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Issue No.12 Spring 2003
The
Supreme Commander
Anthony McIntyre reviews
Ed Moloney’s
‘A
Secret History of the IRA’
Given
the interpretation displayed by many reviewers of Ed Moloney’s book
on the IRA a certain question acquired shape in my mind in relation to
Gerry Adams prior to reading it. It had already been given a verbal form
of sorts elsewhere when Lord Alistair McAlpine asked of Jeffrey Archer
‘how this consummate conman managed to take in so many intelligent
people for so long?’ Could Moloney have veered too close to the ‘great
men of history’ method of constructing our understanding of the past?
Misgivings soon melted.
This book is by far the most comprehensive account, if not of the IRA,
then certainly of matters central to the IRA. Its primary objective is
to establish who kicked the peace process off, when, and what those behind
it intended to achieve through it. The strength of this book is that academia
cannot ignore it in the disdainful manner which so frequently characterises
its approach to ‘journalistic accounts’; and it easily fits
in with the page flicking habits of a much wider audience who wish to
read rather than study a book. Deep without being academically dry, fast
without being journalistically shallow, the book underscores the considerable
skill the author has at his command as he obliterates the gulf that demarcates
journalism from academia.
Moloney
breathes life into history and, while not a ‘trained historian’
(whatever that may be), has produced a book on a par with Anthony Beevor’s
Stalingrad. But more importantly, Moloney stands set to achieve what Beevor
did not aim for - the creation of a new paradigm which will for some time
to come reset the lens through which the phenomenon of Provisional republicanism
will be viewed. This book will shape the discourse on republicanism in
a way that no other has.
In A Secret History of The IRA Ed Moloney sets out to trace the IRA career
of Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams. Adams, of course, refutes any suggestion
that he was ever a member of the organisation and has indeed penned an
autobiography which does nothing to suggest otherwise.
Moloney shows that Adams’s political skill and his internal management
dexterity are to be marvelled at. His ability to present his grassroots
with an abysmal failure with bows on it so that they could then wear the
bows and shout ‘we won’ must be unrivalled in modern times.
Even football supporters know when their team has lost. Moloney traces
this process of management, dissembling, duplicity, linguistic mazes,
brazen conning and parallel but mutually incompatible discursive frameworks
from 1982. That was when Gerry Adams and Alex Reid first sat down in a
tête-à-tête which led to the exploration of alternatives
to armed struggle and ultimately ended with the British state securing
its strategic objectives and the IRA being compelled to acquiesce in that.
This is such a multi-layered book which no reviewer can hope to convey
the intricacy of - Eamon McCann and Fintan O'Toole have come closest yet
- there is so much that is new in it. There are many people who will be
unhappy with it. Although in time to come I suspect that Adams will be
content to recommend the book to all and sundry from the chapters where
he sat down with Alex Reid. Amongst the most unhappy shall be those who
posed as articulate political visionaries or as competent military operatives
who swore never to allow anything remotely resembling the Good Friday
Agreement to come into being. The manner in which they were outmanoeuvred
or worse still bought off through promotion conveys a humiliating image
of the ‘big lad’ patting them on the back while laughing up
his sleeve at them. For reviewers less generous than this one, the term
‘useful idiots’ jumps to mind.
On finishing the book, the answer to the question I had posed myself when
I began reading it was provided again by McAlpine. How did Adams succeed
in outwitting so many? ‘The answer in part is that they wanted to
believe in this - for it appeared to be to their advantage to believe…’
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