middle East and Iraq. He travelled to South Africa to meet Nelson Mandela and others in the African National Congress (ANC) leadership, as well as in the National Party, to learn from their experiences. The Palestinian ambassador and the ambassador from Cuba attended Martin’s funeral along with dignitaries from Ireland, North and South, the USA, Britain and other parts of the globe. Former American President Bill Clinton gave a wonderful eulogy at the funeral mass.

But Martin was also a man who was in many, many ways very ordinary. He was particularly ordinary in his habits and his personal lifestyle. He wasn’t the slightest bit materialistic. Like many other Derry ‘wans’, Martin grew up in a city in which Catholics were victims of widespread political and economic discrimination. He was born into an Orange state which did not want him or his kind. Poverty was endemic. I remember him telling me that he was surprised to learn that his father, a quiet, modest and church-going man, marched in the civil rights campaign in Derry. The Orange state’s violent suppression of that civil rights campaign, such as with the Battle of the Bogside in August 1969 – a confrontation between the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), supported by a unionist mob, against nationalist Bogside residents, leading to three days of intense rioting – propelled Martin into a life less ordinary.

The aftermath of the Battle of the Bogside saw the erection of barricades and the emergence of ‘Free Derry’, which was made up of the main nationalist estates of the city. From August 1969 until Operation Motorman by the British Army in July 1972, no RUC or British soldiers were able to enter Free Derry. Martin and I first met, forty-five years ago, behind the barricades in Free Derry. We have been friends and comrades ever since. From his time spent on the run, to imprisonment in Mountjoy, in the Curragh, in Portlaoise, in Belfast prison, through his time as the Northern Minister of Education and later Deputy First Minister – alongside Ian Paisley, then Peter Robinson and Arlene Foster – Martin made an unparalleled journey. And reading and watching some of the media reports of his life and death, one could be forgiven for believing that Martin, at some undefined point in his life, had a road to Damascus conversion, that he abandoned his republican principles, that he abandoned his former comrades in the IRA and joined the political establishment. But to suggest this is to miss the truth of his leadership and the essence of his humanity.

There was not a bad Martin McGuinness who went on to become a good Martin McGuinness. There was simply a man, like every other decent man or woman, doing their best in very difficult circumstances. Martin believed in freedom. He believed in equality. He resisted by armed actions those who withheld these rights, and then he helped shape conditions in which it was possible to advocate for these entitlements by unarmed strategies. And throughout it all Martin remained committed to the same ideals that led him to become a republican activist in the first instance.

He believed that the British government’s involvement in Ireland and the partition of our island are the root causes of our difficulties and of our divisions. He was absolutely 150 per cent right about that. The British government has no right to be in Ireland, never had any right to be in Ireland and will never have any right whatsoever to be in Ireland.

Along with others of like mind, he understood the importance of building a popular, democratic, radical republican party across this island. He especially realised that negotiations and politics are another form of struggle. In this way he helped chart a new course, a different strategy. Our political objectives, our republican principles, our ideals did not change. On the contrary, they guided us through every twist and turn and will continue to guide us through every twist and turn of this process.

Thanks to Martin we now live in a very different Ireland, an Ireland which has been utterly changed. We live in a society in transition. The future now can be decided by us. It should never be decided for us. Without Martin there would not have been the type of peace process we’ve had.

Much of the change which we now take for granted – and people sometimes say to me ‘the young ones take it for granted’ and I say to them ‘that’s good, that’s a good thing’ – could not have been achieved without Martin McGuinness.

And in my view the key was in never giving up. That was Martin’s mantra. He was also tough, assertive and unmovable when that was needed. He was even dogmatic at times. Wimps don’t make good negotiators – neither do so-called ‘hard men’. Martin learned the need for flexibility. And his contribution to the evolution of republican thinking was enormous, as was his work in popularising republican ideals.

