Gerry Adams: Winning over Unionists a Key Objective

[factual]

Writing in his BLOG, Gerry Adams has set out a strategic vision for Uniting Ireland. Winning over unionist opinion was identified as one of two key objectives (emphasis added):

Freedom is shaped by people – Gerry Adams

Last Friday was spent in the Boyne Valley Hotel in Drogheda where key leadership activists from all levels of Sinn Féin and from all parts of the island, Britain, and the USA came together to discuss the party’s strategy of building toward a united Ireland.


This blog had the honour of opening the day’s proceedings before several keynote speakers set out the multiplicity of tasks before us. Martin McGuinness, Mary Lou McDonald, Caral Ní Chuilin and Lucilita Bhreatnach who has the onerous task of leading our uniting Ireland project, were among those taking part in the workshops and discussions.

The ‘away day’ took place after a very successful conference in the Millennium Forum in Derry. Almost 1000 people, including a sizeable section of unionist opinion, attended that event. The Millennium conference was the sixth in a series that have attracted large numbers of people from every walk of life to capacity packed halls in Monaghan, Dublin, Cork, Galway, Newry and Derry.


Uniting Ireland is Sinn Féin’s key political objective. The Good Friday Agreement and the all-Ireland political institutions are an important step in this direction but more effort is needed.


Suffice to say there are many difficulties and challenges facing us but this blog believes there are also many, many opportunities.


Republicans need to have the confidence to rise to these challenges and to seize the opportunities to advance our cause.


We are republicans, we are socialist republicans. We want to see that type of society shaped on this island. We can’t get that until we get rid of partition. Partition has failed the people of Ireland, north and south, the unionists and the rest of us.


A new agreed Ireland based on the rights of citizens is needed. This is best achieved by unity through reconciliation. That means building on the progress that has been made toward uniting Ireland.


So, this isn’t just an emotional or patriotic or inspirational dream that we have. This is a very hardnosed realisable objective as part of that process of building a new republic.


It is worth going back to read Tone. Read Connolly and Pearse. Take a half an hour and read what Bobby Sands wrote about these big issues.


What they all had in common, and Connolly famously talked about the re-conquest of Ireland by the Irish people, is a recognition that we can’t free Ireland. An elite, a vanguard cannot free Ireland. Obviously there is work for a vanguard. The people who take the initiatives; who take the chances; who make the sacrifices; and who go on the offence, can create the political conditions for change.


But the only true freedom of people is when people shape that for themselves. So this is the big democratic phase of our struggle.


It’s also worth reminding ourselves that this isn’t 1798. This isn’t 1916. This isn’t 1981. So what did all these men and women have in common with us?


They took these core principles of republicanism and they modernised them and made them relevant to their own times. That’s what we have to do – we have to take the core values of our political ethos and make them relevant to our time.


That’s what Friday’s meeting was about.


The fact is Sinn Féin is still too small. Republicans therefore have to punch above our weight. We have to find ways to get the maximum effect, of making the maximum contribution, while at the same time we have to build capacity; build the party; educate; and recruit and fundraise. We have to build the necessary critical mass of activism to make a difference in a very positive way.


We also need cohesion. We need joined-up-ness. We need political integration across the island, from the national down to the local of all of our structures, our programmes of work and our agendas.


We also need to tap into the international good will. Sinn Féin and the broad republican struggle enjoy huge support, sympathy, affection and admiration from progressive people throughout the world, not least in our own diaspora, and it is not limited to our own diaspora. Wherever people struggle for freedom they know about Ireland.


As well as doing all these things we also need time to think. That’s what today’s about. It’s about arguing; it’s about debating; it’s about strategising; it’s about finding ways for us to integrate our uniting Ireland project into our daily work.


Wherever that work is the uniting Ireland objective and process must be part of it. This has to become as natural to
us as breathing.


A new structure is in place within the party leadership to drive this project. So we will continue to come forward with initiatives, events, publications and so on but that has to be integrated into the party as well.


The key objective is to turn the broad emotional, in many cases passive, support for Irish unity, into core political commitment. It’s also to win over a section of unionist opinion and persuade them that Irish unity serves their interests better than partition.


So, Friday’s conference was about raising awareness about how the party integrates this big historic project into our work and to agree a consensus around a number of big things that we can do in the upcoming period.

It was a good days work but only the beginning. There will be other ‘away days’ as this process of integration and cohesion moves up a gear. If you are interested in joining this endeavour than join Sinn Féin and help complete the work of Tone and Emmet, of McCracken and Pearse and Connolly and Sands and Farrell.

[Drogheda445]

I live very near to the Boyne Valley Hotel! Lol!

But anyway, I don't think they can compare to 1916 or 1981 to be honest. They were different circumstances. Now, Sinn Féin have to work on a democratic, constitutional basis, which means continue cooperation and power sharing in Northern Ireland, while building their support in the South.

