Gerry Adams to step down in end of an era for Irish nationalism

Adams will almost certainly hand over to a successor with no direct involvement in the decades of conflict in Northern Ireland

Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams, a pivotal figure in the political life of Ireland for almost 50 years, said on Saturday he would step down as party leader and complete a generational shift in the former political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

Reviled by many as the face of the IRA during its campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland, Adams reinvented himself as a peacemaker in the troubled region and then as a populist opposition parliamentarian in the Irish Republic.

Adams said he would be replaced as party president, a position he has held since 1983, at a party conference