A Farther Shore: Ireland's Long Road to Peace - Hardcover

Adams, Gerry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375508155 ISBN 13: 9780375508158

Publisher: Random House, 2003

Synopsis

He’s been imprisoned, shot at, denounced, shunned, and banned, yet Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams remains resolute in his belief that peace is the only viable option for the Irish people. Adams led the oldest revolutionary movement in Ireland on an extraordinary journey from armed insurrection to active participation in government. Now he tells the story of the tumultuous series of events that led to the historic Good Friday Agreement as only he can: with a tireless crusader’s conviction and an insider’s penetrating insight.

In vivid detail, Adams describes the harrowing attack on his life, and he offers new details about the peace process. We learn of previously undisclosed talks between republicans and the British government, and of conflicts and surprising alliances between key players. Adams reveals details of his discussions with the IRA leadership and tells how republicans differed, “dissidents” emerged, and the first IRA cessation of violence broke down. He recounts meetings in the Clinton White House, tells what roles Irish-Americans and South Africans played in the process, and describes the secret involvement of those within the Catholic Church. Then—triumphantly—this inspiring story climaxes with the Good Friday Agreement: what was agreed and what was promised.

Gerry Adams brings a sense of immediacy to this story of hope in what was long considered an intractable conflict. He conveys the acute tensions of the peace process and the ever-present sense of teetering on the brink of both joyous accomplishment and continued despair. With a sharp eye and sensitive ear for the more humorous foibles of political allies and enemies alike, Adams offers illuminating portraits of the leading characters through cease-fires and standoffs, discussions and confrontations. Among the featured players are John Major, Tony Blair, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Jean Kennedy Smith, and Nelson Mandela.

As the preeminent republican strategist of his generation, Gerry Adams provides the first comprehensive account of the principles and tactics underpinning modern Irish republicanism. And in a world where peace processes are needed more urgently than ever, A Farther Shore provides a template for conflict resolution.

About this title

About the Author

About the Author

The president of Sinn Féin since 1983, Gerry Adams has served as a member of Parliament for West Belfast from 1983 to 1992 and from 1997 to the present. Dubbed “a gifted writer” by The New York Times, Adams is the author of numerous nonfiction books as well as a volume of fiction, The Street and Other Stories. He lives in Belfast.

From the Back Cover

Advance praise for A Farther Shore


“A rollicking good read, replete with murder, noble deeds, hilarious mistakes, treachery, and chicanery, from the pen of a nonjudgmental, gifted writer who is a decent, honorable leader, Gerry Adams.”
—Malachy McCourt, author of A Monk Swimming

“The Irish peace process had to overcome decades—if not centuries—of hate, mistrust, and oppression. Its success was a true triumph of the human spirit. No one did more to make it happen than Gerry Adams. A Farther Shore tells you why. It is gripping, moving, and on the money.”
—Congressman Peter King, co-chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee for Irish Affairs

“The refusal to acknowledge the roots of conflict guarantees its perpetuation, whether in Ireland, in Iraq, or on our own shores. Thankfully there are voices—and Gerry Adams will always be among them—who are prepared to penetrate the silence. A Farther Shore is a memoir of a place and a time rather than of a man; Adams, no fool, knows that his story is not the only one. That he has the bravery to pull aside the silence is just one of his gifts. That he has offered us a history with hope is yet another.”
—Colum McCann, author of Dancer: A Novel

From the Inside Flap

He’s been imprisoned, shot at, denounced, shunned, and banned, yet Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams remains resolute in his belief that peace is the only viable option for the Irish people. Adams led the oldest revolutionary movement in Ireland on an extraordinary journey from armed insurrection to active participation in government. Now he tells the story of the tumultuous series of events that led to the historic Good Friday Agreement as only he can: with a tireless crusader’s conviction and an insider’s penetrating insight. <br><br>In vivid detail, Adams describes the harrowing attack on his life, and he offers new details about the peace process. We learn of previously undisclosed talks between republicans and the British government, and of conflicts and surprising alliances between key players. Adams reveals details of his discussions with the IRA leadership and tells how republicans differed, “dissidents” emerged, and the first IRA cessation of violence broke down. He recounts meetings in the Clinton White House, tells what roles Irish-Americans and South Africans played in the process, and describes the secret involvement of those within the Catholic Church. Then—triumphantly—this inspiring story climaxes with the Good Friday Agreement: what was agreed and what was promised. <br><br>Gerry Adams brings a sense of immediacy to this story of hope in what was long considered an intractable conflict. He conveys the acute tensions of the peace process and the ever-present sense of teetering on the brink of both joyous accomplishment and continued despair. With a sharp eye and sensitive ear for the more humorous foibles of political allies and enemies alike, Adams offers illuminating portraits of the leading characters through cease-fires and standoffs, discussions and confrontations. Among the featured players are John Major, Tony Blair, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Jean Kennedy Smith, and Nelson Mandela. <br><br>As the preeminent republican strategist of his generation, Gerry Adams provides the first comprehensive account of the principles and tactics underpinning modern Irish republicanism. And in a world where peace processes are needed more urgently than ever, <b>A Farther Shore</b> provides a template for conflict resolution.

