I believe Gerry Adams when he insists that he is not a member of the IRA as much I believe him when he says he wasn't responsible for the murder of Jean McConville, writes Kevin Myers.
We should, in all fairness, give equal credence to all his assertions. His not being a member of the IRA was, no doubt, the reason why he was interned in 1972. The British, in all their generosity, simply wished to bring a bit of culture and civilisation - in the person of one Gerard Adams - to the IRA prisoners in Long Kesh.
Then the British released him so that he could join an IRA delegation to London. This wasn't because he was in the IRA. Not at all. Quite the opposite. The IRA wanted a statesman in their midst who could bring an enlightened and cultured world view to the negotiations - if you like, the Erskine Childers of his time.
So, since he was never in the IRA, he couldn't have been in charge of the second battalion of the Belfast Brigade, the group which kidnapped Jean McConville. I believe his assertions of innocence of the abduction, torture, murder and secret burial of this poor woman with the same power and same conviction that I believe he was never a member of the IRA. The two statements exist on an identical level of truth.
Since he had nothing to with the IRA, he could never have had anything to with Bloody Friday, and those who say he organised the deadliest day in Belfast since the second World War are as wrong as those who say he was in the IRA. Nine people died and hundreds were injured as two dozen bombs exploded within minutes; but Gerry Adams had absolutely nothing to do with it. Nothing. We know this because he said so.
And because he had nothing whatever to do with the IRA, he did not develop an obsession about emulating Michael Collins, and all appearances to the contrary are misleading. So, on October 2nd, 1972, he had nothing whatever to do with the abduction of Seamus Wright and Kevin McKee from Ballymurphy. Both men were later murdered, presumably after torture and interrogation, and buried secretly. Moreover, Gerry Adams had nothing to do with the shooting the same day of Patrick Bonner in Broadway, off the Falls Road. All three were murdered because they were "informers". But not on Gerry Adams's instructions. Absolutely not.
Equally, Gerry Adams had nothing whatever to do with the attacks on the British army undercover unit, the Four Square Laundry, that same day. In his account of that IRA operation in his autobiography, Gerry Adams wrote: "On October 2 1972 the IRA struck in Twinbrook, killing the driver of the van and two operatives in the ceiling compartment. At the Antrim Road massage parlour, they killed two more operatives. It was a devastating blow, on a par with Michael Collins's actions against British intelligence in 1920."
A bit of an exaggeration, because only one soldier was killed: but it's easy to understand how such an enthusiastic account might give the uninformed outsider the impression that Gerry Adams was actually writing about the Four Square Laundry operation with a boastful, even proprietorial pride. Couldn't be further from the truth. He was, in fact, at home that day, knitting Aran sweaters and whistling plaintive Gaelic melodies through his teeth.
He was probably doing something equally blameless - learning to play the harp, or mastering the fine art of tapestry - when he was arrested yet again, and imprisoned once more, again to improve the level of conversation in the Maze Prison (as Long Kesh had become). For by this time, the British had become greatly concerned about the morale of their IRA prisoners. They seemed so down in the dumps. They needed a James Joyce in their midst; and Gerry Adams was the solution to the problem.
He also taught needlepoint, and gave lessons in water-colours. His attempts to introduce life-drawing classes came to naught, however, after the South Derry units mutinied. They had never taken off their Y-fronts even in the showers or on their wedding nights; and they weren't going to be seen posing in the nude for hot-shot fancy-pants sophisticates from Ballymurphy. You can take the man out of Swatragh, but you'll never pry him from his beloved underwear, no matter its age.
So Gerry Adams spent a blameless few years in the Maze, even adding flower arranging and ballroom dancing to the prison curriculum. However, he excused the South Derry boys from these classes, and encouraged them to paint pictures of their loved ones - merino or blackface, it didn't really matter.
Then one day he was freed, and he absolutely didn't go back to the IRA, because he'd never been there in the first place. So he wasn't commanding officer of the IRA in Belfast when it firebombed a collie-lovers dinner at La Mon House, burning 12 screaming Protestants alive. He therefore has absolutely nothing to condemn himself for there at all. Nothing.
And Bertie Ahern and Michael McDowell should be ashamed of themselves - ashamed - for suggesting that that he has a paramilitary background.
The opposite is the case. He has spent the past 35 years mastering Haydn string quartets, teaching formation-movement to tropical fish, and collecting the stamps of Panama and Paraguay. It is time for these truths to be reasserted, and time, moreover, to let all those nasty bygones of the Troubles be bygones; except, that is, when the Brits were responsible.