ADAMS CASE: A LANDMARK VERDICT
Sam McBride, Sunday Independent and Sunday Life, June 1st, 2025
Sam McBride examines what ruling means for the BBC, the Irish public and whether broadcaster will start geo-blocking content
Inside the BBC, Gerry Adams's libel victory in Dublin's High Court immediately prompted radical thinking. Few in the Republic yet realise that the most profound implications of this case could be borne not by British licence fee payers, but by the Irish public.
From the BBC's perspective, the jury's decision was little short of disastrous.
Across the corporation, figures in both editorial and management positions had been steeling themselves for what they feared might come. They knew that a jury — something virtually abolished in Britain long ago — was a lottery.
It is not just the fact that the BBC lost that has stung it; it's how the broadcaster lost.
The BBC has suffered a blow to the integrity of its editorial output and a multi-million-euro bill because a programme made in and by and for a UK audience was available to viewers in the Republic.
Geoblocking BBC’s most expensive audience?
The Spotlight programme that broadcast the allegation in question — that the IRA murdered informer Denis Donaldson in 2006 and Gerry Adams would have been the person to give that order — was watched by just a few thousand people south of the Border. An accompanying article on the BBC website was read by just a few hundred people in the Republic.
Some senior BBC figures are now questioning this risk when there's no financial reward for making programmes available beyond the UK.
The Sunday Independent understands that some influential figures within the corporation are now talking about the possibility of geoblocking digital output to prevent this problem ever arising again.
How seriously that is being considered is unclear, but it is being talked about by people both in and above the BBC's newsrooms.
When put to the BBC press office, it did not dispute this is being considered, pointing instead to its statement outside the court.
Until recently, blocking the signal would have been impossible because analogue radio and television waves would leak. In the digital age, it is increasingly possible to implement a hard signal border.
Only last month, the BBC announced a delay in blocking BBC Sounds — its radio and podcast service — outside the UK after opposition in Ireland. It was primarily driven by issues around rights for music and other material and seen as a fairly esoteric issue. Now the financially-pressed BBC has a dramatic example of why this matters.
There are technical ways of circumventing geoblocking, but for most people it would mean the end of many BBC services.
Whatever about the BBC, the verdict that sank the broadcaster's expensively compiled defence complicates other outlets' decisions about reporting serious allegations.
The way the case was fought by Adams's lawyers almost clones Adams for legal purposes.
Before the Good Friday Agreement, their client clearly endorsed the murderous, even if he insists he was never part of the IRA that murdered.
1998 - Year Zero
But after 1998, he was born again as a peacemaker who abhors murder, is appalled at the idea anyone could associate him with murder and believes his reputation is seriously damaged by accusations of possible involvement in murder.
It's a sort of Provisional BC and AD in which year zero is 1998.
One libel lawyer said he did not think the verdict changes much about coverage of what someone like Adams was doing during the Troubles.
"It's not that you can no longer say Gerry Adams was believed to be in the IRA. What Adams was doing in the 1970s can remain as contested an issue as ever,” he said, adding that what the case emphasised is that serious allegations relating to more recent years would require firm evidence that would stand up in court.
An excellent source who would not testify — perhaps because they would lose their job or be killed — might not be sufficient to get a story published.
In almost every sense, it matters whether the BBC's source was right in suggesting Adams authorised Denis Donaldson's murder in 2006. But in one legal sense, it did not. If Adams had a bad reputation as the sort of person who had already done something like that, then even if the allegation was wrong, the BBC had not defamed him.
Defamation must lower someone's reputation in the eyes of a reasonable person. But what that hypothetical reasonable person might think is ever-changing.
Strictly speaking, this was not a trial to determine whether Adams was once an IRA leader. Yet that question was relevant to the verdict.
Mr Justice Owens told the jury that "a person's reputation can change” and they should "evaluate” it as of "2016 and now”.
Three explanations
A jury does not give a written judgment as to their reasoning, but we can surmise that there are at least three possible views they took on Adams.
First, they could have believed Adams's denials that he was ever involved with the IRA.
Second, they could have thought he was lying about that but pragmatically accepted why he did so and believed that activity was justified and so was not damaging to his reputation.
Third, they could have believed he was involved in the IRA up to 1998, but after that point he became a different person with a transformed reputation.
For the 76-year-old Adams, a man who has long behaved with the belief that he is a living piece of history, any one of those possibilities must be gratifying — especially because this was a youthful jury representing generations mostly born around his year zero.
