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Transcript of the Gerry Adams Interview W.F: Gerry Adams you are very welcome to Terrace talk and to Kerry but your no stranger to the Kingdom are you. G.A: No I’ve been coming here for a long time. My mother and father who are since deceased god rest them had very good times here. My uncle Liam Hannaway was a very regular visitor here some of the older people might remember him and some of the older men here like Martin Ferris would certainly know him. W.F: And ye honoured a great Kerryman a great friend of mine and a great G.A.A man lately Jerry Savage. G.A: Yes Jerry was one of the honourees for this province he was up with four others and it was my great privilege to say a few words and to make a presentation to him and the presentation was at an event called Le Cheile and it was to honour republicans from each of the provinces in Ireland and from the Diaspora who through the years have kept faith and I think Jerry has kept faith and will continue to do so a bit so watery on Kerry football You know him yourself he’s a bit indifferent with what’s happening here in the Gaelic sport but apart from that he’s a great human being W.F: He is and one of the oldest and best Kerry supporters I can tell you Jerry of course many of our listeners will be unaware that your son Gearoid has given and is still giving a great service to the Antrim football team he’s a dashing wing back G.A: Well he’s certainly on the team and
he enjoys his football and myself and Colette and the clan are
very proud of him and his put in as you know yourself whether
people win or lose to play at county level is a great honour and
they have to put in a great effort even to get onto the panel
but he’s been there for about 12 years. I was actually talking
to him on the phone on the way in the way in from Tralee and I
was telling him I was going to the Cork-Tipp game so he’s
a wee bit jealous about that G.A: Well the G.A.A is hugely important it always has been. I come from a G.A.A family. My Uncles all played. My wife Colette played camogie for Antrim in her time. Club I suppose Antrim football isn’t so strong. The hurlers would be more prolific but even there the difference between say Ulster hurling and Munster hurling would be quite wide but in terms of culture and in terms of Gaelic sports and in terms of an ethos and in terms of character building G.A.A is centrally important. I’ve often said the G.A.A is probably the second most important National movement on the island of Ireland W.F: What’s the first G.A: The Credit Union movement would be the first one (laughing) no I think I mean I know just on a Saturday morning its probably the same here a Sunday morning in my constituency of West Belfast hundreds of youngsters are out ten o clock in the morning with their mentors and underage teams all of those young people both the camoges the footballers and the hurlers. They have been shaped by that organisation. I have a great affection for an Cumann Luthchleas Gael. W.F: Were you satisfied that they got away with the rule permitting the forces in the North to play Gaelic football Gerry? Would you have retained it? G.A: I would have retained it but I knew it
was going to go and I can understand pragmatically people within
the leadership of the G.A.A were going to be hit with the different
equality disciplines which were being brought in and it went in
a way which I thought was appropriate in that of the counties
still under British rule, five of them didn’t want to change.
