The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 17: Gerry Adams: The Troubles, Margaret Thatcher, and the IRA

Episode Date: May 8, 2023

How much do you know about Thatcher's back channels with Irish republicans during the Troubles? What are Gerry Adams' emotions towards the 1984 Brighton hotel bombing, looking back now in 2023? Who were the most important people in the negotiations that brought peace to the island of Ireland? Alastair and Rory sat down with the former Sinn Féin president to discuss all these questions and more in today's episode of Leading. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive a weekly newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up. Email: [e-mail] Producers: Dom Johnson + Nicole Maslen Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. Sign up to the Restis Politics Plus. To enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolities.com. That's the restispoletics.com. Welcome to another episode of The Restis Politics is leading with me, Alist Campbell.

And with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Jerry Adams. Well, thank you for introducing yourself. And let me say, Jerry Adams, let's describe Jerry Adams. I think Jerry Adams, to some, a heroic freedom fighter leading his country to unity. and peace and prosperity to others a figure of hate and seen as a man of terror and violence.

To me, the guy that I saw very, very, very often in close proximity, particularly with Tony Blair and Bertie Hearn who we've just bumped into and an integral part of what became the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement. So something of enigma. It was only because we persuaded you and your government to embrace people.

peace and when Mr. Blair changed British government policy to actually talking to Sinn Féin, imagine, I just imagine that the British government wouldn't talk to a person who had a mandate as an MP leading a political party, which had a declared publicised peace objective. But you moved before that in a sense? Yeah, of course we did, yeah, but you can only move so far. And in fairness to you and to Jonathan and quickly to Tony, it was only when you came in with that big majority and the new government and new kids in the block

that you turned things the way they were turned. So you talked to my predecessor and a member of Parliament, Penrith and board of Willie White Law, I guess, back in the 17th. Oh, that was a long time ago. Yeah. 73, 73, 73. Do you remember him? I do remember him. Do you do?

I do remember him. What was your sense? I mean, we're not taking you back to your youth. What was your sense of those? early days, Sunningdale, Willie White Law, all that period. Just in the context, you were part of the delegation that met White Law. Yeah, I was one of the delegation, Martin McGuinness, we were the two younger, just by coincidence,

the two youngest members of the delegation. I was 23. He was 22. On reflection, I think what Willie White Law attempted to do was brave. You know, this place was up in flames. It wasn't that long after Bloody Sunday, where the British pirate route regiments had shot all those people in Derry and the stormont.

Parliament was paroched. It was a unionist dominated regime. In fairness to Willie White Love, what he tried to do was brave. Now, it didn't last very long. You know, the discussions were fair enough. I had actually been involved. I had been interned without trial

and I had been released and myself and another Republican called Dahi O'Connell had negotiated out. Arrangements whereby those talks would take place. So there was a wee bit of sensible work being done. But it fell apart in weeks. I don't even know how long it lasted. And you ended up back in jail pretty quickly.

I ended up back in Longcase. Well, a year later, I mean, we've learned enough of that since. And just interestingly enough, 40 years later, for some reason, we were all in Downing Street and it lasted longer. was intended and we all missed our flights and the government arranged for us to be flown back in a private plane and there we were in exactly the same airport it was a military airport that she'd been at 40 years earlier. Martin McGuinness and Martin McGinnis and I both twigged at the same time as we were as we were getting off the bus he said we were here we were here 40 years ago

it's been amazing to be there as part of that delegation in your early 20s and you've been at it all that time you've been doing this all this time And I'd like to know, we talked about you being in jail, in turn. How many times he's been in jail? How many times have you been asked whether you're a member of the IRA? I know the answers that you've given every time you've been asked that. And where do you feel you are on the overall journey that you've been trying to get your whole life? Well, there's rarely an interview that I do, particularly with British journalists, that I'm not asked.

was or am I a member of the IRA? Why don't you just say proudly yes? Well, because I would be telling lies and you know we can't be telling lies about these matters. Now what was your question? I'd be doing it all this time. How many times in jail? Well, I served four and a half years in jail. I was in the prison ship made stone.

