People Before Politics

This blog has found the reaction from certain sections of the Irish Left to Gerry Adams brave decision to contest the next Leinster House election quite startling. Some of these commentators have criticised Adams for "leaving" the people of West Belfast, one of the most deprived communities in Ireland. Some of these critics have even claimed that they should fill the vacuum left by the "retreating" Adams.
Incredible.

Where were these heroic campaigners in 1969 when the people of Bombay street were being burned out of their homes by Loyalist mobs and RUC collaborators?
Where were they when civilians were being used as target practice by the paratroopers in Derry?
Where were they when the people of West Belfast were interned without trial, dragged from their homes in the middle of the night having committed no crime other then being born?
Incredible.
First of all, Adams is a member of the West Belfast community. He lives there, has raised his family there, goes to church there. He is a pillar of the community that these would be opportunists claim that he is abandoning.

Second, the people of West Belfast owe many of the rights they won in recent years, including civil rights, peace and the process of rejuvenation currently under way, to men and women like Gerry Adams. Adams stood by his people during a time of unprecedented trouble. He never abandoned them, even when his life and the lives of his family were in constant danger. Adams has now left the safest SF seat in Ireland to take on the whole Irish establishment, including these wanna be Trotsky's, in order to help the people of the 26 counties, who have been crying out for a real leader. Adams has put the people of Ireland before his own benefits once again.
As always, Sinn Féin has chosen people before politics.

For any group of people to claim that Adams abandoned his community shows their utter ignorance of life in West Belfast, and their villainous readiness to say anything that they vainly believe will cost Sinn Féin political points, and might benefit their own chances of winning some power.
Sinn Féin has no nefarious reasons for contesting elections here, and neither does Gerry Adams. We stand for the people. Remember we have had a bunch of dogmatic socialists proclaiming they were better than Sinn Féin and promising to work for the people above all before. Today they run the Irish Labour party, a group that Adams critics call right wing.
There is one left wing party where true republican socialists still work for the betterment of the common man left in Ireland today.
Its called Sinn Féin.