Gerry Adams

B

Election to Parliament

In the British general elections in May 1997, Adams was elected to the British Parliament, along with his deputy, Martin McGuinness. This marked the first time that Sinn Fein had held two seats in the House of Commons. However, because Adams and McGuinness refused to take their seats, they were barred from making use of the House of Commons facilities. In the aftermath of the elections, Adams was vocal in his demands that Sinn Fein be included in the Northern Ireland peace negotiations, saying that his election demonstrated public support for Sinn Fein.

IV

Adams and the Peace Process

In July 1997 the IRA renewed its cease-fire, and after the British government dropped its demands that the IRA completely disarm, Sinn Fein was allowed to join the Northern Ireland peace negotiations. In December Adams met with British prime minister Tony Blair at the prime minister’s official residence. This meeting represented the first time the head of an Irish republican movement had officially met with the British prime minister in London since Michael Collins met Prime Minister David Lloyd George in 1921.

A

Power-Sharing Accord of 1998

As Sinn Fein’s primary representative at the talks, Adams played an important role in drafting the historic power-sharing Good Friday Agreement between Protestants and Catholics in 1998. The accord, which provided for an elected assembly and an executive cabinet to govern the province, was announced on April 10. One month later Sinn Fein declared its official support. In late May the accord was overwhelmingly approved in referendums in Northern Ireland and Ireland. Elections were held in June for the new, 108-member Northern Ireland Assembly. Sinn Fein won 18 seats, finishing fourth behind the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). David Trimble of the UUP became head of the executive cabinet. See also Northern Ireland Conflict.

B

The Path to Disarmament

In September 1998 Adams announced that Sinn Fein considered violence “a thing of the past” in Northern Ireland politics. But despite his public rejection of violent methods, Adams insisted that the IRA would not surrender its arms before Sinn Fein claimed the two seats allocated to it in the executive cabinet. The issue aroused fears of a possible collapse of the peace agreement because Trimble and the UUP refused to appoint any Sinn Fein cabinet members until the IRA began to disarm. Adams was unwilling to compromise on this issue, maintaining that IRA disarmament could not be considered apart from the achievement of other key reforms initiated by the peace process, including a reduction of the United Kingdom’s military presence in Northern Ireland, police reforms, and an end to Protestant domination of the province. The stalemate over IRA disarmament remained a key stumbling block in the peace process. It delayed the formation of the provincial government for more than a year and prompted the British government to suspend the Northern Ireland Assembly several times.

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In October 2001 Gerry Adams and other leaders of Sinn Fein took the unprecedented step of urging the IRA to begin disarmament. The move followed the UUP’s decision to resign from the power-sharing government because of the IRA’s continued unwillingness to disarm. Later that month, the IRA announced that it had begun to decommission its weapons. In November the Northern Ireland Assembly resumed operations with the participation of Sinn Fein and the UUP.

Northern Ireland’s peace process faced a new crisis in October 2002 amid mounting allegations of IRA misconduct. In early October the IRA was accused of using Sinn Fein’s access to government buildings in Belfast to engage in political espionage at Stormont, the seat of the Northern Ireland Assembly and other government institutions. Adams dismissed the allegations as a politically motivated attempt to undermine Sinn Fein’s power within the provincial government. In October the British government again suspended the Northern Ireland Assembly and its executive, reinstating direct rule.

Adams was involved in intense negotiations throughout 2003 seeking to restore the Northern Ireland executive. Although an agreement seemed within reach in October, when the IRA decommissioned more weapons, Trimble’s UUP was still wary of cooperation with Adams and Sinn Fein, and the assembly remained suspended. Nevertheless, elections to the assembly were held in November. The results were a mixed blessing for Adams. Sinn Fein overtook the SDLP to become the largest nationalist party in the assembly, while the DUP, which had long been resolutely opposed to working with Sinn Fein, replaced the UUP as the largest unionist party. Although Sinn Fein held indirect negotiations with the DUP through 2004, and seemingly came close to making a deal, negotiations once again foundered on the question of IRA disarmament. Adams’s ambition to establish Sinn Fein as a constituent part of a self-governing Northern Ireland remained frustrated.

In early 2005 Adams came under pressure to conclusively distance himself from the IRA. In April he called on the IRA to disband, provoking an internal debate that resulted in the announcement in July that the IRA would end its armed campaign. Two months later an independent commission announced that the IRA had completed the process of decommissioning its weapons. In early 2007 a Sinn Fein party convention voted to begin cooperating with the Police Service of Northern Ireland, which is predominantly Protestant, in efforts to maintain law and order.

C

Power-Sharing Accord of 2007

Elections were held in March 2007 for a new Northern Ireland Assembly, which had remained suspended since 2002. The DUP and Sinn Fein again emerged as the two leading parties. Britain announced that the parties must come to an agreement on sharing power, or else the assembly would again be suspended. On March 26 Adams and DUP leader Ian Paisley held their first-ever face-to-face meeting and agreed to forge a joint platform for government. Self-rule was restored in Northern Ireland in May 2007, when the new power-sharing government took office with Paisley as first minister and Sinn Fein negotiator Martin McGuinness as deputy first minister.

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