We had a prison ship in Belfast Harbour, which sat in sewage from its detrains and we were capped below decks. That was in 1972. I was then shipped up to Longkech, kept out for a while, released then to take part in those talks, put back again, was in Belpast prison at least twice, was in the eight blocks of Longcash for a very short period

and spent most of my time in the cages of Longcash. Interestingly enough, the Supreme Court in London found that my imprisonment was unlawful just last year. that I was unlawfully detained. In these descriptions of your time in Longkeister elsewhere, one often gets the impression that these kinds of internment actually built a sense of solidarity between you and other Republicans that gave you an opportunity to get to know each other better,

to do educational programs together, and that actually it built more cohesion, is that right? Is that how it felt that you were developing deeper bonds through internment? Well, certainly there was, within the prisons, both with women prisoners in Armaya prison and within the prison I was in, there was a prison community, and most famously

that was expressed in the hunger strikes of 1981 where 10 men died in hunger strike. There were hundreds of men in prison. So their surety was a bond developed, and most of it was reflecting back on it apart from the hunger strikes, will reflect back on the funny things that happened and the crack.

Can I go on the crack, Jerry? This is an unfair question. But the cliche we have about West Belfast is very, very outspoken, flamboyant people. And you often have a reputation for being quite sort of controlled in your language and quite almost politician-like. Is that right that you're compared to many of your neighbors,

you'd be seen as somebody who's more careful with the words. I'm very dull. There wasn't a you are always dull. Nobody ever goes out with me. I'm no use. But you're pretty careful with your words. Well, for what it's worse, you know, and I make as many mistakes as anybody that talks as often as I have to talk.

But I try to, you know, you're talking to too many, you're talking to so many audiences. So here I'm talking to people, I presume, in Britain. so I'm trying to give an outline. But anyway, the point of making is you have to be, and I want to stress out, make it as many mistakes as anybody. What we're trying to do here is unprecedented, right? We have, by dint of the Good Friday Agreement,

a peaceful way to end the Union with England. So to do that, we have to persuade people who are for the Union with England to vote for United Ireland. So we all the time have to be trying to make sure that we don't defend them, or that what we're saying can be persuasive and that we can convince them. So that's an utterly democratic, peaceful strategy, that approach.

When did the thinking develop? So you said you talked about it being Tony Blair, but long before that, you were starting to think about different ways of bringing to this to the... The first thing that I wrote on this was in 1976 from Longcash, and it was around the time of the peace. people here in Ireland and the peace people was formed when the British army shot the driver of an IRA getaway car, shot him dead and the car carried out of control and ploughed into a family who were out walking and children, the McGuire children, were killed through the peace women

and that entire sort of phenomenon arose out of that awful incident and I then reflected on that in a little pamphlet which I wrote and it started to probe at what is peace and how do you get peace and so on. So that was 1976. And how important were your discussions with Father Alec Reed? Well, Father Alex Reid was a redemptorist priest and he and Father Des Wilson lived in West Belfast

so they knew what was going on in the neighbourhoods and they knew all of the aggression and the whole line from the British and from the Irish governments was this was criminality, this was gangsterism, we have to smash it, we have to subdue it and so on. So he and I were talking, and there was a huge amount of condemnation of the IRA from the Irish government, from the Catholic Church hierarchy and so on.

And I said, if these folks want the IRA to stop, why don't they come up with an alternative? So he went away and he tried to get an alternative. And in the course of that, he developed some principles, which I think are fundamental to any peace process. You've got to talk. You've got to listen. Out of that arises all sorts of other little things.

You can't decide who you're going to talk to. If you're going to talk to Sinn Pian, you can't decide that Martin McGuinness can't be in the delegation. You know, if you're going to talk to the DUP, you can't decide that the N. Paisley can't be in there. So there's all sorts of little very good bullet points that would enforce or reinforce any negotiating position. So what was the essence of his position?

treat people with respect, talk to people, find a way forward, and look for an alternative. And he was just central to that. And he was also tenacious. And was the alternative he was always looking for a peaceful one? Yes, of course. But you were at the time operating a dual track strategy? Well, we weren't operating any dual strategy. The fact is there was a war going on and it was being conducted by the different protagonists, the British forces, their surrogates within loyalism and then the Irish Republican Army.

