Westminster '97

WEST BELFAST CANDIDATE GERRY ADAMS
Sinn Fein President

Gerry Adams was born in 1948 in West Belfast where he continues to reside with his family. He became involved in the civil rights campaign in the late 1960s and was interned without trial in 1972. When he was released in July 1972 he took part in secret talks in London between Republicans and the then British Secretary of State, William Whitelaw, which gave rise to a brief ceasefire.

After arrest with other leading republicans in Belfast in 1973 he tried to escape from Long Kesh, for this he was imprisoned and was eventually released in 1976.

He played a leading role in the campaign for political status for prisoners and in the 1981 Hunger Strike. He was central to the formation of our current electoral strategy and he topped the poll in West Belfast in the Assembly elections of 1982.

In December of the same year he was banned by Home Secretary William Whitelaw, under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, from entering Britain to speak to Labour MP's and councillors at the invitation of Ken Livingston. The ban was lifted in June 1983 when he was elected MP for West Belfast with a majority of more than 5,000. He was re-elected in 1988 but lost the seat to the SDLP in 1991.

Gerry Adams has been President of Sinn Fein since 1983. In 1987 he was instrumental in launching the party's current peace strategy with the publication of the discussion document ``Scenario for Peace''. This was followed in 1992 with the document ``Towards a Lasting Peace in Ireland''.

In 1993 it emerged that Gerry Adams had been holding a series of meetings with the leader of the SDLP, John Hume. From these meetings both leaders agreed a joint position which was to become the Irish Peace Initiative. In the Forum elections in the Six Counties Sinn Fein topped the poll in West Belfast when Gerry Adams was elected to head the Sinn Fein negotiations team.

 

CONSTITUENCY PROFILE

 

Belfast West

Party	1992	1996
SF	16,826	22,355
SDLP	17,415	11,087
UUP	4,766	1,489

This is the one constituency where in recent years a nationalist party was able to organise a voting pact. That was 1992 when unionist voters on the Shankill voted for the SDLP's Joe Hendron thus ensuring Gerry Adams lost the Sinn Fein seat. In 1996 the Sinn Fein vote more than doubled that of the SDLP and the party took four of the five forum seats. Holding onto the 1996 vote will be difficult as the combined opposition to Sinn Fein will leave no stone unturned to deprive the party of the seat they won in 1983 and `87.

Map of Constituencies