Over many years there were adventures and craic, and fun and laughs and tears along the way, and both of us realised that advances in struggles require creativity, imagination and a willingness to take the initiative. Martin embraced that challenge. He didn’t just talk about change, he delivered change. He once said: ‘When change begins, and we have the confidence to embrace it as an opportunity and a friend, and show honest and positive leadership, then so much is possible.’

It was a source of great pride for me following the Good Friday Agreement to nominate Martin as the North’s Minister for Education. It was a position he embraced: putting equality and fairness into practice in the Department of Education, by, for example, seeking to end the Eleven Plus – a disreputable exam taken by students in the North at eleven years of age that determined whether a child went to a grammar or secondary or technical school after primary-level education. He sought to improve outcomes for children and to bring about the most radical overhaul of our education system since partition.

In 2007 he became Deputy First Minister and an equal partner to Ian Paisley in government. And they forged a friendship that illustrated to all the progress we have made on the island of Ireland. His reconciliation and his outreach work, and his work on behalf of victims and for peace – in Ireland and internationally – have been widely applauded.

As part of that work, Martin met Queen Elizabeth of England several times. He did so while conscious of the criticism this might provoke. He would be the first to acknowledge that some republicans and nationalists were discommoded at times by his efforts to reach out the hand of friendship. But that is the real test, and if we are to make peace with our unionist neighbours, we have to reach out. The real test of leadership, after all, is to reach out beyond your own base. It is a test that Martin passed every time.

Some unionist leaders were dismayed at the sight of their queen greeting our Martin on 27 June 2012 or on another occasion when she used a cúpla focal, a few words in Irish, or bowed her head in salute to the men and women of 1916. These were symbolic gestures but they were important nonetheless.

As Martin pointed out in his letter of resignation on 9 January 2017, when he stepped down as Deputy First Minister in protest at the failure of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to accept the principles of power sharing and their handling of the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) crisis:

The equality, mutual respect and all-Ireland approaches enshrined in the Good Friday Agreement have never been fully embraced by the DUP. Apart from the negative attitude to nationalism and to the Irish identity and culture, there has been a shameful disrespect towards many other sections of our community.

I quote this more in sadness than anger. I try to understand why this is so. That’s what Martin did. At the graveside of this good man I appealed to our unionist neighbours:

Let us learn to like each other, to be friends, to celebrate and enjoy our differences, and to do so – on the basis of common sense, respect and tolerance for each other and everyone else – as equals.

Let me appeal also to nationalists and republicans – do nothing to disrespect our unionist neighbours or anyone else. Yes, stand against bigotry. Stand up for your rights. Stand against sectarianism, but respect our unionist neighbours. Reach out to them. Lead, as Martin led, by example. By little acts of kindness and generosity.

There was a huge attendance at Martin’s funeral. Frances Black sang for him. The flautist Matt Molloy played and Christy Moore sang ‘The Time has Come to Part’.

Go raibh maith agaibh also to the choir – Cór Chúil Aodha, under the stewardship of Peadar Ó Riada – from Co. Cork, to Martin’s granddaughter Cara, who sang beautifully in St Columba’s Long Tower Church, and to the three pipers who led the cortege: Stephen McCann and Paddy and Patrick Martin. Patrick also played uilleann pipes at Martin’s house as the funeral commenced.

There were friends from across the entire island of Ireland, from England, Scotland and Wales and from Canada, Australia, the Basque country and from the USA. But it was the mass nature of the funeral, the quiet respectful attitude of the mourners, which uplifted everyone. The vast majority would not have known Martin personally. But they wanted to thank him, to show respect, to be there on his last journey. It was evidence of the great love and admiration that many had for Martin.

Why is this so? It’s because he was another of those great and remarkable men and women who have stood up for Irish freedom and for what they believed to be right. He believed that a better Ireland, a genuinely new Ireland, is possible. He rejected any suggestion that gender, race, class, skin colour, disability, sexual orientation or religion should exclude citizens from their full rights and entitlements. That is the legacy we must build upon.