The first possibility would mean that Adams has convinced a section of society to believe something dismissed by historians, many republicans, government ministers, security agencies and journalists. It would demonstrate his ability to argue that war is peace.
The second possibility would mean that the "Ooh ah, up the Ra” generation has come to believe what their parents' and grandparents' generation rejected — that the IRA was a group of freedom fighters bravely battling against injustice.
The third possibility would mean younger generations simply do not care about what he did in the Troubles — he's the man who was central to bringing peace to the island, in their eyes, and what happened before then is not of much interest.
There remain uncertainties about the result. The BBC is considering an appeal. But even if it appeals and wins — something that would probably involve arguing that the judge misdirected the jury or was wrong to prevent several witnesses testifying — it could not entirely undo what has been done.
Legally, the result might yet be annulled. Historically, the matter has been settled unless there is a retrial with another jury.
If a judge overturns this, the BBC will be relieved. But Adams could present it as an establishment fightback against what 12 ordinary men and women decided.
Already, Ireland is an outlier on these islands in retaining juries for libel actions. The trend towards judge-only trials centres on the argument that the growing complexity of defamation law is too confusing for people who are not lawyers to understand. Defenders of juries ask who could better judge a reasonable person's view than a jury of reasonable people.
For politicians who are themselves hostile to Adams, this case could push them towards urgent legal reforms.
‘Fair and reasonable’ ?
The legal position under which this was defended — fair and reasonable publication on a matter of public interest — has never been successfully defended in an Irish court.
The defence, whose counterpart in the UK was for many years known as the Reynolds Defence after Albert Reynolds's unsuccessful libel claim against The Sunday Times, is complex but crucial to journalism.
It exists because in many cases it is impossible to prove important allegations. The law accepts that where these are in the public interest and responsible journalism has been undertaken, then they can be published and defended — even if they turn out to be wrong.
This is the basis on which many important stories, whether about criminality or prolific sexual predators who have not been convicted, are broken. Despite his immense victory, the risks for Adams are not yet over. This trial represents the first time he has denied under oath that he was ever in the IRA. That could have significant future implications.
But the political consequences could be more important. Adams's real goal is not to win money or humiliate the BBC; it is to secure a united Ireland. This verdict does not make that simpler.
The day before the verdict, a senior DUP figure told me that the outcome would not only be a test for Adams and the BBC, but "the jury are going to tell us a lot about the views in modern Ireland”.
To many unionists, this verdict reinforces to them that Ireland has not changed as much as some of them might have thought.
Loved and loathed
Even within republicanism, Adams is a man who is both loved and loathed. But within unionism there is a unique distaste for him, even among many of those who worked, in some cases harmoniously, with Martin McGuinness.
Just before the Good Friday Agreement, Ian Paisley Jr said of Adams: "I find him repulsive. If he was in physical danger and I had an opportunity to save him, I would not step across the road to do it. In fact, I think I would smile as he suffered.”
Pressed on how that sat with his Christianity, Paisley was unrepentant, saying: "The man has contributed nothing to civilisation in Ireland.”
Most unionists would not express themselves in those terms now — nor, probably, would Paisley Jr. But the candour of that answer alludes to a widespread dislike of Adams across most of unionism, which is tied to his refusal, unlike McGuinness, to admit his IRA past.
In 2016, former UUP leader Reg Empey pithily told the House of Lords: "Mr Gerry Adams says he has never been in the IRA. Could we fill a telephone box in this country with people who would believe that.”
Adams's view of unionism has shifted incrementally. First, he disregarded unionism entirely; these people were really Irish and their "false consciousness” would fall away once Britain withdrew.
Then he accepted that unionists had to be persuaded; his 1995 book Free Ireland stated that "we cannot make peace without the unionists”.
But he still had a highly simplistic view, believing that Britain should become a "persuader” for Irish unity — effectively, it should tell the unionists what was going to happen, and they would fall into line.
This fundamentally misunderstood the relationship between unionism and London; long before partition, unionists had demonstrated their very conditional loyalty to London with a willingness to take up arms against crown forces.
As late as 1994, when Adams met several moderate Protestant clerics, the liberal Methodist Rev Harold Good, who would witness IRA decommissioning, relayed to British officials that Adams was ignorant of Protestant attitudes and "refused to accept that Sinn Féin had any responsibility for, or role in, persuading the unionists that unification of the island was in their best long-term interests”.
