‘Gerry Adams: Should He Stay Or Should He Go?’ by Donal Lavery

The former Tory Prime Minister, Harold MacMillan, once opined that ”if the entire establishment is against something, it’s bound to be good.” For the past number of years, the Free State ruling clique have ran with the line that if Sinn Fein knifed in the back Gerry Adams as leader it would be a route straight into government – coalition or minority, with them. The first question you need to ask in assessing their Shakespearean, MacBeth-like demand, is why would the electoral opponents of Sinn Fein, who have a vested interest against their economic ideology, want to help the party succeed at the ballot box? Surely that’s a no-brainer. Whether the Irish establishment like it or not, there have been republicans, IRA men and women and even gun-men, in government in the Free State from its inception – from Sean Lemass to Sean MacBride. Indeed any independent state usually has a history of having been founded through the barrel of a gun. The remaining points however require a bit more detail than just that.

Fundamentally, it’s very difficult to imagine Sinn Fein without Gerry Adams – He has led it from a party on the periphery of the Irish political scene, where the only sure tradition was losing, into an election-winning machine. Rarely is there an election in the North or the South where they don’t increase their percentage of the vote and pick up seats. Out of all the main parties on the island, he is the only leader offering a credible ideological break with the neo-liberal orthodoxy which has engulfed this island since the 1980’s. He’s a Keynesian, who wants a return to tax and spend economics to increase demand – the same model which built the NHS and the motorways. While the political class envisage crumbling public services so as to ensure tax cuts for the affluent.

I don’t doubt that there are other credible and articulate  people in Sinn Fein, like Pearse Doherty or Mary Lou McDonald. But neither of those people have the same level of extensive experience of negotiating with successive British governments going right back to Ted Heath’s administration in the 1970’s – when the British were laying waste to nationalist communities. Indeed, the same Free State ‘intrigues’, like Varadkar or Ahern, struggle with a common game of draughts while Adams is enjoying a complex game of chess.

Think of how that would be perceived by the establishment class in Ireland and also by the electorate – ‘they executed their leader just to get into office (it would be a coalition, with little real power), so what depths would they not sink to just to retain it?’ The Free Staters would be opening the champagne and applauding the fact that they can now manipulate the structures of the only party which threatens their tight hold on power. They would know that they have their foot on the throat of an alternative to the economics of austerity.

I’m a young person (at 25) who didn’t live through most of the conflict. Yes I think it’s nice to see ‘new’ faces in politics but not at the expense of ideas and core beliefs. I don’t care what age people are or their background, I’m interested in what they think. One of the things which struck me about Margaret Thatcher, and I detest virtually everything she did, was that she believed in something; she didn’t care what people thought of her, she felt that she was right and she would see it through to the end past all such opposition. These people don’t follow the political weather, they get up each day and make it, without the support of the media or banks. The same can be said of Tony Benn or Mandela. They are sign-posts, who don’t move in every direction temporary winds may blow. The fact remains, that whether you are a pensioner living in Ardoyne, a nurse in Galway or a student in urban Dublin, you have everything to gain materially, socially and spiritually from Adams as Taoiseach, in comparison to Mr Martin or Leo Varadkar.

The other and more revealing point is this – say Adams does go to “help” Sinn Fein into coalition with Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil, what next? Do you think their demands will stop at that? They will chip away at everything that is good about Sinn Fein (starting with excluding ex-prisoners) until you have a party that is moulded to their liking. They are the real crocodiles you should never feed. So the most authoritative thing which any republican or Sinn Fein voter should hold dear, is that there should never be any coalition or government that doesn’t include Gerry Adams, because he represents everything that is good about it – ensuring ordinary working class people have a say in how society is governed; where people who served time for the republican struggle are not blacklisted; where your social class or profession doesn’t determine your influence or standing; and an Ireland of “the future”, free of the British and indigenous parasitical class which presently abuse it. For if they get rid of him, they’ll come after your interests next.