BERTIE AHERN, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness have emerged as Tony Blair’s favourite Irish politicians.
In his autobiography, A Journey, published yesterday, he reveals how he made contact with Sinn Féin and with Mr Ahern before he achieved power in May, 1997.
“I met Bertie Ahern, also a leader of the Opposition, and we got on immediately like the proverbial house on fire. The Taoiseach John Bruton was a great guy, but he was clearly going to lose.”
Mr Blair gives details of the negotiations that led to the Belfast Agreement. At a very early stage he became aware that then Unionist Party leader David Trimble would not be able to agree to the kind of North/South institutions envisaged by the two governments. “I next got hold of Bertie, who had just arrived . . . He was heroic throughout the whole process, smart, cunning in the best sense, strong and, above all, free from the shackles of history.”
Mr Blair tells how the SDLP complained they were being ignored because he was paying so much attention to Sinn Féin. He says this was the SDLP’s own fault because they had thrown away their trump card by refusing to do a powersharing deal with the unionists unless Sinn Féin was involved.
Mr Blair has warm words of praise for Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness. “They were an extraordinary couple. Over time I came to like both greatly, probably more than I should have, if the truth were told.”
After the talks concluded on Good Friday, 1997, the scale of what had been achieved only hit Mr Blair when he boarded a flight from RAF Aldergrove in Belfast. “I somehow got on to the plane and took a call from the Queen to congratulate me . . . I thought, I bet she doesn’t do this often and indeed she doesn’t.”
Later, he remarks how Ian Paisley took over and completed the process begun in the Belfast Agreement. Mr Paisley was “clever, shrewd, occasionally even sly. He had a great grasp of strategy and tactics and could spot the difference between the two.”