But something changed in the overall thinking. When I came out of prison, a group of us started to try and reboot Sinn Féin. Now, Sinn Féin was an honourable organisation and did lots of good work, but it wasn't a political organisation in the sense that we now see it. So we, and it's very hard to organise politically when you're underground. It's very hard when you're, Sinn Féin was banned. at the time. So it's very hard to do the type of open political work that you would be used to, Alistair, if you're, you know, if a meeting like this would be rated. You know, in the old days,

we would have all ended up in a long case because this would be an illegal assembly. So that was happening. So you had the efforts to try and get a peace process, the efforts to try and build Sinn Féin as a relevant radical political party and the ongoing war. All right, Jerry. Let's take a quick break. Hi everybody, it's Dominic Samarach here from The Rest is History. Now, some of you may have heard me on your show, The Rest is Politics, when Rory was away, and I was filling in and enjoying Alistair Campbell's tremendous banter. And I'm back to tell you about our new series on The Restis History,

which is all about Britain in the 1970s, a period with a lot of uncanny resemblances to our own. So right now we're living through a moment when oil shocks generated by war in the Middle East, are rippling through the world economy, when Britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise, people are arguing about Europe, the government has got a few issues with the trade unions, and we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say governing elite, a kind of political class that is really struggling to come to terms with all of these issues, and people are asking if Britain is governable at all. So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing, which is our Britain and the Britain of the mid-1970s. So in this series that's coming

out on the rest is history, we're looking at these and other issues. We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now, whether you love her or loathe her. We'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of 1975, a subject that I'm sure Rory and Alistair will have strong opinions about. We'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson and we'll be talking about one of the grimmest moments in Britain's economic history, the moment in 1976 when we had to go cap in hand, as people said at the time, to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for a then record bailout. Now, if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you? Of course it sounds good to you.

We have a clip for you to listen to at the end of this episode. And if you want to hear more, just search for the rest is history wherever you get your podcasts. This is a program largely about politics and the way that politics works and how you compromise. And I wanted just a second to touch on Terrence O'Neill and your experience, the 60s, and how he failed. Was there an opportunity there that was lost and how was that lost? Well, I was only a kid, but I remember meeting with his children in Australia. They moved to Australia. I remember meeting them subsequently.

and they said that he was always bitterly disappointed that he hadn't done more. What was your impression of that, though, as a young man growing up in West Belfast? Did you have any sympathy for what he was trying to do, or was he seen as the enemy? It's difficult to answer with the benefit of all the time. I was involved in housing agitation, and we had formed a housing action group in West Belfast because people were being held and were being housed and dreaded. conditions and there weren't enough and a lot of so on so much. If I'd asked you about him then, the Jerry Adams of 1967, 68, and I'd said, what do you think about this guy, Terransoneal?

What would your answer be then? That he should have just given on the civil rights demands. They were very moderate. They were very, very modest, you know, people. But I guess, but can we not see the political problems he faced? I mean, in the end, even the small movements he tried to make brought him down, didn't they? The first time I was arrested was for selling a newspaper. The newspaper was banned and as part of the public defiance of the Special Powers Act we decided to take an initiative and go out in public and sell the newspaper the Sinn Féin organisation rebranded itself as Republican clubs and held a meeting and the Republican clubs were banned the next day so at a human level I can have some sympathy with Terence only but what what they were being asked to do was simple,

reasonable and modest. And the government in London was complicit in all of this. I don't think you can understand anything about Irish affairs unless you see it in the context of English involvement in Irish affairs. So this state is a partitioned

and those days it was an apartheid state. That has changed as a result of a work of a lot of very, very good people. So Terrence O'Neill, of course, he has responsibility and he may have done his best in his own his own way but the London Parliament is by its own claim

the sovereign Parliament so how could London preside over a situation where a section of people within the British state was being treated on the basis that people were being treated so let's talk about a bit London then Thatcher in a word, major in a word Blair in a word Thatcher was actually talking to Republicans

through a back channel while she was making arrogant denunciations and saying she would never talk to Republicans. That happened during the first hunger strike, it happened during the second hunger strike, and then happened subsequently. But what did you make of them all? What was your character assessment of those three leaders?

