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“... out of a kaleidoscope of groups stretching from Ian Paisley’s branch of the Unionists through to Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness and whoever they officially or unofficially represent. Typically, this ‘peaceful solution’ seems to involve shuffling Northern Ireland into a closer relationship with the Irish Republic and trying to get the spectrum of ...”

“... value for going into the ring in the world of lies and violence with the likes of Dick Cheney, Gerry Adams, Vladimir Putin, Jacques Chirac or Robert Mugabe, none of whom has anything to learn from anyone about the uses of power. Advisers are always at hand. But Blair has chosen on the whole to be surrounded by trusted acolytes rather than ...”

“... Add to that dungaree-wearing list the Troops Out movement and Livingstone’s invitation to Gerry Adams to come to County Hall ‘to discuss how the war might be ended’, and who can wonder that he got up so many noses in the 1980s: so far up, in Mrs Thatcher’s case, that in one of her most dictatorial moments she abolished the GLC and sold off ...”

“... recognise them as prisoners of war rather than regular inmates. The IRA leadership, which included Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, wanted a show of strength and it was perfectly willing to see its men starve themselves to death to make its point. The more intransigent the British were, the better, since the IRA was confident it had the greater appetite ...”

“... the case of Haiti – and to take another crack at the Clinton who has offended him by meeting Gerry Adams, and so can do nothing right – he has his deadly thrust at the ready: ‘The year 1994 is a lot more like Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four than the chronological 1984 was. Operation Restore Democracy is a masterpiece both of Newspeak and ...”

“... and perhaps an apology, however belated, for past intolerance. ‘We were all to blame,’ Gerry Adams is fond of saying these days, referring to all manner of atrocities, from mass slaughter to the covering up of child abuse; and, however reluctantly, one must agree with him. What the pre-1916 vivid-faced idealists would have made of ‘Dev’s ...”

“... The Labour vote is bunched: the five largest majorities in Great Britain are in Labour seats (only Gerry Adams in West Belfast equals the biggest of them) and are where we would expect them – on Merseyside, on Clydeside and in Inner London. Which is why Labour won 258 seats with such a small proportion of the vote: single-member constituency systems ...”

“... harbour here). Both parties are working hard to achieve this: the newspapers report a speech by Gerry Adams saying that the IRA needs to be wound up as a paramilitary force in order to stop the Unionists using its existence as an excuse for not sharing power with Sinn Fein. And among growing signs that positions may be shifting on both sides, Jeffrey ...”

“... and elsewhere. Anyone who has seen Ian Paisley preaching in a darkened mission hut in Africa, or Gerry Adams walking up the steps of Stormont in an Armani suit will appreciate that politics can go beyond itself into that almost transcendental grotesquerie that is the antic. As I write Mrs Thatcher has just addressed the Tory Party Conference, head and ...”

“... of leadership we had.’ Indeed, on his account, everyone was heroic: David Trimble, Ian Paisley, Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, Bertie Ahern, John Hume, even Seamus Mallon and Mark Durkan of the SDLP and David Ervine of the Progressive Unionist Party. This also seems too good to be true. Was this really the golden age of Irish politics, akin to the ...”

“... could afford to ignore. It is said that on the night before he decided to grant a visa to Gerry Adams, Bill Clinton watched a film about the catastrophic injustice inflicted on one Irish family by the British state. Here, Lord Scarman and Lord Devlin, retired law lords, joined Cardinal Hume, the head of the Catholic Church in England, in ...”

“... the Government had all along been engaged in dialogue not with the mere ‘pseudo-terrorist’ Gerry Adams but with the IRA itself, via intermediaries specifically authorised to act on its behalf. If this did not breach Questions of Procedure for Ministers, then it is hard to know how its guidance can ever be disregarded. When Ian Paisley drew this to ...”

“... public opinion. The Presidential election of 1800, in which Jefferson trounced the incumbent John Adams, witnessed an outpouring of newspaper and pamphlet comment directed against his religious indifferentism. Could he be so sure that an atheist would neither pick his pocket nor break his leg? Soon after his death, a fellow Virginian, ‘Black Horse ...”

“... America is not usually sympathetic, as one recent comment, prompted by the success of the latest Adams visit, illustrates: ‘the East Coast Irish political circus ... is posturing, tribal, self-indulgent and unhelpful. It’s old-fashioned and it’s lazy’ (the Guardian). A horrible hybrid, particularly offensive to British tastes, has been ...”

“... spread round on middle-class T-shirts. As I write, the federal Aboriginal Affairs minister, Gerry Hand, announces his individual boycott of the official programme, and his intention to participate in Aboriginal demonstrations of protest. Then he has to decide whether he’ll go to official black events, like the opening of Imparja. The opposition calls ...”