After the war

I'd met Gerry Adams only once. It was at a music-related event in Dublin and we briefly swapped some idle talk about Christy Moore and folk music. But I've seen him and heard him interrogated on countless media programmes over four decades. Irrespective of any political reservations I might harbour about what he stands for, I was invariably deeply impressed by the fact that, despite the bulldog aggression of British journalists like Jeremy Paxman and John Humphries, he had never seemed to put a word wrong and, despite the worst provocation, never allowed himself to be bullied or wrongfooted into any concessions they might have wished him to make.

In addition to being a seasoned pro and an impressive media performer, he has around him now a sophisticated organisation that carefully manages his and indeed much of Sinn Fein's media dealings. In this interview, the controversy in relation to Gerry Adam's knowledge or otherwise of the fact that his brother Liam was abusing his daughter (and Gerry's niece) Áine Tyrrell – and whether or not the Sinn Féin president subsequently did enough to keep Liam away from working with children – is specified in advance as being off limits. Deeply contentious accusations contained in Ed Moloney's book Voices From The Grave also have the potential to damage the Sinn Féin leader. When I meet him at Leinster House – a few days after the murder by the Israeli army of activists trying to bring essential aid to the besieged people of Palestine – he is clearly determined not to entertain these allegations either. No matter. In almost every respect, he turns out to be exactly as he seems from those television interviews, clear and articulate and confident to the point that it becomes obvious why he's an inspirational figure for many – and a formidable adversary to his enemies.

Jackie Hayden: What's your reaction to the Israeli action in the Mediterranean?
Gerry Adams: It's disgraceful action, one in a long line of illegal actions. Their siege of Gaza, their occupation of the West Bank, their building of the separating wall, the settlements, these are all illegal. Here we had a ship flying the flag of another state, attacked illegally in international waters.
Who do you blame?
I blame the international community, the US and British governments, the European Union.
Have you been there yourself?
I was in the Middle East twice last year. I was in Gaza just after the Israeli assault. But nothing prepares you for the utter devastation. 1,400 Palestinians killed. I was in the West Bank just before Christmas and it was the same scene.
So what needs to happen to stop this?
Our own government should expel the Israeli ambassador. We need to ensure that the special protocol that the EU has with the Israeli government is ended. We must use whatever influence we have in terms of the UN to ensure they uphold international conventions and international laws. Of course there's another side to this in terms of encouraging the peace process there. I've been in touch with George Mitchell, and I've talked to Israelis and visited a small town called Sterdon which was a victim of some of the rockets coming out of Hamas, so I understand on a human level the difficulties its citizens encounter. But no matter what's going on in the peace process, international law has to prevail.
Sinn Féin politicians have called for a boycott.
People who are active politically will engage in small boycotts all the time. Maybe you're in a supermarket and you see produce from a State which you disagree with. Some of the campaigning groups have called for boycotts, but they're very hard to organise – what we need is the same kind of movement internationally as with the anti-Apartheid situation in South Africa. What's happening in the Middle East and the Palestinian territories is another apartheid system. There's an immediate focus on this, given the ferocity of recent attacks and the killing of the activists on the flotilla.
Have you been in touch with them?
I have. There's a lovely story about the Rachel Corrie ship that the Irish government impounded because the crew were being badly treated and fed dog-food and stuff. SIPTU campaigned, and the Free Gaza people bought it, and named it after the American activist who was killed by the Israelis. I do a blog and just by coincidence I met with Caoimhe Butterly the day before the ship left. So I dedicated the blog to the Rachel Corrie and what they were trying to achieve, but I never for a second thought – when I heard about the killings on the first ship, it reminded me a wee bit of the first time I heard about Bloody Sunday. The first radio reports said ten killed. The next said fifteen. The next said twenty. Exactly the same as happened forty years ago in Derry.
Were you surprised at the Israeli action?
I was. I presumed they would stop the flotilla. I presumed that, as they've done before, they'd arrest, detain and deport the activists. I didn't for a second think they'd send in the SAS-type assault troops. But that's what happens when a government, and we have to differentiate between the Israeli people and their government, is allowed to contravene protocols and international law and conventions. They think they can act with impunity.
