Johnston Clarke - Martin McGuinness: From Guns To Government

MARTIN MCGUINNESS

FROM GUNS TO GOVERNMENT

LIAM CLARKE AND KATHRYN JOHNSTON

Copyright Liam Clarke and Kathryn Johnston 2001

All rights reserved

The moral right of the authors has been asserted

First published in Great Britain in 2001 by

MAINSTREAM PUBLISHING COMPANY (EDINBURGH) LTD

7 Albany Street

Edinburgh EH1 3UG

ISBN 1 84018 725 5

Revised and updated, 2003

Electronic Edition 2011

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for insertion in a newspaper, magazine or broadcast

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Contents

Preface to the Electronic Edition

Gerry Fitt and the SDLP are concerned at the moment with running down the IRA. These people are going around talking about peace. Theyre wasting their time. It doesnt matter a fuck what Gerry Fitt or John Hume say. We fight on. Were not stopping until we get a United Ireland.

Martin McGuinness, Derry, Easter 1972

The reunification of Ireland can only happen by purely peaceful and democratic means.

Martin McGuinness, Cavan, October 2011

The eight years that have elapsed since the last edition of this book have been eventful ones both for Martin McGuinness and for Irish politics. The Celtic Tiger economic boom in the Republic has come and gone and the western world has been plunged into an unparallel economic recession. Yet, against all odds, the Northern Ireland peace process has hung together and thrived. An enduring partnership has emerged between Sinn Fein and the DUP, long regarded as the awkward parties who stood in the way of political stability.

Yet even eight years ago, the direction in which Martin McGuinness was travelling seemed clear. In the Postscript to the 2003 edition of this book, we wrote that the signs were that Sinn Fein would consolidate their lead over the SDLP in the Assembly, meaning Martin McGuinness could be Deputy First Minister to a unionist First Minister. We argued:

The fly in the ointment is that he needs a unionist leader to share power with him, and he is unlikely to find one as long as IRA activity continues to be detected. The IRA, once the mainstay of McGuinnesss power and influence and the focus of his loyalty, now stands in the way of his ambitions and is a hindrance rather than a help to the entire republican project. The message is slowly being driven home that the support of Sinn Fein and republicans is no longer enough. The choice between pleasing his unionist enemies and maintaining republican unity was once no contest, but now the choice is between pleasing the unionists and being denied power.

McGuinness is, if nothing else, a ruthless and pragmatic man. This new choice will not be much of a contest either.

In the eight years since then, McGuinness has done what was necessary to fulfil our prediction. By September 2005, the decommissioning of IRA weapons was completed in order to pave the way to power sharing with the DUP, now the largest unionist party. Suddenly it seemed safe for moderate nationalists to vote for Sinn Fein. In the election of March 2007, the party had far outstripped the SDLP. After negotiations, McGuinness assumed the mantle of Deputy First Minister alongside Ian Paisley. The two old enemies constantly laughed and smiled in each others presence so freely that they were nicknamed the Chuckle Brothers. In December that year, they jointly visited President Bush in the White House where McGuinness told a press conference:

Up until the 26 March this year, Ian Paisley and I never had a conversation about anything not even about the weather and now we have worked very closely together over the last seven months and there's been no angry words between us.... This shows we are set for a new course.

That new course has continued even after Ian Paisley was succeeded by Peter Robinson; the voting strength of both the DUP and Sinn Fein continued to thrive. The relationship was primarily political - Paisley and Robinson do not drop into McGuinnesss Westland Terrace home - but it was built on acts of personal trust. McGuinness expressed public and private sympathy to Robinson after his wife, Iris, resigned her seat and suffered a nervous breakdown when her extra-marital affair with a teenage restaurateur was exposed. McGuinness could have attacked Robinson, who lost his Westminster seat, in his moment of weakness. Instead, he calculated that Sinn Feins best interests lay in a good working relationship with the DUP. The two men shook hands for the first time and are now visibly at ease together, making jokes at each others expense and exchanging text messages about football.

McGuinnesss outright condemnation of the dissident republicans as traitors for shooting two British soldiers and a police officer in 2009 was another seminal moment in building unionist confidence in his peaceful intentions. Such gestures may be worth it politically, but they still take courage. The Wikileaks cables released in the spring of 2011 revealed that McGuinness also received a death threat from the dissidents. It didnt deflect him from standing shoulder to shoulder with Peter Robinson at the funeral of Constable Ronan Kerr, the young GAA player and PSNI officer killed by a dissident bomb attack in 2011.

As we write, McGuinness is standing in the Irish Presidential election on 27 October 2011. While he is not favourite to win bookies put him at around 14/1 - his candidature marks another new departure for Sinn Fein, who have never contested the election before. He also looks likely to increase the partys vote and he has moved republicans onto new ground, conceding that some IRA attacks could be described as murder and pledging to meet Queen Elizabeth in his role as President if required. He has also developed a reputation as a name-dropper. On a TV3 Presidential debate, the presenter, Vincent Browne, introduced McGuinness with the tongue-in-cheek assertion that he was Nelson Mandelas best mate and had been in the Oval Office more times than Monica Lewinsky. Much of the public debate has centred around him and he seems surprised that his IRA past had featured so heavily. His claims to have left the organisation in 1974, a legally convenient fiction - that was the last time he was convicted of membership - have been treated with derision. Repeating the line to unbelieving audiences may well have damaged his credibility on other issues.

He was also trapped into the 1974 line by his evidence to Lord Savilles Bloody Sunday Tribunal a few months after the last edition of this book appeared. As a witness, he refused to give any details about IRA personnel, even those who had already testified to Saville. He had left the IRA in 1974, he told the Inquiry, and had been unarmed on Bloody Sunday. However, when Lord Saville released his report on 15 June 2010,he found that on Bloody Sunday Before the soldiers of Support Company went into the Bogside he [McGuinness] was probably armed with a Thompson sub-machine gun. He went on to say that he had found no evidence that McGuinness had engaged in any activity that provided any of the soldiers with any justification for opening fire. The full proceedings of the inquiry are available online. Paddy Ward was, like us, called as a witness because of the account given in Chapter 3 below, which we believe is still broadly accurate. Ward, now dead, was challenged on his claim to have led the Fianna by two other witnesses who gave contradictory accounts, each claiming to have held the post themselves. McGuinness denied handing out nail bombs and Ward countered that he may have given out detonators, rather than full bombs.