Traditionally, when volunteers were asked if they were in the IRA, they would refuse to answer, because to acknowledge membership would be enough to put them in prison. But as Adams refashioned his persona from guerrilla leader to statesman, he took this gambit one step further: he began to tell people that he had always been a purely political figure, an ardent republican and a Sinn Féin leader – but not a volunteer, not someone who was in any way directly involved or implicated in the armed struggle. ‘I am not a member of the IRA, and have never been in the IRA,’ he would say.
