During the early days of the Northern Ireland peace process, Gerry Adams was filmed addressing a gathering outside Belfast city hall. A clip on the internet is both short and grainy. From the crowd, a man can be heard shouting: “Bring back the IRA.” Grinning broadly, Adams replies into his microphone: “They haven’t gone away, you know.”
As Sinn Féin, which Adams led for 35 years, becomes an increasingly popular political force in Ireland, both south and north, many will be puzzling over the extent to which the Provisional Irish Republican Army still wields power within the party.
