One handshake, many headlines and many leading articles. Most of the headline-writers, who were provided with only an image of a smiling Prince Charles greeting a smiling Gerry Adams, played it straight.
So we had “History in a handshake” (Daily Telegraph); “Prince holds out the hand of peace” (Times); “Hand of history” (Sun); “The hand of peace” (Daily Mirror); “Historic handshake of peace” (Daily Express); “Charles and Adams meet in historic handshake” (Guardian).
Metro, with “Prince offers hand of forgiveness to Sinn Fein’s Adams”, and the Independent, “Tea and sympathy: the royal and the republican shake hands”, were just a little more expressive, as was its sister title, i, with “A handshake to put Troubles behind us”.
But the Daily Mail was altogether more forceful. The main headline said: “Shaking a blood-soaked hand” while a sub-deck, based on the views of “aides”, said: Prince still seethes over the murder of his idol.
And the Daily Star overlaid the picture of the two men with a fantasy bubble coming from Charles’s mouth: “If only One could shake him by the throat”.
Perhaps the oddest headline of all was on the front page of the Belfast Telegraph: “Hand over fist: when Charles the bereaved met Adams the unrepentant”. The opening sentence to its report said:
“Gerry Adams failed to apologise to Prince Charles for the death of his great-uncle Lord Henry Mountbatten at their historic meeting”.
Did a paper published in Northern Ireland really think that would happen?
The London-based national press was, in the main, much more taken with the symbolism of the handshake itself, not least because the words exchanged between the men went unheard.
The newspaper reports recorded the fact that the IRA’s killing of Lord Mountbatten in 1979 had a special resonance for Charles because he was so close to his great-uncle. And they recalled that, at the time, Adams had justified the bombing of the boat off Mullaghmore in County Sligo.
But, 36 years on from that and 17 years on from the beginning of the peace process, most of the leading articles concentrated on the positive message emanating from the men’s meeting.
“Whatever his own emotions,” said the Times, the prince “was bound to make a show of public reconciliation on our behalf”. The following sentence showed commendable understanding of Adams’s own risks: “Doubtless Mr Adams believes something like this too, on behalf of his own constituency of people”.
The Times said that “we ask a great deal from all those who, in pursuit of peace, have had to put aside their grief and anger: and “should thank them for their forbearance”.
The Telegraph argued that “there now seems to be a great desire on all sides to draw a line under the past” while understanding that “the legacy of the Troubles is hard to shake off”.
It pointed out that Charles is colonel-in-chief of the parachute regiment, whose members were responsible for shooting dead 14 unarmed people in Derry in 1972.
Some of those soldiers are still under investigation and the paper thought “it would be wrong if this leads to prosecutions”. It concluded: “As Prince Charles is demonstrating today, it is time to move on”.
The Sun, in a leader headlined Prince of peace, believed “it took admirable devotion to duty and the cause of peace in Northern Ireland” for the prince to shake Adams’s hand. It said:
“Adams said the handshake was ‘a big thing for him to do and a big thing for us to do’. Charles’s act of forgiveness strikes us as the far greater sacrifice”.
“We should celebrate the fact the struggle is political and democratic, and no longer military”, said the Mirror, reminding its readers that the 1998 Good Friday agreement “is a jewel in the crown of the last Labour government, one of Tony Blair’s lasting achievements”. It said:
“Peace is hard won and easily lost if we fail to appreciate the significance of dialogue and progress. We move forward or risk slipping back. On Northern Ireland, standing still isn’t an option”.
The Guardian grasped the fact that “the long, smiling handshake” was “an encounter of personal significance that also challenged the prejudices of their supporters”.
It viewed the meeting as “an unusual moment of collective conciliation between a symbol of republicanism and a symbol of British monarchy – and a moment of almost intimate forgiveness”.
On balance, it thought Charles made the greater scarifice:
“For Prince Charles, with apparent warmth, to shake hands with the man who was at the least an apologist for the murder of Mountbatten, who had been the prince’s lifelong mentor and friend, suggests a very personal and indeed admirable act of forgiveness”.
It concluded: “In a political world so heavily shaped by historical symbolism, their meeting was both brave and constructive”.
Broadly, the Mail agreed, but expressed its view more trenchantly (as it does). In its editorial, Royal restraint in the face of IRA gloating, it argued that Charles “displayed heroic restraint in the cause of promoting reconciliation in Northern Ireland”.
But the paper, while saying it supported the continuance of a “fragile peace”, was not prepared to sing Adams’s praises:
“Isn’t it profoundly sickening that every conciliatory gesture seems to come from one side alone? For their part, the representatives of those who died for democracy and the rule of law have freed killers from jail and allowed them to share political power.
Meanwhile, the terrorists who turned their backs on the ballot box merely gloat and demand ever more...
“Yes, this paper admires the heir to the throne for his sense of duty to the greater good in accepting Adams’s invitation. But nobody would have sympathised more if he’d flatly refused”.
NB: I have written for Sinn Fein’s newspaper, An Phoblacht.