But the Israeli government seems immune from international opinion.
They're very short-sighted. There are already Palestinians moving away from the two-State solution and looking more at the notion, like ok, let's deal with us having our rights. On that front, the Israelis are on a losing streak in terms of the demographics in ten or fifteen years. The other difficulty, and I can't say any of this with any recent information, but Hamas, and I have no truck for Hamas, ….
But you had links with the PLO during Yasser Arafat's time. What's the key difference?
When I say I wouldn't have any truck with Hamas, I mean I'm for secularism. We've seen in our country how religious fundamentalism can hurt the spirit of the people. We've seen the kind of things that have been uncovered here, although there's no suggestion that any of that's happening under Hamas. I met Hamas. I met the Prime Minister. They have an electoral mandate that has to be recognised no matter what anyone's opinion is about their policies. If there's another election they can increase their mandate in the West Bank. Hamas could end up being the elected party for all the Palestinians.
But isn't there a contradiction between Sinn Fein condemning Israeli government atrocities when you didn't condemn, say, Enniskillen and other IRA atrocities?
No.
There's no contradiction?
First of all we did condemn some IRA actions. I did condemn Enniskillen. Look at the record. We still have, I still have, a political defence of the IRA's right to engage in armed actions in the context of what was happening at that time. That does not mean that I support, or indeed would try to justify, all actions that they took. I would be critical of some. Even now, a few decades into the peace process, I don't want to be talking about the IRA or the war, but I would resist any attempt to retrospectively de-legitimatise or criminalise what was going on. But no, actions that are carried out, and the organisation involved has to take responsibility, and which kill or injure civilians even by accident are to be deplored. I'm acutely mindful that I live in and represent a community that's been through all of that. I'm also conscious that even though partition has skewed things a lot, if you go around here you'll see echoes of people who came in on the same track – walk from here (Leinster House) down to Pearse Street, and if you're conscious of it, the city echoes all that. So what's the difference? The difference is that of sixty years. If you want to look at the situation philosophically, once you allow Generals or securicrats or the military establishment to come in, that is a surrender, by politicians, of responsibilities. Whether it was the Labour government in Britain in the late sixties, or the Fianna Fáil government here at that time, once they allow armies to come in, armies will behave the way armies are trained to behave. They'll go out to kill, and to oppress. They'll use military means, they won't use democratic or peaceful means, whether it's in Afghanistan or Iraq or Ireland.
At what point does it become unacceptable what revolutionaries or terrorists do?
The responsibility of any true revolutionary is to bring about change. I want to see big change in this State. I want to see revolutionary social and economic change across this island, but I want to see it done peacefully and democratically. The difficulty for those of us who wanted that in the sixties, seventies and eighties was we couldn't do it. We were beat off the streets. We were interned. We were incarcerated. We were shot. We were water-cannoned. We were gassed.
So what does that then justify or not justify?
It isn't a matter of justifying or not justifying. It's a matter of understanding that violence moves in cycles and that you have to break the cycle, and the way to break the cycle is to uphold peoples' rights. If peoples' rights are being upheld you will not get political violence that has any popular echo anywhere. If the basic rights of the people of Palestine were being upheld, there would be no conflict in the Middle East. There might be differences of opinion or tensions or arguments, but there won't be violence. If the rights of the people of this island were being upheld, particularly before the peace process, then you wouldn't have had (violence)... But you can't live life on the basis of “if”. There are conditions that engender conflict, and the job of the revolutionary, and the working politician, and the genuine activist, is to get to that and to have some sort of a vision of what society should be shaped like and encourage the great and the good to be part of that.
Are you disappointed with President Obama that he's been relatively soft on Israel?
I wouldn't personalise it around disappointment with named leaders. I have a high regard for George Mitchell (American special envoy to the Middle East for the Obama administration). I get on with him very well in terms of the process in the North. He has a huge amount of skill, wisdom and humour. But those who are in positions like the Israeli government, who have an Afrikaner or laager mentality, will only move when they have no option. It's the same, incidentally, with Unionism in the North, and not to compare like with like. So I look to the US administration to make it clear to the Israeli government that it has no option but to make a deal based upon a viable state for the Palestinian people.