Now it was a national decision and I accept that entirely but
I thought it was appropriate that those counties and it shows
you the strength because the G.A.A isn’t Sinn Fein it isn’t
a republic and its non party political so I think that showed
the strength and I think it was brought to a satisfactory and
most importantly it was not an accramonise people took their decision
had their discussion and voted as they voted and we went on to
play Gaelic sport and to watch it. I think what your saying and
not to be too political about this but what your saying in terms
of particularly the six counties but within all of Ulster the
strength of Gaelic football is not least because of the liberating
influence of the peace process that for years and years particularly
in my town of Belfast it was very difficult to walk around with
a G.A.A top or kit bag or Hurley in the boot of your car going
through British army road blocks or R.U.C or U.D.R road blocks
a lot of oppression a huge amount of sectarian difficulties around
so the relative peace the building of the peace process you know
you can see the strength of Armagh the strength of Tyrone even
Derry coming back there more recently all of the counties building
so its just marvellous you know G.A: Well let me say first of all that you know why people this far south are watching what’s happening in the North and the peace process ye are very ably represented by Martin Ferris even before he became a T.D and we wouldn’t have a peace process if Martin wasn’t in there. W.F: And of course if he hadn’t gone down the Sinn Fein route and went into politics he’d be on the Kerry team and after winning four or five All-Irelands. Sinn Fein’s gain was our loss Gerry. G.A: I’ve heard this but it’s disputable
anybody that opts out early on I mean I have often said that I
had two ambitions. One was to help Ireland to win an All-Ireland
and the other one was to help bring about a united Ireland. I
took the easy option. Martin Ferris often tells us that he would
have been an all star but how do you prove it? The fact is he’s
an all star in Sinn Fein and the sporting field G.A: Well I find writing therapeutic because there is a lot of travelling and your on your own a lot of the time when travelling across the country in the back of cars and trains sometimes out of the country on planes, writing is a solitary occupation and it suits me and also there is a political motivation because with this book “Hope and History” I want to tell people about the republican involvement in the peace process and its one of the very few books written by a participant. There have been tons of books written by people who don’t really know the inside story so it helps me to write, it gets it out of my system and also as I have said if it gives you the inside picture then that’s good. W.F: One of my lasting abiding memories I got married in 1969 and we went up the North on our honeymoon and walked the walls of Derry and I can still visualise and I can still see in my own memory there was a fierce feeling of apprehension of foreboding you could nearly reach out and touch it now and I didn’t know what was happening and what was going to happen I was away from it in the south down here. What was it like before 1969 or am I exaggerating. G.A: No I’ve been in other situations exactly as you describe it very graphically where its almost palpable the feeling of tension however the atmosphere can be made bola tile by the emotion of what is happening among human beings is beyond me but I mean that has happened many times. Before 69 if you go back to when I was in my early mid teens around 1965-66 the generation above me would have been very opasetic. This is the northern generation the Belfast generation. 1966 was the 50th anniversary of the 1916 rising brought a whole popularisation of that period with the leaders so people like me and others would have been captivated encouraged by that but our elders would have been saying “take it easy things aren’t changed don’t be doing something that will be bring the house down around all of us. Then you had the whole civil rights thing. You had brilliant spokespersons like Bernadette McColeskey and others so when it came to the period of 1969 we were above our knees and saying we want equality we’re not going to be treated like our parents we’re not going to be treated like our grandparents we want equality we don’t want to exploit anybody we don’t want to put anybody down we just want to be treated as human beings as Irish people on this island so the state reacted against it and we have been in a period of just complete combulsion you know James Connelly decades before he talked about a carnival of reaction that’s what we got from 1969 what this book tells I suppose to a degree is the story of the search for a way out of that it’s almost a journey out of all of that. If you were back in Derry now it’s like being in Killarney or Tralee or Sligo. Things are settled. Now they’re not settled over the whole north and they certainly aren’t settled in terms of ending partition and ending the union and getting equality and you’ll know the institutions are down and the British Government has behaved very arrogantly but in terms of just of people having come to terms with the fact that there has to be change and it has to move ahead at a popular level this process