John Drennan: Adams turns into proper Charlie in political twilight

SURVIVOR: Charles Haughey 'the great escapologist who skipped away from the phone-tapping, the leadership battles'

John Drennan

December 01 2013 12:33 AM

Gerry Adams is at the point of discovering that very often the greatest moment of danger for any leader of a 'democratic' party occurs when you are seen to be a source of difficulty for future leaders.

And intriguingly, in last week's TV3 documentary on Sinn Fein, it is clear the biggest victim of his contested dark past is his likely successor Mary Lou McDonald.

This was evident in Ursula Halligan's gripping encounter with McDonald as she shopped for prawns in the safe setting of Superquinn.

Most of Sinn Fein's core vote would be as dismissive as Roy Keane when it comes to the prawn sandwich eating brigade, but the positioning and imagery, as is so often the case with McDonald and Sinn Fein was on this occasion superb.

Superquinn Mom shopping for prawns and rustic breads constitutes the dream candidate – and more important still the dream voter – for Sinn Fein, a party that still has too many members who prefer chips, Dutch Gold and batter-burgers.

On this occasion, ironically the respectability of the location actually contributed to McDonald's utterly uncomfortable response to Halligan's probing questions about the legitimacy of the IRA's armed struggle.

Ms McDonald may normally be utterly unflappable but instinctively she sensed the dissonance because Super- quinn is simply not the location where politicians say they support the right to meet force with force.

Ms McDonald also knows that defending Provos in balaclavas is the barrier that will always prevent her from securing the votes of Superquinn Mom.

There was more of it to come for Mary Lou the Superquinn Mom as the ghost of Sinn Fein, or more accurately Mr Adams' past, reached out a skeletal arm for a second time courtesy of the jailing of Liam Adams.

Though poor Mary Lou got busy with the political pooper-scooper again, in a classic case of the old maxim of explaining and losing, her critique of the attempt by Micheal Martin to use ''this traumatic case to try and score political points is absolutely disgraceful'' was as unconvincing as her earlier foostering for Cheerios in the supermarket.

As for Mr Adams, he is becoming the latest politician to learn that the warning of that High Tory Unionist Enoch Powell that ''all political careers, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs'', is one of the immutable laws of politics.

It had been thought that the 'curious' structure of the Sinn Fein hierarchy and Mr Adams' own status as the first war hero in history to never fire a shot in anger meant the SF leaders might evade that particular law.

However, it is a measure of his political decline that increasingly when we gaze at Gerry Adams it is as though the face of Charlie Haughey in his final year in power is looking back at us.

In the case of Mr Haughey there was no single defining moment when we and he knew the jig was up – until it actually was.

The absence of understanding that Gerry too is nudging up against the endgame all democrats must endure is unsurprising for despite the current drab exterior Mr Adams is the most astonishing political leader Ireland has witnessed.

He inspires that fanatical devotion that is the lodestone of the paramilitary soul while the failing Sinn Fein shape-shifter is a more elusive, ruthless and cunning leader than Haughey at his peak.

That is no mean achievement, for prior to his great fall Mr Haughey was the most fabulous and exotic political creature the Irish Republic had thrown up.

The former Taoiseach had survived the Arms Trial and the near treasonable behaviour in Cabinet that had led to that trial while personal bankruptcy had only been held at bay by the rather unique strategy of telling the banks to go and f**k themselves.

That was only the half of it though for the great escapologist skipped away from the phone-tapping, the leadership challenges, the PDs, the improbable lifestyle, the destruction of the economy, the faint taint of the dark that eternally followed him, the abandoning of his most loyal lieutenant Brian Lenihan and, even, the abandonment of FF's core value of no coalition.

Then, in what appeared to be the blink of an eye, Haughey became a hollow man.

He still looked the same, still moved in that sinuous manner and still talked in precisely the same menacing though slightly ornate way, but the hounds of history had finally, after the longest of chases, begun to catch up.

The endgame was still fraught, but, like Edgar Allen Poe's famous tell-tale heart, the drumming of his past misdeeds became ever louder until finally the great chameleon was so denuded of authority a political ghost called Sean Doherty was enough to finish the job.

Of course, Mr Adams has hidden in full view for far longer than even Mr Haughey and he has had far greater sins to hide.

And just like Charlie, who created a Gatsby-style palace of deceit to sustain the illusion of Haughey the modern Irish chieftain, Mr Adams has created a veritable Taj Mahal of illusion to hide the more crimson weave of his past associations.

Within a Dail populated essentially by bank clerks and school teachers Mr Adams is unique for he is no mere TD or politician.

Gerry instead, is a literary figure, an author, a philosopher, a Buddhist who hugs trees and perhaps most important of all, a form of international celebrity.

As with Haughey, Mr Adams' authority is also enhanced by the manner in which he is surrounded by

rumour, fear and, in some cases, awe, for he is – depending on your point of view – either Ireland's last living war hero or a war criminal.

Of course just like Haughey in his final year, Mr Adams has made it clear he intends to go on and on like one of those Chinese leaders.

But intriguingly, just like Haughey too, it is the women that have done for Adams.

When it came to Haughey, the signature moment which signalled the grass had begun to grow under his feet was the election of Mary Robinson.

In the case of Mr Adams, the first woman who has been the catalyst for his endgame is the unquiet ghost of Jean McConville.

Suddenly after a long hiatus, a young country of Google employees and Superquinn Moms are freshly disgusted by the Grimm gothic tales of Mr Adams' history.

It is a measure of his political abilities that for two decades, like Shakespeare's hunchbacked Richard III, Mr Adams has managed to evade all allegations about his ''naked villainy, With odd old ends stol'n out of holy writ; And seem a saint, when most I play the devil".

But suddenly, however, like Haughey in 1991, that trait has become increasingly hard to maintain for a leader who is becoming an anachronism in a country that has moved decisively towards modernity.

As the ghosts of the Disappeared and in particular Jean McConville haunt the political tent of Mr Adams ever more noisily, it appears that the once indestructible one will have to face a very long winter of discontent if he is sticking to that old plan of hanging around until 2016.

Though SF Nua is not short of political sharks there is no equivalent of Albert waiting hungrily in the wings ... yet.

But, no one more than Mr Adams will know that SF is now above all things a party of pragmatists.

They have had to be to get to where they are now from where they once were.