Gerry Adams, Before the Dawn

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Gerry Adams, Before the Dawn: An Autobiography, London, 1996, pp. 202-6.

When it came to the talks in London, I consciously dressed down for the occasion. I couldn’t have dressed up anyway, but there was a hole in my pullover, and I was aware of it. In my juvenile arrogance and ignorance, I thought that was appropriate. When we reached Derry we learned that the night before the IRA had arrested some British soldiers. Contrary to speculation later, this had nothing to do with our meeting. The soldiers were not hostages, but they were extremely lucky that their incursion into Free Derry had happened at such a sensitive time. As it turned out, they were held until shortly before our return.

We were taken by bus, accompanied by British officials and plainclothesmen, one at least of whom was armed, as was Séan Mac Stiofáin and another of our group. On the way we were held up by a herd of cattle, and it occurred to me rather wryly that the best laid plans of government spooks could founder in the face of a herd of cattle and a farmer who wasn’t going to be hurried by anybody. Then we were taken by helicopter on a trip which I naturally compared with the very different flight a few months earlier when I had been brought from prison ship to internment camp. This was a wonderful flight on a beautiful day over verdant countryside and the Glenshane Pass. On our arrival at Aldergrove, Belfast’s civil and military airport, the plainclothesmen, anxious that we should not be spotted, tried to rush us on to a waiting military aeroplane, but we were not about to be rushed.

We landed at Benson RAF airport in Oxfordshire, and were then transferred to two limousines. At Henley-on-Thames we stopped: Seamus Twomey wanted to go to the toilet; I asked him to get me some cigarettes while he was at it. We meanwhile went for a brief dander. Seamus was away for what seemed to be a very long time and this caused consternation amongst our minders, who were frantically phoning and using their radios. Eventually Seamus strolled back, totally unconcerned and at his ease, remarking on how pleasant the place was.

We arrived at 96 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, the home of Paul Channon, and entered quite a large house. I went into the bathroom, which was very untidy, with sheets in the bath, and I wondered whether the person who owned the house hadn’t been given much notice. Whitelaw arrived late, and there seemed to be an effort to have the meeting proceed without him, but our side wouldn’t have that. When he came in he struck me as florid and flustered; his hand was quite sweaty.

The two delegations were a considerable study in contrasts. William Whitelaw, ‘Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for Northern Ireland’, was a Scottish landowner; Paul Channon, a millionaire Guinness heir, was minister of state at the Northern Ireland Office; they were accompanied by the civil servants Frank Steele and Philip Woodfield. On our side were Seán MacStiofáin, the ex-RAF republican; Dáothí Ó Conaill, a teacher; Seamus Twomey, a bookies’ runner; Marin McGuinness, a butcher’s assistant; Ivor Bell, a plasterer’s labourer, and myself; we also had a notetaker Myles Shevlin, a solicitor.

There was a normal exchange of documents and a formal exchange of views. Whitelaw opened by announcing: ‘I hope that the trust set between us is reinforced by this meeting. I record that the histories of our two countries give the Irish grounds for suspicion. I hope that in me you will see a British minister you can trust. Look on me as a man who will not make a promise that he will not keep.’

In the course of our meeting Seán Mac Stiofáin led the presentation of the republican position, supported by Dáothí Ó Conaill and the others. Seán read a prepared statement outlining our demands for Irish self-determination; a public declaration by the British government of the right of all the people of Ireland acting as a unit to decide the future of Ireland; a declaration of intent to withdraw British forces from Irish soil by 1 January 1975; pending this, the immediate withdrawal of British forces from sensitive areas; a general amnesty for all political prisoners in both countries, for internees and detainees, and for people on the wanted list. Our interim demands were for the release of internees; the repeal of the Special Powers Act; the removal of the ban on Sinn Féin; no more oaths of allegiance to the crown; and proportional representation for all elections in the north.

It was inevitable that there would be a certain amount of tension in the course of our discussions, and there were two small eruptions. In one Seamus Twomey, making a point with characteristic forcefulness, shouted and thumped the table. The other came when Whitelaw remarked ridiculously that British troops would never open fire on unarmed civilians. Martin McGuinness laid into him strongly about the killings on Bloody Sunday. Martin was a year or so younger than I was, and even then he was well-known and highly respected in his own community. Although I didn’t know him well, I was impressed by his straightforwardness; like me he had a lot to learn, but he was candid about this. Tall and with curly fair hair, he came from a large family in the Bogside. I had met him in Derry behind the barricades along with Seamus Twomey. Free Derry was practically a liberated area, and while the events of Bloody Sunday had had a profound effect on most Irish people, they had been particularly traumatic for Derry people in a way which was more than a normal consequence of such savagery.

As I recall, some of the best interventions in the meeting were those of Myles Shevlin. I played very little part in the meeting myself, but when they were arranging for the second meeting, I asked that we adjourn. We went into another room to discuss matters amongst ourselves.

‘Jesus, we have it!’ said Seán Mac Stiofáin.

But that was the complete opposite to what I thought. I argued that we should insist on less time before the next meeting. Following our adjournment an agreement was arrived at regarding the timing. The Brits said that they’d consider and meet again in a week. Meanwhile, it was agreed that the IRA and British army would both have the freedom of the streets and the IRA could bear arms — openly displaying them in republican areas only.

Whitelaw was stressing the need to keep our discussions private, and he said that if news of our meeting got out, ‘All bets are off.’

Riled by his arrogance, I responded quickly: ‘That means all bets are off, then.’

A British official accompanied us on the flight home and spoke more to Dáothí Ó Conaill than anyone else. He spoke about the unionists, asking what we were going to do about them. As regards their military operations in Northern Ireland he said: ‘We can accept the casualties; we probably lose as many soldiers in accidents in Germany.’ This, of course, was completely untrue, but perhaps it spoke eloquently of their attitudes to their own soldiers.

The meeting had been, I felt, part of the British government’s exploratory approach, motivated by the fact that they had only recently imposed direct rule in the north. They had shown no sign of conceding republican demands, and I took a fairly absolutist position regarding these demands. I was conscious of the historical nature of the negotiations. We were in a direct line of descent from the republicans of 1920 — the last time such discussions had occurred — but they had represented a revolutionary government with massive support. A lot had changed since then.