is hugely important. W.F: What would your tastes in music be Gerry? G.A: Very wide I like Irish music. I like Christy Moore. I like all sorts of folk music and I also like a wee bit of light classical. One of the biggest and best music incidents in my life is for instinance is Martin McGuinness singing “ A Bridge over troubled water” Martin’s a wonderful singer. W.F: Was he playing the guitar? G.A: No he just sings and its unaccompanied Sean Nos “A Bridge over troubled water” W.F: Impossible to cover everything in “Hope and History” Gerry there is so much inside in it. However you do touch on the hunger strikes and we down here in the south we were so far away from it we were only seeing images of it on the television and 10 of those hunger strikers that died 5 or 6 of them were members of G.A.A clubs which we would have an interest in down here. Looking back at that period now 1981 and you’re a long ways away from it now both in time and in distance did it affect you an awful lot or how did it affect you? G.A: Well first of all you have to bear in mind that it wasn’t so much that you were very far away because people here would be far away from the middle east and they may know an awful lot about the situation there about what’s happening in central America it’s because you were censored you couldn’t have interviewed me it’s ridiculous what people put up with that you couldn’t stick a microphone in front of me and ask me even who I think was going to win this evenings game so people were denied information. How does it affect me? There isn’t a day in my life that I don’t think about the hunger strikers. There isn’t a day that in some way and I’m not unique a whole generation of us I was in jail with Bobby Sands. I was in jail with Joe O’Donnell. I went into the prison at a point before some of the lads died, I was with big Kieran Doherty a fine athlete a big lad 6’2 or 6’3 a brilliant footballer and good hurler whose pal was Kevin Lynch who was captain of the Derry Minor team. All of those lads, Joe who might have been the same age as me was just a sort of a messer on the football pitch but still was out there strutting his stuff. Bobby Sands was a good soccer player but also played Gaelic football. Once we asked for hurling sticks in Long Cashe and of course they wouldn’t give us hurleys so a great friend of mine Cliggie Clark made hurleys. They took down some of the wooden beams and through a whole pile of ingenious implements they made these box wood and out we strode in the cage in Long Cashe and had a game of hurling up and down the big parade ground so how do I think about it. I think it was a seismic event in our lives and in our struggle. I think that we who are getting increased lacto mandate I mean there are talks about corruption and standards within public life that are own models are the hunger strikers. Kieran Doherty was a T.D. Bobby Sands was an M.P the rest of them got very sizeable votes at the time you know people had other things in their minds so I think they were role models they were so generous so self sacrificing so brave and I would like to think that their ethos will guide Republicanism in the time ahead. W.F: Out of all of your involvements since you began your struggles in the North for a just and lasting peace what was the most traumatic event in your life in relation to that Gerry? G.A: Well it’s hard to know to be honest I suppose the hunger strikes would be but they were not an event they were a summer an entire year of on-going trauma. The deaths of loved ones the death of my mother who died of natural causes of course. They’re were attacks on our offices at a time when I was talking to John Hume there was an IRA attack on the Shankhill road against loyalists paramilitaries who were killing innocent Catholics but none the less innocent people were killed so it would have to be around some of those incidents which people lost their lives but I couldn’t single out one event. I couldn’t at the top of my head if I thought about it I couldn’t single out one event. I suppose the fact that we got a process in place I have great pride in the way the mature republicans who were treated deplorably by the State were prepared, particularly the IRA people were prepared to reach out the hand of peace and to say look you know we can fight ye if ye want but we are prepared to make peace with ye. W.F: One traumatic event that you didn’t mention and you deliberately didn’t mention was that you were shot yourself and in the book you vividly described how that happened when you left the courthouse to go as you say for fish and chips with your friends but that in its self could you describe that to our listeners. G.A: Well it was sore (laughing) I was very
lucky all of us were lucky some of us were shot at quite badly
it was a come on in it was my firm belief that it was a planned
ambush it has since been revealed that British Military Intelligence
were aware of the attack and this is a period in which British
Military Intelligence were killing citizens in the North and also
in this State like Eddie Follitern who was a Sinn Fein councillor
and the people who died in the Dublin and Monaghon Bombings so
the issue of collusion is in the background of these killings
and some of these attempted killings. We as I say were lucky as
the people trying to shoot us were incompetent and for that I’m
