Gerry Adams was ‘at most number three on the IRA Army Council at height of The Troubles’ according to former parish priest
Newly declassified files show the priest confided his 'insights' into the IRA to an Irish diplomat
GERRY Adams was a member of the IRA Army Council at the height of the Troubles, according to his former parish priest — but he was actually junior to “sidekick” Martin McGuinness.
Newly declassified files also reveal that the Sinn Fein leader was working on a plan in 1987 for a future Labour government to declare an intention for Britain to withdraw from Northern Ireland.
The strategy, with a time-scale of 25 to 50 years, would be sold to the “war-weary” Army Council in a bid to halt its campaign of violence.
The files, from the Taoiseach’s office, have just been released into the National Archives under the 30-year rule.
They show a former parish priest in Adams’ Ballymurphy neighbourhood in Belfast confided his “insights” into the IRA to an Irish diplomat gathering intelligence to send back to Dublin.
Adams was “at most number three on the Army Council” at the time “but his influence on it is declining”, Fr Forde said, adding Martin McGuinness was “number two”.
Although McGuinness appeared “to be merely a sidekick of Adams”, the priest said he was “in many ways more powerful”.
It was notable that he had “discretion to come to Belfast” to make speeches and organise events but Adams had “no similar discretion in regard to Derry.”
The priest said he didn’t know who was “number one” in the Army Council.
There was a “serious split” in the Council over Sinn Fein ending its abstentionism policy in Ireland, which was worsened by the party’s poor performance in Dail elections.
Mr McGuinness intervened and “swung the matter in Adams favour” but there remained “a lot of discontent ever since”.
Fr Forde said Mr Adams still “goes through the motions” of being a Catholic.
But rather than going to his local Ballymurphy church, he went to Mass at Clonard Monastery.
The “Southern Redemptorists there tend to be more wide-eyed about the Provos” than most Northern priests and “less likely, therefore, to ask him searching questions”.
Adams has always denied membership of the IRA.
PJ McGrory, a well-known Belfast solicitor whose son Barra became Mr Adams’ lawyer and later Director of Public Prosecutions, also met with the Irish diplomat.
He said Mr Adams had spoken to him a number of times about a plan for a future Labour government to declare a British withdrawal with a time-scale of “maybe 25, 40 or even 50 years”.
Mr Adams told him that it was legitimate for Sinn Fein to support “armed struggle” but that he “personally felt entitled to decide that the armed struggle was undesirable at a given point in time”.
“McGrory read this remark in two ways,” according to the files.
“First, Adams disapproves of individual IRA atrocities — though, as he told McGrory subsequently, he will never say so in public ‘the Army Council gives me only so much leeway’).
“And secondly, he favours the political struggle at the present time.”
Mr McGrory said Mr Adams was a “a politician more than a gunman”
He went on: “[Adams] believes, or hopes, that the ‘movement’ will become more and more political as time goes by.
“Despite his professed subservience to the Army Council, the essential reality is whatever Adams says, the Provos will eventually do.”
Mr McGrory said the IRA was “war weary” by 1987 and that Mr Adams feared Catholic west Belfast would be “annihilated” in the event of “a major conflagration in which loyalists on the rampage” would be backed by their own paramilitaries and elements in the security forces.
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Then Bishop Cathal Daly, later head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, told the Irish official that he too heard Mr Adams was working on proposals to halt the IRA campaign.
“While recognising his intelligence and political abilities, Bishop Daly spoke with some vehemence of Adams’ deviousness and fundamental untrustworthiness,” the note added.
Fr Enright, then Superior of Clonard Monastery, told a diplomat that Mr Adams’ attendance at Mass there presented difficulties for Ministers of the Eucharist, “many of whom felt in conscience that they could not give communion to Adams.”