He also published a book of tweets, My Little Book of Tweets, with Mercier Press in Cork in 2016, hoping to "show the lighter side of his personality and allow the reader some insight into his private life." He will not want or allow any successor to ever cast doubt on the validity of that IRA campaign. He will want them to state that this campaign was as legitimate as the rebels of 1916.” His longstanding connection to the IRA’s violent “armed struggle” and his often poor performances in Dáil parliamentary debates continue to alienate vast sections of the Irish Republic’s middle class. Documents released to the public records office under the 30-year rule revealed that the British prime minister at the time, Harold Wilson, knew there had been procedural irregularities in the detention of Adams and other republicans who tried to escape from the heavily guarded camp.

Gerry and Sinn Féin won’t need me to tell them just how toxic it is and the sort of reactions it gets. I don’t think that you can equate what was happening in Belfast in 1965 with slavery,” Brannigan said. Spotlight claimed the Provisional IRA’s South Armagh brigade rather than the Real IRA demanded Donaldson be killed in an act of revenge for his treachery. Despite his many remarkable achievements in turning the republican movement towards solely peaceful constitutional politics, Adams is now seen by both external observers and some party insiders as a brake on the party’s growth in the Republic. The party, alongside other more militant republicans, however, continues to revere one of the most controversial figures in 19th century Irish republicanism, John Mitchel.

Adams, 71, who has always denied being a member of the IRA, called on the government to identify and inform others whose internment may also have been unlawful. Between 1971 and 1975 almost 2,000 people were detained without trial. Instead, it is ageing ex-Servicemen in their 70s, 80s and 90s who have had to face the legal music under the arrangements that have obtained until now. The Government’s Bill rectifies this imbalance – and not before time. Mr Adams said that he was glad he did not know in advance about the bomb, because it would have raised serious dilemmas in terms of the moral imperative to prevent or report it,” according to an Irish government report of the meeting, part of a collection of state papers released this week by the National Archives of Ireland. Having led Sinn Féin since 1983, Adams will hand over power to the Dublin-born Irish MP Mary Lou McDonald at a special delegate conference next Saturday. He dismissed Sinn Féin’s attempt to blame it on the UK government’s intransigence. “Blaming the British for it, I think under these circumstances, is pretty gutless,” Clinton said.

Yet despite his promise before this weekend’s 2017 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis to provide a road map to retirement, Adams the author as much as the leader continues to leave hints about his true intentions. Earlier this month he launched a new book, a collection of his writings on topics ranging from his thoughts on Brexit to his love of dogs. Adams’s latest work is titled Never Give Up. Gerry Adams 1970 Asked about the IRA, whose armed campaign during the Northern Ireland Troubles Adams defended for decades, he said: “I would wish that no one had been killed or injured in the course of the conflict.” Among his various roles for the IRA and Sinn Féin, Donaldson worked abroad forging relations with international militant groups including Palestinian factions and the Lebanese Hezbollah. At the time Donaldson was in the Middle East he was already working as a British spy. He said: “It is our intention to unveil at the Ard Fheis in November the plan that [the late Martin McGuinness] helped to formulate. Gerry Adams denies he was consulted on what he calls an alleged IRA army council decision or that he had any final say in the matter being sanctioned. Photograph: Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters

Blaze at derelict property in Derry being treated as arson

The British Government was reluctant to feed them during dialogue leading up to the Good Friday Agreement in 1997 and 1998, so the republican negotiators took matters into their own hands, he said. In a statement released through his solicitor on Tuesday night, Adams lawyer said his client “had no involvement and had no knowledge whatsoever in Denis Donaldson’s killing”. Following the Donaldson murder the Real IRA admitted killing the British agent at his cottage in County Donegal. But “Martin” in the programme claimed this was an opportunistic move by the republican dissidents to promote the idea they had murdered a top British agent. The DoJ said in 2021 that Adams was ineligible for compensation for a miscarriage of justice because it was the analysis of a legal point that led to the guilty verdicts being overturned, rather than a new or newly discovered fact.