Gerry Adams in Enniskillen: the full transcript and audio

Question from a member of the audience: “When we talk about young people being turned off I think there is a lot of the older generation, people that voted all their lives... by what's happening up at Stormont... they're just shaking their heads and I think they are dragging us down. I don't think it's Sinn Fein's fault – we are trying our hardest. I didn't think it was possible but the DUP seem to be going backways and more bigotry, you know. Is there a line in the sand that we say, look it, there's no point even trying with these ones because they are dragging the whole thing down.” [The] problem with the free state government is they don't want to know now either because they're probably delighted to see it fails so they can turn around and say that Sinn Fein couldn’t administrate the Assembly and the six counties.” Question to the audience member from the chair of the meeting.

“What do you think yourself?” The audience member responds: “I don't know, I am just wondering what the leadership's spiel on it is – where the DUP are at the minute or what they are playing at?” The full response from Gerry Adams: “OK, well, first of all I neglected to do it in my opening remarks – it's just to thank people because, you know, people come out and make your own stand in your own way within your own community within your own families. I think it's very important that the appreciate that and you know from my point of view the whole thrust is what we are trying to do has to be about empowering people. So I have learnt things from this meeting tonight and I do these meetings all the time. But it was just very interesting to come in here and to hear the range of views on a range of subjects – good, radical, progressive thinking about, for example, issues of rural community.

A lot of our traditions come from rural Ireland and the need to develop those and to assist, to encourage people to take control. You know, what Vic was describing about, you know, small towns dying off, villages dying off, the scourge of emigration, I know it's an issue I've campaigned on for a long time. We need to be making a stand on these issues and developing ways and means for people to take more and more control over their own lives.

I remember one time doing a meeting in Belfast and people were really, really annoyed about David Trimble. I remember saying, at the meeting, 'Why are yous so annoyed about David Trimble? Yous don't have to work with him'. So, it is a matter of being patient but not being too patient, you know, trying to push, push ahead.

And you can rest assured that somewhere in that notion of why increasingly unionists aren't voting is that they are scundered by the likes of Gregory Campbell, they are scundered by the things that are going on. They are not going vote for us and so on at this stage, in our development or their development but, I mean, yous all live here – how many unionists do you talk to? We're trying to convert people and in there somewhere the sort of fundamentalist bigotry, because that's what it is – it's nothing got to do with politics. It's got to do with blind bigoted hatred of people and not just Catholics, of Presbyterians, of Church of Ireland, of meth... of everybody, bar the people who share their own very narrow vision of the world.

Now, that's not unique in Ireland. It manifests itself in other societies but in other societies it's illegal and in other societies life goes on and people can be racist, people can be homophobic, people can be anti-Semitic but they are not allowed to do it in a very public way. So, we don't have that expression yet. Sectarianism remains one of the big issues that we have to deal with as a people.

There are lots of thoughts in terms of the indications that were thrown up. One of the things that was very prevalent was the point that Kevin made. For a period there, I spend most of my working week in Dublin but when I was back in Belfast or at meetings like this it was universal people saying ‘what’s the point?’, ‘what’s the point?’. They weren't blaming Sinn Fein — in fact they were making the point that Sinn Fein were doing their best.

But what’s the point? The point is to actually break these bastards - that’s the point. And what’s going to break them is equality. That’s what’s going to break them - equality. Who could be afraid of equality? Who could be afraid of treating somebody the way you want to be treated. That’s what we need to keep the focus on - that’s the trojan horse of the entire republican strategy – is to reach out to people on the basis of equality.

The question about where is the tipping point... You see, the interesting thing about Gorbachev... Gorbachev didn't set out to get rid of the USSR – that wasn't his intention. He wanted to modernise it. It needed to be reformed but once he started to pull the thread it wasn't possible. The afrikaners didn't want to bring about an ANC government in South Africa. They wanted to get rid of the international campaign that was hurting them in terms of their different money making ventures. They actually, and I had the privilege of going there after Mandela was released and I talked to the guy – I forget his name but it is well enough written about -went into the prison to talk to Mandella and he told me, because he was one of the people who went and argued for them to start defusing some of the worst aspects of apartheid rule. They thought Mandela was going to home, they thought that blacks couldn't govern themselves – he told me that.” Listen here:

Note: This clip contains strong language.