Of course, while much progress has been made – not least in the numerous lives saved in the last twenty years as a consequence of the ending of the armed conflict by all of the major combatant groups – Irish republicans know that a long, long road, with many twists and turns, still lies ahead.

It’s all about rights.

Human rights.

Religious rights.

Language rights.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights.

Social and economic rights.

Rights for women.

National rights.

The right to freedom.

These rights can’t be left to any single political party. If you want an Acht na Gaeilge – an Irish Language Act which will ensure equality of treatment by the institutions of the state for Irish speakers in the North – get out and campaign for it. Don’t sit back, get out and work for it. Na h’abair é. Dean é. Don’t talk about it, do it.

If you want a Bill of Rights – to legally protect human rights in the North – campaign for that.

If you want marriage equality – mobilise, get on the streets, demand it.

If you want freedom, go out and take your freedom.

Freedom for everyone.

Organise. Mobilise. Unite for your rights. That is the challenge facing us. To build a mass movement for positive change across all thirty-two counties of our island. And for all our people. Facing that challenge, we are the stronger because of Martin. So don’t mourn. Celebrate, organise, that’s what Martin would want.

He exemplified all that is decent and fair about our republican ideology and our core values of freedom, equality and solidarity. It is now over to us to take the struggle from where he has left it. Like Bobby Sands, he believed that our revenge should be the laughter of our children. By his example he showed us that it is possible to build peace out of conflict; to build a fairer, better and more equal future and to build unity out of division.

Martin will continue to inspire and to encourage us in the times ahead. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis. May his soul be on the right hand of God. Ni bheidh a leithéid ann arís. His like will not be around again.

I never thought for one moment I would be writing about Martin like this. Or that I would give his oration. Martin was looking forward so much to stepping down from public office in May. Not to stepping back from activism but to stepping back from the rigours of that particular position. That wasn’t to be. But his was a life well lived.

Now none of this is any consolation to Bernie and her clann, but we pray that she and they in the time ahead will take comfort from the happy times they enjoyed with Martin. He said Bernie was his rock many times during his illness. ‘My Rock of Cashel,’ he told me. ‘I am lucky to have her.’ Bernie was also lucky to have him.

But so were the rest of us. We also loved him. He will be missed by many. But Bernie will miss him more than anyone else. As I said at his graveside:

Farewell Martin. Slán a chara, slán go deo. We thank Martin McGuinness. He was a rebel. Up the rebels. We salute Martin McGuinness. We applaud Martin McGuinness. He was a Republican. Up the Republic.

The Sagart

27 November 2013

Clonard Monastery off the Falls Road in Belfast is a place of pilgrimage. They came in their thousands early on 27 November 2013 to say a final goodbye to a good priest, Fr Alec Reid. He was a close friend, a gentle and kind-hearted man, and as courageous and humble a human being as you could ever hope to meet.

Fr Alec Reid died in his sleep in the early hours of Friday, 22 November. I had been with him the previous Thursday and he was in good form. Talkative, funny and enjoying his hospital tea in St Vincent’s in Dublin. But his condition deteriorated. I was phoned on Thursday night and told that he only had days. I arranged to travel down on Friday to visit him but shortly after 9 a.m. on Friday morning we got word that he had quietly passed in his sleep.

I was deeply shocked and saddened at his death. For forty years I had known him as a good friend to me and my family, and a selfless and unstinting worker in the search for justice and peace. In the midst of hard times Fr Reid was always there, offering comfort and solidarity and advice. He was one of the good guys. His death is a huge loss to all the people of Ireland, to his fellow priests in the Redemptorist community and to his family, especially his sisters Margaret and Maura, his aunt Ita, his wider family circle and his many friends.

I first met Fr Alec in the cages of Long Kesh, where I was interned, in the mid 1970s. He and Fr Des Wilson visited the prison often, as they were pioneers of peacemaking in those difficult times. Both men were deeply committed to living the gospel message and to making it relevant to the particular circumstances in which they ministered. They developed dialogue with loyalists and facilitated meetings between us and some prominent people from loyalist paramilitary organisations. Both were tenacious peacemakers.