Eventually, Adams moved to what was essentially John Hume's position all along: Irish unity could only come about by persuading unionists, accepting that they could not simply be cajoled. Interestingly, support for unity had been slowly rising as Adams faded further into the background.
This was not the sole or even the main cause; Brexit plainly was transformative. But Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O'Neill did not have Adams's past.
Now he is back at the heart of the story, something that could drag on if there is an appeal. Senior Sinn Féin figures are glorying in his victory; online, the party's crudest supporters are taking this as an opportunity to verbally attack IRA victims and shout sectarian insults at their neighbours.
If you were running a serious Irish unity campaign, this would not be part of it.
If the verdict leads to the BBC limiting or severing its output to the Republic, then the cultural chasm that has opened up over more than a century could widen. Already, the cultural differences are pronounced and complicate unity.
Immediately after the verdict, Adams attempted to turn this into a broader assault on the BBC's independence. Pointedly using the full title of the "British Broadcasting Corporation”, he claimed it "upholds the ethos of the British state in Ireland” and "is out of sync in many, many fronts with the Good Friday Agreement”.
Having successfully sued the BBC for presenting an allegation without sufficient evidence, here was Adams implying, without evidence, that this was not simply about honest journalistic mistakes or complex libel laws.
One of his lawyers, Paul Tweed, went further, asking whether "there has been any political or other outside pressure on the BBC to take the stand it has taken”.
Nuala O’Loan
The idea that today's BBC is a political stooge does not sit easily with facts such as Panorama's recent scathing expose of alleged murderous war crimes and high-level cover-ups by members of the SAS in Afghanistan.
If the British government had control of the BBC, it would probably be pressing it in the opposite direction. Many in London just want Northern Ireland's past to go away.
Whatever Adams wants, or governments want, or even courts want, not all unflattering coverage of him can be stopped.
Last year, Nuala O'Loan said in the House of Lords: "It is also generally accepted in Northern Ireland and elsewhere that Gerry Adams was in the IRA and that he served on the IRA army council.
"As one who, as a young woman, lost my baby when I was caught in an IRA bomb explosion, I fully understand the revulsion at the idea that he and others who were involved in violence might now be able to recover even more money as compensation.”
Those with a parliamentary platform can still say what they like, but this case could ultimately mean that people in the Republic might not be able to listen to or watch what they like.
Jean McConville civil action unlikely after Adams verdict, admits daughter
Christopher Woodhouse, Sunday Life, June 1st, 2025
Gerry Adams will likely avoid a potential civil case by the daughter of IRA murder victim Jean McConville following his libel victory over the BBC at the High Court Dublin.
Helen McKendry told Sunday Life the staggering sums involved in the case — up to £4.2 million in costs and damages — has made her reconsider trying to sue the former Sinn Fein leader.
Her mother was abducted, killed and secretly buried by the IRA in 1972, with the story being portrayed in Disney+ series Say Nothing.
Mr Adams — who in 2014 was arrested over the murder then released without charge — has repeatedly denied having anything to do with the death of the mother-of-10.
Jean's body was eventually found by a dog walker on a Co Louth beach in 2003.
“I'm very disappointed he won the case, but now I'm of the mind of 'Should I really even bother? What's the point?'” she told Sunday Life.
“If I took Adams to court, I don't have the money. I just have a GoFundMe. If I lose, where will I stand?”
Helen added: “I'm left between here and nowhere really.”
defamed
Online Fund Raiser
In late 2022, Helen and her husband Seamus launched an online fundraiser for £10,000 to finance a civil action against Sinn Fein over her mother's killing.
The fundraiser on the GoFundMe website is still open and is currently sitting at £18,883.
Mr Adams will be paid €100,000 in damages by the BBC, which is also expected to be hit with a bill for legal costs of up to £4.2 million.
A jury found he was defamed in a BBC NI Spotlight programme broadcast in 2016, and an accompanying online article, in which an anonymous contributor alleged he sanctioned the 2006 murder of Denis Donaldson.
Donaldson was shot dead at a remote bungalow in Co Donegal less than a year after it was revealed he had been working as an MI5 agent inside Sinn Fein for 20 years.
Three years later, the Real IRA claimed responsibility for the murder.
Jean McConville was 37 years old when she was abducted from her home in the Divis flats complex in west Belfast in front of her petrified children.
In 1999, the IRA finally admitted responsibility for her disappearance after putting out a rumour she was a British agent who had abandoned her children.
