Gerry Adams says Brexit deal would challenge Irish peace
Former Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams outlines implications of Brexit on the 1998 Good Friday peace accords at a National Press Club Headliners Newsmaker on Oct. 16. Photo: Alan Kotok
Irish politician Gerry Adams told a National Press Club Newsmaker audience Wednesday that Brexit would challenge many of the positives changes that have occurred since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement brought a measure of peace between Northern Ireland and Britain.
Northern Ireland, where Adams was associated with the Irish Republican Army in years past, is part of the United Kingdom but shares a border with Ireland, a member of the European Union. Since the 1998 agreement, trade and people have moved back and forth across their border, but Adams says the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the EU -- “Brexit” -- would threaten that free flow.
Brexit would hinder the flow of milk from dairy-rich Northern Ireland across the border, Adams said.
Children and teachers and "he himself" need to go back and forth across the border regularly, Adams said. Under Brexit, if there was a return to a “hard border,” tariffs would have to be imposed, he added.
A house can be found, part of it “in one jurisdiction, the other part in another jurisdiction," Adams said.
In the ongoing negotiations about Brexit, Adams said Northern Island has sought a “backstop” – staying in the European Union while gaining special status for Northern Ireland, a reference to an open border.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson now is negotiating how Brexit would be carried out, but he accused Johnson of “flip-flops” – for and against Brexit. He accused British leaders of having no “cultural affinity” with Brexit.
Adams noted that Sinn Fein, which he headed from 1983 until stepping down last year, joined Northern Ireland in voting to remain in the EU two years ago. He remains steadfastly in support of a unified Ireland and continues to place the blame on Britain.
“Partition doesn’t work, it just doesn’t work,” Adams said. “The partition of Ireland is illegal, immoral, totally and absolutely wrong.”
“Are we not capable of doing it ourselves? For me, it comes back to this issue , time and again, even without Brexit, we need to have the right to govern ourselves," Adams added.
"The conquest of Ireland by England was where the problem starts and where it continues,” Adams said.
Although it is still the most segregated entity in western Europe, Northern Ireland has changed demographically since the bloody days of the past, Adams said. There is a new generation of youth that has led to support for marital equality and women’s reproductive rights. There now is peaceful protest along the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, he said.
As for his own story, Adams said: “I’ve never hidden my association with the IRA. IRA was a very legitimate response to the British military occupation. Were there things unacceptable? Yes.”
Now, Adams said, “there is no room for violence. It’s gone. It’s done. It’s over.”
When Club President Alison Fitzgerald Kodjak introduced him as being “controversial, to say the least,” Adams said he never considered himself that way, then said wryly, “there was a time when perhaps I was deemed to be so.”
Two ways to more peaceful outcomes on disagreement was to keep politicians from turning issues “over to the generals” and an openness to dialogue so as to eliminate situations when the only place to talk was “in the men’s room," Adams said.