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thomas davison

I'm sorry, even in the name of peace, it was wrong to take his bloodsoaked hand
By Max Hastings
PUBLISHED: 23:43, 27 June 2012 | UPDATED: 23:43, 27 June 2012

One among many reasons we admire the Queen is that, in return for all those palaces and footmen and Scottish holidays, she must smile through endless encounters that would send the rest of us either to sleep or the madhouse.

She entertains at Buckingham Palace African dictators, clowns like ex-French president Nicolas Sarkozy, or Chinese and Russian leaders who never get the blood off their hands, however often they use the royal hand-basins. For ten years, she had to meet Tony Blair once a week, and even be civil to his wife.

But I doubt whether any of these ordeals inspired as much royal repugnance as shaking hands yesterday with Martin McGuinness, Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland and former career killer of British soldiers, Ulster policemen and anybody else who obstructed his all-Irish dream.

Repugnant: The Queen should be admired for having the fortitude to shake Martin McGuinness's hand
Since seeing the idiot of the monarch with McGuinness, probably you, like me, have thought a bit about the arguments in favour of the meeting. Of course it is worth a great deal to have peace in Northern Ireland, after more than 30 years of bloodshed.

McGuinness now seems to be going straight, and last year stood as a candidate for Ireland�s presidency. Is it not reasonable for the Queen to make the symbolic gesture of extending a hand to him in her people�s name?

The British Government has, after all, put Ian Paisley in the House of Lords. Paisley, on the other side of the sectarian divide, played a huge role in stoking up the Troubles that I witnessed at first hand as a reporter more than 40 years ago.

Stoking up the Troubles: Both McGuinness (left) and Reverend Ian Paisley (right) have both gone from sectarian politics to mainstream government

I am confident that eventually he and McGuinness will stoke the fires of hell alongside each other for the horrors they shared in precipitating, even though the preacher has certainly never pressed any triggers.

If Britain�s legislature can tolerate Paisley, does it cost any more to be civil to McGuinness? The former IRA chief said back in 2007, when he first sat in the Northern Ireland Assembly with his old foe: �Until March, Ian Paisley and I never conversed about anything � not even about the weather � and now we have worked very closely together over the past seven months and there�s been no angry words between us. This shows we are set for a new course.�

Thinking about McGuinness yesterday dragged me back through a time warp to the decade that began in 1969, when I seemed to spend half my life in Ulster. Those were terrible years, when I saw whole streets in flames, rival mobs armed with petrol bombs and dustbin lids hammering each other in Derry and Belfast; then men with guns and bombs killing and maiming in indiscriminate mayhem.

Torn apart: Enniskillen after the IRA bomb in 1987 that killed 11 people
I never met Martin McGuinness, but saw his handiwork often enough. In the early Seventies, when he was first deputy then leader of the Provisional IRA in Derry, his bombers reduced the city centre to rubble, so that it came to look as if the place had suffered air attack.

I met sobbing widows of men the Provos had killed, dazed and uncomprehending children whom the terrorists had deprived of fathers.

�We have to fight against the killing of our people,� McGuinness defiantly told a Dublin judge when he was arrested in 1973 in possession of explosives and ammunition, and sentenced to six months� imprisonment, despite the fact he refused to recognise the court and declared his pride in membership of �Oglaigh na h�Eireann� � the �warriors of Ireland�.

'Warriors of Ireland': McGuinness (far right) with other IRA men in 1972
He was oblivious to the fact that British soldiers had been sent to Ulster to protect the Catholic minority from the degradations of the Protestant majority.

McGuinness was born in 1950, and got his start as a young terrorist throwing petrol bombs in defence of the Bogside in 1969 � a time when it should be said that the Royal Ulster Constabulary was behaving appallingly towards Catholics.