Well, let me do with these. He won't ever use that term first. Tony Blair made a difference. You know, I would grievously disagree with, with his adventures in Iraq and other foreign affairs issues. But on this issue, he made a huge difference in Dallister and Jonathan and the team that were in at that time made a difference. So he deserves great credit.

John Major was handed a peace process on a plate and didn't accept it. Now, arguably, he was a minority government. He didn't, he was dependent on union support and so on. But there's this thing, and I hope this doesn't sound racist, this thing which I describe, every so often it is the English disease, which when it comes to Ireland, these senior people are just totally oblivious of the needs, the rights, the demands, the aspirations of Ireland.

You don't think John Major did accept that you had some legitimate claims in the area of equality and human rights? Well, he may have, but what did he do about it? John Hume and I came up with what became known as the Humadams Agreement. and the T-shock of the day the Irish Prime Minister of the day Albert Reynolds

gave that to John Major and the Downey Street declaration arose out of that but the Downing Street Declaration and both John and I made this point it didn't go far enough it didn't deal with the core because what we needed was

all of these equality guarantees and human rights protections but we also need the constitutional issue is on. Back to this business about an alternative. So now there is an unturnative, right? Now, if the people here want, they can vote to leave.

How do you, at a human level, deal with the question of death and victims and meeting families of people who lost loved ones? How have you, over time, sort of how did you think about in the 70s? How do you deal with it now? if her mother stops you in the street and wants to raise the horrors

of what her family went through, how do you deal with that as a person? I have met many, many, many families of victims of the conflict including victims of the IRA and not all victims or not all victims' families respond the same way. Some are the very, very best peacemakers, very very best pioneers

for peace. Some are still hurt some have been fractured and never recovered. So I try to deal with all of this in a very respectful way and listen. You've got to listen. And I try to do that. Now, I come from a community. I have two family members were killed. I was shot myself. I'm advised that there's a live death threat against me at this time. My home was bombed twice. So it isn't an academic thing. I know what it's like to attend a funeral

or to be at a wake house. So the big thing is that now all of that has ended. So we can't undo it. And obviously, have people have resentments. That's fair enough. That's their right. How do you feel about the legacy bill and what they're trying to do with that?

I think it's shameful. Just quickly explain what legacy bill is to listeners because not everybody is aware of it. The bill that our government has brought forward to try to deal with some of the outstanding issues of violence at the time. And the idea is to effectively have an amnesty? Well, and what they're doing is they're defending their own operatives.

Now, I mean, there are two issues to this. First of all, there was an agreement, the Stormont House agreement. The British government were party to that. They've torn it up. They've brought in this new bill. It's at the behest of Northern Ireland veterans. It's at the best of right-wing Tories and others who are from that little Englander mentality. And they have just torn it up because,

they don't want to see British operative soldiers, police officers, going through that process. But every single political party here is against what they're doing. Does every party are against what they're doing? There are elements of the Tory party who are against what they're doing. It's just terrible stuff. I noticed you didn't actually answer with me about Thatcher, really, apart from that. When the Brian Baumhammed, would you have been happy if the entire cabinet had been

wiped out. Hobbiness is not a term or hobby is not a term that I would use. Would you welcome their demise? I don't want to get into that type of, come back to what Rory observed, that type of rhetoric. The fact is, there was a war.