Have you asked Obama to do that?
We have articulated our position publicly and often, and in private discussions with all of the American presidents. I haven't done this with President Obama but with George Bush and Bill Clinton. We made our position clear on the blockade of Cuba and against the war on Iraq and how small nations were being driven under. We engaged formally and informally with Gordon Brown and Tony Blair on the same issues and I've talked at some length with Hillary Clinton, as US Secretary of State, about what we think needs to be done. But I haven't got to President Obama, no.
Would you like to?
Well, it doesn't come into it. I haven't been in the States for the past four, five months and hopefully I won't have to go too quickly again.
Are you optimistic about Obama?
I've read his books and they're remarkable. I'm very conscious how much it takes to effect change, even in the small system we have here. To try to bring about the change that's required is dreadfully difficult, so to try to bring about change in a big system with rich stakeholders and big vested interests who are ruthless and very influential is very difficult. Obama's upbringing, and his experience as an organiser in Chicago, were a million miles away from your normal US politician. I said to myself, this guy has got something that the rest of them don't have. But I do think his election was a huge act of faith by the majority of people in the US. I was lucky to be at the inauguration and ended up standing beside a couple of people from Kerry. One of them had spent time as a young teacher student down in the southern States, registering black African-Americans for voting, so this was his life's work coming to fruition. We went down to a little legion hall for US army veterans for breakfast and there were a lot of African-Americans there who were in tears, totally moved by what was happening.
Did we expect too much of him?
We could never have expectations which are high enough. But asking one person to deliver on that is a different matter. It's the old business of only being engaged in politics during an election and then when you've cast your vote leaving it to the politicians. That's the worst thing. A friend of mine in the States, who's been involved in decades of activism, said that he thought Obama had activated a whole generation of young people, which he felt would bring a new crop of activists, and that this was really significant in terms of US politics. But I met a lot of people the last time I was there who were disappointed. But in politics the struggle isn't made by the big people it's made by the small people, making a one-inch movement forward.
How did you celebrate the news that Ian Paisley was being elevated to the British House of Lords?
I didn't. I thought that it was a sure bet that he was going to be. That was the inside news. But I get on very well with him. He was here today. I thought that was remarkable. I became active in politics forty years ago. Forty years is a long time in a person's life, but it's only a blink in history, but if you consider those last forty years and that Ian Paisley was here joking with Caoimhín Ó Caoláin and the rest of the people. He was obviously quite happy and enjoying it, and quite rightly, cheerful and relaxed. Forty years ago when he was throwing snowballs at Sean Lemass, who'd have considered that he would end up as First Minister with Martin McGuinness and on good terms with us? He says that “one thing I've learned about Sinn Fein is that if they tell you they'll do something they do it.”
Would you feel the same about him?
Ah, yeah. Obviously you would have a totally different view now to the period where he was absolutely responsible for very negative and sectarian opposition to people's rights. We sussed out maybe about four years beforehand that it might just be possible to create the conditions where he would have no option but to do a deal. It took a lot of very strategic planning and patience and perseverance by us to create those conditions. But I have to say that when it came to it, he did so with grace and good humour. Any meetings I've had with him, he's always been very respectful and wise. You'd go to him a problem and he'd give you a solution. He said to me at one point, “Our job is to make this work, and if we come into a room like this we close the door.” I think he deserves great credit.
What's he like socially?
The same. Yeah. He tells yarns and stories and jokes. Some of his jokes he finds funnier than everybody else.
No blue jokes?
Nah. It's the way of a good joke-maker that they start laughing – Martin McGuinness is a good joke-teller and he starts laughing before he gets to the punchline too. There's an infectious quality to his joke-telling, and Paisley is the same. And Eileen Paisley, in fairness to her, I think her off-the-cuff intervention at the Battle of The Boyne when the new centre was being opened and where she referred to the women of Ireland as from the north, south, east and west, I think that was from the heart. I had the opportunity to sit down with her at a social event. I'm not terribly taken with some of these things, so I went somewhere quiet and found her sitting there and we sat for about an hour and a half and had good craic and I thought she was in a good place.
