The wearing of the greenbacks - Gerry Adams' 1995 St. Patrick Day visit to the U.S

National Review, April 17, 1995 by Conor Cruise O'Brien

ST. PATRICK'S Day in America is a day of celebration of ``the Irish,'' but the Irish being celebrated are Americans: those Americans who regard themselves as of Irish or partly Irish ethnic origin (about 40 million strong, according to the Census). The message of St. Patrick's Day is that ``the Irish,'' in this sense, are a force to be reckoned with as voters and consumers, by reason of their numbers and their coherence.

St. Patrick's Day in America is a fun thing, for the most part; a thing of leprechauns and green beer, broad grins and slaps on the back. Ireland is the Old Country from which the ancestors of all these fine Americans once came, and St. Patrick's Day is best seen as one of a number of ethnic celebrations, along with Pulaski Day for Poles, Columbus Day for Italians, and Steuben Day for Germans. Together, all these celebrations make up a multi-ethnic celebration of America itself.

The status of representatives of any given Old Country on such occasions is somewhat equivocal. I have noticed over the years that visiting Irish leaders (for example) seem to think that the President of the United States, on receiving them, is doing honor to the people they represent: the people of Ireland, living in Ireland. But this is not really the case. The Taoiseach (or foreign minister or whatever) is being received as a symbol of the Old Country from which the ``Irish'' -- meaning what we call the Irish - Americans --

originally came. The President, in receiving the Taoiseach, is honoring the Irish in America and them only. And this is true whoever is Taoiseach.

The significance of the President's receiving Gerry Adams -- as a guest, not guest of honor -- is different: more specific, more limited, more political. Receiving the president of Sinn Fein -- and allowing Sinn Fein to raise funds in America -- is a compliment, not to Irish-Americans in general, but to a relatively small group of politically minded Irish-Americans, mostly in New York and Boston. At the core of this group are the people who have been raising money for the Irish Republican Army.

In America as in Ireland, there is now an Irish pan-nationalist consensus around a peace process which is identified with progress down an Irish nationalist agenda toward a united Ireland. President Clinton has no trouble with that as long as the IRA ceasefire holds. Gerry Adams is working for peace, so shake hands with Gerry Adams.

Nobody in the Clinton Administration is worried about British displeasure over Adams. On the contrary, it does a President good to be seen to stand up to British pressure, within certain limits. Condoning terrorism would breach those limits, but Mr. Adams is generally perceived as having broken with terrorism. The great American public is not attentive to the domain of the equivocal in which his current relationship with the IRA is situated.

NOR is President Clinton in the least worried about any damage that may have been done to the ``special relationship'' between Britain and America. Most present-day Americans don't even know that there is supposed to be such a special relationship. And Clinton's own experience of such a thing consisted most vividly of the special relationship between John Major and George Bush, as a result of which the British Conservatives openly helped the Bush campaign in the 1992 election. That special relationship is well and truly over, and the wider special relationship has grown even dimmer than before as a result.

Personally, I regret that that should be so. I regret it because it tends to generate American pressure on Britain over Ireland and because I fear that that pressure, combined with others, may lead, within five or ten years, to British withdrawal from Northern Ireland, with consequences that would be disastrous for all of Ireland.

In the meantime, Gerry Adams had quite a good St. Patrick's week in the United States. Not altogether an easy passage, because Mr. Adams had two main constituencies to cater for, and what needed to be said to one of these tended to grate on the ears of the other, and vice versa.

The larger constituency consists of American officialdom, plus whatever section of the wider American public can muster some fleeting interest in Irish affairs. To that constituency the message has to be primarily on Sinn Fein's commitment to peace. Mr. Adams had successfully addressed that constituency even before this visit, and his reward was visible during St. Patrick's week in the White House and on Capitol Hill.

But the president of Sinn Fein has another American constituency: smaller and more obscure, but also more exigent. This constituency consists of the IRA's supporters in New York, Boston, and (to a lesser extent) other big cities. These people don't want to listen to bromides about peace. They want to hear that the IRA has not given up but is still determined to get the Brits out of ``occupied Ireland.'' Specifically, they want to hear that the IRA will resume its armed struggle unless the British get out of Northern Ireland soon.