New Statesman - Spending the Day With Gerry Adams

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Spending the day with GerryAdamsPatrick BeltonPublished 25 May 2007

Patrick Belton spends the day with Sinn Fein's presidentand reflects on the possible deals that will come out of theIrish elections

In a Dublin where no stretch of horizon lacks a crane, Gerry Adams and I pass

the day before elections in working-class Northside neighbourhoods whose

inhabitants have not all tasted the Celtic Tiger.

He permits me to accompany him on the hustings and we speak in the sluggish

moments; we go to city centre where Sinn Fins national chairperson Mary Lou

McDonald hopes for a seat in Dublin Central, and later to Finglas, where IRA

bombmaker turned councillor Dessie Ellis seeks his in Dublin North-West.

This is Sinn Fins moment. In all, the party will add five to seven seats to its

current set of five; it is projected to poll 10 percent in todays count of votes,against 7 in 2002 and 3 in 1997. With the governing Fianna Fil-Progressive

Democrats coalition locked in close war with the alternative Fine Gael-Labour-

Green alliance and neither tipped to command a majority, Sinn Fin could end in

government both north and south. Should the Dil be hung, Sinn Fin is set to be

its kingmaker.

Adams its president is respectful, unhurried, generous with his time, listening

carefully to what his interlocutors have to say. He wears a finne and a breast

cancer ribbon, for his assistant Siobhn OHanlon who died last April; under his

blazer his shirt is open at the neck, and not tucked in.

Unlike the GPO - the building that was HQ to Pearse and Connolly's republican

organisations during the 1916 Easter Rising - todays Sinn Fin is eager to cover

up its bullet holes. But why are so many otherwise sane people, in a peacefulnation enjoying the strongest economic growth of the EU-15, disposed to vote

now for a party headed by a former member of the IRA's Army Council and a

socialist?

The answer lies partly in cultural dislocations caused by a Celtic Tiger economy

(where low taxes fuelled an average annual GDP growth of seven per cent over

the last decade), in part concern for how this wealth is being spent and not least

the support of those feeling left behind.

With its message of social levelling, Sinn Fins gains are strongest amongst

members of the working classes unmoved by the Tiger. Other parties are in

economic policy understandably prescribing more of the same; SFs manifesto

alone calls for redistribution through higher taxes. Amongst the more wealthy,

Republicanism finds an elegiac centre for a society which has spawned the new

Irishmanrepresented by Ryanairs Michael OLeary and Paddy Powers

Popebetting, cheeky and likely to have made a bundle in property in the 90s but

not necessarily up on his Yeats or his Irish.

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There also is the benefit of SFs ambiguity, a political Rorschach spot riding what

Adams acknowledges is an electoral bubble of favourable publicity following

formation of a coalition government in the North with Ian Paisleys loyalist DUP.

Theres little in their manifesto theyve not pulled back from when pushed; and to

the extent Republicanism stands for nothing (apart from 32 counties), everyone

can be a Republican. A touch of inscrutability has its privileges, as a taoiseachs

personal financial foibles and misstewardship of the health service weigh him with

negatives on the one hand, and the opposition leaders repute as a policy

lightweight does like work on the other.

With Adams by some polls having the highest favourable ratings of any Irish

politician, many voters from across the political continuum flirted with Gerry. One

is actress Mire Greaney, who with her Maureen OHara looks, auburn hair and

fluent Irish, is Hollywoods fantasy of the West of Ireland. The Galway resident is

a lifelong Labour voter but like many, she confides, in this election 'I started to ask

myself, am I a Republican?'

Yet 90% of Irish voters are not republicans, not of Gerry Adamss sort anyway.

(The Irish system of PR with multiple member districts and a single transferable

vote, which in coalition parleys will magnify their influence, dryly dates to the

closing days of British Southern Ireland, and a desire to confine the sway of Sinn

Fin of a century ago by nurturing smaller parties.) They have at least two decent

reasons not to be. First, how long must Bono sing this song. The Good Friday

Accords were signed in 1998; the Colombia Three were arrested in 2001, for

offering bomb making and urban warfare expertise to the narcotrafficking FARC in

return for25 million. Each of them had Sinn Fin as well as IRA connections.

