The word that Gerry Adams will not use

Gerry Adams has a weekly column in the North Belfast News and I think the same column appears in the Andersonstown News.  It carries the title 'Gerry Adams TD - He hasn't gone away you know', but of course he has gone away, south of border, to county Louth.  He has a new job in another country.

Today he deals with 'the killing of Adrian Donohoe' on 25 January and 'the killing of Garda Jerry McCabe and the wounding of Garda Ben O'Sullivan in Adare in June 1996'.  However the one word that Adams has refused to use is the word 'Murder'.   According to Gerry the Provisional IRA didn't 'murder' anyone.

He referred to his apology for the 'killing' of Garda McCabe by the Provos but criticised unionists who 'have demanded an apology for the deaths of members of the RUC and British Army.'  Adams then stated his position very clearly: 'I do not believe the fact that citizens took up arms against oppression in the North, and against those forces that inflicted violence on behalf of the British state, is a matter of apology.  I take no satisfaction  from the killing by the IRA of British soldiers and RUC officers.  and I am very conscious of the suffering of their families.'

Sinn Fein have condemned the murder of PSNI officers by dissident republicans and have apologised for the 'killing' of Garda McCabe by the IRA.  Such progress is limited but it is welcome and of course it only came because of pressure from politicians, from the media, from public opinion and from the families of victims.  That pressure on Sinn Fein must be kept up until Adams and his party acknowledge that the 'killing' of RUC officers and British soldiers was equally wrong and was indeed 'murder'.

The fact that Adams felt it necessary to write such a tortuous article about this matter shows that he and his party are troubled by this pressure and it must be maintained.  We must not allow them to succeed in their strategy of trying to rewrite history.