The Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams remains one of our most polarizing political figures: the leader of a violent republicanism movement which cost thousands of lives from the early 1970s; now lauded internationally as a peacemaker. This 60-minute documentary encounters Adams at home and abroad; meets some of his famous friends – like the singer Barbra Streisand – and also some of his former enemies who’ve accompanied him on his journey through the peace process, among them Tony Blair, Jonathan Powell and David Trimble.
Blair, who says he now considers Adams a friend, says: “I think he had been through a journey in a way where the sense of injustice …hatred … of what the British government had done, what Unionism had done, was the powerful motivating force … And then I think there was a point with him when actually the motivation switched to one of a genuine sense of compassion for all the victims of the troubles.”
Adams comments: “I increasingly believe in people in the sense that people are, broadly speaking, good; and … I think that people respond to the political conditions in which they live. So if you want to change the way people think, then change the political conditions and people will think differently in different situations.”
Production for:
BBC Northern Ireland
Transmission date:
28th June 2010
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