Reviews

Born in Belfast in 1948, Adams has spent his entire life in the nationalist movement and immediately states that he was never a member of the IRA; he similarly denies that Sinn Fein is "the political wing of the IRA." Northern Ireland politics is always a complicated array of facts and contradictions, but Adams has done a workmanlike job of defining events and personalities. He puts the 1988 Gibraltar assassinations of three IRA members squarely at the feet of Margaret Thatcher. And while he excoriates Thatcher and her ilk, he embraces Nelson Mandela ("the greatest political leader of our time"), Steve Bilko, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Rosa Parks and Ho Chi Minh as mentors and heroes. The Good Friday Agreement is at the book's heart. There are many heroes, including Nobel laureate John Hume, Irish Prime Ministers Albert Reynolds and Bertie Ahern, Tony Blair and, most prominently, Bill Clinton. Adams shows how he and his cohorts reached across the Atlantic for help and support. It was Clinton's unilateral 1994 act granting Adams a visa to enter the U.S. that started the peace process rolling. Adams takes us step-by-step through the tense negotiations, which culminated in the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Adams's eighth book is suspenseful, biased, subversive, blunt and often funny. Edifying for both the neophyte and the veteran observer, it will open eyes as to how this master politician thinks and operates. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Although a complete end to the Troubles will require decades of healing, 1998's Good Friday Agreement between the Irish and British governments proved to be a significant step toward peace in Northern Ireland. Nudged along by George Mitchell, Bill Clinton, and the world's spotlight, Downing Street relaxed its longtime unwillingness to negotiate with Sinn Fein, and the IRA relaxed its longtime unwillingness to cease fire. This book is Sinn Fein president Adams' account of a quarter-century of progress and setbacks leading up to the agreement. It also takes issue with the conventional British and media wisdom that Sinn Fein is the "political wing of the IRA." Rather, Adams' Sinn Fein is a social-justice-minded political party that shares the objectives of the IRA while eschewing its violent means, and Adams himself is a passionate yet ultimately peaceful patriot. But violence, by both the IRA and the unionist paramilitary, punctuates his narrative, adding urgency and keeping feelings of progress in check. Yet there's always rhetorical distance between Sinn Fein and these violent acts. Packaged for posterity? Perhaps. But not to obscure the point: this is a story about peace. Brendan Driscoll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

The Hunger Strikes

Sometimes I go to the edge of the world: to the northwest of Ireland, where on dark clear nights the skyscape stretches forever. I'm there now, trying to figure out how to tell the story of the Irish peace process. Here on the edge of Europe, a huge expanse of ocean stretches in front of me to New York and the Americas. Inland, at my back, across rugged mountain ranges lies the road to Belfast. Beyond, separated from Ireland by a narrow sound of water, is Britain.

I try to imagine how it would appear if I were a hundred miles above myself, looking down. I imagine everyone, on a night like tonight, doing all the things that people do on nights like this. I used to get this feeling in Belfast sometimes, occasionally brought on by some street event or incident. The incident might be the entire focus of your attention or indeed of others involved in it or close to it; but if you lift yourself above it, you will see other realities. Yards or streets away, people go on about their lives as if nothing were happening. They have their own concerns and preoccupations, their own priorities. And it would be this way in any case, even if they knew what was happening close at hand. But many of them don't.

Yet the specific, the particular, affects us all. It may connect us all, if only for a minute. Even though we approach it from different realities. Television, that small-picture medium, sometimes has this effect.

Pondering on all of this, I appreciate the need for distance, for a wider context. I feel a need to rise above my reality, and tell this story in a way that allows you to share my experience, my reality. That's the challenge for me.

As I sit here now, reflecting on all that has passed, my mind is crowded with memories, with different and conflicting emotions. How do I make sense of all of this so that it becomes your sense? It's difficult to absorb all that has happened. The reader may think that people close to events have a sense of what's happening, but that's not always the case.

For example, an image has remained with me of a friend of mine, Jim Gibney, in the days after he was released from prison after serving a six-year sentence. This was around March 1988-the month three unarmed IRA volunteers were shot dead by undercover British troops in Gibraltar. When they were being buried some days later in Belfast's Milltown Cemetery, there was a loyalist attack on the mourners at the gravesides. Three people were killed and scores were injured. A day or two later at one of these funerals, two armed undercover British troops who drove into the cortege were seized by the crowd and shot dead by the IRA.

This maelstrom of events-from the killings at Gibraltar through the long journey home of the remains, the Milltown Cemetery killings, and the subsequent killings of the two British soldiers-were among the most frightening, dramatic, tragic episodes of the recent past.

My memory of all of this is vivid, and I will return to it later. But in the course of the attacks, of the panic, the fear, the noise, the screams, the color, the scariness of it all, Gib's presence sticks out. Days before, he had the exhilaration of release from prison. To be pitched into this madness from the relative sanctuary of a prison cell-that was his reality. Those who died, died in a different reality, and those who killed them had their own reality as well.

