Free Ireland: Towards a Lasting Peace

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams follows his recent controversial visit to the U.S. with a timely appraisal of the history, tenets and significance of contemporary Irish republicanism. Using a personal, unassuming style rather than heated political rhetoric, Adams presents a concise, lucid and partisan analysis of the development of Irish nationalism and republicanism and of the strategic and political responses of the British government. Moving from a recollection of his personal development within the civil rights movement in 1960s Belfast to a broader account of Northern Ireland's tragic political history, Adams reviews the origins and evolution of his own and Sinn Fein's republicanism as a response to ``an apartheid state in which a very substantial minority of the citizens were disenfranchised and denied social, economic, political and civil equality.'' Adams also provides an insightful discussion of political conditions in Britain and the Republic of Ireland, and he examines Sinn Fein's role in the search for a peaceful settlement to a quarter century of discord. Originally published in Ireland in 1986 as The Politics of Irish Freedom , this take on Ireland's tangled politics is updated to include Adams's assessment of the current peace processes, his solutions for the resolution of the violence and, in a bid for U.S. support, a discussion of the ``enormous symbolic and political importance'' of his recent visit to this country. (June)