Martin McGuinness wanted Gerry Adams to step aside as Sinn Féin leader after brother’s abuse case

Martin McGuinness orchestrated a move to have Gerry Adams temporarily stand down as leader of Sinn Féin in 2013 during a controversy about the sexual abuse of Mr Adams’ niece by his brother, according to claims in a forthcoming book.

Mr Adams declined to comply with the suggestion, however, and marshalled party allies to defeat the move.

He confirmed to The Irish Times last night that McGuinness, who died in 2017, had “offered to step in for me if I needed some time”.

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The revelation is contained in The Long Game, a new book on Sinn Féin by journalist Aoife Moore, due to be published next week by Sandycove.

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Mr Adams was Sinn Féin leader for 35 years from 1983 to 2018, when he handed over the leadership of the party uncontested to Mary Lou McDonald. He led the party away from its traditional policy of abstentionism, contesting elections in the Republic and eventually taking seats in the Dáil.

After many years of armed conflict in which more than 3,000 people died, he was also one of the principal architects of the peace process, leading the republican movement away from its campaign of violence to exclusively peaceful methods in pursuing its political goals. Though he has always denied being a member of the IRA, this claim is widely disbelieved and contradicted by several former IRA members.

Mr Adams’s leadership was always publicly uncontested. However, the new book relates in detail how McGuinness believed Mr Adams should temporarily step aside as leader in 2013 when his brother Liam was convicted of raping his daughter Áine over a six-year period, beginning when she was four years old.

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Mr Adams had earlier admitted that he was aware of the abuse, which had first been reported to the then Northern police, the RUC, in 1987. Áine Adams has been extremely critical of her uncle in relation to the case and told her story in a television documentary, the UTV Insight programme, in 2009.

At the time the documentary was aired, the Adams family revealed that Gerry Adams snr, father to Gerry and Liam Adams and grandfather to Áine, had sexually abused members of his family.

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Martin McGuinness being escorted back to the Bridewell on January 1st, 1973, after appearing before the Special Criminal Court in Dublin on a number of charges, some of which related to the Offences Against the State Act. Photograph: Paddy Whelan / The Irish Times

After Liam Adams’s conviction in 2013, the new book relates, there was significant unease in Sinn Féin about the damage being done to the party by criticism of Gerry Adams’s role in the affair, not least by his niece.

At a meeting of senior Sinn Féin officials in the party’s headquarters at Dublin’s Parnell Square, the book says, McGuinness suggested that Mr Adams could step aside. Referencing police investigations, McGuinness said: “I think Gerry could stand down for the course of one of these investigations. I’m only throwing that out, just a suggestion.”

But the party leader, backed by allies who accompanied him to the meeting, strongly resisted the move.

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“The meeting never fully got off the ground,” the book relates. “And Adams remained in charge. Those who sat around the table walked away having received a lesson in how not to take on Gerry Adams.”

In response to a query from The Irish Times, Mr Adams said: “This was a hugely traumatic time for my family but especially for my niece. I was giving evidence against my brother in court and he was later convicted. Myself and Martin spoke about it often, conversations which were always supportive and compassionate.

“On one occasion he offered to step in for me if I needed some time. I was grateful for the solidarity but was able to continue working. I will always be thankful for the bonds of friendship with Martin over a lifetime.”

• Aoife Moore, author of The Long Game, will be in conversation with Irish Times political editor Pat Leahy for an Inside Politics podcast at the Electric Picnic this Sunday at midday.