It has been a good 12 months for Gerry Adams. Last May he “put manners” on the BBC in his successful libel action and now a civil case centring on whether he was responsible for IRA bombing campaigns in Britain has effectively collapsed.
Long-time observers of Adams – and there are many – would have raised a wry smile when, in the High Court in London on Tuesday – his first of two days of giving evidence – he wished the presiding judge Jonathan Swift a “very happy St Patrick’s Day”. He hasn’t lost the old diplomatic chutzpah, they would have reflected.
The judge was a little taken aback, but he took the greeting warmly.
It’s unlikely his charm would have appeased the three victims of the IRA – Barry Laycock, injured in the Manchester Arndale bomb in 1996; John Clark, injured in the Old Bailey bombing in 1973 and too frail to appear in court; and Jonathan Ganesh, injured in the Canary Wharf bomb in 1996 that ended the 1994 IRA ceasefire – who sued Adams for “vindicatory” damages of just £1.
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And then we were into the meat of the case over whether Adams was a senior IRA leader overseeing bombing campaigns in Britain. This involved the rehearsal of the same allegations and the same denials – with some shades of variation – that all those Adams watchers will have heard many times before.
It all proved academic in the end. Looming over the hearing was a procedural matter that had to be overcome for the claimants before the judge would be in a position to decide whether on the “balance of probabilities” the evidence supported the victims or Adams.
Adams’s legal representatives claimed breach of process – that rather than the case addressing the specific three bombings, the victims were seeking to turn it into a general inquisitorial investigation of Adams’s alleged role in the Troubles over decades, which, the lawyers argued, was beyond their legal remit.
It seems, based on what was said in court yesterday, that the abuse of process argument was the issue that prompted the claimants to discontinue the case.
Nonetheless, the two weeks provided some interesting courtroom drama with Adams once more centre stage. As a senior republican he has faced severe interrogations from the British army and police, so even at the age of 77 he was well up for the grilling he had to take from the former British director of public prosecutions, Max Hill.
Adams took issue with Hill’s use of the term “the mainland” (“I live on the mainland ... [Britain] is our nearest offshore island”), complained that the lawyer spoke over him, and insisted on taking his own sweet time when reading documents before him.
Adams frequently uses humour and self-deprecation to assist whatever points he is making, and such was the case in the High Court. Hill was persistent in citing several instances suggesting Adams was in the IRA. For example, his wearing a black beret when helping to shoulder the coffin of an IRA member in Belfast in 1972. Wasn’t that a giveaway?
No, that simply was a republican mark of respect and anyway “even Benny Hill wore a beret”, Adams joked. This was the second time Adams has used a British comedy sitcom as part of his defence against the black beret accusation. In his successful libel suit against the BBC last year, when the same “black beret” point was put to him, he remarked that the picture made him look like the hapless Frank Spencer character in the TV comedy Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em.
There was focus on how in 1972 an IRA delegation that included Adams was flown to Cheyne Walk in London to meet the then Northern Secretary William Whitelaw. Again Adams’s defence was that he was a Sinn Féin rather than an IRA member of that team.
There was considerable reference to his Brownie column in the republican paper An Phoblacht, written when he was in Long Kesh in the early 1970s. The writer identified “rightly or wrongly” as an IRA volunteer. Again Adams’s defence was that that particular piece was written by his long-time friend Richard McAuley.
Relations between Adams and his questioner were not helped by Hill’s claim that the pseudonym Brownie referred to the name Adams and his wife used when they made love, a claim Adams dismissed “as a nonsense”.
[ ‘No smoking gun’ as Gerry Adams court case endsOpens in new window ]
During the hearing, there were references to the 1972 abduction, murder and disappearance of mother of 10 children Jean McConville in which Adams denies involvement, and to the IRA Bloody Friday bombings the same year, in which nine people were killed and many more injured.
“All of these things, like Bloody Friday, are hung around my neck and have been done incessantly,” said Adams.
There was evidence from former British army and RUC officers and from former IRA member Shane Paul O’Doherty asserting Adams’s paramilitary involvement. Garda intelligence officers were cited placing Adams on the IRA ruling army council. The testimony of the late Brendan ‘The Dark’ Hughes and Dolours Price was referenced. As before, Adams denied all claims – his description of Hughes as a “disappointment” likely to annoy some republicans.
But none of that evidence could have judicial impact because of the insurmountable procedural breach of process hurdle. “You must pick your battles when dealing with Gerry,” noted one senior Belfast lawyer, not at all surprised by the outcome.
The money sought was nominal but the stakes were high. If the judge had decided for the claimants it could have had serious implications for Adams, potentially opening the door to an avalanche of such cases – where the damages sought may have been far higher than £1. But now other victims of the Troubles may be dissuaded from taking similar legal action.
Those watchers intrigued by the enigma that is Gerry Adams won’t be at all surprised by how the case unfolded.
