Politics & Power Quote by Gerry Adams

He’s doing something sly: shifting the center of gravity away from parliaments and onto the street-level cadre who actually move Republican politics. “Your ability…to rise to this challenge” flatters volunteers, but it’s also a discipline cue. Adams is reminding activists that their value isn’t just loyalty or sacrifice; it’s leverage. If they stay organized, visible, and strategically patient, they become the pressure that keeps officialdom from drifting back into denial and delay.

The key phrase is “cannot easily hide.” Governments don’t just fail; they evade, burying hard questions under procedure, deadlines, and “complexity.” Adams frames the crisis as one of accountability rather than technical policy: obligations already exist, responsibilities are already owed, and the real fight is forcing powerful institutions to acknowledge them in daylight. That’s classic peace-process rhetoric with teeth: it sounds cooperative (“resolve these problems”) while warning that noncompliance will be exposed and politically costly.

“Two governments and others” is deliberately expansive. It points at London and Dublin, but also the local parties, security apparatuses, and unelected actors who can stall implementation while claiming good faith. Adams’ subtext is that the Republican base must act as a kind of moral and political audit team.

Context matters: coming from the Sinn Fein leader who steered the movement from armed struggle into electoral strategy, this is persuasion aimed inward as much as outward. He’s selling a transition: volunteers as enforcers of a deal’s promises, not saboteurs of it. The message is bluntly pragmatic: keep the pressure up, and the state loses its favorite weapon - plausible deniability.