Adams’ arrest a grim reminder of how fragile the peace process truly is

TOMMY Gorman, RTÉ’s Northern Editor, usually says it best. On last Sunday night’s news, he said "it’s one more reminder of the unfinished business of the peace process". Or, to put it more crudely, they haven’t gone away, you know.

Isn’t it amazing how elections in Ireland take a particular course. They usually have a pretty dull first week or so, with opinion polls and media commentary replacing any real action. The majority of people, I guess, don’t have a vested interest in the result — they’re free to enjoy the spectacle as it unfolds.

I used to be utterly engrossed in elections — physically and emotionally. Back in the days when I worked full-time in politics, the start of an election campaign would normally mean saying goodbye to my family for three weeks and plunging myself into 20-hour days, living on cigarettes and chips for the duration. It would also mean a knot in my stomach every time I heard that an opinion poll was imminent, a knot that wouldn’t disappear until, by hook or by crook, I got to know the figures.

I still have immense sympathy for the poor souls in every party who have to punch in endless hours dealing with the vagaries of each campaign. Because you never know just how even the most predictable election can turn in an instant.

Right now, of course, there are four elections going on — Europeans, local elections, and two by-elections. Up to a few days ago, all the pundits were united around two conclusions. Each election would be a disaster for the Labour Party (of which I’ve been a member all my adult life, in case I’m accused of hiding an interest). Each would produce some level of triumph for Sinn Féin.

I know my party is struggling still, and I’ll write more about that before election day. But as usual in Irish elections, unexpected events suddenly reduce the certainties we had been taking for granted up to now. Suddenly the Sinn Féin triumph is surrounded by question marks. In fact suddenly, elections apart, we’re all living in a world less certain.

Sinn Féin is a unique entity, capable of making the most astonishing leaps. The party’s reputation used to rest entirely on its unflinching support for what it always called “the armed struggle”. Now its reputation and support is based on its unique role in building the peace process. Not that long ago members of Sinn Féin used to refuse to recognise the court. More recently they emerged as staunch defenders of probity within An Garda Siochána.

There was a time not so long ago when almost every Sinn Féin utterance contained the assertion that they did not believe in the politics of condemnation. They’ve got a lot better at condemning things these days. “Peace with justice” used to be a commanding slogan for Sinn Féin. Nowadays it sort of depends on who you want justice for.

But Sinn Féin is, notwithstanding all that, an important political party. It has a mandate, and it works hard to protect that mandate. It’s famous for its discipline, and its capacity to speak with one voice. It occupies a position of power in Northern Ireland, and aspires to power here.

Last week’s events have established, beyond any doubt, that it is a unique political entity, unlike anything the rest of us mere mortals can come to terms with. If any other political party in these or any other islands has seen its leader arrested and treated as a suspect in an unbelievably cruel crime, with that cloud of suspicion hanging over him for four days at least, it would have rocked that party to its core.

Imagine, if it’s possible, that what happened to Gerry Adams last week had happened instead to Micheál Martin, or Eamon Gilmore. Do you think there’s the remotest possibility that either of them would have recovered from it — or that Sinn Féin would have stayed silent throughout it?

I don’t know the truth about Gerry Adams’ involvement with the abduction and murder of Jean McConville. Perhaps at this stage the only person who really knows the truth of that is Gerry Adams himself. I do believe that he has chosen to draw a veil — perhaps a steel shutter would be a more appropriate description — over a good deal of his past. Like thousands of others, I simply don’t believe him when he says he was never in a leadership position in the IRA.

But I also believe that without him, the process of ending the violence in Northern Ireland would not have succeeded. He could have led his people out of violence much more quickly than he did — it was his choice, in many ways, that the peace process was so tortuous and slow.

But that was because he chose to move at the pace of his slowest and most recalcitrant follower. The unity of his movement was always more important to him than the achievement of any negotiating breakthrough. But he did succeed in bringing a largely united movement from violence to democratic participation, and that was a historic achievement.

That unity was surely tested during his four days in prison last week. It must have come as a terrible shock to people like Mary Lou McDonald that the moral high ground they had begun to enjoy was so rocky. I haven’t the slightest doubt that behind the scenes, more than a few of Sinn Féin’s leading lights were utterly shaken — they had to be — by the association between their leader and a terrible crime. But they managed to ensure that not a single chink of light became visible behind the facade of unity.

That monolithic and impenetrable unity that Adams has built is a major strength for him and his party. But it can also represent a terrible weakness.

SINN FÉIN has alleged that Adams’ arrest is effectively some kind of conspiracy, but if you think about it that makes no sense. There must have been a great deal of agonising at senior PSNI level before the arrest, because there could be no way of knowing what sort of tinder box explosion could be set off.

Just imagine the state Northern Ireland could be in this morning if Adams has been charged on Sunday instead of being released.

Just as you’ll never convince some people that Adams is innocent of heinous wrongdoing in his past, there are thousands of others who believe only the words on that new mural about him — leader, peacemaker, visionary.

But to go back to the beginning. Adams’ arrest, and the international furore that surrounded it, was one more reminder, as Tommy Gorman put it, of unfinished business. Everyone living on this island — whether we know it or not — depends on the peace process.

We got a frightening reminder this past weekend of how fragile it is, depending as it does on the dark secrets of the past remaining uncovered.

In the short term, though, Sinn Féin got a reminder of how volatile politics can be. They were genuinely rattled and uncertain, for the first time I can remember in recent years. And that, for sure, was no bad thing.