Portrait of the Week – 26 February 2005

Mr Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, attempted to rush through Parliament legislation to put people suspected of terrorism under house arrest without trial. Mr Michael McDowell, the Irish justice minister, said that leaders of Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland were also members of the Irish Republican Army’s seven-man Army Council: ‘We’re talking about Martin McGuinness, Gerry Adams, Martin Ferris and others,’ he said. All three men denied the accusation. Mr Adams had earlier nuanced his opinion that the IRA was not involved in December’s £26.5 million raid on the Northern Bank in Belfast, saying, ‘The IRA has said it was not and I believe them, but maybe I’m wrong.’ The IRA was also blamed for murdering Robert McCartney, a Catholic from Short Strand, in a Belfast pub. Mr Paul Murphy, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, asked the Commons to end the non-sitting Sinn Fein MPs’ allowances. Primates of the Anglican Communion met in Northern Ireland in an attempt to avoid schism over the appointment of practising homosexuals as bishops, but conservatives at the meeting did not want to take Communion with liberals.