No one has ever been convicted of Jean's murder, but in 2014, ex-IRA chief of staff Ivor Bell was charged with aiding and abetting her murder.
His arrest came as a result of testimony given to the Boston College tapes project.
But a ruling at Belfast Crown Court in 2019 deemed the tapes unreliable, so they could not be used as evidence and he was acquitted.
O'Callaghan to reform defamation legislation
Gabija Gataveckaite, Sunday Independent, June 1st, 2025
A current defence strategy in defamation cases — which has yet to succeed — will be strengthened under proposals from Justice Minister Jim O'Callaghan.
A law lecturer in Trinity College Dublin said no defence under Section 26 of the Defamation Act 2009, which allows publishers to argue publication was fair and reasonable and in the public interest, has ever succeeded in this country.
It comes as Gerry Adams was last week awarded €100,000 in damages after being defamed in a BBC documentary and news article.
The jury rejected defences put forward by the BBC that the allegation was published in good faith and that it was fair and reasonable to do so.
Section 26 of the Defamation Act 2009 outlines the possible defence of fair and reasonable publication, citing the need for the publication to be in good faith and for the public benefit.
"As our legal team made clear, if the BBC's case cannot be won under existing Irish defamation law, it's hard to see how anyone's could,” said the head of BBC Northern Ireland Adam Smyth, speaking after the jury's decision.
Eoin O'Dell, a lecturer in Trinity College Dublin, said that no Section 26 defence has ever succeeded in this country.
He said the Adams case "shows how limited a defence it is for media”. He said the defence needs to be simplified, as had happened with defamation law in England.
The Department of Justice confirmed that Mr O'Callaghan intends to bring forward an amendment "to provide for a clearer and simpler defence of fair and reasonable publication in the public interest”.
The Government has also promised to pass defamation law reforms with safeguards against strategic lawsuits against public participation, also known as SLAPP suits.
Defamation reforms passed committee stage in the Dáil at the end of April and are now being passed "as a matter of priority”, said the Justice Department spokesperson.
'My thoughts are with victims’ says DUP Leader Gerry Adams wins BBC case
By David Thompson, Belfast News Letter, May 31st, 2025.
The DUP leader has said the party’s thoughts are with “the innocent victims who suffered at the hands of the IRA” – as the BBC is ordered to pay former Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams 100,000 euros after he won a libel case against the broadcaster.
TUV leader Jim Allister said that regardless of the verdict, the people of Northern Ireland “know that Gerry Adams stood front and centre in justifying and defending thirty years of brutal IRA terror”.
Mr Adams took the corporation to court in Dublin over an episode of the Spotlight programme, and an accompanying online story, which he argued had defamed him by alleging he sanctioned the killing of former Sinn Fein official Denis Donaldson, an incident he denies any involvement in.
A jury at the High Court in Dublin found in Mr Adams’s favour on Friday after determining that was the meaning of the words included in the BBC stories.
Gavin Robinson said the jury’s decision relates “to a specific allegation broadcast and published online by the BBC about Gerry Adams.
“Our thoughts today are with the innocent victims who suffered at the hands of the IRA - ruthless terrorists who were victim-makers for many years. I would struggle to find a victim of IRA violence who has changed their view of Gerry Adams”.
The East Belfast MP also criticised the broadcaster’s handling of the case, and the resultant cost to license fee payers.
“While journalists must always be able to scrutinise and investigate in the public interest, the BBC have significant questions to answer.
“How have they found themselves in a situation where allegations were insufficiently evidenced with the consequence that license payers money will now be spent on both damages and reputed legal costs running into many millions?”, the DUP leader said.
However, the BBC defended its handling of the case, and while thanking the jury said that there would be “profound” implications as a result of the decision.
Adam Smyth, Director of BBC Northern Ireland, speaking on behalf of the broadcaster, expressed disappointment at the verdict.
“We believe we supplied extensive evidence to the court of the careful editorial process and journalistic diligence applied to this programme and accompanying online article.
“Moreover, it was accepted by the court, and conceded by Gerry Adams’ legal team, that the Spotlight broadcast and publication were of the highest public interest”, he said.
Mr Smyth added: “ our legal team made clear, if the BBC’s case cannot be won under existing Irish defamation law, it’s hard to see how anyone’s could. And they warned that today’s decision could hinder freedom of expression”.
TUV leader Jim Allister also responded to the verdict with thoughts about the victims of IRA violence.