And all around us-skirting the pandemonium, the killing, the dying-buses and cars whizzed by, people got on with their lives. If you had lifted yourself high above the scene, you could have witnessed all this. But if you stayed in the eye of it, you could see only what was immediate to you.

So why with all else that was happening is it the image of Gib that stays in my mind? Maybe because I thought it was worse for him than for the rest of us. But was it?

In telling the story of the Irish peace process, I can tell only my experience of it, my understanding of it, my role in it. It is not my business to offer an objective account of events or to see through someone else's eyes. Nor is it my responsibility to document these events. My intention is to tell my story. My truth. My reality. My task is to connect this small-picture perspective to a big-picture screen. In trying to write a personal narrative from inside the process, I want also to make sense to the reader standing outside it.

How do you get a sense of all the players, all the organizations, all the twists and turns? How do you convey in a book of this size the history of this period in its context of eight hundred years? How do you stay with the particular, the specific while at the same time rising above it to observe the bigger picture?

I say it is my story. I don't say it will be the full story. It is impossible to see how this tale will unfold. Even as I pen these words, the story is unfolding, still sensitive, still fragile. A happy ending, finally, eventually, it seems to me is more important than a tell-all story now.

Telling my truth is not an excuse for being untruthful. This book is a frank account, essentially a story of change. The change involved is specific: it is personal, it is individual. It is a personal journey, but it is also communal. It is the story of a process which affects not only those who are directly involved, but others who are yards or miles away from it as well.

The process affects all who live on the islands of Ireland and Britain. In looking back on these changes, it is worth noting that they occurred and were influenced by a world also in transition. The road to the end of apartheid in South Africa; the reunification of Germany; the attempt to modernize and the eventual collapse of the U.S.S.R.; the end of the Cold War; the beginning and the end more recently of a peace process in the Middle East.

Getting to an agreement was difficult. Getting that agreement implemented and resolving the consequences of an unprecedented phase of conflict involving the IRA, British forces, and their allies within Irish loyalism is a mighty task indeed. Can a peace process deal with all of this? Clearly that is the hope of those who want it to succeed.

Or will the peace process collapse? That is the intention of those who are against the changes that are required.

But what of the story which has evolved thus far? Where do I start to recount that? Where do I begin to tell my tale?

Perhaps by introducing myself. My name is Gerry Adams. My life began in 1948 in the city called Belfast on the island called Ireland. Belfast is the second city of this island, but it holds fewer than half a million souls. I have lived here all my life. Belfast is a fine city. Its greatest asset is its people. But for all our fine points, we Belfast people are divided in our loyalties, subjected on this account to great difficulties. The last thirty years or so have been very cruel years. I have survived them so far. Many others have not. Friends. Enemies. People I knew well. Others I did not know. It is a wonder to me that we have come through it all.

Division is our middle name. The divisions in Belfast go back centuries. This is not unique. There are many divided cities throughout the world-divided geographically and physically, by religion or by politics or by culture. Even those without apparent political divisions are separated by class. Each city has its poor, its underclass, living cheek to jowl with the less badly off, alongside the more affluent. And so it goes right from the bottom to the top of the social ladder.

But the divisions in our city of Belfast are more obvious than the social divides which separate others. Our city is physically divided from itself. It reflects our island. It too is divided. Both these divisions stem from British government involvement in our country. Most of Ireland is governed by an Irish government based in Dublin in the south. Belfast is in the north, and the north or at least the northeasterly counties-six in all-are at this time within the British state.

It has been this way for eighty years or so. Before that, all of Ireland was under British rule. British rule, or at least the English conquest of the island called Ireland, goes back eight hundred years. The Irish never accepted the conquest. There has always been resistance. Even if at times there was an absence of war, there has rarely been peace. And never justice.

Belfast is a city which loves and hates itself. I have lived here over fifty years, yet there are parts of this small city I do not know. My lack of familiarity with parts of Belfast arises from the reality that I would not be safe in sections of it.

A sad thing, but that is the reality. Parts of Belfast are tough parts indeed. I come from such a place, or at least a place with such a reputation. But whether worthy or not of such titles, tough is only part of any story of any place or any person. The tough place that I come from has many other facets to its character.

Belfast is also kind, dry-humored, scary, openhearted, sectarian, compassionate, and generous. It is a complex place. And Belfast is where this story begins.

I returned there from Long Kesh prison camp in 1977. I had been interned in Long Kesh since 1973. This was my second period of internment-imprisonment without trial. (Internment without trial was used in every decade since the state was established in 1921.) I had first been interned in 1972-for a time on the prison ship the Maidstone, anchored

in Belfast Lough. After protests by those of us imprisoned there, the Maidstone was closed and we were transferred to the cages of Long Kesh. Several months later, I was released by the British and, along with others, flown to London as part of a high-level republican delegation to negotiate a truce. When that initiative failed, I was on the run again, living underground for over a year before being arrested again and returned to Long Kesh.

I am not a violent person. I have often been accused, particularly by my opponents...

Edition details

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0375508155
• ISBN 13: 9780375508158
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 448