I met him again on Easter Sunday after my release in 1976, when, at my request, he and Fr Des – who thankfully is still with us – intervened to negotiate an end to the inter-republican feuds in Belfast. They succeeded in establishing an arbitration and mediation process between the different republican organisations – including the IRA, the Official IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA).

Fr Alec had more freedom than most priests because he belonged to an order – the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, popularly known as the Redemptorists – which fully supported the work he was doing. The Redemptorist mission is to ‘preach the values and the blessings of the Christian Gospel to people everywhere but particularly to the poor, the marginalised and the downtrodden’.

Born and raised in Co. Tipperary, The Sagart – as he was known by republicans – was ordained in 1957 and appointed to Clonard Monastery several years later. From 1969, and throughout the intervening years of conflict, Fr Reid was constantly involved in a number of special peacemaking ministries. The objective of these was to give comfort and support to the people living at the coalface of the violence, helping prisoners and their families, and promoting understanding and reconciliation between the people of Belfast. He was also chaplain to and worked closely with the Traveller community in Belfast. Another Clonard ministry aim was to foster dialogue and friendship between the separated Christians of Belfast, an enterprise he took especially to heart, working tirelessly to move the conflict off the streets and onto the conference table.

It was Fr Reid who suggested that we meet with Cardinal Ó Fiaich to discuss the worsening situation in Armagh women’s prison and the H-Blocks of Long Kesh, where hundreds of republican prisoners were protesting against the efforts of the British state to criminalise them by forcing them to wear a prison uniform. One consequence of this was that the men in Long Kesh wore only a prison blanket. The Sagart persuaded Ó Fiaich to visit the republican political prisoners in Long Kesh in July 1978. Afterwards the cardinal, then Archbishop Ó Fiaich, condemned the conditions under which the prisoners were being held:

Having spent the whole of Sunday in the prison, I was shocked at the inhuman conditions prevailing in H-Blocks 3, 4 and 5 where over 300 prisoners were incarcerated. One would hardly allow an animal to remain in such conditions, let alone a human being. The nearest approach to it that I have seen was the spectacle of hundreds of homeless people living in sewer pipes in the slums of Calcutta.

The cardinal informed the then British secretary of state, Humphrey Atkins, of these meetings and tried to mediate a resolution of the prison protest. It failed. The British were determined to break the prisoners.

Fr Alec was also a friend of the prisoners and part of the line of communication between them and the British government up to the first hunger strike in 1980. He actively encouraged initiatives in support of the H-Block blanketmen, who were refusing to wear the prison uniform or carry out prison work, and the Armagh women prisoners, who had their own clothes, but were still refusing to do prison work. Both the blanketmen and Armagh women prisoners were also on a no-wash protest as a result of assaults on prisoners going to and from the toilets.

Fr Alec was devastated by the commencement of the first hunger strike. He had lobbied ferociously for an end to the dispute. The stress of trying and failing to get a resolution took its toll and he became seriously ill. I used to visit him in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda and on one occasion my wife Colette and I found him in a very distressed state as the health of the hunger strikers deteriorated. Paradoxically, while the plight of the prisoners and their families and the on-going conflict continued to wear him down, he took great comfort from the messages of support that the blanketmen smuggled out to him.

Some of his friends arranged to send him to Rome, where the Redemptorist main headquarters is based. He enjoyed Rome; he delighted in wandering through the city and eventually finding his way back to the Redemptorist house at nightfall. On 13 May 1981, eight days after Bobby Sands died on hunger strike, Fr Alec was in St Peter’s Square in the Vatican, reflecting on events in Ireland, the hunger strike and how different the Vatican was to Belfast, with its daily bombing attacks and intermittent gun battles. As he tried to get closer to where Pope John Paul II’s procession was passing, an armed man dashed forward close to the Sagart and shot the Holy Father. The Sagart, in a state of some understandable shock and concern for the pope’s well-being, made the mistake of recounting his experiences to friends back home. It was a story that was to be told and retold with suitable irreverence in typical black Belfast humour for years after that. Only the Sagart, they pointed out – who was recovering after years of difficult and stressful work, during some of the most dangerous years of the Troubles – could find himself at the scene of an attempted assassination of the pope.

