Queen expected to send her condolences

QUEEN Elizabeth II will send a private message to the grieving family of Martin McGuinness, Buckingham Palace has indicated.

The British monarch and former IRA commander remained on opposing sides throughout both of their political careers, each epitomising what the other loathed. But in 2012, the pair did the unthinkable, sharing an amicable handshake and paving the way for an era of new relations between unionists and republicans.

McGuinness said so himself the following day, remarking that the gesture could define ‘a new relationship between Britain and Ireland and between the Irish people themselves’.

He said he was ‘offering the hand of friendship to unionists through the person of Queen Elizabeth for which many unionists have a deep affinity’.

The gesture was met with disapproval from some republicans but lauded as a great stride in the peace process by others.

Reflecting on the meeting in an interview with Miriam O’Callaghan in 2012, McGuinness said: ‘Obviously people were talking about it being a historical moment and no doubt as one of the leaders of Irish republicanism on the island of Ireland, her representing everything that we had been opposed to for centuries – it was a moment for me anyway as deputy first minister to show my respect for the unionist people of the North and to extend through Queen Elizabeth the hand of friendship, peace and reconciliation to all of them.

‘Some commentators say… “the peace process is over, why don’t they get on with it?” But I think they’re totally and absolutely wrong. The peace process is not over. There is still work to be done.

‘The private engagement lasted about seven or eight minutes and I have to say she was very nice,’ he said.

McGuinness, a former member of the Provisional IRA’s army council, once took to the streets in Derry to protest the violence inflicted on Bloody Sunday. Lord Mountbatten, her husband Prince Philip’s uncle, was murdered at the hands of the IRA. The queen herself was once a target of an IRA bomb in the Shetland Islands which caused her no harm.

In light of the brutalities shared on both sides, history will remember that momentous handshake.

Last year the pair met again, a familiarity between them this time.

When McGuinness asked her if she was ‘well’ during a meeting at Hillsborough Castle, Queen Elizabeth laughed and responded: ‘Thank you very much – I’m still alive.’