An Open Letter to Gerry Adams

Dolours Price

So, Gerry, it has come to this. Not a lot when all is considered, nothing that didn’t already exist in some form since the creation of the State. Constitutional Nationalism has been a part of Six County politics since forever. Joe Devlin, Eddie McAteer and then the S.D.L.P, now Sinn Fein. Not a lot to see so many people dead for, hardly a resounding victory, not even a resounding compromise. I’d say you were fairly whipped.

I knew you way back when. I thought I knew you. How far you moved from the Republican position over the years has astounded me. How were you lured down the path you conned others to tread behind you? Was it the interfering cleric or the flattery of the Americans; did it go to your head, did the ego soar and at last did you see the possibility that you might be somebody?

I ask none of this in a malicious way but as an observer of the human condition and the individual.

Could it be that least attractive of motives, self promotion. I have watched you carry far more than your share of coffins, I watched as you embarrassingly elbowed people aside inorder that you might put a shoulder under Sean Mac Stiofain (my Chief of Staff). This was a man whose ruination within the Republican Movement you were party to. I call that hypocracy. Was it just a photo opportunity?

Then there is the comfortable lifestyle. You didn’t do it for a couple of houses and a good suit on your back surely? I’m am all curiosity.

The things we have in common from our past, long past, are often in my mind. Now that it is all over bar the final destruction of the weapons I look forward to the freedom to lay bare my experiences unfettered by codes now redundant.

This is the only freedom left to me and those Republicans of like mind.

I should wish you well, Gerry, but my heart is too heavy to feel it and I cannot be a hypocrite. I have no regrets. My trust was abused.