It wasn’t until July of the following year that the Sagart was allowed to return to Ireland but on condition that he didn’t come north. His superiors were afraid that his fragile health could be undermined if he became re-involved in his previous activities. When he eventually did, we resumed our conversations about the conflict, its causes and how it might be ended. It was obvious that dialogue was the necessary first step. In the early 1980s we tried to commence a process of engagement with the Catholic hierarchy, the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), and the Irish and British governments. All these efforts were rebuffed. The breakthrough came after Fr Reid wrote a letter to John Hume, the then leader of the SDLP, on 19 May 1986. John phoned the monastery the next day and he arrived at Clonard on 21 May.

Towards the end of 1987 it was decided that John and I would begin party-to-party meetings. The Sagart formally wrote to both of us as ‘an interested third party’, inviting Sinn Féin and the SDLP to ‘explore whether there could be agreement on an overall nationalist strategy for justice and peace’. He presented us with a paper entitled ‘A Concrete Proposal for an Overall Political Strategy to Establish Justice and Peace in Ireland’. I brought the invitation to the Sinn Féin Ard Chomhairle – i.e. the party’s Executive – and it responded positively. Following this, John Hume and I met on Monday 11 January 1988 for several hours. For the first time our meeting was publicised and there was an immediate and generally hostile response from the governments, the other political parties and sections of the media. Jump forward twenty-five years and it is the same sections of the media and in many cases the same journalists who are still busy peddling their anti-Sinn Féin agenda.

Fr Reid never allowed any of it to distract him and was tenacious in his pursuit of peace. He wrote copious letters to political leaders here and in Britain, and engaged in countless meetings with politicians and governments seeking to persuade them to start the process of talking. He saw good in everyone and lived the gospel message. His was the gospel of the streets. He was there during the so-called ‘Battle of the Funerals’ in 1988, the first in Milltown Cemetery when the mourners were attacked by a lone loyalist during the funerals of the IRA volunteers who had been killed by British forces in Gibraltar. Three people were killed at the cemetery and over sixty were wounded. Several days later, he administered the last rites to the two British soldiers killed at the funeral of one of the victims of the Milltown attack, Caoimhín Mac Brádaigh.

Fr Reid also helped broker talks in May and June 1988 between Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil, and subsequently between the Irish government and Sinn Féin. In 1999, at my request, he became involved in the on-going efforts to locate the remains of those who had been killed and secretly buried by the IRA and others. After several years it became apparent that our initial hope that all of the remains would be located quickly was naive. He and I discussed this and we put to the governments a proposal advocating the employment of experts in the recovery of remains, along with suggesting the use of high-tech equipment and archaeological methods. Later, in 2005, he was an independent witness, along with Rev. Harold Good, to the IRA putting its arms beyond use. During this time he was also involved in trying to develop a peace process in the Basque country.

Early on 27 November 2013 we brought him to his last resting place in the Redemptorist plot in Milltown Cemetery. Hundreds of his religious colleagues, political and community leaders and the people of west Belfast attended his funeral mass in Clonard.

The Sagart lived a full life. His contribution to peace in Ireland is immeasurable. There would not be a peace process at this time without his diligent doggedness and his refusal to give up. He remained through all these turbulent times a good and simple priest. He was forthright, funny and totally dedicated to upholding the dignity of human beings. He was an active proponent of equality, particularly of a woman’s right to equality.

He was also a proud Tipperary man and a hurling enthusiast. His last words to me were ‘Up Tipp’.

Go ndeanfaid Dia trocaire ar a n’anam dílis.