The North Antrim MP said: “Regardless of the verdict delivered by a Dublin jury, the people of Northern Ireland know that Gerry Adams stood front and centre in justifying and defending thirty years of brutal IRA terror.
‘Not merely in hearsay’
“His active role at the heart of the Republican terror machine is well documented — not merely in hearsay, but in the detailed testimonies and investigations contained in multiple authoritative books on the IRA. These include the works of Peter Taylor, Toby Harnden, Ed Moloney, and Eamon Collins — all of which remain available and uncontested in the public domain.
“For the countless innocent victims of IRA violence, the one abiding consolation is this: Gerry Adams will one day stand before a higher court than any convened in Dublin.”
Gerry Adams has always denied being a member of the IRA. Asked by a reporter about what the outcome of the case means for his reputation, he replied: “I’ve always been satisfied with my reputation.
“Obviously, like yourself, we all have flaws in our character, but the jury made the decision and let’s accept the outcome, and I think let’s accept what the jury said.”
He also referenced his legal action against the UK government, saying: “I’m mindful of an unrelated case, again, which I won, and which the Supreme Court in London decided that I and up to three or four hundred other internees had been unlawfully detained.
“And the British Prime Minister is refusing to pay, I don’t mind, but is refusing to pay compensation to what are now quite elderly former internees, and he has actually said that he will use every conceivable mechanism to prevent compensation being paid.
“So if you want an explanation why this went on for nine years and why we spent five weeks here, I think there is direct political interference with this.”
BBC should have settled with Adams long before libel case reached court
Suzanne Breen, Sunday Life, June 1st, 2025
Gerry Adams' victory over the BBC is a major milestone in the former Sinn Fein president's public story. It couldn't have come at a better time for him.
Just months ago, he was literally a Disney villain. Nobody bar British Army general Sir Frank Kitson came across as more loathsome in the Say Nothing mini-series.
Now, aged 76, Adams has secured the big headline win against the media which he has for decades longed for.
His opponents would be foolish to dismiss or downplay that. And let absolutely nobody blame the jury for reaching the decision they did.
This case should never have made it to court. It should have been settled long ago. Maybe the BBC felt that was a step too far, that it couldn't engage in behind-the-scenes negotiations to broker an agreement in such a high-profile case.
However, the refusal to compromise has been far more damaging for the corporation, and journalism generally, than a deal would have been.
Four years ago, Sunday World apologised to Adams in Dublin High Court. It was for a 2015 story that he'd attended a secret meeting with former IRA member Kevin McGuigan, who was later shot dead.
McGuigan was alleged to have voiced concerns for his safety at the meeting. Sunday World said that while it had “reported the existence of such a meeting in good faith”, it now accepted Adams' position that it didn't take place and wished to correct the record.
By doing so, the newspaper avoided potentially six-figure damages to the former Sinn Fein president, millions in costs, and the negative publicity of losing a lengthy legal battle.
The Spotlight case lasted five weeks, but it was abundantly clear from the early days that the BBC was in trouble. From the evidence presented, I failed to see how it could win, and so did any colleague I discussed it with.
It didn't bode well for the corporation that Adams' lawyer Paul Tweed let the case run. I've known Tweed for decades, and he is very risk-averse.
In a jury trial, you must connect with those 12 men and women. They have to like you, and your message has to resonate.
Facts matter, but charisma counts as well. I've seen juries in criminal cases turn because of the tone a defendant or their barrister adopts.
The jurors seemed to take to Adams. His quips from the witness box were often met with laughter. Asked about a photograph showing him wearing a black beret at a republican funeral in the early 1970s, he replied that he looked like a character from the sitcom Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em. Humour builds bridges. He developed a rapport with those who would decide the case.
Maybe the BBC needed someone from the republican community in its corner to deliver compelling evidence: a Brendan Hughes or a Dolours Price. It's not the corporation's fault there was nobody living who was willing to do so.
However, other decisions are less understandable. This was a young, Dublin jury — mostly in their 20s and 30s — and the strategy for dealing with that was not immediately clear.
An overwhelming emphasis on the Troubles was never going to reap dividends. The Bloody Friday and Claudy bombs were appalling atrocities, but they were in 1972. Focusing so much on events that occurred before jurors were even born was curious.
controversies
It's different on this side of the border, where there's a collective memory of such awful events. Time and time again, we've seen in Southern elections that Troubles-related controversies really don't matter to voters there.
It was over immigration that Sinn Fein lost support earlier this year.
