In an exclusive interview with The Ulster Fry, outgoing Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams has revealed that he intends to spend his retirement ‘telling the real story of the troubles’.
“It’s important that people know the truth,” he told us. “If you read the so-called ‘History Books’ you’d think that the IRA did bad things, but they were actually a charitable organisation – that’s why I like to call their members ‘Volunteers’.”
“They spent most of the 1970s engaged in community work, like helping old ladies across the road, anyone who suggests that they occasionally shot the old lady across the road is a British propagandist.”
“Ok, so they occasionally engaged in heroic gun battles with heavily armed troops, but they never did anything like batter the living shite out of someone and leave them lying in a ditch.”
Mr Adams told us that it’s important that young people learn the truth about the past.
“It’s time kids understood that Catholics in the North of Ireland couldn’t vote until I negotiated the Good Friday Agreement, by myself.”
Controlling our understanding of the past has become a key battleground in Northern Irish politics, with everyone keen to put a gloss on the role ‘their side’ played in the conflict.
As well as the work of Mr Adams, DUP leader Arlene Foster is working on a new book called “Why Northern Ireland used to be class before themuns ruined it,” and the British Government is planning an official history “Building Peace. How we weren’t really involved in the Troubles but made life better for everyone.”
Mr Adams’s own book “My role in the armed struggle that I had no role in” will be published next year by Fable and Fable.