10 May 1998
Introductory Address
by Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams
One of our General Treasurers is moving sidewards as part of a reshuffle of our Finance Department. Desi will be helping to streamline our finance operation and he will be concentrating on improving this necessary and important part of our expansion. Joe O'Reilly has let his name go forward - Welcome.
Desi has been 13 years in the job - Well done.
Now to the business at hand - this discussion is a crucially important one and I want to make it clear that every opinion expressed here is as valid as any other opinion.
We are a political organisation and political organisations must by their nature, discuss and debate issues which they consider pertinent. We cannot do so properly unless all sides of the argument are articulated.
So we want a mature, comradely and futuring debate. All of the resolutions in this section are about future strategy and about how to develop that strategy in the context of contemporary political conditions.
Our experience teaches us as a group, we have a better chance of success when we have a flexible approach.
We are at our weakest when we are pushed or forced into a static political position.
So we have to seek to move forward towards our goals with strategies and tactics based on the objective reality and conditions of the time.
The central issue is to grasp the centrality, the primacy and the fundamental need for republican politics. This truth must be grasped. It is a difficult truth for some given the conspiratorial and repressive nature of our past - our traditional distrust of `politics and politicians - the misguided belief that so-called `constitutionalism' and politics are the same thing - that politics are the property of the establishment, of the `sliveens' and place-seekers - and that politics are inherently corrupt and corrupting.
If any of us still believe that - then we don't know our own history and we have little concept of the class nature of this struggle. It is my view that everyone here does grasp the need for the primacy and centrality of republican politics.
That is what this debate is about.
Some of the resolutions here look at our attitude to the upcoming referendums. In my view this is an issue of future strategy and I will talk to this at that time in the debate.
The other issue is whether a struggle such as ours can be advanced by opening up yet another front in an assembly set up by the establishment which oppresss us and the interests we represent. Again an issue of future strategy.
So let us have a good wideranging discussion. Let us be mindful in all of this of our own strength. Many media people have told me privately that they know of no other party which would have the debate in a public session.
I don't know how the vote will go this afternoon. That is part of the craic at a Sinn Fein Ard Fheis. The leadership has to fight for its position as is right but whatever about how you vote we can all be sure of one thing - that is, we will go out of here more energised and stronger than we came in. And our struggle goes on until we attain our goals.
So leanaigí ar aghaidh leis an díospóireacht, Gerry Adams Ard Fheis 10.5.98.