Margaret Thatcher was notorious. Not just for Harper's heading over the deaths of the hunger strikers, which could have been easily resolved by very simple. improvements in the prison regime, but also because she was up front

and she was being the Iron Lady and she was masquerading as somebody who was endammable and so on and so forth. So there would be very few tears shed for Margaret Thatcher in Republican Ireland or in many in villages and Wales or in working class neighborhoods in Scotland or England itself, you know. But it's done, you know, it's over.

It's gone. all of that's in the past. You were against the hunger strikes. Yeah, yeah. And yet they became an incredibly powerful symbol, if you like, of what you were trying to do at that time. Just talking through your thinking on that. First of all, we were trying to do what I have described earlier

to build a Sinn Fien party and also try and develop within republicanism a peace strategy. So we were trying to do that. and there's a war on at the same time. And that was incredibly challenging. So if you like hand the entire struggle over to prisoners with such high stakes. And then particularly when the first hunger strike ended, and the first hunger strike ended in some contention,

where the prisoner in charge was told that there was a deal on its way and he agreed to end the hunger strike. And then that was seen as a sign of weakness by the, Thatcher regime and the same weakness by elements within the business system. And despite valiant efforts by Bobby Sands to make that work, it didn't work. So my thinking and the thinking of others was that we couldn't have a repeat of what happened the first time. It was strategic and it was tactically something.

And also these are our friends. I mean, I talked about being in prison. I was in prison or some of these folks. You know, these are our friends. And it ended up, as you know, famously. I mean, a watershed and Irish political struggle. Jerry, I'd just just come back. I mean, I joined the British Army in 91,

and my first barracks, Clive Barracks, had been blown up by the IRA two years earlier in 1989. So I was living next to a building. Where were you? In Shropshire, Turnhill, in Shropshire, Clive Barrier. And I was listening to your answer on the Brighton bombing. And I guess some listeners will feel like me a real disquiet with your answer

because they'll feel, you know, amongst those people killed, we're just wives of Tory MPs going to a Conservative Party conference, going to bed in a Brighton Hotel, and they get blown up. That it isn't what most people think of as a war. When I guess maybe this listeners will feel that these weren't legitimate combatants. Well, maybe I could take that from the families, but I couldn't take it from a former British soldier. People in my house weren't combatants.

People in my street weren't combats. Well, I mean, I feel I was a legitimate combatant. I mean, I wouldn't have taken it too personally if you'd had a shot of me. But I never went to war. You came to me. You know, you came in in car game in tanks. But in retrospect, you don't feel there was a distinction between kind of wives of MPs going to a conference and somebody like me. I think including, including, let me say this, the deaths of British soldiers or all you see officers.

I think all those deaths. are to be regretted. It's a regrettable part of our history. And clearly, civilians, for them to be killed, doesn't matter whether it was accidental or not. That's even more regrettable. And thankfully, we're now out of all of that. And we need to learn the lessons of it because we're thinking,

what's happening in Palestine now? What's happening in the Sudan? What's happening in Iraq? What's happening in Ukraine? what happened here it's not that long I lived 30 years under military occupation

how long were you in the British Herm very short time there you go you were very smart you've had a pretty remarkable political success

your political strategy has got you to a position where if the institutions are up and running Sinn Féin would be running the show First Minister you've got Mary Lou McDonald

on the brink of becoming T-shirt possible do you not think there are lessons you mentioned some of these other struggles going around the world. Do you don't think there are lessons for other organisations that are involved in sometimes violent struggle

from your political strategy? And I wondered if you thought that, what you thought those might be. Well, first of all, we have been successful politically, but we still haven't got our main objective, which is to end the union with England, and obviously that will be assisted if Sinn Paine continues to grow in strength.

I think there are less as not just for other people struggle but for other governments. See, it takes two to tango. So it took, as I said before, the leadership of Tony Blair, on the one hand of Birdie Ahern and the other hand of President Clinton, as well as John Hume and, you know, all the folks involved, as well as those of us

who were in Republican leadership. And, you know, Martin McGuinness has gone to many of these conflict zones and talk to people and, you know, we can't preach to them, you know. We're not up to us to dictate what. they should do. Jerry, how did Ian Paisley come on site? I'd love to understand the politics of this.

