Man of War Man of Peace? The Unauthorised Biography of Gerry Adams by David Sharrock and Mark Devenport Macmillan 488pp, £16.99 in UK
David Sharrock and Mark Devenport can be sure of one thing: their book on Gerry Adams will not be overtaken by an authorised biography in the run-up to Christmas, or indeed at any time in the foreseeable future. The nature of Republican politics, the clear risks to individuals, and the fragility of the peace process, make this a project for the next millennium, at the very earliest.
In the meantime, they are faced with the task of delineating this most elusive of personalities and opaque of politicians in a way that makes some sense of his background and role in the cauldron of militant Republicanism. It is a book which reminds one of the exasperated tones of the British statesman who remarked that negotiating with de Valera was like trying to pick up mercury with a fork. Writing a biography of Gerry Adams is much the same, except that you don't have the fork.
That said, they have succeeded in creating a narrative whose ambiguities are, paradoxically, as convincing as its certainties. It is especially valuable on the early years of Adams's life, and on his Republican antecedents generally. From the beginning, it is clear, he may have been a follower, but he was never an acolyte.
He was a silent, almost invisible pupil in school, where he was a beneficiary (among others) of the Butler Education Act. Top of the class in Irish, bottom in history, he left early in 1965, radicalised by the Divis Street riots. While his commitment to the Republican cause was wholehearted, he hesitated for a good three months at the time of the 1970 split before deciding to go with Mac Stiofain: his sister Margaret went the other way.
The authors, understandably, spend considerable time and energy trying to disprove his denials (twelve of them listed in the index) of IRA membership. It is important, and yet it is probably not crucial, given that the conflict in which he is involved has encouraged British Ministers to dissemble on a heroic scale. What will be more important, at the end of the day, is now what he has done, but what he can become.
It is clear from the chronology that whatever his function and status within militant Republicanism, he moved at a fairly early stage into the political sphere, even though this sphere was acutely circumscribed at first by the demands of the armed struggle. Throughout the 1970s his articulacy was employed on many occasions to defend the indefensible, not least in his attempt to defuse the threat posed by the peace movement of Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan in 1976 - a movement which was eventually to self-destruct without his help. As late as 1979, he was arrogantly proclaiming that the Dublin government, too, would have to be undermined before the grand Republican scheme of things could come to fruition.
John Ware's hostile 1983 TV documentary on Adams, The Honourable Member for West Belfast, is the source of some of Sharrock's and Devenport's evidence. Ironically, the sequence of events suggests strongly that it was around 1983 also that Adams, already more commissar than volunteer, simultaneously changed his own tactical perspective and acquired the political authority necessary to implement a new strategy. His leadership quality, the authors remark, "showed itself in the way he always secured the ground before moving onto it himself". Within a year, Ruairi O Bradaigh was remarking that "when the constitutional bug bites it's an incurable disease".
In a sense, what Adams had set out to create - notably the more virile and proactive Sinn Fein political organisation - was what contributed substantially to his own political development. Side by side with this was the decision to ensure greater autonomy for the Northern command of the IRA, which buttressed him against ideological assaults from south of the border. Recent events suggest that his leadership, although impaired by the breakdown of the first ceasefire, still depends heavily for its success on these two critical factors.
The authors have combed public sources, and carried out many useful interviews (some with unnamed IRA men) to provide us with a valuable, three-dimensional portrait of the evolution of a political leader. The later material adds less to our understanding of him than do the earlier sections, but there are bonuses along the way - among them the rehabilitation of Peter Brooke, and a salutary reminder of Denis Faul's courage in outflanking Adams during the hunger strike.
This is a deft and vivid book, which throws light into some dark corners, but also helps to illuminate what may be, with luck, a different kind of future.
John Horgan is the author of Sean Lemass: The Enigmatic Patriot