Joe Biden's picture with Gerry Adams and ex-IRA leader who tried to kill British army officer sparks outrage
President-elect Joe Biden earlier cautioned British Prime Minister Boris Johnson that if Brexit went against the Good Friday Agreement, it could take a toll on the US trade deal with the UK, one of its closest allies.
In a post on Twitter in September, the president-elect said “we can’t allow the Good Friday Agreement, which brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit”.
He then added in the same tweet that the US and UK “must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border”. Biden also retweeted a letter to PM Johnson from members of the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee, which warned that the Congress would not pass a US-UK trade deal if Britain did not uphold commitments to Northern Ireland.
We can’t allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 16, 2020
Any trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period. https://t.co/Ecu9jPrcHL
Biden’s words sparked a controversy in the UK with the supporters and opponents of Johnson taking them in contradictory styles.
Biden has over the years stressed on his Irish Catholic roots in his birthplace in Pennsylvania (he also traveled to County Mayo in West Ireland in 2016 to see distant relatives) and the same came under the scanner as he inched closer to the White House. A photograph appeared showing Biden with former Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams and Rita O’Hare, an Irish Republican Army (IRA) fugitive.
The association will certainly spark a fresh controversy. While Adams has claimed to have discussed a united Ireland with Biden, O’Hare, a former IRA general secretary, was arrested in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s for attempting to kill a British Army officer in Belfast. She went to Dublin after getting released on bail where the Irish High Court ruled that she should not be extradited to the UK because her alleged crime was “apolitical”. She is believed to be one of the several IRA suspects who were told that they would not face prosecution by the former Tony Blair government as part of the Northern Irish peace process.
Image could hurt Biden's image as US president
The image, which is three years old, saw politicians from the UK warning that Biden needed to be more careful about who he was seen with as he enters the White House.
In the past, Biden also caused an outrage by quipping to an Irish delegation that one “wearing orange” would be greeted in his house on St Patrick’s Day, a remark which was perceived as a slur against Protestants.
Adams shared the photograph on Twitter in September 2017 to say that he had a ‘good conversation’ with Biden about the ‘northern talks, UI (United Ireland) and Brexit’. Biden was in Ireland that year too.
Adams also said after meeting Biden that he had sought for the latter’s help in asking the Donald Trump administration to appoint a ‘special envoy for the peace process’. “We also spoke of the potentially very damaging effect of Brexit on the island of Ireland, and in particular the implications for the border and for the Good Friday Agreement,” the 72-year-old Adams said.
"I briefed Mr Biden on the Sinn Féin position for the North to have Designated Special Status within the EU. This is the position supported by the Oireachtas, the majority of MLAs and by the European Parliament,” he added. Biden visited his ancestral roots in Mayo in 2017 as well besides in Louth. His maternal grandfather Ambrose Finnegan had arrived in New York at the end of Ireland’s Great Famine in 1850 at the age of seven after his family emigrated from County Louth, north of the Irish capital.
While Republican supporters in the robust Irish-American lobby see the prospect of a Biden presidency as a rare opportunity for Irish unity, there are also others like Petersborough Tory MP Paul Bristow, son of an army officer, who feel otherwise. “I am sure that this is an association that Mr Biden regrets. If he is confirmed as the President-elect, the British Government and the people of Northern Ireland will expect him not to be partisan in his approach to Northern Irish matters,” Daily Mail quoted him as saying.
He also said that being photographed with somebody like O’Hare is something that families of victims of IRA terror attacks would not appreciate. “'It would be especially wrong for the President-elect of the United States and not something that should be repeated,” Bristow added.
Obama was also criticized after being photographed with Adams and O'Hare
Even former president Barack Obama, who Biden served with in the administration between 2009 and 2017, was accused of ‘a lapse of judgment’ by Unionists after being pictured with the same pair in 2008, when he was the president-elect.
“With Joe Biden's Irish connections, it is important for him to recognise that protecting the peace process is about engaging with both sides and upholding the rights of Unionists as well as Irish republicans,” Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, Democratic Unionist Party's Westminster leader, told the Mail, adding: “We need a White House that takes a balanced approach to Northern Ireland, whilst also cherishing the special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom as a whole.”
Democratic Senator Chris Coons, who just won his re-election bid from the seat in Delaware that was once held by Biden, told the BBC recently that the Democratic presidential nominee would be ‘concerned’ if the Brexit arrangements undermined the Northern Ireland peace process.
“I expect he would be concerned about making sure the Good Friday accords are respected and protected, and the ways in which the UK-EU terms are negotiated doesn't put at risk the stability of the border terms in Northern Ireland,” he said.