Niall Connolly was the Latin American representative for the party and had been

arranging Gerry Adams visit to Havana; Martin McCauley was an election worker

in the Upper Bann constituency in 1998, and James Monaghan was voted to the

partys Ard Chomhairle in 1989. A bit rich, then, the partys manifesto promises a

crackdown on drugs.

And whatever allowances can be made for such technology in the confused

environment of communal reprisal in the North in 1975-76 and 1987-95, there can

be no excuse made for their export outside Northern Ireland, to drug lords in

Colombia. This is the lesser reason. More importantly, theyve not taken the

socialism out of (their) Irish politics. The history of nationalism combined withsocialism is not a uniformly happy one. Their manifesto likes high corporate and

individual taxes, the opposite of the growth recipe Fianna Fil have been pursuing

for the last decade. This is the strongest reason not to put an IRA gun to the

Celtic Tiger's head.

I ask Adams whether he is concerned the partys call for more spending on social

services would kill the tiger. He counters that no one with whom hed spoken on

the hustings had shared that concern, that they instead were pressed down on

every day by overly dear housing and inadequately managed hospitals if they fell

ill.

He also points to the 5.6 billion budget surplus, evidence taxes neednt be raised

and an inculpation against the government for not spending it on the poor. Yet

Stormont, financially dependent upon Westminsters largesse, is meagre as a

training pitch for financial prudence. And the solution of the manifesto, repeated

over and over, is greater levies against the public purse. (A reading from the book

of republican economics manifestoes includes a Combating Low Pay portion on

page 40 that opens with immediately increase the minimum wage ... and abolish

age and experience differentials. Raising Household Incomes, on page 44,

counsels the state to double the living alone allowance and increase the Family

Income Supplement by 68 per week and make it an automatic payment. Ensure

all those eligible take it up... It continues for 74 pages.)

I ask what Republicanism means today, and whether 32 counties takes

precedence over the economics. Adams refuses to subordinate one to the other,

and says its presence at local council and national levels means Sinn Fin can

move simultaneously towards Irish unity and a more equal, just society. When I

note his calls to move water and health to an all-Ireland basis and ask him

whether his tests whether to move a service to 32 would include that it could be

furnished more cheaply at all-Ireland level, he ducks slightly and remarks the

business community has come to view Ireland in island-wide terms, and it

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By Harry McGee 25 May

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facilitates investment accordingly to harmonise jurisdictions, laws and regulations.

I ask him his criteria for joining Fianna Fils coalition, or offering it support from

outside in the Dil as a minority government, if their current junior partner PDs

face their expected political annihilation. He says Sinn Fin will not be easily

lured, and there would need to be agreed joint steps both towards United Ireland

and expanded social protection; he lingers over housing.

Two observations going forward. One is coalition arithmetic. If the Dil is hung,

protracted negotiations lasting in the weeks could precede forming a government;

Ahern faces hard sums. Though he and opposition leader Enda Kenny of FineGael have both forsworn Sinn Fin as a coalition partner, in political circles the

vow is roundly considered false.

Ahern has already cracked a window by stating he couldnt stop SF deputies from

voting to prop up the government if they so chose, though of course there could

be no quid pro quo. With its smaller vote harvest, Sinn Fin would require fewer

portfolios if insde than would Labour. Yet there are alternatives for Ahern if the

costs charged to the Tigers economic policies prove too high.

The Greens may be in play. Labours Pat Rabbitte has slammed the door to

cooperation with Ahern, but his party includes many veterans from the last

Labour-FF government, and clientelist rural Irish politics being what it is, Labours

rural TDs have as close ties to Fianna Fil as to the international labour

movement.

There have been suggestions Ahern would even ponder allowing an FF-Labour

government to be led by someone other than himself, in which case De Valera

would remain Irelands unique threepeating taoiseach a bit longer. How much

sway would Sinn Fin exert as a junior partner? If the influence of the PDs is

instructive, the junior partys influence will focus around one issue.

The PDs selected the finance portfolio when they first did business with Bertie;

given the partys free-market line, the presence of a substantial PD closet within

Fianna Fil and the PDs own origins as an FF breakaway party, focusing their

energies on the economy let them boast a success they did not enjoy

subsequently, when seeking to widen their appeal they moved into justice and

health, a fatal tactical mistake.

Patrick Belton is a London-based journalist, completing a doctorate at Oxford

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This article was originally published on newstatesman.com at 10:35

on 25 May 2007

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