Martin McGuinness, a fighter turned peacemaker
Martin McGuinness should be celebrated for fighting for peace and unity in a divided society.
There is not much I can say, positive or otherwise, which hasn’t already been said about Martin McGuinness. The IRA Commander turned politician, a man who set down the gun, who offered a handshake to bring an end to the atrocities which had set the tone in Northern Ireland for the preceding 30 years. Make no mistake about it, without Martin McGuinness, there would be no peace, or certainly not the same kind of peace, in Northern Ireland that we enjoy today.
Having started with this, it would be remiss of anyone to ignore his past and any killing which took place either at his hand or at his command should not be condoned. He is a man that is proud of being in the IRA and in a way that is quite admirable, despite the atrocities which occurred due to the actions of the IRA and the subsequent retaliation from Loyalist paramilitary groups. At the age of 21 he became an IRA commander in Derry, a quite astonishing achievement which shows how strongly he felt about the cause of Irish Unity.
He was committed to the armed rebellion but did not believe it was the only way to achieve peace, as illustrated by his negotiations with Willie Whitelaw, Northern Ireland Secretary of State, in 1972. This took place while he was still an active member of the IRA and I believe it shows that from the outset of The Troubles, he was always looking for a peaceful resolution to the violence. I understand that this is a view which will be criticised and most likely laughed at, that Martin McGuinness was a ‘coward` and a ‘terrorist` who should be vilified for everything he did in his time as a commander in the IRA. We should all feel the deepest sympathy for the families of all people who were murdered due to the actions of the IRA but to lay the blame for every murder at the feet of Martin McGuinness is incredibly unfair and in truth, it’s naïve of anyone to think that he is to blame for all the atrocities that took place.
When the Assembly finally got properly up and running in Northern Ireland, after the St Andrew’s Agreement in 2006, it was headed by Reverend Ian Paisley, a Unionist and a Loyalist, the founder of the DUP and a man who denounced the Pope as the ‘Antichrist`, and the former IRA Commander, Martin McGuinness. If you had told anyone in the 1970’s that Martin McGuinness would be a politician, and would be working alongside Ian Paisley of all people, they would have pronounced you as clinically insane.
But that is exactly what happened. But here’s the kicker, they got along. In fact, they got along so well that they were nicknamed the ‘Chuckle brothers` and when Rev. Paisley passed away, Mr McGuinness remarked that he had ‘lost a friend`, a true testament to the relationship which they shared in their year together in Stormont. Ian Paisley once called upon Martin McGuinness to be prosecuted on war crimes yet, just after his death in 2014, Ian’s wife said “His friendship with Martin McGuinness had meant something very special to him.” After McGuinness resigned as Deputy First Minister in January 2017, an MP said of him “I can say thank you, honestly and humbly, and recognize the remarkable journey Martin McGuinness went on has not only saved lives, but has made the lives of countless people in Northern Ireland better.” The name of that MP is Ian Paisley Jr. The impact which Martin McGuinness had upon the Paisley family is clear for all to see and is also a mark of how much he changed his political style throughout the years.
The Martin McGuinness which entered into government with Ian Paisley is the same Martin McGuinness which commanded the IRA at 21. Same person, same goal, different methodology. May I be so bold as to comment that one of the greatest human beings to have ever lived was also supportive of achieving a political goal through means of violence if necessary. This man was called Nelson Mandela. There must be clarity to this point, I’m not trying to suggest that Martin McGuinness should be revered and admired on the same level as the great Mandela, nor am I saying that the campaigns of violence were similar in South Africa and Northern Ireland. What should be illustrated here is that a man’s past experiences don’t define who he will become and one part of a person’s life shouldn’t define their life as a whole. Martin McGuinness, like Mandela, believed strongly in what he was fighting for and wanted to achieve this through any means possible. Martin McGuinness, like Mandela, sometimes overstepped the boundary between right and wrong in trying to achieve his goal. But they will both go down in history as men who sought to right their wrongs by doing things the correct way later in life.
Tuesday, 21 March 2017 will rightly go down as a historic day in Northern Irish politics. Whether you love him or loathe him, it would be incredibly difficult to deny that Martin McGuinness played a significant, and possibly even the significant, role in bringing about the peace which we now all enjoy.
It’s a shame some people can look at Martin McGuinness and see only a murderer and a man who brought misery to many families. While I can completely understand this and accept their reasons for doing so, I feel it does a disservice to the work he undertook during his time in politics to bring peace and equality to a region which hadn’t seen true peace for centuries.
This is a man who was prepared to sit and negotiate with people who he was diametrically opposed to for the betterment of the lives of the people of Northern Ireland. A man who gave over 40 years of his life to fight a minority cause in an incredibly divided society. But most of all, Martin McGuinness was a man who, despite what others may say about him, fought for all the people of Northern Ireland in an indiscriminate way and brought about a level of peace which nobody believed was possible.
