The Guardian view on the Gerry Adams handshake: a brave act of reconciliation
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Version 0 of 1. The long, smiling handshake between Gerry Adams and Prince Charles, balancing an informal cup of tea in one hand, was a historic moment not only because it was the first such encounter in the Republic since partition. It happened only because each of them was prepared to look beyond old wounds that as Mr Adams, the Sinn Féin president, acknowledged, have not been entirely healed by peace. For both, it was an encounter of personal significance that also challenged the prejudices of their supporters. It was an unusual moment of collective conciliation between a symbol of republicanism and a symbol of British monarchy – and a moment of almost intimate forgiveness. It is more than 35 years since Lord Mountbatten, his grandson Nicholas Knatchbull, 14, and a 15-year-old local boy, Paul Maxwell, were blown up by the Provisional IRA at a time when Mr Adams was what is coyly described as a “leading figure” in the republican movement. At the time, he justified the murders by claiming that Mountbatten was too old a soldier not to be aware of the “danger involved in coming to this country”. On the same day, at Warrenpoint, 17 British soldiers were blown up in another Provisional IRA bomb. Today’s meeting, which took place as Prince Charles began a four-day official visit, was the first in Ireland between any Sinn Féin representative and a member of the royal family since 1922. It was also the first public encounter between Mr Adams and any member of the royal family. But it was always bound to be a complicated, even incomplete, symbol of reconciliation. Unlike his colleague Martin McGuinness, Mr Adams has never offered his own gesture of truth and reconciliation by detailing his precise role in the Troubles. For Prince Charles, with apparent warmth, to shake hands with the man who was at the least an apologist for the murder of Mountbatten, who had been the prince’s lifelong mentor and friend, suggests a very personal and indeed admirable act of forgiveness. Mr Adams attempted to balance the personal nature of the encounter by emphasising Prince Charles’s long connection with the Parachute Regiment, probably the most hated regiment based in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. The Paras were responsible for both Bloody Sunday and the shootings of 10 people, including a priest, at Ballymurphy where Mr Adams lived. But this was more than an attempt to inch the peace process forward among republican hardliners, more even than another move in Mr Adams’ wooing of the Irish electorate with an eye on next year’s elections to the Dáil – although a very public laying to rest of another ghost of the past can only help Sinn Féin win over an increasingly secular electorate that is moving back towards Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. Some observers think it adds up to little more than displacement activity by two old men, neither of whom has any choice but to bide their time. Even so, in a political world so heavily shaped by historical symbolism, their meeting was both brave and constructive. |