Remembering Friends from the Twin Towers

14 September 2011

I have met the Irish everywhere, from Britain to Australia, from all parts of Europe to Canada and the USA, from the Middle East to South Africa. Some have been first generation. Others have been the sons and daughters of previous generations forced from Ireland for economic, social and political reasons. Persecution, sectarianism, repression and hunger all played their part.

Among the seventy-plus million in the Irish diaspora scattered around the globe, many take a deep interest in developments in Ireland. They seek to play a helpful role. Many times this is in small, personal ways. Over recent decades they have positively contributed to the search for peace. This has been especially true of the Irish in America, Canada, Britain and Australia.

Friends of Sinn Féin (FOSF) USA was established in 1995. This organisation raises funds for the party and has done sterling work in that time. Consequently, leading Shinners have travelled to all corners of the USA speaking at breakfast, brunch and dinner fundraisers and at many universities. We have addressed press conferences, met newspaper editorial boards, lobby groups and politicians at local, state and federal level, as well as the various Washington administrations under Clinton, Bush and Obama (and Trump, as of 2017). We have also engaged with local Irish-American communities and briefed them on the ongoing developments in the peace process.

In my travels around the USA, I have met tens of thousands of very good, decent Irish-Americans. Frequently, in the early days of my travels I would be met at airports by Irish-American police officers, who would whizz me around cities, through rush-hour traffic, with lights flashing and sirens blaring. I used to joke that it was a new experience for me – being driven around by police officers who weren’t intent on taking me to prison.

In New York the construction industry and the police and fire services are the backbone of the fundraising project for FOSF. Others, including people who work in the financial district, the law, the pub and restaurant business, in community organisations and ordinary working men and women, have also been enormously helpful. A frequent attender at our fundraisers was Fr Mychal Judge, a Franciscan priest who was well known in New York for his work among the homeless and AIDS victims. Mychal was chaplain to New York’s firefighters. He was also a close friend of Steven McDonald, a detective in the NYPD who in 1986 was shot by a fifteen-year-old youth and suffered such severe injuries that he was paralysed from the neck down.

In later years Steven embraced the Irish peace process and established his Reconciliation Project when he visited Omagh in 1998 with Fr Judge. Steven visited Ireland, and particularly the North, many times. This included visiting parliament buildings at Stormont to see the changes that their support for the peace process had helped bring about. Steven – along with Mychal – also frequently attended FOSF events in New York.

In 1999 I visited the Mercantile Exchange, the largest commodity futures exchange in the world, which was then in the shadow of the twin towers. A group of FOSF activists – Todd, Fitzy and Tom – arranged for me to see the place and watch the madness of the ‘bear pit’, where scores of traders, buying and selling commodities, were lined ten or more deep shouting at each other, creating a cacophony of noise and excitement. How they understood what they were buying and selling was beyond me.

These three also organised a very successful fundraiser in the north tower of the World Trade Centre in the Windows on the World restaurant that year. The restaurant was at the top of the tower, on the 107th floor. I remember looking out of the large windows and it was like being in a helicopter hovering high above New York. There was a spectacular panoramic view of New York and New Jersey, of the Hudson River and the Statue of Liberty, and of Ellis Island, through which so many tens of thousands of Irish immigrants had entered the United States. There were about thirty people there that day, enjoying the craic, getting photos taken, talking about Ireland and being captivated by Rita O’Hare, the then director of publicity of Sinn Féin, who had previously been active in the civil rights campaign in the 1960s, was shot and wounded in 1972, and later spent three years in Limerick prison for the possession of explosives.

We also met security men and women, waiters, lift operators and others. They were all warm, decent human beings. Two years later, the twin towers were gone and almost 3,000 people were dead. Among them was Tom (McGinnis), one of the three who had organised our World Trade Centre event. Another to die was Mychal Judge. Hundreds of New York police officers and NYFD personnel died also, along with construction workers, many of whom had Irish roots.