It seems to me from a distance that his political interests, his party, he could have had a future in just remaining obdurate and refusing to join in because there would have been many unionists that would have celebrated him. First of all, and I have commended David Thrimble, who was the first minister from the unionist position. But it was up and down with David. and it wasn't tenable and he couldn't get his own party in order.

So we decided that we would try and get Ian Paisley into that position. Now we were in the Northern Assembly with him so we were across the chamber and we were moderated in our differences in that way. And we advised the two governments I advised Tony Blair that we were going to try and do something with Ian Paisley.

I took away 18 months, close to two years. The method that we'd have advised was to remove every obstacle he put up so that at the end of it he would have no option but to decide to go in or not and we thought he would decide to go in because one he wanted to be in that position of power and two we noticed across the chamber that he was listening to some of the things that we were saying that there was a sort of I'm not saying there was an accord but there was you know you could you had a sense of relationships sort of been developed and But it took me too long to describe all the promulations to get all of that in place.

But he did famously go in with Martin McGuinness. And it feels like a sort of miracle, presumably something that in the late 60s, early 70s, you would never have been able to imagine. No, but neither would they have been able to imagine a Republican like Martin McGuinness been in the same position. So sometimes people can surprise each other in a good way. And it comes back down to the divisions in Ireland are very artificial.

as are most divisions between human beings. And it's a bit of a cliche, but a lot of people have much, much more in common that they may think. So Ian at the ripe old age of whatever age he was, came in and did a decent job and cheered people up and Martin worked with him. And I think, I mean, Martin made a sterling contribution to the whole struggle and to the whole peace process.

But in fairness to Ian Paisley, he did very, very well. and we're talking there understandably about the number of people who have been killed there have been half a million people born in this stately since the Good Friday Agreement so unless they had personal family connection to conflict they have no memory you walk about here all these young kids

they have no memory of it they're living on a totally conflict-free so that's the great you know if you want an achievement and there's lots of achievements but that's the big singular achievement that those young people. And also that there are people now out there

who would otherwise be dead if the conflict had continued. You did say not that long ago that the conflict could have gone on forever and we've had recently the death of so-called state knife infiltrator from the security services. What's your sense of how deeply

your organisations were infiltrated by the security services? Well, we always worked on the basis that, you know, the special branch was set up in Britain against the Fenians. And one of their tactics was to recruit agents and informers. So you always work on the basis that there are people there who are, are they've been tricked, they've been blackmailed, they've been coerced, or they've been paid to work for the British or to work for intelligence services.

you work on that, that's the life that you live, you know? So how bad does anything emerge from that story that shot surprised you? No, none of all. You get to know as you go along. Like our car was bugged. We famously brought a bug back to Leeds Castle to get back to Tony Blair. I remember you found him, I'm sorry to buggy with this. Yeah, we found it in Connolly House.

So you work, you just get to the point. Interestingly enough, in castle buildings, and you'll vouch for this, Alistair. Everybody presumed that Castle buildings was born. I mean, even government ministers that they wanted to talk to you took you to one side. So that's just part of where you are and that's the way it works.

And that's one of the reasons why the British have brought in this shameful bill because you're still doing the same things in other parts of the world. During, final one for me. We go around and around this stuff but I'm interested in in the end why outsiders came in.

many of the conflicts I've seen around the world, people would say they don't want outsiders getting, it's an internal issue, they want to resolve it themselves. They're not interested in Finnish presidents turning up and US presidents turning up. I think that was one of, really, one of our big successes. The mantra of the British government was, this is an internal matter for the government of the United Kingdom.

Piss off. So they told that to everybody, right? And President Clinton's intervention then opened up the possibility. And, you know, the politics of President Clinton are not that dissimilar from the politics of Tony Blair and so on and so forth. And then that made it easier because once George Mitchell

has put it as a special envoy, then you need another special envoy, and then these other countries, the Nordic countries are Canada, of all peace mission histories. So I think that was one of our two internationalises and that's something we worked on to some degree plagiarizing the African National Congress's campaign against apartheid

was to make it an international issue. So I think that was one of the great successes. And incidentally, you can still see that this very day that we're talking, because here we are the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. And we've had two American presidents in town. And we've had the American Secretary of State in town. And they still retain that very, very active interest. You and I attended a dinner recently at Hillsborough Castle.

