McGuinness’s legacy of peace must prevail
THE death of Martin McGuinness has, predictably and understandably, led to very different interpretations of his complex life and the choices he made, both as a leader of the IRA and as a constitutional politician.
To some, he was a freedom fighter dedicated to the cause of a United Ireland. His friend of almost five decades, Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams, said he was ‘a passionate republican who worked tirelessly for peace and reconciliation and for the reunification of his country’, and Mary Lou McDonald TD said that in joining the IRA in his native Derry, ‘Martin never resiled from his ambition or duty to defend his city’.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Norman Tebbit, the former Conservative politician badly injured in the bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton, and whose wife was left permanently disabled in that attack, said a world without Martin McGuinness was ‘a cleaner and sweeter place’.
Families of the victims of IRA violence also shared photographs yesterday of their loved ones killed during the period Martin McGuinness headed the IRA, a reminder that the ephemeral concept of forgiveness is a great deal easier for those not personally affected than for those tragically and cruelly bereaved.
For countless others, the truth lies somewhere between these extremes. There are many who will forever wonder why he did not follow the path to peace much earlier, and more who grudgingly concede that despite the darkness of his past, Martin McGuinness eventually became a positive force for the progression from the balaclava to the ballot box, the Armalite to the Assembly.
How you view him is a deeply personal choice, but what surely is indisputable is that we now, in March 2017, find ourselves a very long way from the era in which he rose to national and international prominence. Instead of endless violence, of hideous murders carried out by all sides during the Troubles, we now see peace, power-sharing, and a legislative framework that will bring stability to all the citizens of Northern Ireland, no matter how its constitutional status evolves.
There are just five days left to the deadline for agreeing a deal to restart the Northern Assembly, after elections this month. That deadline must be met. We cannot allow a situation in which Northern Ireland – after all that was achieved by Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley, by John Hume and David Trimble – slides even marginally back into insurmountable enmities and sectarian suspicion.
Martin McGuinness was a religious man but he was no saint. Yet he found the personal conviction to embark on a peaceful future and to bring the vast majority of the paramilitary wing of the republican movement to the table with him. It might be easy to ask why he did not do so sooner, but it also is legitimate to be thankful that, however long it took, that he finally got there, sparing countless lives that might otherwise have been snuffed out by bomb or bullet.
And that is why everyone must use the period of reflection following his death to ask what is preferable: is it to be a return to the fear of the past; or a reinvigorated commitment to setting aside differences, to compromising, even when it leaves a bitter taste, and to working together to offer the people of Northern Ireland continued peace?
Martin McGuinness’s legacy is for history to decide. Right now, this very day, politicians of all hues need to get back to the work to which he dedicated the latter years of his tumultuous life.