JFK’s sibling who, as US envoy to Ireland, brought Gerry Adams in from the cold
Jean Kennedy Smith, the eighth of the nine Kennedy siblings who included a US president and two US senators, witnessed abundant triumph and tragedy during her long life. But during a brief spell in the mid-1990s the so-called ‘‘quiet Kennedy’’ helped make history herself by bringing Sinn Fein and the Provisional IRA in from the cold.
In 1993 President Clinton, an admirer of the Kennedys, appointed her US ambassador to Dublin. She shared the strong nationalist sympathies of her Irish-American family, but had no diplomatic experience and knew little about the finer points of the sectarian conflict north of the border. She was determined, nonetheless, to fulfil her brief, which was actively to encourage a fledgling peace process in Northern Ireland.
She had particular reason to oppose political violence, having seen two of her brothers assassinated, but soon became convinced that Gerry Adams was serious about ending the IRA’s armed struggle. Thus she recommended that the Sinn Fein leader be granted a visa to visit the US for a one-day peace conference in New York in 1994.
The British government was appalled at the idea of granting the mouthpiece of a terrorist organisation a concession that would give him respectability and publicity.
The Irish government and John Hume, the nationalist SDLP leader who had been holding secret talks with Adams, backed Smith, as did her powerful younger brother, Senator Edward Kennedy, and other senior senators. A ferocious battle for Clinton’s ear ensued. In the end the president enraged British prime minister John Major and risked a major rupture with America’s closest ally by granting Adams a 48-hour visa.
Smith was vindicated by events. The visas – a second one for Adams was issued later, again at Smith’s behest – gave Sinn Fein recognition and confidence. They helped to persuade the IRA that ending violence would yield rewards. In 1997, after one false start, the provisionals declared a ceasefire that largely held and Sinn Fein was admitted to peace negotiations at Stormont in Belfast. The next year it signed up to the Good Friday agreement, which ended 30 years of conflict in Northern Ireland.
‘‘The visa granting was pivotal,’’ Adams said later. Clinton said it was ‘‘controversial but critical to jump starting the peace process’’. Of the woman Sinn Fein affectionately called ‘‘Speir Bhan’’ (‘‘Woman of Mythology’’), the historian Arthur Schlesinger said: ‘‘Jean may well be the best politician of all the Kennedys, but she needed this position to really show that.’’
Jean Ann Kennedy Smith was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1928, the
US diplomat b February 20, 1928 d June 17, 2020
youngest daughter of Joseph Kennedy, a wealthy but somewhat controversial businessman, and his wife, Rose. Smith enjoyed an idyllic childhood divided between summers on Cape Cod, winters in Palm Beach, Florida, and a mansion in affluent Westchester County, New York. She sailed, rode and played tennis. Her siblings were ‘‘simply my playmates. They were the source of my amusement and the objects of my admiration’’.
In 1938 the family decamped to London, where her father had been appointed US ambassador by President Roosevelt. The children returned home when war broke out, followed a year later by her father who had made himself deeply unpopular by supporting appeasement and predicting Britain’s defeat by Nazi Germany.
Smith went to Roman Catholic schools, then read English at college. In 1956 she married Stephen Smith, a transport company executive, who managed the Kennedy family fortune after her father had a stroke. They had two sons, Stephen and William, and two adopted daughters, Amanda and Kym.
Smith and her husband worked for her brothers’ many political campaigns, but they were not attracted to frontline politics themselves. She preferred charitable and humanitarian work.
In 1974, inspired by the fate of her mentally ill sister Rosemary, she founded an international programme called Very Special Arts to help the mentally disabled engage in the arts. For the same reason another of her sisters, Eunice, launched the Special Olympics for the intellectually and physically disabled.
That charitable focus changed after Clinton won the presidency in 1992. Smith had joined her brother, John, on his triumphant presidential visit to Ireland in 1963. She was 65 and her husband had died of cancer three years earlier, but Edward Kennedy persuaded the new president to appoint her ambassador. The Irish were thrilled to have a member of America’s most prominent Irish family in Dublin, the British and Northern Ireland’s Unionists distinctly apprehensive.
Change was afoot. John Major and Albert Reynolds, the taoiseach, signed the Downing Street declaration in December 1993, affirming the right of the Irish people to selfdetermination, and there were rumours of an imminent IRA ceasefire.
Smith broke the diplomatic rules. She upset the US embassy in London by travelling regularly to Northern Ireland.
She persuaded her brother Edward that Adams was serious about peace and in January 1994 she sent the fateful cable to Washington recommending that Adams’ visa application be approved. ‘‘She thought the British should get the hell out of the way and quit blocking progress,’’ Admiral William Crowe, the US ambassador in London, recalled. ‘‘Offending the British didn’t bother her in the least.’’
In March 1995 she supported another visa for Adams so he could fundraise in the US and attend the St Patrick’s Day celebrations at the White House. Major was so angry he refused to take a call from Clinton for five days.
‘‘I was a cog, really, in the machine that was moving. I was fortunate to be here to perhaps add momentum to what was happening,’’ she said as her posting ended shortly after the Good Friday agreement in 1998.
Smith was awarded honorary Irish citizenship. ‘‘You have helped bring about a better life for everyone throughout Ireland,’’ Bertie Ahern, the taoiseach, told her.
In 2011 President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honour, for her humanitarian work. In 2016 she published a memoir of her youth, The Nine of Us: Growing Up Kennedy. By the time of her death, aged 92, she was the last of those nine.
Jean Kennedy Smith
Do you know someone who deserves a Life Story? Email obituaries@dompost.co.nz