And I'm seeing you there many, many times before when the negotiations were going on. But this was quite a kind of grand, lavish dinner in the newly refurbished Hillsborough Castle. And there was a new portrait of the new king on the wall. And I was just looking at you during the dinner and trying to get a sense of how you feel in those kind of moments when you're absolutely at the heart of the British establishment in a way. And although you've made all this political progress, you still haven't, as you say, achieved that objective. So what's your sense of your own relationship now with this place,

with the British government, and where you think you are on that road to that final destination you've always wanted? Well, first of all, I spent a huge amount of time in Hillsborough Castle. When MoMAOllum was there, I spent nearly every Sunday. And we walked in the grounds and I did the same with David Trimble. David had most of our private conversations up there. And we went right through to Peter Mandelson. And I forget there were so many seconds to stay, I can't remember their names.

So I became quite familiar with it. And I supported a lot more efforts to make it a public park, which she succeeded in doing. So what's my relationship with it? Right. The first time I went into Dublin Castle, I was shocked as a young Westport. Elfast person to see that the old symbols of the empire are still in the Great Hall in Dublin Castle. They're still kept there, right? And then when I went into South Africa and into the parliament, this was when after apartheid had been got red off, the Afrikaner symbols were still there.

And I remember actually saying to Mediba, what was the story? And he said, we're keeping them. We're certainly going to keep them for a time because we don't want the Afrikaner people to think that we're robin them of all these symbols. So I can live with that, provided there's some parody. We're in a transition. There is change ongoing. And people particularly

who have been here maybe 20 years ago coming in will see the changes more readily than those of us who live here. So there's a process of change on their way. I think we're at a phase which needs quiet, persuasion,

quite gentle, proactive listening to invite those people who may be pro-union or who may be a bit deletery about the future to come over to the notion of why can't we govern ourselves? Do you worry that the reason

for the blockage in the institutions is as simple as the fact that the DUP find it quite difficult with the fact that Sinn Féin would have the first minister? I think some do, but I believe Jeffrey when he says it's not a problem for him. I believe him. He said it's not a problem.

from me, Michelle, being the first minister. So I believe that from him. But it's undoubtedly a problem for some. This state was constructed so that that would never happen. So will it be United Ireland in your lifetime? Depends or long I live in or how long I'm stuck in this interview, wasting my life. Jerry Adams, thank you.

Thank you. How did that feel then? Jerry Adams telling you that it was very wise that you didn't stay in the army too long? Did you feel slightly menaced? Well, I felt the thing that troubled me most, of course, wasn't him threatening a British soldier, it was fine. It's more the fact that even with all this time, he still does not feel that these civilian casualties were unjustified. So in particular, I mean, Brighton bombing, these were people who just simply happened to be married to politicians staying in a conference hotel.

And that, I think, has always been very odd. But I think it's always been something at the heart of the problem. I mean, the IRA presented itself as an army, but was totally unapologetic about deliberately targeting civilians. And armies, of course, do kill civilians, but they do not set about deliberately blowing up a hotel full of civilians, deliberately, right? I mean, they may do so unintentionally. And I think it's very, very odd that not only did they do that, but that, you

even decades later, they're so completely unapologetic about it. We didn't talk about Mountbatten, which was another very dramatic example of a retired 80-year-old admiral with his grandson and his daughter-in-law on the boat and a young Irishman who just happened to be piloting the boat, all of whom were burnt up and killed. That, by the way, is a big part of the book I mentioned, Killing Thatcher, is the Mountbatten story. I mean, I think, look, not for me to speak for Jerry Adams. I think what Jerry Adams would say is that Mountbatten was a representative of the British establishment and the British forces that were, he saw as an occupying force. I think, except he was 80 years old, wasn't he?

