Adams says ‘justice for all’ and then denies it to anyone who’s in his way

I THINK there might be more merit in supporting Maíria Cahill than in attacking Gerry Adams. I’ve two reasons for saying that, and I realise that people who read that sentence might see it as the beginning of an apologia for Adams or Sinn Féin. I don’t mean it that way, and hope to make that clear.

My first reason is that there is something deeply disturbing about placing a young woman, who has suffered immense trauma, at the centre of a political campaign. I don’t know Ms Cahill, although what I have seen of her on television has been an example of courage and transparent honesty. There is no doubt, whatever, that she deserves the justice she seeks.

But she has been through an awful lot in her life — the kind of pain and deep-down emotional suffering that words can’t easily describe.

I have met many people who have been abused, and I know how much they struggle to maintain normality.

None but a very few, capable of almost super-human resilience and surrounded by strong supports, would be able to cope with the added intrusion of television cameras and reporters, telling, over and over again, what had happened to them and at whose hands.

Although it must frequently be done in the interests of justice, the reliving of abuse, for example in the course of a trial of a perpetrator, can take a significant toll and must be managed with care and sensitivity.

So I hope — and this is aimed at those democratic leaders who have sought to pressurise Mr Adams about this story — that they have paused long enough to be sure that Ms Cahill has all the support she needs. Their pressurising of Adams is legitimate and appropriate, but they must not cross the line of exploitation of a person, Ms Cahill, whose pain may well be deeper than they know.

My second reason is this: I wonder if there’s an awful lot of point in trying to say anything that would disturb Mr Adams, or shake him out of the constructed image with which he lives. Better people than me have tried, and failed. Perhaps 30 pages of last weekend’s newspapers were devoted to the task. The best efforts of the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the leader of the opposition have failed to penetrate the mask he wears when under the most pressure.

Those around Mr Adams have now begun to wear the same mask. I saw Mary Lou McDonald sitting in the front row of the audience for Adams’ ‘keynote address’ in the Balmoral Hotel on Saturday, a fixed, blank expression on her face as the cameras zoomed in.

Ms McDonald has spent years building a following for Sinn Féin among middle Ireland, helping to surmount the built-in reluctance that people have for a party with such a violent past. I’ve heard her described as the outstanding woman politician of her generation. I don’t agree with that superlative, but there is no doubt that she’s impressive.

I feel I know, with certainty, how Ms McDonald would react to Ms Cahill if Ms Cahill’s allegations had been made against anyone else in the world. Ms McDonald would not simply have joined Ms Cahill’s campaign, she would have been one of its natural leaders. She’d have been articulate, passionate, clear, and ‘not behind the door’ about what heads should roll. Above all, she would have believed.

It’s hard to recognise the same Ms McDonald, who chooses now to believe bits of what she hears, but not to believe it all. Ms Cahill’s story is so clearly credible, so clearly logical in its detailing of context and consequence, that this ability to pick and choose what you accept, and what you deny, can only be the mark of someone who has become a prisoner of a different logic.

And the logic, in this case, is ‘my party leader, right or wrong’.

It’s the same logic as the bishop, or the head of a religious order, who, when confronted with prima facie evidence of abuse, chooses to attack the victim. It’s precisely what bishops and heads of religious orders did throughout the proceedings of the Ryan Tribunal, when they adopted a constantly confrontational and adversarial approach to people who had suffered terrible abuse at the hands of their organisations.

They did it behind the closed doors of the tribunal, while, at the same time, they paid public relations firms large sums of money to issue carefully worded apologies to the same victims they were continuing to abuse in the witness box. It sounds too familiar, doesn’t it?

But here’s the thing. Sinn Féin, a bit like the Church, takes a long view of history. They’ve been here before. Issues of justice for individuals always take second place to the longer-term needs of whatever legacy they believe they are pursuing.

Do you remember Robert McCartney? He came to the aid of a friend who had insulted an IRA man.

McCartney and his friend were savagely beaten, and McCartney’s throat was cut. When the police arrived to investigate the crime scene, local Sinn Féin members staged a riot, to ensure that the gathering of evidence was fatally compromised.

For years, the five brave sisters of Robert McCartney campaigned for justice for their brother. They were all over the media.

They were invited to the George Bush White House and they met Senator Ted Kennedy. Sinn Féin were going to be, perhaps, terminally damaged by the fall-out, and by their own refusal to co-operate with the investigation.

Ultimately, they ‘suspended’ a number of members of the party — they didn’t hand them over to the police, just suspended them.

All that happened eight or nine years ago. To my shame, I struggled to remember Robert McCartney’s name when I started to write this. Did his family get justice in the end?

I suspect, if you asked them, you’d get a bitter laugh in return. They have largely disappeared from view.

But, in that same period, Sinn Féin has grown and grown, in both parts of this island. It has come out of every election stronger than the previous one, and has dealth with every internal crisis with the same fixed, unblinking stare.

So why should Mr Adams listen? Probably, he won’t — in his entire career, he has only ever spoken to one audience, and only ever listened to one — his own people. But, for many years, he believed that his legacy would be the unification of Ireland.

Now, he believes his legacy will be peace in Ireland.

He’s wrong. Right now, unless he finally accepts that his organisation has perpetrated too many injustices, and hidden too many wrongs, unless he is prepared to acknowledge the past and carry its burdens, his legacy will be entirely diminished.

It’s not enough to pretend that you will fight for justice for the masses, when you’re prepared to deny justice to everyone who stands in your way.

That’s not the legacy of a peacemaker. It’s much closer to that of a tyrant.