glad. We were in court it was a made up charge. I was tremendously
suspicious because they’re were some characters knocking
about who I thought were a bit odd. We tried to stay in the court
not as in nervousness but just a security precaution during the
lunch break we were told we weren’t allowed to stay. We
left we were going in our car my sixth sense was screaming at
me that there was something odd going to happen and then whack
we were caught in a hail of gunfire and the bravery of the man
driving the car Kevin Rooney he kept driving and we were in the
hospital within two minutes of the attack and thankfully we were
looked after. G.A: Well there’re heroes in the situation and the sagart is the hero. I pay tribute to John Hume to Bill Clinton to Albert Reynolds to all of my friends and colleagues but essentially the man who ploughed the furrow was Fr. Alex Reid. I guess the background of censorship of people being excluded and against huge militarisation he argued for talks and for pro active listening and argued in his own way for the Christian gospel which is to embrace people and to go to the sinners not to send the sinners away he is very sincere and I think a very genuine Catholic and in many way it will be sagarts like him who will save the institutionalised Churches because they have found that the way to resolve these matters is by treating people with dignity and by arguing for peoples rights to be upheld so he for me is the prime mover in all of this. W.F: Another incident I got great satisfaction out of in the book was when the Sinn Fein delegation landed at No.10 Downing Street. I have since been told that a woman from Monaghan is working there but we won’t talk about her now when ye went in talk to us about approaching 10 Downing Street in the significance of it and walking in and you said in the book the remark Martin McGuinness passed and you also passed on some paintings on the wall. G.A: We went to 10 Downing Street for the first time we were taken to the cabinet room Martin queried Tony Blair was this the place the business was done the treaty negotiations and Blair mentioned it was and we cracked about that for a while and I had noticed on the way in that the portraits of all these great English state persons are exhibited on the walls and it struck me but I was only joking but joking with a purpose it struck me to say to Tony Blair why they had all of their failures in such a prominent place because of course while these were great English leaders in the issue of Ireland they were just messers whether it was Lloyd George, Churchill, Balfour or whether it was Gladstone in terms of our island in terms of the rights of people here they were signalled failures and I was in a funny way or at least trying to be funny that Blair took it well enough trying to point up the cultural differences that from an Irish perspective instead of an English perspective there is two sides of this one coin. W.F: What was the significance in walking through the door of No.10 Downing Street? G.A: I’m not fazed by that and I don’t say that through any false sense of arrogance. I’ve come from a community from which I never felt isolated even in the worst days of censorship when your routed in your own people and ordinary working people who are trying to have a better life and trying to bring about freedom have never been phased by meeting Presidents or Prime Ministers I wouldn’t discourage them at all but I work on the broad theory that everybody has to wear underpants so no matter how powerful the person your dealing with he’s just a human being the same as you and I’ve seen too many times people being phased and in some way almost tugging the forelock at these great historical moments. The biggest history we can make is to bring about the freedom of the people of this island harmony between orange and green so I can understand why there is a significance attached to Sinn Fein going into Downing Street and it wasn’t lost on me and my friends. It had been the first time since the treaty negotiations just part of business its part of bringing the English ruling class to a sense of what they have to do about our country. W.F: Now your next choice of music is Ordinary man by Christy Moore W.F: Was it a big fear in your life since the troubles began we call them down here the troubles whether that’s the right description or not but that’s what we call them. Were you worried about your family through all those years? G.A: Of course all my brothers were in prison my father was in prison my uncles were imprisoned and cousins and of course they were the people particularly my mother and my wife Colette they were withstanding British Army raids and RUC raids all of the intimidation that goes with all of that but rather then get too serious let me tell you because of the nature of your programme I was doing negotiations once with President Clinton’s Chief advisors a guy called Tony Lake and I was arguing that they needed to be pressing ahead with getting the British Government to move the process onward and he was arguing that there were certain rules to this process and he’s a big exponent of Baseball and he said to me look you have to run this process like baseball rules and he explained to me how the game of Baseball was played so I told him I would go off and think about that and I