Why disillusioned republicans breached IRA’s code of secrecy
The contradiction that ran through the Provisional movement explains the anger of Gerry Adams’s accusers
Gerry Adams says that former colleagues who accuse him of having ordered the death of Jean McConville are driven by hostility to the peace process
Gerry Adams says that former colleagues who accuse him of having ordered the death of Jean McConville are driven by hostility to the peace process, by a conviction that he personally sold out the republican struggle and by the fact that they have had “their own demons” to deal with.
He is right that many of his accusers, including the two most prominent among them, Dolours Price and Brendan Hughes, both now dead, saw the Good Friday agreement as a betrayal of republicanism and regarded him as the man who had led the movement into acceptance of the shameful deal. He is right that both had been distraught toward the end of their lives at the way the IRA campaign had ended and, at a personal level, had been damagingly affected by the thought that their own armed actions had turned out to have been for nothing – or at least for nothing that came close to the objective the struggle had been aimed at. And he is right that these were the factors which prompted them to put their accusations on the record.
Telling the truth
But he isn’t obviously right in suggesting that these feelings caused them to concoct wicked lies to discredit him.