There's talk now of the Unionist parties uniting. Is that likely?
It's entirely up to them. I don't think it'll do them much good in terms of the well-being of a section of the North who are now very alienated from the Unionist parties. That's mostly working people from disadvantaged areas. If you look at the sum total of the DUP and UUP vote in Fermanagh/South Tyrone they should have won that seat, easily. But a large section of Unionism chose not to come out and vote. And some people who would previously have been Unionist voted for Sinn Féin's Michelle Gildernew. I don't want to exaggerate this but I've thought about this quite a lot recently: Unionists from Belfast voted for me, and Unionists voted for Martin McGuinness. Now it's only a trickle, and we shouldn't exaggerate it…
Did it happen in reverse?
There was tactical voting. Sinn Fein voters would not vote for a Unionist, but if was a choice between a Willy McCrae and the more mannered Unionist and there was no viable Sinn Fein candidate, you might get some section of our vote that would tactically vote for the softer Unionist candidate. But the people who are voting for us from the Unionist camp is broadly because of the social and economic issues. They see that on the ground we're campaigning on these issues. Some of their neighbourhoods have been abandoned by the conservative parties. There's a state of flux in our politics in the North at the moment; the iceberg's just starting to melt a little bit. What used to happen was “not an inch”, “no surrender”', “what we have we hold”, “we are the people”. If you're living on the dole and you're stuck on a decrepit estate …
It starts to crumble?
Yeah, yeah. Again I don't want to exaggerate, but like I said earlier, struggles are rarely won on big landslide movements. It's more incremental.
Would you welcome a single Unionist party?
Well, we need a partner. We have found a way, by dint of very hard work, to replace conflict with this very experimental form of politics and there are some people in the main Unionist parties who are still very fundamentalist, who still won't bid us the time of day and who would be opposed, on a sectarian basis, to other people. So what we're doing, all of us involved, including Unionists, is a bit uncharted. But it's good and it's better and it's a way forward, so we need a partner within Unionism in the same way the Unionists need a partner within Republicanism. Whether they unite or not, I would far rather deal with – we invested a huge amount working with David Trimble, and then they took him out. We invested a huge amount working with Ian Paisley to do the deal, and nobody else in my view could have done it, and a year later they get rid of him. Peter Robinson took a heavy hit. I'm a United Irelander, so we want to see partition ended and we want to see a totally new dispensation. It isn't within the interests of people of this island – of Cork, never mind people in North Belfast – to have a shredded, dysfunctional right-wing Unionist cadre.
Are we any nearer to a 32-county republic?
Well, you can't have a 32-county republic without an end to partition but if ever there was a time for Republican politics in this State it's now. Basic core Republicanism has just been prostituted.
So would a coalition with Fianna Fáil make sense?
The leadership of Fianna Fáil have been the main agents of totally undermining and revising what Republicanism is about. Republicanism at its essence is a European movement brought to Ireland and influenced by the French revolution and then by the American Revolution. It's about citizens' rights. You are a citizen so you have rights. We would argue that in today's language that means the right to health, from the cradle to the grave, the right to a home, the right to a healthy environment, the right to be treated with tolerance and respect, the right to access to education. These are all things that successive governments have taken away from people.
So you're ruling out coalition with Fianna Fáil?
What we need before we contemplate what government would be put together is a broader coalition, a big debate about the type of Ireland we want. Labour's Árd Fheis talked about one Ireland, but their one Ireland stops at Dundalk and Cavan Town.
What you're talking about presumably is a left-wing movement.
Without categorizing it as necessarily left, it has to be based on rights. There's a huge amount of people who hold this society together and without whom a lot of people would fall through the cracks. There are people in the voluntary sector, who possibly see politicians as being corrupt or all somehow tarred with the one brush, but they have a vision. They're working with young people and in communities, with people who have learning difficulties, working as carers, working on the environment, people who are making a stand right across society.
But there could be an election, so do you not have to make a decision about a Fianna Fáil coalition sooner?
