Gerry Adams is the pre-eminent republican activist of our times. A former President of Sinn Féin, he served as MP for West Belfast and as a TD in the Dáil over a four-decade period of frontline elected politics.
He is the author of several books including Before the Dawn, The Street and Other Stories and Falls Memories. His latest collection of short stories The Witness Trees will be published in the autumn.
He describes himself as "an optimistic and hopeful activist" and publishes a famed Twitter account.
ON International Women’s Day, history was made when two statues were unveiled at the front of Belfast City Hall to two formidable Irish republican women – Mary Anne McCracken and Winifred Carney. Despite the cold, hundreds of people gathered for the ceremony to applaud these two fearless women and this important initiative by Belfast City Council.
THE last two weeks have seen an increase in the conversation that has been growing around Irish unity. Sinn Féin’s Commission on the Future of Ireland held two packed, public hearings in Fermanagh and West Tyrone; Friends of Sinn Féin in the USA, the AoH and a range of other Irish American organisations had a hugely successful Irish Unity Summit in New York; the Irish Echo in New York editorialised on the imperative of a united Ireland; and Ireland’s Future produced a major report, ‘Ireland 2030’, which set 2030 as the date to hold the unity referendum promised in the Good Friday Agreement.
I HAVE spent many enjoyable afternoons in Casement Park watching countless football and hurling games – and playing in some of them. I have lost count of my Man of the Match triumphs. Especially for St Mary's or Belfast Schools in hurling. Or on Sports Days. In the past the stand and terraces or raised mounds around the pitch provided a wonderful view of the contests. Some games attracted a few hundred spectators while others were watched by enthralled thousands.
ON Sunday last I spoke at the 40th anniversary commemoration of the killing by the SAS of IRA Volunteers Henry Hogan and Declan Martin in Dunloy, County Antrim. Declan was 18. Henry was 20.
IN the 1970s the IRA shot dead and secretly buried a number of people. This is a terrible legacy of that period of our history. The families of those killed have suffered a grievous injustice. Republicans, including the IRA, recognise and have acknowledged this fact. What happened was wrong and unjustifiable.
THE restoration last Saturday of the political institutions and the election of Michelle O'Neill as First Minister marks an extraordinary turning point in the process of constitutional change for the North and for the island of Ireland. It is a significant new chapter in the transitional process of change that began with the peace process. Last Saturday something fundamental happened.
COMHGHAIRDEAS Kneecap as an rath a bhí ar bhur scannán ag Féile Scannán Sundance.
THE question 'Will he or won’t he?' has yet to be answered. Will Jeffrey Donaldson provide the leadership needed to persuade his party to go back into the Executive or, as Michelle O’Neill pondered at last week’s meeting of the Assembly, have we seen the final sitting of the Assembly?
ISRAEL'S genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank passed the 100-day mark at the weekend. By the time this column is published the number of dead at the hands of Israel’s war machine is likely to have passed 25,000, mostly women and children. That’s almost equivalent to the entire population of Newry wiped out.
RICHARD has insisted that I write a little bit about the death of Frank Kitson. Kitson, British Army general and leading advocate of counter-insurgency operations and collusion between state forces and death squads, died last week. I have written about him many times. I am sure his death will be mourned by those within the British system whom he served over many decades in defence of the Empire. He was rewarded with medals, a knighthood and military promotions. He was for a time Commander-in-Chief of UK Land Forces and from 1982 to 1985 he was Aide-de-Camp General to the British Queen.
BEST wishes and blessings to you all in 2024. It is shaping up to be a decisive year that will determine the political direction of travel for this island for the next ten years – and possibly even longer.
I DID a book signing for Christmas at An Fhuiseog’s stand in the Kennedy Centre. It was a pleasant hour of banter and craic, meeting old friends and making new ones. Gerry Kelly was there just before me but he escaped when I arrived. So it was just me and the punters. And RG and Maggie, who was selling all matter of gifts for An Fhuiseog.
I AM recommending this new book – Togáil Croí by Seán Mitchell – as a great Christmas present for you, dear reader, and for someone you love. It is bilingual and very accessible. Irish and English columns side by side, page by page. It is beautifully designed, colourful and with many graphics and photos as befits a book which celebrates the work of the people it is about.
LAST Sunday was the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was a response to the horror of the Second World War, and in particular the Holocaust of European Jews, trade unionists, gay people, socialists and others the Nazi regime regarded as inferior. Its first sentence encapsulates what many hoped would be the dawn of a new era: ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.’
SHANE MacGowan was a friend of West Belfast. Back in 1988 in the wake of the killings of IRA Volunteers Mairead Farrell, Dan McCann and Sean Savage in Gibraltar, and the killing of other citizens at their funerals and the killing also of IRA Volunteer Kevin McCracken in Turf Lodge, this community was subjected to a vicious full-frontal tsunami of vilification on the back of decades of demonisation and discrimination.