In his 1996 autobiography Before the Dawn, Gerry Adams reveals that his parents completed the papers for assisted passage to Australia but were turned down when it was discovered that Gerry Senior had a prison record for teenage republican activities. It is intriguing to speculate on what might have happened to the eldest of the ten children in that family if they had been brought up in Sydney or Melbourne. It is not fanciful to imagine that, given his record in the cauldron of Northern Ireland politics, the young Gerry would have become involved in public affairs in this country and might have progressed to the highest level. What is certain is that he would have had more opportunity to develop his considerable talents as a writer and might now be one of Australia’s most successful authors.
Hope and History is an account of the long, gruelling journey towards the uneasy peace in modern Ulster. It is the writing that strikes you first. This is the kind of book that is hard to put down. One wants to learn how this setback is dealt with; whether that sequence of tit-for-tat killings will derail the process; how in the aftermath of Enniskillen, Canary Wharf, Greysteel and a dozen other atrocities and in the face of condemnation from church, state and media, people still don’t give up. This is endurance raised to a cardinal virtue, described in prose that mixes tension, humour, emotion and honesty.
In Before the Dawn Adams describes a time in the 1970s when there was bloody strife between the Official and the Provisional IRA. Father Alex Reid, a Redemptorist priest from the local Clonard monastery, was acting as a peacemaker and suggested at a particularly tense point that they should pray to the Holy Ghost. Fr Reid appears here again, older and a nervous breakdown later, but now a central figure, a go-between trusted by all sides and a loyal critic-friend of Adams.
It would be difficult to overestimate the significance of what Gerry Adams has achieved in Ulster. When one compares the story with similar ethno-religious feuds in other parts of the world—the Balkans, the Middle East, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, a dozen forgotten places in Africa—the miracle of six years of fragile peace between long-lasting enemies becomes a wonder. It is still not secure, of course. It is like the alcoholic who can only take one day at a time