He committed his first known crime by breaking into St Colomb�s school to steal sulphuric acid for bomb-making. He was caught red-handed by the local priest, a bitter foe of the IRA, who dismissed him with a wigging.
Chieftan: McGuinness rose through the ranks of the Provisional IRA (pictured in 1972)
Assassinated: The Queen's cousin Lord Mountbatten was killed by the IRA in 1979

It did no good. In 1970, McGuinness joined the Official IRA, then shifted a few months later to the Provisionals. He rose swiftly through their ranks to become Derry commander at 22, recognised by the security forces as a ruthless leader and cunning planner.

A Royal Marine major said, with a mixture of respect and loathing, that if McGuinness had been on our side he would have been considered �excellent officer material�.

But he was not. He had made a career decision to shoot and bomb the British out of Ireland, which eventually elevated him to become chief of staff of the IRA army council.

Atrocity: McGuinness has always denied involvement in the Enniskillen bombing
McGuinness has never admitted to personally killing anybody, though many refuse to believe him. He equivocates or lies about exactly when he abandoned terrorism in favour of politics.

He claims to have laid down his gun in 1974, but this is not credible. The respected BBC TV reporter Peter Taylor believes McGuinness was head of the IRA�s Northern Command as late as 1987, and that he had foreknowledge of one of its most ghastly atrocities, the Enniskillen bombing in which 11 civilians died. McGuinness denies the allegation.

In his personal life McGuinness, like many terrorists, is obsessively austere. He is a member of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association: odd, isn�t it, that somebody who can murder without pity recoils from the wickedness of alcohol?

Austere: McGuinness does not drink, and does not take a salary as Deputy First Minister
He professes devout religious convictions, once saying: �If I believed that the struggle I am engaged in was wrong from the point of view of being a Catholic, I would not be part of it. I believe that God will understand the pressures under which we live and be a fairer judge than the bishops and the cardinals.�

Married since 1974 with four children, he has also said: �If my activities caused my marriage to break up I would consider the British had won.�

Though entitled to a salary of �71,434 as Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, he does not claim the money, accepting only expenses and a monthly stipend of �1,600 from Sinn Fein. He thus fulfils the foremost requirement of a fanatic � certitude about his own moral compass, arbitrated by himself.

Unlike many of the soldiers and policemen killed and maimed on his watch as a Provo chieftain, he has been fortunate enough to make a comfortable transition from man on the run to man at the top table, from professional terrorist to politician.

It is initially puzzling why this sea-green, lifelong nationalist should have agreed to meet the Queen, the embodiment of the Britain he has fought all his life.

I am cynical enough to doubt whether McGuinness is much interested in reconciliation. I fancy he shook the royal hand because he made a cold calculation that such a gesture would boost his political stature. He lost last year�s presidential election because many Irish people saw through the mask and recognised him for what he is.

Calculating: McGuinness may be hoping that the appearance of reconciliation with win him political support
But don�t underestimate his ambition. At the Lyric Theatre in Belfast yesterday, he made a gesture designed to proclaim: I am a new man, born-again moderate, standard-bearer for sectarian harmony.

This proposition seems implausible. The essence of South Africa�s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, an inspired concept, was that those who had done terrible things in the era of apartheid publicly confessed them to secure forgiveness. McGuinness has staged no such confrontation with his dreadful past, making not the smallest admission of contrition.

Anyone with a little religious faith must believe that bad men can attain forgiveness � through repentance. But no more than Paisley or Gerry Adams has McGuinness ever expressed regret.

For that reason, and even in the great and worthy cause of Irish reconciliation, I think it was wrong for the British Government to ask the Queen to shake the man�s hand.

If she was a wee bit taller I am sure she would have headbutted him.

2Anne · Joined: 04 May 2008 Posts: 399 Location: Norfolk

This man has never uttered a word of regret for the immense evil he did.
Its pretty disgusting that he now occupies a seat of power but then so do the likes of Peter Hain and Jack Straw.
I think the fuss abot this underlines peoples unease about the situation.
Its not the first time the Queen has shaken hands with murderers.