He was completely, you know, he's an 80-year-old retired man with his grandchildren in the mid-sson. But they had a lot of focus when they were pursuing that military strategy alongside the political strategy. They had a lot of focus on what they call spectacular. Brighton-bomb would have been, you know, especially if it had taken out Margaret Thatcher, that would have been the ultimate in terms of the spectacular for them. So they were significant in terms of their overall strategy. And if you think about it, the same day that we were speaking to Jerry Adams,

he was in the audience, sitting in the hall, listening to, amongst others, Rishi Sunak, who actually mentioned him in relation to having taken a decision to be part of the peace process, as it were. So if he were at any stage between when he was back then as active as he was to when he dies, if he was at any stage to come out and say, yeah, do you know what, I was a IRA commander, I was on the Army Council, I was doing all this stuff, then I don't know, I guess he thinks that you've lived with that fiction for so long, and other people have accepted that fiction up to the point of a Tory Prime Minister. It's very odd, isn't it?

And there's also his manner. He's this very sort of genial, sort of almost professorial figure. I showed a picture of us with him, and somebody said he looked like Father Christmas. And it's that sort of reconciling that with terrorism is tough. But equally, you know, we have to agree with your friend Jonathan Powell, who said to a swimmer in Belfast, as he said many times in the past, you only get peace by negotiating with terrorists. and that it was absolutely the right thing to do in the end to negotiate with him and bring him and Martin McGuinness in. I mean, I was also been reading the most extraordinary book on the Protestant experience in Ireland,

which again I'm going to put in the feed, but that was a real reminder about Protestant violence. And Ian Pace, these extraordinary evolution, which we touched on a little bit in that. And it says a pity that we're not able to, interview in Pacey to get some sense of this transformation. Jonathan Powell, your friend, says that it was a near-death experience in hospital that convinced him that he wanted to suddenly come to peace and that we should never underestimate the individual factors in bringing peace. Essentially, the other people who were in the room with Jerry Adams and Richard McCauley,

who's been alongside him for as long as I can remember, was of, as you say, quite hard to reconcile that persona with somebody who's for a lot of people still such a sort of massive hate figure but I think you do have to recognise that without him

and McGuinness it wouldn't have happened none of what we were witnessing last week would have happened Has he changed a lot over the time or is that pretty much what you remember when you were first dealing with him 25 years ago?

I always found Martin McGuinness very kind of easy to talk to very more straightforward in a way. I think Jerry Adams has become more reflective I think he's become warmer in the way that he engages with other people. Yeah, I would say a much more empathetic human being.

So even though you are seeing a lack of empathy and his inability to recognize the hurt and the pain caused, other than through the context of we were at war and that you started it, as it were, I actually think in more general terms, he actually has become a much more empathetic human being. Right. The book that I wanted to recommend is by a journalist called Susan Mackay, and it's called Northern Protestants and Unsettled People.

And it's a series of interviews done. She's herself an Ulster Protestant with everybody from people in very tough housing estates who are actually actively involved in the paramilitary violence, right the way through to housewives in wealthy suburbs of Belfast who have nothing to do with the vows. violence at all. It's like V.S. Naples writing on India. It's extraordinary her ability to bring forward all these different perspectives

and somehow layer them over each other. Resolve the lurches of defining an incredibly complicated society, which has hundreds of thousands of different experiences going on. I found it so moving. Just another thing to mention,

Mary McAlees, former Irish president, an incredible woman, And she did a radio series some years ago called The Protestant Mind. She was raised as a Catholic in a pretty Protestant part of Belfast. And she did a very, very interesting radio series. So maybe we should try and dig that out as well and put it in the newsletter. Very good. Okay. Well, there we are.

Yet another prominent historical figure to whom I've introduced you, Rory. You'll find me some soon to return the complement I trust. The problem is you know absolutely everybody. So even the people, when I'm closer friends of them than you are, you already know them. See you soon. Bye-bye for me.