Gerry Adams’s repeated denial of his leadership role within the IRA during The Troubles actually hurts the cause he claims to champion, award-winning journalist John Lee has argued after the civil case against him was withdrawn on its final day.
Adams, 77, has spent the last two weeks at the Royal Courts of Justice in London defending a lawsuit brought by three men wounded in IRA bomb attacks in 1973 and 1996. John Clark, Jonathan Ganesh and Barry Laycock sought a ruling that the former leader of Sinn Féin was directly responsible for the attacks.
On Friday, the three claimants dramatically withdrew their case with no order as to costs. During the trial, the court heard from former IRA members, British Army Intelligence officers and journalists who all accused Adams of being a senior IRA member.
Speaking to the Trial podcast, Lee, Executive Editor of the Irish Daily Mail, said it is ‘more than common knowledge’ that Adams was a member of the Provisional IRA and his refusal to admit it damages the credibility of Sinn Fein.
The Provisional IRA was an Irish republican paramilitary organisation that waged a three-decade terror campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland, killing around 1,700 people during the conflict known as the Troubles.
‘Adams exists to justify what I believe is unjustifiable’, Lee argued.
‘His whole political career has been based around justifying the savagery that went on in Northern Ireland and the UK.
‘Neither Adams nor Sinn Fein have ever made a statement saying: all that went on in Northern Ireland was wrong, and we agree it was wrong.
‘That may sound like a small, innocuous thing but it would be massive for them. Until they do that, Sinn Fein as a party will not progress in the Republic of Ireland and Adams’s long-held dream of achieving power here will not happen.
‘I was a young person in Ireland during the Troubles, I know it was all a savage, misguided campaign that frankly, could have achieved what it wanted to achieve through peaceful means.
‘If Adams goes on in the fashion he has for years, I do not believe it helps the political movement he has given his life to.’
Lee has covered Sinn Féin for three decades. He hosted the Mail’s award-winning podcast series From Bomb to Ballot: The History of Sinn Féin, where he explored the turbulent history of the party that Gerry Adams led for 34 years.
He pointed out that Sinn Féin was a banned organisation until 1974, and questioned what Adams was doing between 1969 and the mid-1970s if not involved with the IRA, the only active republican organisation at the time.
Lee emphasised that Adams could have had the bombing case struck out at any point but chose to let it run its course, suggesting that on some level the veteran republican relishes the attention and the opportunity to assert the legitimacy of his cause.
Adams arrived each morning smartly dressed, wearing a sprig of shamrock in his lapel, giving a thumbs up to supporters waving Irish flags outside the court, and on his first day in the witness box wished the judge a very happy St Patrick’s Day.
‘If I know the man like I think I do, I think he enjoyed the whole process’, Lee said.
‘With all the accusations against him, I have never seen Gerry Adams lose his cool in a way many other politicians have.
‘He wants you to know he knows who you are writing about.’
Adams has denied IRA membership for over forty years. In a statement following the withdrawal, Adams said he welcomed the decision and that the case should ‘never have been brought’.
Listen to the Daily Mail’s Glen Keogh and John Lee break down the withdrawal of the IRA bombing case by subscribing to The Crime Desk for unlimited access to the Trial Plus podcast.
