Voices from the Grave: Two Men's War in Ireland by Ed Moloney Read Free Book Online

split on the same issue, abstentionism, as the IRA had two weeks earlier, but confusion surrounds Adams’s disposition that weekend. He would later claim that he was barred entry to the Sinn Fein conference, or ard-fheis, because he didn’t have the correct credentials, thus missing the divisive debate on abstentionism, and instead went off to join an anti-apartheid demonstration at the Ireland versus South African Springboks rugby international. But that version is undermined by the fact that the abstentionism debate happened on a Sunday while the rugby match was the day before.
    One eyewitness, Official IRA Belfast Adjutant Jim Sullivan, an ardent supporter of the Goulding wing and admittedly a hostile witness, claims that Adams was in the hall, seated beside him when the crucial vote came and that he stayed in his seat when the anti-Goulding faction walked out in protest to set up Provisional Sinn Fein. The first President of Provisional Sinn Fein, Ruairi O Bradaigh, recalls that Adams was not at the meeting afterwards thatformally launched the new party, which is where he would likely have been had he been part of the walk-out. While reluctance to break from what was once the mainstream IRA was fairly commonplace at the time – units in County Tyrone, for instance, who later provided some of the most militant Provisional activists, did not change sides until well into 1971 – all this was enough to feed speculation in the intervening years that Adams was waiting to see which of the two IRAs got most support in Belfast before casting his lot. Whatever the truth, the bulk of pre-split IRA units in Belfast, with the exception of the Lower Falls, had aligned with the Provisionals by the spring of 1970, fifteen out of sixteen companies according to one count, and by that time Adams had thrown his hat into the Provo ring. 17
    Brendan Hughes remembers meeting Gerry Adams for the first time in early 1970 and again shortly afterwards, and both times was impressed with what he saw.
    I met Gerry for the first time in Osman Street [in the Lower Falls area] during rioting and Gerry was at the corner of Osman Street directing the rioters … At that time, I didn’t know who he was, but he certainly stuck out as a leader because he was able to control and he was able to direct. I can’t remember if he threw anything but he certainly directed everybody else to do it. That was my first contact with Gerry. A few weeks later there were riots taking place in Ballymurphy and Billy McKee sent us up there with guns. We took a few short arms, a rifle, and we walked up the Falls Road into Bally murphy. —— was with me and we were there to give back-up power [to the rioters] with weapons. But Gerry directed us to this house … and he ordered us not to leave it. So we sat there all night while the riots were going on. We were wearing holsters and, you know, we were busting to get into the action, to shoot British soldiers. But Gerry’s attitude at that time was he wanted to keep the rioting going. He didn’t want any gunfire. It was the first sign of conflict between Adams and McKee. Billy [McKee] was Belfast Commander and had ordered us to go there but Adams was the O/C in Ballymurphy … If there had been any sort of contact there between McKee and Adams, we wouldn’t have been sent into Ballymurphy in the first place .
     
    That incident took place in April 1970, after British troops had bowed to pressure from the Unionist government and forced an Orange parade through part of Ballymurphy. The estate, which is quite close at one spot to the strongly Loyalist Shankill Road area, had once been mixed, but since the violence of August 1969, Protestants had been moving out in growing numbers, some because of intimidation, others because they expected it. Orangemen believed that even though the area was no longer a Protestant district, they still had the right to march along what once had been a traditional route. Local Catholics objected