''I conducted a campaign of electoral fraud'' So said Brendan Hughes,IRA member and close friend of Gerry Adams Belfast Telegraph Mon March 29,2010
Senior republican Brendan Hughes has revealed how he directed a campaign of electoral fraud,stealing votes for Gerry Adams during the 1980s
The former IRA Belfast commander, who died in 2008,gave a detailed description of how he stole ''loads of votes for the Sinn Fein president during a closely contested battle for the West Belfast seat in the 1987 general election.
The book 'Voices from the Grave' which is edited by journalist Ed Moloney also claims that vote-stealing was an important part of the party's operations at the time. According to extracts published in todays Irish News,Hughes who was interned alongside Gerry Adams at Long Kesh,told the author: ''I was the main person in charge of personation''
''I organised busloads,carloads,I'd a fleet of taxis at my disposal to bring people to the polling booths. I did this right after I got out of prison,during the council election and the (Westminster) election...I hear Unionists complaining about it all the time,(and) they're right,it was massive...I was the impersonation master.
''I did it from my house,from Connolly House. I did it from the Sinn Fein centre on the Falls Road. I had loads of dead people. I had babies who wern't born,babies who were in the graveyard,they all voted. ''And thats how we got to the position we're in now.''
Gerry Adams won his Westminster seat in 1983,but thoughout the 1980s the SDLP's Joe Hendron was a thorn in his side and four years later he gave the Sinn Fein leader a run for his money. In 1987 Joe Hendron lost by just 2,000 votes and the SDLP complained bitterly about vote-stealing. At the time medical cards were the only identification required to vote.
Speaking to the Irish News last night Dr Hendron said he welcomed the facts coming out. ''To somebody like me there is nothing new in this. We as a party knew that votes were being stolen. It was thousands of votes,not hundreds,''' he said.
''I would even speak to Sinn Fein people in my time in the Assembly and Sinn Fein people would not have denied it. There was nothing to deny - they knew it happened.
Footnote..Before his death Brendan Hughes was one of some dozens of people connected to the conflict here,who lodged interviews with Boston University - their personal accounts of the 'war', not to be published while they were stilll alive.