We would fight an election as an independent Republican party, as the only party organized throughout the island. Any decision on coalition will have to be decided by an Árd Fheis. I was one of the people who argued for that position. So the first thing is to get the largest vote we can get, then we take a judgment on the manifesto you have stood on, and if you can reach agreement on a Programme for Government with others, and then if you've got a proposition you can negotiate and go back to your own party and say, “this is our view.” At the moment I think what's most likely going to happen here, and they've been very coy about it, is that Labour will amalgamate with Fine Gael and they're going to make a mess of it. Again, this expectation thing is going to kick in and it'll be the Fine Gael dog wagging the Labour tail. Without being offensive about it, it'll be what's happened every single time any party of the broad left goes into coalition on a non-even basis with a right-wing party.
So how do you stop that happening with a relatively small number of seats?
You have to judge a party like Sinn Féin on the changes we have been involved in bringing about. If I was, in ten years time, to reflect back and someone said to me, “you had a hundred seats, that's a great achievement”, to me that's not a great achievement. It's only a great achievement if you use it to bring about necessary progressive changes. Similarly, if you have a small number of seats but are able to be part of a wider movement towards a better society, that's something you could say you were happy to be part of. It's a continuous process. There's a need for fundamental changes in society, so that's why I go back to this idea of having a really national debate by informed citizens – and try to do away, if we can, with the notion that politics should be left to the politicians. We've just seen what happens with that, when you get a dis-empowered citizenry and elites who work the system to suit their own ends and then it collapses. And who is being rewarded now? The elites – and the citizens are being asked to pay for it.
So are you open to the possibility of a Fianna Fáil-Sinn Fein coalition?
I would have to be persuaded, by dint of a huge change – on a united Ireland, on policies which are socially, radically relevant. I would be sceptical about going into coalition with any of the parties in the short term. The job of Sinn Fein is to keep building across the State. It may be, on the back of an election, that we get a sufficient mandate, that we have to look in the national interest at going into coalition with some of these other parties, but if you ask me now, I would say ‘no'. I not minded to do so because they are the parties who have created the economic mess we're in, and as someone who comes from another part of the island, who've done nothing until we've given it to them on a plate to bring about the type of dispensation that has been brought about. And that's not to underplay the work that Albert Reynolds or John Bruton did.
Do you get any sense here in the Republic of people resenting you commenting on politics down here?
Maybe some who don't want any proper discussion, but at a people level, none whatsoever. Obviously there are generational issues involved, and there is a clique here, best represented by Dessie O'Malley and if you want to look at their mission statement it's his oration at the grave of Jack Lynch which is just Free Statism. So they would resent anybody commenting.
Dissident Republicans have become more active recently.
There will probably always be irreconcilables, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. But it's regarding whether they have the right to take actions that we part company with them. The support base across the island is minimal. I couldn't give you statistics but you're talking about it being a tiny sliver of the population. In areas that I represent in Belfast they don't have any popular support whatsoever. In fact there's very active opposition.
Is it useful to Sinn Féin to have extremists so you can say, wouldn't you rather deal with us than with them?
Not at all. It's a waste of time. I don't have any problem at all with people who are politically opposed to us. That's their right, but as someone who has survived thirty years of conflict and saw first hand so much havoc and what it can bring into people's lives... These groups are a mixture. There are probably some sincere militarists, there's people with vanity projects and there are others who are downright – what's the right word to use? – adventurers, people who are using the term “Republican” or “IRA” or whatever.
But when Martin McGuinness condemns them, are people entitled to say they're only doing what you defended in the past?
There's a qualitative difference. Anyone who would defend the use of armed actions or indeed use armed actions themselves does so on the basis that there really is no alternative and that there's a purpose behind it. What was the purpose behind shooting a police officer in Craigavon? Anybody who wanted to shoot a police office in the last ten years could have done it. But what's the point?
So there's no gain for them?