To reach out to unionists would have to take an immensely different course to what they take now. They would have to appeal to unionists and tell them that under an UI roof, Protestant Orange tradition would be put to the fore as much as the Catholic tradition.

While I don't support Sinn Féin, its good to see them beginning to become more pluralist than they used to be.

[Castle Ray]

factual, I have a suspicion that you actually wrote that press release. The words and phrases contained within it are very similar to the way you write and this press release is hot off the press.

Are you Lucilita Bhreatnach?

[between the bridges]

A new structure is in place within the party leadership to drive this project.

see i told you McMG is the top dog!!!

[factual]

factual, I have a suspicion that you actually wrote that press release. The words and phrases contained within it are very similar to the way you write and this press release is hot off the press.

Are you Lucilita Bhreatnach?

[Castle Ray]

The phrases are identical to your own. I don't believe Adams writes that blog himself so I'm wondering did you write it. A reasonable query given your propaganda posts. Do you have to let it stay on leargas for a week before circulation?

[Roman Emperor]

"It was a good days work but only the beginning. There will be other ‘away days’ as this process of integration and cohesion moves up a gear. If you are interested in joining this endeavour than join Sinn Féin and help complete the work of Tone and Emmet, of McCracken and Pearse and Connolly and Sands and Farrell."

Who is Farrell ?

[Drogheda445]

The phrases are identical to your own. I don't believe Adams writes that blog himself so I'm wondering did you write it. A reasonable query given your propaganda posts. Do you have to let it stay on leargas for a week before circulation?

Who would go to all their time to right up something like that and pretend it was Gerry Adams'? I wouldn't think Factual would, he seems honest enough!

[Cruimh]

Writing in his BLOG, Gerry Adams has set out a strategic vision for Uniting Ireland. Winning over unionist opinion was identified as one of two key objectives (emphasis added):

If you are interested in joining this endeavour than join Sinn Féin and help complete the work of Tone and Emmet, of McCracken and Pearse and Connolly and Sands and Farrell.

Freedom is shaped by people – Gerry Adams

Back to the tired old lie that there was some apostolic continuity between Tone through to Pearse and on to SF's "martyrs"......

Lets see how Tone felt ....

Tone's political philosophy was relatively simple. It had in it two main elements: the first was an unqualified enthusiasm for the ideals of the French revolution; the second, which we have already seen, was a deep hatred of England, with a desire and purpose of revenge. Towards the end of his life Tone had persuaded himself that he had always hated England, but his own writings reveal unmistakeably that this was not so. In fact Tone's hatred of England had in its origin nothing to do with Ireland. It was a personal affair. Tone was snubbed by a British prime-minister and he swore to be avenged. In the last month of his life he still brooded over this grievance, which dated from his student years in London. The snub was Pitt's complete lack of interest in Tone's project to set up a British colony in the Sandwich islands from which 'the colonists should devastate the territories of Spanish America and plunder the churches'. The project, Tone told Pitt, was conceived in 'the daring and invincible spirit of our old buccaneers' and it was to be 'a terror to Spain and the pride of England.' At this time Tone in London decided not to return to Ireland but 'to quit Europe for ever' and to seek his fortune as a soldier with the India Company - incidentally abandoning his wife and child: this was prevented only by an accident of time.

Hatred ?

Another facet of Tone :

The seizure of the Pope by the French brought to Tone in the last year of his life much joy and consolation. 'The Pope is dethroned and in exile', and Tone speaks of

a special Providence guiding.. . the great end of the emancipation of mankind from the yoke of political superstition, under which they have so long groaned.. . to destroy for ever the Papal tyranny.. . the folly and wickedness of the Papal government.. a court so long celebrated for the depth of its cunning and its art and address in steering with whatever wind might blow...

Tone then falls back on Holy Scripture to express his feelings and says:

'"How art thou fallen from Heaven, 0 Lucifer, Son of the morning!"'

The Revelations, Tone tells us, 'have many fine things on this subject touching the "Beast and Babylon". . .' That Tone does not mention the whore is presumably due to his respect for old age, for he adds, 'But I scorn to insult the old gentleman in his misfortune. Requiescat in pace'.
It may be added that Tone never makes any attempt to conceal the fact that high amongst the motives which directed his life and actions was the desire for revenge. It is difficult to understand how Pearse can have persuaded himself that Tone was the greatest of all Irishmen, that he was a prophet chosen by God to speak to the Irish people and that the place where he was buried was the holiest place in Ireland. Wolfe Tone was a very brave man and he gave the supreme proof of his sincerity in the cause to which he dedicated himself; but this must not blind us to the fact that the ideals of this man were not, prima facie, likely to be accepted with enthusiasm by any large number of his countrymen.

SF want to continue the work of Tone then ?

[Cruimh]

Who would go to all their time to right up something like that and pretend it was Gerry Adams'? I wouldn't think Factual would, he seems honest enough!

Ghost writers and speech writers are common.