went and got a video tape of an All-Ireland hurling final, I think it was Kilkenny in one of the big games in one of the times they won I think it may have been against Tipp and I sent him the video to the White House with a note saying “ these are the rules we play with”. W.F: Nice one. Did you ever think you would become such an International figure worldwide International figure meeting international politicians? G.A: Well I don’t consider myself to be an international figure if I shaved off my beard sure you wouldn’t know me W.F: Well any man that Nelson Mandela is waiting to shake his hand, Nelson Mandela and you shook his hand tell us about that. G.A: Well it was one of those silly periods where the British were an issue out of anyone shaking hands with Republicans because I was the person at the front and probably just making a big issue over me President Mary Robinson had come to West Belfast and committed the mortal sin and never got credit for it for shaking hands and the British had railed against that. They railed against Clinton and then when we were going to South Africa they put huge pressure on the new South African Government that President Mandela wouldn’t meet with our delegation and we wouldn’t shake hands and of course he ignored all of that but when we arrived in he shook hands and then said he wouldn’t wash his hand for a week he was just being self a facing and good humoured. He’s the worlds no.1 citizen he for me is the hero internationally of this period a man to come through what he was through and to lead his people as to freedom and democracy he’s just a huge guy brilliant on our process. Always helpful even yet even though he is retired would still return calls would make one of his younger colleagues available and while I think the big focus has clearly been on the U.S.A and Irish-America we shouldn’t underestimate the huge example of the ANC and the South African freedom fighters and particularly Nelson Mandela and President Mumbaki and this time brought to our process. W.F: And your final peace of music the Furey’s and red rose cafe W.F: You have met so many people just a few quick comments on Mo Molom G.A: Well I think Mo Molom had a good heart G.A: John Hume I think was extremely brave down to earth and there would be no peace process without him and dreadful vilification of the reactionary media particularly around the Independent group of newspapers. I give John great credit for the role he has played in this W.F: Senator George Mitchell G.A: A great guy he was actually here in Belfast this week met with Martin McGuinness and told us in the middle of it and I quote this in the book a few times “ that we had a life and this was it and that he had a life and this wasn’t it” this is the drudgery of the whole negotiations brought great humour, wisdom experience to the process. You could not have wanted a better chair of the process. W.F: Dr. Ian Paisley G.A: Good guy (laughing) He has a mandate. He’s from County Antrim sure what better place in the world could you come from, Ballymena, a great hurling County W.F: Drumcree G.A: Drumcree the back of the high ridge cow someone called it I think I don’t know if that’s the proper translation. W.F: It looks like it’s solved by the way G.A: No it’s not solved but the fact is that people stuck up for their rights and the orange men had to come to terms with the fact that they needed to talk to their neighbours if they want to be doing what ever they want to be doing but it’s much quieter not much because of the effort of republicans in that area but also some sensible unionists in that area as well. Orange is a part of what we are I think we have to its there in the Kerry kit its there in the flag and its there in our short history so there has to be an accommodation. I would like to think there would be an accommodation around Drumcree. What’s the most prominent flag on the Garvahey road today the Orange flag? W.F: Staying with G.A.A matters our president Sean Kelly have you met him I’m sure you have? G.A: I’ve met him a few times and the last time we met I asked him was he enjoying the job and he said he is and it must be a huge honour at a time when the sports are being to popularised and the players and even this weekend so many games in hurling and football it’s just so tremendous so I think Sean does great honour for Kerry and for an Cumann Luthchleas Gael to be leading it at such an exciting time. Fair play to him. W.F: Looking back on your life now regrets? G.A: I have a few (laughing) W.F: Oh you can burst into song on this programme if you want G.A: No I can see I am being ushered towards the door I started singing there so you would close down the programme. Yes I have regrets but too few to mention. W.F: Gerry Adams you’re here in Killarney to sign copies of your book. Gerry Adams “hope and history making peace in Ireland” I can tell you it’s a wonderful read and my mother in law who’s 94 years of age certainly enjoyed it. It was lovely meeting you and I hope you enjoyed your trip to Killarney and I hope you enjoy the match in Croke Park G.A: I will and good luck to Kerry too slan |
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Terrace Talk Audio Interviews 
Below is the full transcript of our recent Gerry Adam's interview.
The full audio version will be available for download in December
2004. 
