As a prisoner to the past, sometimes sorry is the hardest word for Adams

DAMNED if does, damned if he doesn’t.

The decision by Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams to apologise on behalf of the republican movement for the murder of Garda Jerry McCabe in Adare, Limerick, in 1996, was a highly significant one, politically. The reaction to his apology has been mixed.

The issue must have been on a list of apologies that Sinn Féin, in its role as spokesman for the IRA now that “P O’Neill” is no longer in place to issue statements for the disbanded organisation, needs to make as it continues its process of normalisation in democratic politics.

One more has just been ticked off. Supporters of Adams applaud him for doing so. As far as they are concerned it shows how they are “reaching out”, dealing with the past to the satisfaction of its erstwhile enemies.

Others give him no credit, however. Indeed they treat his words with disdain. They suspect that Adams is indulged in a tactical feint, that his words carry little or no sincerity, that it is just something that has to be done.

Who knows what the truth is? These were his words: “I want to apologise to Mrs McCabe and the McCabe family and to Garda Ben O’Sullivan and to the families of other members of the State forces who were killed by republicans in the course of the conflict. I am very sorry for the pain and loss inflicted on those families. No words of mine can remove that hurt. Dreadful deeds cannot be undone.’’ How true that last line is.

The problem for Adams is that, like many politicians, he will say whatever has to be said to win support. So how can we judge the sincerity of his words?

Adams was forced in his statement by the circumstances of the murder of Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe in Louth, the constituency Adams represents in Dáil Eireann. How could Adams condemn this atrocity while remaining silent about the similar foul nature of the last murder of a garda officer 17 years ago? How would silence have affected the credibility of Sinn Féin among many voters? So what did his younger colleagues say and what did, for example, Martin Ferris, the TD for Kerry, have to say about this statement of apology.

The history of the Sinn Féin response to the McCabe killing is worth remembering.

It came at a delicate stage of negotiations in the peace process, before the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, but with the IRA scaling down its terrorist activities (apart, it seems, from some bank robberies to fund the pension plans of activists).

The IRA Army Council initially denied any involvement in the raid on the Adare post office that McCabe and his colleague Ben O’Sullivan unsuccessfully tried to stop. The Sinn Féin leadership loyally parroted this lie and angrily denounced those who levelled the accusations.

Adams and Martin McGuinness lobbied hard for the killers as part of the peace process negotiations once they had been jailed — scandalously for the manslaughter of McCabe rather than his murder, which would have carried a mandatory minimum 40-year sentence. Senior Sinn Féin figures were regular and supportive visitors to the killers in jail. Ferris was the smiling chauffeur who brought them out of Castlerea Prison. There were his comrades in arms who Adams effectively chastised, if not disowned, on Tuesday.

Adams, of course, angrily and often denies that was ever a member of the IRA. He is like the disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong in his denials of what was obvious to so many people, and just as Armstrong for many years used his cancer charity as his shield against criticism Adams does the same with the peace process. And just like Armstrong had the support of many groupies so does Adams.

The death last week of Dolours Price — a woman who engaged in a foul career in the IRA, being part of the bombing team who wrought destruction at the Old Bailey in London in the early 1970s and who admitted to driving mother-of-10 Jean McConville across the border to her death — has opened old wounds for Adams.

Price gave an interview last year in which she insisted that Adams was her Belfast commanding IRA officer at the time of the Old Bailey bombings. She said he was also her “OC” when she was part of an IRA team that drove McConville across the Border and ultimately to her death. Adams has repeatedly denied both these claims and supporters of his had quietly called Price’s mental well-being into question.

There seems little doubt but that Price had an agenda to undermine and destroy Adams. He reliability as a witness was in question because of her depression and dependency on alcohol. But just because she bore a grudge doesn’t mean that what she said isn’t true.

It seems that we will never know the full circumstances of who was responsible for Jean McConville’s callous killing — so we should be prepared to allow Adams to continue to maintain his innocence on that charge — but there have been many witnesses who have given information previously about Adams key role within the IRA.

Remember that when he was interned in the 1970s he was released temporarily from jail to be part of secret negotiations with the British government. Why else would he have been involved if he were not a senior IRA man? The role of president of Sinn Féin was to be the public face of the IRA. Let’s not insult anyone’s intelligence by pretending otherwise.

WHICH brings us to Tuesday’s apology: it was notable how the man who maintained that he was never a member of the IRA, let alone one of its most important leaders, could take it upon himself to apologise for its actions. What “conflict” had been taking place in Adare when Jerry McCabe was shot dead or how was the case of Irish “freedom” advanced by a straightforward murder at a time of a criminal robbery? Fortunately, Sinn Féin now takes a different position. Adams told the Dáil this week that he wanted to restate the resolve of Sinn Féin and the majority of Irish people to ensure there would never be a recurrence of conflict. “Members of An Garda Síochána do a dangerous job. They take risks for all of us.” For many years those risks involved confronting an IRA that was dedicated to the overthrow of this State and for whom Adams was its most powerful propagandist. That history should never be forgotten. His colleagues like Martin McGuinness have achieved more by admitting to their past, something that has helped his bona fides among unionists (who have far more respect for him than they do for Adams). His actions, such as shaking Queen Elizabeth’s hand, and his work in the Northern Executive, have spoken far louder than words.

Adams instead is a prisoner of the past to which he won’t admit more than the past for which he is not apologising. He has been the leader of Sinn Féin now for 30 years, an extraordinary length of time in democratic politics in the western world. He is revered by many in his party, in a cult-like fashion, but when will the time come when the younger members of his party will say their thanks for what they believe he has achieved and ask him to move on, for their sake.

*The Last Word with Matt Cooper is broadcast on100-102 Today FM, Monday to Friday, 4.30pm to 7pm.