Two remarks by the judge indicated the challenges the BBC faced in the case. On one occasion, Mr Justice Owens told the jury that “all of this guff is not evidence” as to whether or not Adams was a member of the IRA.
Another time, he interjected: “All of this blather about Mr Adams being a member of the (IRA) army council is not something you have to decide.”
The BBC didn't opt for a 'justification' defence that the allegations in the Spotlight programme were substantially true. Rather, it argued that its reporting was fair and reasonable on a matter of public interest.
Yet the BBC's ultimate problem was that the allegation that Adams sanctioned Denis Donaldson's murder was utterly unconvincing to the jury, and indeed others. There was no escaping from that.
The Special Branch informer Spotlight referred to as 'Martin', who made the allegation against Adams, wasn't speaking from a position of having direct knowledge of what he claimed: it was purely hearsay evidence.
It was said in court that five other sources agreed with Martin's claim, but this wasn't mentioned in the 2016 programme.
Adams' experience in Dublin High Court was very different from that in Belfast Crown Court in 2013, when he appeared as a prosecution witness at his brother Liam's first trial.
His testimony — that he'd been estranged from his brother after learning of his paedophilia and had done everything possible to help his niece Aine — was severely undermined.
unanimous
If the BBC hoped for a similar unravelling, it didn't happen. This wasn't a majority verdict, it was unanimous.
Not a single juror agreed with the defence's case. Of course, an appeal is possible. Another big call lies ahead for the corporation.
Outside the court after his victory, Adams called on Irish Justice Minister Jim O'Callaghan to meet Donaldson's family. He'd some nerve given his lawyers had objected to Jane Donaldson having her voice heard by the jury.
He also spouted nonsense about how the BBC was “out of sync with the Good Friday Agreement”. The corporation's journalists are employed to pursue the truth with no agenda, not to be “in sync” with any political agreement.
For decades, Spotlight has lived up to its name and illuminated the dark corners of Northern Ireland society. 'Spy in the IRA' doesn't detract from those brilliant programmes.
Lessons will be learned from the libel trial verdict, but let's hope “putting manners” on the BBC isn't one of them. For those in power, journalists must be as irreverent and insubordinate as possible.
Ben Lowry: A New Ireland? I actually prefer the old one
By Ben Lowry, Belfast News Letter, May 31st, 2025
A Wolfe Tones concert at the West Belfast Festival. Young people across Ireland now chant Ooh ah up the Ra. Ireland has in fact become ever more anglophobic, as it becomes markedly less Catholic than it was
A Wolfe Tones concert at the West Belfast Festival. Young people across Ireland now chant Ooh ah up the Ra. Ireland has in fact become ever more anglophobic, as it becomes markedly less Catholic than it was
For years now there has been fevered talk of about a new Ireland. It has been a regular point of discussion on the BBC, particularly on BBC Radio Ulster Talkback and on the View.
It has been a regular point of discussion on the BBC, particularly on Radio Ulster Talkback and on the View.
The idea that a supposed all-Ireland state is imminent has been given weight by other unionists or former unionists, one of whom is the founding members of the DUP, Wallace Thompson.
There is an obvious point to be made in response to that, which is that a range of different types of polling have shown stubbornly high support among people in Northern Ireland for staying in the UK, even though the odd survey on the matter has found opinion to be evenly split.
This obvious point is of particular importance because the UK has essentially no defences against losing a major part of its territory, NI, apart from the discretion of a secretary of state to point out that polls do not show a demand for constitutional change (and remember that republicans and their many helpers, indeed many politicians in the centre ground, have tried to remove that discretion by forcing the UK into a binding legal response to polling data).
But there is another important point with regard to all these claims of support for an all Ireland, that I have not seen unionist supporters of such change address, which is this: is it a ‘new’ Ireland at all?
I pose that question because I have begun to say in recent years that I would much prefer the old Ireland to the new one.
Before I explain my reasoning on that, let me make clear that I am not in this article writing specifically about the legal verdict of the jury yesterday in Dublin, in which they decided that Gerry Adams had been defamed in relation to an anonymous suggestion that he had a role in the murder of the IRA informer Denis Donaldson.
I am referring to a much wider rehabilitation of republicans south of the border, that chimes with an increasing greening of thought south of the border.
My late father, who lived happily in Dublin as a young physicist in the 1950s, used to talk about how radically Ireland had changed from those days. He said Home Rule really had turned into Rome Rule at that time, and that John Charles McQuaid, the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, still had great sway in that society. It was a world away, he pointed out, from the Dublin that he regularly visited in the 2000s, right up until past lockdown indeed.
