- published: 03 Aug 2015
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Ivor Malachy Bell is an Irish republican, and a former volunteer in the Belfast Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who later became Chief of Staff on the Army Council.
Bell was involved with the Irish Republican Army during the 1956–1962 campaign, but left over the decision to call a cease-fire. He rejoined the republican movement in 1970, and become the commander of the Kashmir Road based B Company of the Provisional IRA Belfast Brigade. During Gerry Adams' initial career in the republican movement he took much of his direction from Brendan Hughes and Bell. At this time Bell was Adams' adjutant in the Second Battalion of the Belfast Brigade. Hughes was the commander of the D Coy. Adams looked to Bell for political strategy and to Hughes for the opinion of the "rank and file" volunteers.
In 1972, Bell, now Belfast Brigade adjutant, along with Seamus Twomey, Martin McGuinness, and Gerry Adams were flown to London by the Royal Air Force for secret ceasefire talks with British government ministers. Adams and Bell were sceptical about the proposed cease-fire and did not trust the British government. The truce soon broke down, followed by twenty deaths over three days.
Gerard Adams (Irish: Gearóid Mac Ádhaimh; born 6 October 1948) is an Irish republican politician who is the president of the Sinn Féin political party, and a Teachta Dála (Member of Parliament) for Louth since the 2011 general election.
From 1983 to 1992 and from 1997 to 2011, he was an abstentionist Westminster Member of Parliament (MP) for Belfast West.
He has been the president of Sinn Féin since 1983. Since that time the party has become the fourth-largest party in the Republic of Ireland, the second-largest political party in Northern Ireland and the largest Irish nationalist party in that region. In 1984, Adams was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt by several gunmen from the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) including John Gregg. From the late 1980s onwards, Adams was an important figure in the Northern Ireland peace process, initially following contact by the then-Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) leader John Hume and then subsequently with the Irish and British governments.