Gerry, for you it’s just a power process — not a peace process

An open letter to Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams,

Gerry, Back in 1996 I got into all sorts of trouble for saying that talks without Sinn Féin weren't worth a penny candle. The assumption was made by some that I was some sort of SF mole in Dick Spring's office. Others decided I was just naïve and stupid, and that I was allocating SF a central role they didn't deserve.

I thought at the time it was the simple truth. And I still believe that the central purpose of the entire journey undertaken by the political system on this island and in Britain over the last 10 years or so was to try to make peace.

Peace, as Shimon Peres once said, is made between enemies. And peace in Northern Ireland depends, ultimately, on nationalism and unionism being prepared to reach an accommodation for the betterment of the ordinary lives of people. It only works if everyone is included.

Peace starts with the ending of terror. It ends with the ability of people to live and work alongside each other. It can look forward to a time beyond peace, a time when, perhaps, living and working together can develop into a shared sense of purpose, a shared future. Unity, if you like, but unity built on common objectives. It's a simple enough concept, however complicated the journey is.

What is becoming clearer, though, is that you make a distinction that the rest of us don't make. For you, peace is one thing, no doubt to be welcomed if it happens. But what really matters to you is a tactical or strategic set of objectives collectively known as 'the peace process'. And that 'peace process' has really very little to do with making peace. It's really about exercising power and influence.

Toward the end of your book, Hope and History, you refer to one of the breakdowns on the journey towards peace, a breakdown caused in that instance by the British Government seeking acts of completion by the IRA.

And you ask the question: "Was it really all about the IRA?" This is your own answer, from the book: "I believe the growth of Sinn Féin has been a critical factor. All other things to one side, that is what has brought about this latest crisis in the peace process. The British and Irish establishments' version of the peace process has a different script from the one that has been written in recent years. The growth of Sinn Féin was not part of their script, according to which the SDLP and the UUP were to coalesce to form the so-called centre ground. It hasn't turned out like that. The Good Friday Agreement has been correctly seen as an instrument of real change in people's lives.

"For that reason, nationalists and republicans support it. For that reason, rejectionist unionists oppose it. For that reason, the British government has minimised or diluted or delayed many of the changes it involves. Sinn Féin is now the largest nationalist party in the North the growth of Sinn Féin hasn't been confined to the six counties... Sinn Féin is seen by an increasing section of the electorate right across Ireland to be a party which is the engine of the peace process. And the peace process has become a cherished and important process for most sensible people."

There's a fundamental dishonesty about that set of sentences, and it's very revealing. It is not true to say, and it never was, that the British and Irish governments wrote a script that involved building the centre ground at your expense. In fact, the two governments tore up the 'centre ground' script when they decided to embark on the peace journey with you and others.

They tried for thirty years to build a centre ground that would lead to the causes of violence, and therefore the perpetrators of violence, to wither away. That failed. The central strategy behind the peace process, therefore, was to ensure that the causes of violence, and the perpetrators of violence, were addressed in a much more central way.

In embarking on that strategy, every one of the participants knew that one likely outcome would be the growth of SF. Your party was given a starring role. And it was inevitable that you would grow and strengthen. But that was seen as desirable because your growth would help to remove violence from the conflict; it would help to generate, and then consolidate, peace.

WHAT nobody realised then, of course, was the degree to which you were prepared to use the peace process for your own ends. Through military discipline and media manipulation, you have succeeded in turning the process into something that isn't about peace at all. Instead it's about you and your party.

Or rather, your movement. Some of us have been polite enough, over the years, to observe the notion that there is some difference between you and the IRA. You're the peacemakers, they're the ones who need to be persuaded towards peace. When progress is painfully slow, that's because you're struggling to persuade the hard men. It's pretty clear to everyone now though, isn't it, that there aren't any soft men? Your determination to manipulate processes to your own ends is shared by the entire leadership, both military and political, of the republican movement. Your willingness to allocate blame to everyone else, and your refusal ever to accept any, is a unique constant in your approach to the development of peace, unique among real peacemakers anywhere in the world.

Just look, for instance, at the only reference in your book to the so-called Colombia Three "there was controversy over the arrests of three Irishmen in Colombia". Your refusal to initiate steps towards peace at moments when they are needed, and your reliance of political choreography to secure your concessions always before you make any, is the mark of a dealmaker and not a peacemaker.

We saw you as potential peacemakers, but you have turned out to be cynical manipulators of a process. We saw you as people who would share power in the interests of all, but you have turned out to be people who want power only on your own terms. We saw you as leaders who could bring people with them, but you have turned out to be a prisoner of those who must hang on to their weapons and their crimes in the interests of asserting their misplaced and fascist authority.

You were nearly right about one thing in the passage I quoted earlier. Whatever about the peace process, the Good Friday Agreement it helped to create has become a "cherished and important" prize for most people. It mustn't be used and manipulated for cheap political purposes. You've done that because you've lacked the wit and generosity to use the agreement as it was meant to be used, as a framework within which people could make, rather than just demand, meaningful gestures. You've used it crudely and selfishly. You've chosen process over peace. And that's never going to worth a penny candle.