This is obviously true and for a while, 15 or 20 years ago, I though that the transformation of the Republic meant that the significance of the border would begin to disappear.
But something that I did not foresee then began to happen.
Ireland became in some respects more anglophobic than I remember it (although I do not seek to downplay the anglophobia that prevailed during the Troubles, such as the stubborn extradition refusals of IRA terrorists during that time). In one sense, you might say that such anglophobia is more harmless in a time of peace, given that it is only manifest in things such as social media platforms like X (formerly known as Twitter), and not expressed via the burning down of the British embassy in 1972 (after the appalling Bloody Sunday killings) or the murder of Christopher Ewart-Biggs in 1976.
Even so, the more recent forms of anglophobia have been striking.
It exploded after Brexit in 2016, as if that was (as Irish nationalists say) a sign of British imperial arrogance. I often point out that all of the nations on the fringe of Europe, going anticlockwise from Finland (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Scotland and indeed the Republic of Ireland) are, or at some point have been, eurosceptic. They all have movements that advocate leaving the EU or indeed have successfully kept their country out of it. Yet if the UK, the only one of those countries easily big enough to be able to survive outside the EU, actually takes that step then it is depicted, above all by the Irish, as proof of a longing for lost empire and greatness.
Anglophobia was apparent during covid too, when there was a lot of moralising over supposed British incompetence in response to the pandemic in contrast to Ireland’s allegedly superior handling of it all.
Ireland becoming more like Quebec
And it is apparent above all in the rehabilitation of the IRA.
The chant Ooh Ah up the Ra, which has swept the island and crops up in all sorts of situations, is a harmeless one, we are assured.
The Kneecap use of a republican balaclava is all a big joke, we are also told. It is not the same, or treated the same, as it would be if a loyalist rap band used a black UVF balaclava in supposed jest (ie treated with total contempt).
Meanwhile, polls show that most Irish voters would not even agree to changing their flag, changing the Irish anthem or even joining that friendly association of nations, the Commonwealth, if it meant a reassuring gesture to northerners considering an all Ireland. Note that countries that suffered codified racial discrimination have joined the Commonwealth, but Ireland, which was a fully representative part of the UK, is ever more hostile to such a move.
The academic Prof John Wilson Foster, who is from NI and has lived and worked for decades in Canada, says that Ireland is becoming like Quebec. As it loses it Catholicism it is becoming ever more nationalistic.
So I would take the old Ireland over the new one, which repudiated IRA terrorism almost completely. Support for Sinn Fein was derisory from the early 1980s until after the 1998 Belfast Agreement.
We will continue at the News Letter to cover the outrage of legacy, and how the story has turned against a UK state that prevented civil war in the face of determined paramilitary murder and mayhem.
Apology from BBC would have been enough, say pals of Gerry Adams
By John Toner, Paula Macken and Mark Tighe, Sunday Life, June 1st, 2025
Gerry Adams would have settled his BBC libel case at the outset for just an apology, sources close to him have claimed.
Friends of the former Sinn Fein leader say this was made clear to the corporation's lawyers, but the public service broadcaster instead doubled down and insisted on fighting him in court, a move that will cost it millions.
In a landmark ruling Adams won €100,000 (£84,000) in damages from the BBC after a Dublin jury ruled its Spotlight programme falsely claimed he ordered the murder of MI5 spy and senior Sinn Fein member Denis Donaldson.
The BBC will also have to cover the cost of both it and Adams' legal fees which could top the £4.2m mark, making it the most expensive court case in the history of the broadcaster.
Pals of Adams told Sunday Life that the nine-year legal battle — the Spotlight documentary first aired in 2016 — could have been resolved quickly with an apology.
“He would have settled for an apology and a retraction and no money at all,” said a source close to the 76-year-old, adding: “It was never about money, it was about setting the record straight.”
The Adams camp believe that the BBC would have settled were it not for “serious pressure from Downing Street” and “political interference”, and that had he lost he would have been bankrupted.
They also accuse the corporation of underestimating the former politician's popularity in the south, particularly among young people.
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The jury which awarded Adams €100,000 damages found the Spotlight programme and subsequent article on the BBC website were not published in “good faith” or “fair and reasonable”.
The BBC had not contested the case on the basis that it would stand over the truth of the allegations made by 'Martin', the alias for its source.
