When the vote comes In

The voting was nearly finished at the polling station in Andersonstown. At first Gerry Adams' supporters thought that the Army and the RUC had come to take away the ballot boxes. Things had gone well for Gerry Adams so the supporters were ready to follow the ballot boxes down to the City Hall just to make sure that none of them were thrown away. Almost directly over the polling station a helicopter hovered motionless.
But it was too early. The RUC and the Army had come to take a man away. His wife had been accused of impersonation and he had become violent. The RUC brought him down and put him in a van. Most of the Sinn Fein supporters were in their teens. All of them wore short hair; some wore ear-rings. Impersonation had been a serious problem all day, they contended. They were insisting that the SDLP were the main culprits.

When Sinn Fein supporters went in to vote, they were stopped and challenged for no reason, they said. You couldn't even cast your vote. It was, they implied, another example of the way things were. One young lad began to speculate how much compensation you could get if you were stopped in the wrong. He felt it would only run into three figures.

The following morning there were more of these young lads hanging about the corridors of City Hall wearing official badges. Others wearing official badges were older but looked equally out of place. One of them explained with great glee that here they were in their City Hall. They sat on the chairs outside the counting room for West Belfast. Gerry Adams, soon to be their MP, was inside. Every so often one or two of them would ask the RUC questions and the RUC would answer.

As the time came nearer for the results to be announced, one bloke explained to the others that there was to be no trouble.

As the candidates walked into the room where the announcement was to be made, one reporter said into his tape recorder that there was a scuffle going on. The RUC man told him that the scuffle was being caused by the press. The RUC man was right.

The three Unionist women were not causing a scuffle. They were simply waving union jacks and roaring "Murderer" at Adams.
Adams, like a letter from the civil service, started and ended in Irish. The middle was in English; it was blunt. There was a soldier blown up that morning. Adams told the assembled press, politicians, police and officials that he shouldn't have been there. When Adams was finished speaking he stood to one side.

Next, he had to make his way across the hall to the television studio. There were more protesters this time. One of them had a bible in his hand. "Murderer, murderer", they roared again. Their faces were contorted and tense.

Adams was interviewed three times in the television studios. Each interviewer was hostile. Each time he was slow and calm. His answers were ready.

As Adams and his supporters moved down the stairs, the protesters stood at the top and shouted once more. Their slogans had about them all the aura of heaven and hell. One of them turned on the press demanding why the press didn't write about the British soldier blown up that day.

Three cars were ready to take Adams and his supporters in convoy to the Falls Road. First there was a green car for Adams and last was a black taxi.

At Sinn Fein headquarters in the Falls, a window was taken out and Adams stood there and made his speech again, beginning in what he had previously called "ar dteanga". His supporters were wandering about like people who had inherited the earth.