I remember that day. Martin McGuinness and I had been meeting the Taoiseach in government buildings in Dublin. As we left the building, we met US Special Envoy Richard Haas. The first reports were coming in but the details were vague. Mark Costigan, a very good radio journalist, was outside government buildings with the press pack. He had a new hi-tech electronic gadget with a miniature TV. We heard him exclaiming and so we gathered around him to watch images of the planes hitting the Twin Towers. It was like a scene from a film. It was hard to take in that it was real.

Then on the way north we listened on the car radio to The Irish Times correspondent Conor O’Clery’s eyewitness account of what was happening. It was gripping, shocking and terrifying. I immediately began to ring friends in New York, trying to find out if any of those we knew were among the dead or injured. Like many others, I spent several hours each day for the next several days doing this, as the extent of the devastation and the scale of the deaths became clearer.

Two months later FOSF held its annual fundraising dinner in New York. It was agreed that the monies raised would go to help the families of the construction industry who were killed at the World Trade Centre. It was a small gesture of solidarity from Irish republicans in Ireland and from FOSF USA to our friends in the construction industry who had suffered grievously because of the attacks that autumn day in September 2001.

During that visit, I called to a local fire station. The fire fighters talked with huge pride of their chaplain, Mychal Judge. He had joined them in the inferno that was the Twin Towers – he died attending to them and the dead and injured. The fire fighters had a deep sense of gratitude to him. There was also a deep appreciation for the huge courage and heroism shown by all those who rushed to help others caught up in the attacks in New York and Washington and the passengers of Flight 93 who confronted their hijackers.

11 September 2001 is one of those watershed moments in human history. Its consequences are still with us today in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere. But our thoughts and prayers are still with the innocent who died. I often think back on all this. I also think of the time I visited Arlington Cemetery with Courtney Kennedy, Robert Kennedy’s daughter. She brought us to visit her father and her uncle’s graves. Carved on the wall before Robert Kennedy’s grave are words he spoke in South Africa in the 1960s – visionary words in the history of that troubled land but words which also speak to those who died trying to help their neighbours in the 9/11 attacks, and to the seventy million Irish people throughout the world who make up our great diaspora and whose help and support we still need as we seek to advance our democratic goals of peace and unity and freedom for Ireland:

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope; and crossing each other from a million different centres of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

Saying Slán to Nelson Mandela

19 December 2013

I arrived in Pretoria on the Thursday before the funeral of Nelson Mandela. Irish republicans have a long association with the African National Congress (ANC) going back many decades. We supported each other in our struggles and in our respective efforts to achieve peace. Nelson Mandela and others in the ANC leadership were, and are, hugely supportive of the endeavours of Irish republicans. It was right and proper that Sinn Féin should be represented at his funeral, but it was equally important that we participated as comrades from our struggle honouring a comrade for whom we had the greatest admiration and respect.

The day after I arrived – along with Richard McAuley (RG) – the ANC brought us to Union Buildings in the city of Pretoria where Mandela was lying in state. Richard and I had been here before several times, meeting Thabo Mbeki in 1995 when he was deputy president of South Africa and later when Thabo was president. Union Buildings is impressive. It sits on the highest hill in Pretoria, looking down on the city. It is the official seat of government and is where the president’s office is located. This month it celebrated its 100th birthday and was declared a national heritage site.

Between the two wings of the building is a 9,000-seat amphitheatre, which is used for national ceremonies. It was here in 1994 that Mandela, also referred to as ‘Madiba’, was inaugurated as South Africa’s first democratically elected president. It was fitting therefore that it was here that a special protective cover was erected, within which his body rested and through which two rivers of citizens passed by on either side for three days. The queues of ordinary South Africans stretched for miles, winding their way down the hill and through the streets of the city. They began arriving at 4 a.m. each morning and waited patiently in burning heat to pay their respects to their leader. One estimate put the number of people who quietly, sombrely and respectfully passed by Madiba during those three days at over 100,000.