Instead, it said it published the allegation and Adams' denials as part of journalism on a matter of public interest. The BBC spent much of the five-week trial traducing Adams' self-proclaimed reputation as a statesman and peacemaker by demonstrating the extent of his reputation as an IRA leader during the Troubles.
The corporation's barristers said any award other than a derisory amount would be an insult to the IRA's many victims. In his statement to the media after the verdict, Adams said he took the case to “put manners” on the BBC.
He suggested political interference prevented the BBC from settling the case earlier and accused the “British Broadcasting Corporation” of upholding the “ethos” of the British state in Ireland.
Victims campaigner ‘saddened’ by ruling
Victims campaigner Ann Travers, whose sister Mary was murdered and magistrate father Tom seriously wounded by the IRA in 1984, gave evidence on behalf of the BBC and described Adams as a “warmonger”.
She described being “saddened” by the ruling and defended journalist Jennifer O'Leary who fronted the Spotlight programme.
“The verdict is very disappointing,” said Ms Travers. “I feel for Jennifer, who is a journalist full of integrity, and for every single victim and survivor of IRA terrorism.”
Adams opted to sue the BBC in the south rather than the UK despite the Spotlight programme only being seen 15,000 times there and the web article viewed just 700 times.
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The 12-strong jury who heard the evidence were almost all aged under 50 and would not have any direct experience of the Troubles.
That the BBC decided to defend the case rather than settle was a huge gamble.
It had six anonymous sources, including 'Martin', who had alleged that Adams authorised the IRA operation to kill Donaldson, a former senior Sinn Féin official who was outed as a British spy months before his death.
Adams' legal team were successful in ensuring three witnesses called by the BBC were excluded by the judge.
These were Austin Stack, the son of murdered prison officer Brian Stack, who was prepared to give evidence about how he met Adams in a blacked-out van in 2013 to accompany him to a meeting with an IRA man.
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Historian Eunan O'Halpin, who was to give evidence about Adams' reputation, and Jane Donaldson, the daughter of Denis Donaldson, who wanted to give evidence about how her family had an “open view” about who was responsible for her father's murder.
The BBC's defence said it would prove Adams was in the IRA and on its army council, but Judge Owens ruled this was not something the jury should have to decide.
He said the BBC could only present evidence that Adams had a reputation of being in the IRA.
He prevented Paul Gallagher, senior counsel for the BBC, from directly asking Adams if he was in the IRA.
These rulings are all possible grounds for the BBC to appeal. Most only go to Adams' reputation, however, so would only have affected the amount of damages awarded.
The former Sinn Fein leader has pledged to donate his £100,000 payout to good causes.
Government reiterates commitment to stop internment compo for Adams
Belfast News Letter, May 31st, 2025
In light of Gerry Adams’ libel victory against the BBC, Downing Street has reiterated its position that it is looking at “every conceivable way” to stop compensation cases from Troubles internees such as the former Sinn Fein president.
However, the government has declined to say why it is removing the specific clause in the Legacy Act which would stop Mr Adams and others being able to take a case.
Mr Adams successfully sued the BBC over a claim in a Spotlight programme and online article alleging he sanctioned the killing of former Sinn Fein official Denis Donaldson – a claim he denies.
A spokesperson for the Prime Minister said that “operationally the UK Government’s position remains the same” as that set out by the Prime Minister in January – and they “are working on a remedial order”. During Prime Minister’s Questions on January 15, Sir Keir Starmer said that the 2023 Legacy Act “was unfit, not least because it gave immunity to hundreds of terrorists and was not supported by victims in Northern Ireland—nor, I believe, by any of the political parties in Northern Ireland. The Court found it unlawful”. The Prime Minister told MPs the government “will put in place a better framework”. He said: “We are working on a draft remedial order and replacement legislation, and we will look at every conceivable way to prevent these types of cases from claiming damages”.
He had been responding to criticism from the opposition leader Kemi Badenoch, who said that Sir Keir’s Government “may write a cheque to compensate Gerry Adams”, calling the situation “shameful”.
However, when pushed on the issue in January, Downing Street could not guarantee that compensation payouts would be prevented.
“Clearly the Government’s intention is to prevent compensation from being paid. We are going to look at every option but I can’t get ahead of that process,” the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said when asked about a guarantee.
Asked if there are real options to block payments, he said the PM wouldn’t make the commitment in Parliament if he didn’t think he could address this issue.