There's no advance of the republican position. It actually plays into the hands of the people on the British side who can't sleep at night because Martin McGuinness is the guy who's in charge with Peter Robinson. This is their worst nightmare, that there are four or five Sinn Fein Ministers in the executive! And it upsets the genuine Unionists who are worried about the future because they suspect there's another agenda here. There's no sense to it whatsoever. There is a democratic peaceful way forward for ending partition. It's slow. It's very much back to Pearse, back to Tone with the unity of catholic, protestant and Dissenter. It's hard politics but that's there and it should be defended. The other thing is, and some investigative journalists should check all of this out, the British military intelligence system infiltrates all over the place, and the IRA has been subject to it, and this institution here (the Dáil) has been, as have the Garda Síochána and we've had incidents like the Dublin and Monaghan bombings which were part of that murky world of collusion. So these groups, even those with genuine people involved, are heavily infiltrated. There are a number of trials going at the moment in the North in which MI5 are giving evidence and they're running the main players. So it goes back to whose interests are served by instability in the Middle East or in the North? Is it an accident that on the eve an election there's an upsurge in bombs? The instability, the lack of confidence, the tensions that arise among people across the sectarian divide, they're the interests that are shared.
When you are elected to Westminster and refuse to take your seat, doesn't that disenfranchise those who voted for you?
It used to be that when Republicans engaged in abstentionism were elected, that was it. We developed this concept of “active abstentionism” and then we discovered that there was an old, four or five hundred years old law which allowed British elected officials and public servants who didn't want to take the oath – probably English Atheists or English Republicans – who wouldn't be allowed to take their seats in the chamber to use the facilities at Westminster. So I have a room there.
But you don't sit in the chamber…
No, and I wouldn't.
So what would change your position?
I would never do it. Never. The fact is it's Britain! Why would I go there? I'm Irish. I might as well go to the parliament of France!
But you don't stand for election in France, so why bother standing for Westminster?
You wouldn't be asking me these questions if I didn't represent the people of West Belfast for over two decades. It's a matter of trying to develop mandates. You see, the people of West Belfast and the majority of people within what you might call Nationalism – and Sinn Fein is now the largest party in the North, not just the largest party in Nationalism – they're voting for us not to go to Westminster. With the development of the administration at Stormont and the cross-border apparatus and the Good Friday Agreement, there's now less attention paid, even by Unionists, to what's happening in Westminster because they've got their own administration and accountable ministries. What we would be arguing for is more powers.
I can accept that the people who vote for you understand that you won't take your seat, but what about the rest of the people in your constituency whom you're meant to represent?
We do.
And debate the issues?
Like what's happening in Somerset or Liverpool or Sussex?
Aren't there laws enacted that will apply to Northern Ireland as much as they apply to Somerset?
That's decreasingly the case. And with the passing of powers on policing and justice that's another big tranche of legislative powers. We're arguing now for fiscal powers to be transferred to Stormont.
Will the new British government be good or bad for Northern Ireland?
No British government has been good for us! I met with Cameron about two weeks ago and he committed to continuing with the St Andrews, the Good Friday and the Hillsborough agreements, and we'll test him on all of that. We still have business to do. He committed to dealing with disadvantage and so on. All of these guys, and I don't mean to be offensive here, because I think it's entirely natural, they don't think of Northern Ireland. It's somewhere in the cusp of their vision.
British media usually refer to politicians on different sides as Northern Ireland politicians, not British politicians …
Well even the definition of the United Kingdom is “Great Britain and Northern Ireland”, and under the Good Friday Agreement it's now, if I may use the term, provisional. It reminds me of the awkward situation where two people decide to separate but they're going to wait until the kids grow up. The British have signed up… The first thing Martin McGuinness said to the new Prime Minister, “You should know that this place isn't as British as Finchley.” And that's famously the case. The British, even in terms of their own commitments under the Good Friday Agreement, have committed to legislating for Irish unity. There's a very, very clear and unadulterated statement that they will do that. So we just have to keep testing them and give them a fair wind. I'm actually at the point where I'm not well motivated to go to London. It's a pain. (laughs)
Did you read Ed Moloney's book Voices From The Grave?
No, I didn't.
Have you no interest in reading it, even out of curiosity?
