Gerry Adams last week told Pat Kenny on RTÉ radio that he had been a founder member of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, the organisation which tried to change the North by peaceful means only, writes Kevin Myers
"You mean you were not a member of the Irish Republican Army, dedicated to the overthrow of the Northern Ireland state by violent means?" Pat Kenny did not at this point ask him, as of course he wouldn't.
"No, Joe, I deplore violence, as my family always has done."
"It's not Joe. It's Pat. But - forgive me for asking an embarrassing question - I thought your father was in the IRA during the war, signalling from the Black Mountain to the Luftwaffe to blow the bejasus out of Belfast."
"A common error, Marion! In fact, my father was chairperson of the Improving Agrarian Reformers, the IAR, a Quaker group dedicated to the production of pulses and legumes instead of cattle. The Adams family also invented feminism, you know, and were the first people to use the word 'chairperson', back in 1938. My family were raised as vegetarians, in common with most of West Belfast. We were devout Catholic Quakers, but we were heavily influenced by the Dalai Lama and Mahatma Ghandi, and their theories of passive resistance."
"How did you get involved in the civil rights campaign?"
"Get involved? Ryan, I started it. I had been advising Martin Luther King on his civil rights campaign in the US. After I'd written his I have a dream speech, he suggested I start a similar campaign in Ireland. Well, why not, I thought - I'd recently won the Pulitzer Prize for my anti-racist novel, Cry, the Beloved Country. John Masefield had just died, but I hadn't been offered the job of British poet laureate, even though some of the most promising young poets of our time - Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Ciaran Carson - were learning their wordcraft at my knee. So I thought, this isn't right. Martin has a point. Nelson agreed that I should return to Ireland."
"What? The mayor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller, also urged you return to Ireland?"
"No, Gerry, Nelson Mandela, when I secretly went over to see him in Robben Island. In my childhood, I had co-founded the African National Congress with him. You see, with India free, I was able finally to disengage from the Congress Party, which I had formed a couple of decades before I was born. So there, in his prison cell, Nelson implored me to return to Ireland to start a peaceful campaign for justice in the Six Occupied Counties."
"How did you even get into Robben Island?"
"I swam there, David. Very cold, that Lagan Lough. Even worse, the Irish Sea. I smoked a pipe in those days and it was great consolation to me, puff puff puff, until I reached the Bay of Biscay, where the waters warmed up, and after that it was plain sailing, so to speak, apart from swimming into a two mile-wide swarm of Portuguese men-o'-war near Gibraltar. Then there was the small affair with the great white shark off the Angolan Coast. It's very difficult dealing with a great white shark, Jim, when you're a pacifist vegan, you know. So I calmed it with readings from The Selected Speeches of Gerry Adams. 'Four score years and seven years ago our fathers brought forth. . .', followed by 'Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many. . .' Then came, 'The fools, the fools, they have left us our Fenian dead.' "
"Extraordinary. Allow me to wash your feet while I cleanse between your toes with my tongue. Vha huvvened nudge?"
"What happened next, Eamon, was that I led the civil rights march in Derry. I'd contracted beri-beri, typhus and malaria in Africa, and so was not looking too well. There are many pictures of me being beaten by the RUC, but because of temporary hair-loss, people thought the victim was Gerry Fitt. It wasn't. It was me. I'm sorry to say that Gerry - who was a dear friend of mine - rather cynically used those pictures to further his career. But we pacifists are used to other people stealing our thunder. It is the price we pay for peace. We console ourselves that our reward lies in the next world, which we have striven so hard to ensure is not enriched by the souls of people now living."
"Marvellous. Quite marvellous. Your lifelong passion for a peaceful road to civil rights and justice is there for all to see. Yet things turned for the worse, didn't they?"
"They did, Róisín, they did. There were various British bombings - Bloody Friday, Claudy, The Four Step Inn, Mountainview Tavern, and other atrocities - which put the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association into an impossible position."
"Extraordinary. Quite extraordinary. By the way, the name is Pat."
"Aye, I know that, Tom."
"I am unspeakably grateful to have this audience with you. Excuse me while I perform some more linguo-pedicural hygiene upon your scrumptious feet.
"Ah! The taste between your little toe and the one beside it is delightful.
"Is it Camembert? Gorgonzola? Milleens?"
"I'm not sure. Tony Blair thought it was Danish Blue, but Peter Hain declared it was Cashel Blue. Try the other foot, Pat."
"Finally, you've got my name, Pat, off pat. What joy! Hmmmm. This foot is delicious too! I know the flavour well. It's my favourite: Montrose Craven Green."