Gerry Adams - MLA PERSONAL INFORMATION

Born:6th October 1948, in West Belfast. The oldest of ten children. Married with Wife, Colette McArdle; and has 3 children. His father was a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) who was shot and imprisoned by British forces. His mother came from a family of prominent Irish revolutionaries and nationalists. Son, Geroid, 23 in 97, played Gaelic for Co Antrim (97)

AGE: Approx 51 years 2001

QUALIFICATIONS: Unemployed Barman all his life

A convicted IRA bomber has said that the Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams was "my commanding officer" at the time of the bombing. (says) Dolours Price, who with her sister Marion was convicted of involvement in a four car-bomb attack on London on March 8, 1973, made the claim at a republican event in February, according to witnesses.- Irish Echo Newspaper Corp March 2001

His father was jailed in the 1940s for shooting at the RUC. His Mothers family name is Hannaway. He grew up in Ballymurphy, has been an active republican since he was 17 years of age (1965). In 1983 , Gerry was also elected as a Minister of Parliament from West Belfast. But refused to take his seat in Westminster because of the compulsory oath of allegiance to the British Queen.

A former barman, the Sinn Fein president comes from a strongly republican family. In security circles, it is believed he has held senior positions in all branches of the republican movement, including the IRA, but he has never been convicted of membership of that organisation. Interned by the British government in 1971, he was considered important enough within the republican leadership to be released in July 1972, to take part in secret talks in London with then-Northern Ireland Secretary William Whitelaw.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Adams has been the main key figure in developing the political strategy of the republican movement along with his close colleague Martin McGuinness. In 1979, he said that the aims of republicans could not be achieved simply by military means alone.

Following the 1981 hunger strike in which 10 republicans died, Sinn Fein's base was given renewed strength. Mr Adams persuaded the republicans to place increasing emphasis on the political strategy and success of Sinn Fein. Adams was elected party president in 1983 and under his leadership the party took the historic step of abandoning its policy of abstention from the Irish Parliament.

Explaining away violence is a Gerry Adams specialty. Whenever Irish Republican Army bombs dismember innocent victims, it is Adams, president of the I.R.A.'s political wing, Sinn Fein, who sits down before the microphones and attempts to transform atrocities into regrettable but necessary collateral damage in a just war against British oppression. The calm, reasonable, well-spoken Adams is good at the job.

Is Adams an ardent civil rights protester inspired by Martin Luther King? Or is he just a third-generation nationalist bruiser following in the footsteps of a father who was jailed by the British and a grandfather who stood shoulder to shoulder with James Connolly? Is he a peacemaker who has gradually pruned away the violent rhetoric of his party to prepare the way for compromise and reconciliation? Or is he a former - even present - IRA member who sits on the Army Council and coldly plans terrorist attacks on civilian targets? Adams is, to one degree or another, all these things. His power lies partly in this very lack of clear definition: he is at once a mouthpiece for IRA terror and a moderate voice for peace.

While Adams gained a thin veneer of respectability from his participation in electoral politics, he and his followers command attention mainly because of their links to the IRA. Yet Adams firmly denies being a member. "It's illegal," he says. "I could get 10 years. But I am at pains not to distance myself from them (the IRA). Even if I did, no one will believe me, and besides, I accept that I have a responsibility to the same constituency."

At least four of his brothers have served time in prison; he has been shot and his home has been fire bombed.

In jail he became a prison leader, and at 23 he was plucked out of jail with other IRA prisoners to negotiate a cease-fire in London.

Adams felt no compunction about attending the funeral of I.R.A. member Thomas Begley, who died last October when the bomb he was planting in a fishmonger's shop in a Protestant neighborhood went off prematurely, killing nine men, women and children besides himself. As is usual, Adams "took a lift," shouldering the coffin for a short time on the way to the cemetery. As he has done with so many other IRA men killed who were out to destroy innocent lives. The picture of Adams carrying the coffin stirred outrage in Britain, where it was regarded as proof that Adams was an IRA boss.

In the run-up to the deadline for the formation of a new Northern Ireland executive in March 1999, he insisted that the IRA could not yet be persuaded to give up its arms. When the process appeared to be floundering in the autumn of 1999, Mr Adams' made a statement committing Sinn Fein to "all aspects" of the Good Friday Agreement, including decommissioning.

What is certain is that Gerry Adams, along with Mr McGuinness, has been one of the most influential figures within the modern Republican movement, driving the twin-track approach of developing a political voice alongside the armed wing.

1970 - Met Capt James Kelly of Eire Army in Belfast about arming IRA

1972 - Adams was arrested by the British army and interned on the Maidstone, a prison ship. He serve time in many of the penal institutions.

1973 - 1977 He was once again arrested and interned.

1974 - According to sources inside the maze, Adams, tried to escape by shaving off his beard and putting on the clothes of a lookalike visitor. But the false beard he fitted came loose and was notice by an observant security guard. The plot to escape was hatched with the assistance of another IRA man and three women as was the usual practice. Two weeks later the prison officer involved was seriously assaulted in one of the IRA compounds. The prisoner, who violently assaulted him, later became Gerry Adams constant bodyguard.

This man later served a prison sentence for his prominent part in the horrific crowd attack on two Army corporals in 1988, who were dragged from their car, stripped, beaten and then shot dead on nearby waste ground. The prison officer was so severely assaulted that he lay critically ill in hospital, in a coma, at the point of death for several days. After the prison officer, returned home from hospital, a bomb was laid outside his bathroom window. The prison officer's young daughter broke her arms in the blast and he received cuts and bruises.

1983 - Elected as President of Sinn Fein, and has been President ever since. Adams gradually moved Sinn Fein into electoral politics. The party won some local elections, and in 1983 Adams was elected to Britain's House of Commons from the Belfast West constituency. He refused to take up his seat, since it required him to pledge allegiance to the Queen

1984 - Adams was severely wounded in an assassination attempt; he has never admitted being member of the Irish Republican Army. 1987 - He retained his Westminster seat in the election of 1987.

1992 - Adams lost the election seat he had won and held from

1983 1997 - Re-elected to parliament

2001 - Sitting in Stormont as a MLA for Sinn Fein. There has been no decommissioning and all the IRA prisoners have been released.

The majority of the people in Northern Ireland feel betrayed both by the promises of their local MPs and also the British Government. There is still no peace, if any thing it has got worse and any community relations there were have fragmented, with the appointment of the Parades Commission who follow the Nationalist Agenda. This is a message to the British Government, until you take on the terrorists and stop appeasing them there will be no peace. Terrorists belong in jail not in the corridors of power dealing with the day to day lives of the people they have destroyed this past thirty years.

There must be democratic government and all the democratic parties are welcomed to join in the "Democratic Alternative" to find out more go to

http://www.democraticalternative.com/

"We all want Peace but not at any price"

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