No. This is the second work of him attacking me. I bought the first one with an open mind and read about 16 pages and threw it away. I read the parts that were serialized (of the second one) in the media …
Are you saying he was unfair?
Absolutely.
And wrong?
First of all it's untrue. I've (deliberately) stayed away from getting involved in any big discussion about it. It isn't my job to sell his books for him, but if I was going to write a book containing allegations about Ed Moloney I'd say, look this is what I'm going to be writing, what's your side of it?
If he had, would you have spoken to him?
Of course I would.
Have you thought of suing him?
I have, yeah.
Is that an ongoing thought?
It's hugely problematic. I've taken senior counsel's advice in Dublin and in Belfast and in the States. Michael McDowell famously brought in a new act around a lot of this and it has never been tested. It's uncharted territory in the North as well, because you'd end up perhaps dealing with judges who would be quite hostile. In the States they have a totally different system where you can nearly say anything you want about anybody. It's also hugely costly to take a libel action. If any of the people at the other end have any sort of backing… remember the famous Albert Reynolds case where he sued The Sunday Times and was awarded one penny and it cost him a million! So it's risky.
Moloney claimed in a Hot Press interview that his book provoked threats from Republicans. Had you known about that?
Not at all. But I read a little piece by a man called Jude Collins, who's a journalist in the North, and he recited this little story about how he had written a critique of an earlier piece of work and how Ed Moloney had attacked him and told him that he was putting his (Moloney's) life in danger and that of another interviewee, Anthony McIntyre. So I don't pay much regard to that at all.
When it was revealed that Denis Donaldson was a British spy I thought of people, including yourself, at meetings with him or having a drink with him and then he goes round the corner and phones the Brits …
Denis was a friend of mine. I was in prison with him in the seventies, but any suggestion that Denis was “inside” the Sinn Fein leadership or inside the core group which managed our negotiations is totally fictitious. We had our suspicions about him.
From when?
From about three of four years previously. We run a very tight ship. I work in an ambience where at different times the Brits tried to recruit people who were driving me and people who, in their working lives, were close to me and so on, so you become careful. I think the West Belfast community and Belfast Republicanism responded magnificently to the plight of his family.
In what way?
They put their arms around them, his widow Alice and daughter and sons. The community differentiated between what the father was involved in. The family remains part of our community.
Were you not surprised when you discovered what he was at?
I was disappointed. I was sorry. MI5 spends so much of its budget now in this jurisdiction, so it's not a surprise that they'd be about trying to influence, buy off and exploit some human weakness. They recruit people because people compromise themselves and there's a way to bribe them. But obviously you are disappointed personally, because that's the man's life finished. He ends up in the arsehole of Donegal in a cottage and given fairly primitive conditions and then he ends up being shot to death.
Were you saddened by him being killed?
Of course.
The Sinn Fein press officer here signals that my time is up.
Any final message for our readers?
It's past the time that we sat back and let the elites just walk all over us. We have a capacity for anger when it's triggered, and we've seen it over the killing of the people in that flotilla. We saw it when the senior citizens rebelled. But we need to start thinking our way through this and realize that we who want change are in the majority – and do something about it, take control of our politics and remove the ridiculous situation where Brian Lenihan's just given €3 billion to a bank. Jesus Christ…
But what can people do?
People just need to see we're not powerless. We can organize. I come from a community which, when I first became engaged in politics, was in the worst place in terms of, well not as bad as Africa, not as bad as Asia and the Middle East, but just awful. There were people here (in Dublin) in tenements in the sixties. It can be turned around.
(Former Fine Gael leader Michael Noonan stops to say hello).
Do you never feel like packing it in?
You do of course. Did you see Michael being interviewed about his wife? She has Alzheimers. Do you remember the time when he was in the leadership and he was making a balls of it? He was talking about what it was like when she'd walk out of the house and they couldn't find her. She couldn't remember his name. He was very brave and very dignified. There was just a wee trickle (indicates tears)….
There is a Ghandian thing that everybody has that good spot in them, if we can only find it.
Well, I do think that, without getting too deep, that there's good and bad in everybody. That's what the whole battle's about, and that most people are essentially good and they just need a chance to let that flourish.