Me, Martin and the long, hard road to peace
THE late Martin McGuinness resigned as deputy first minister in early January over the refusal of first minister Arlene Foster to step aside in the ‘cash-for-ash’ row. That evening, when I watched him on the news, like most of the rest of the country, I was shocked by his frail appearance. He seemed to have deteriorated very rapidly from the last time he had appeared in public.
The next morning, I decided to chance ringing him on an old mobile phone number that I had for him.
Given the fact that I had left public office in 2011, I didn’t particularly think the number would be up to date. However, after a few rings he answered, albeit with a very weak voice. I apologised for disturbing him, adding that I merely wanted to wish him well in his fight to regain good health. We talked mostly about his health difficulties.
Just over a week later, I met him at the funeral of the former secretary general of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Dermot Gallagher, and I was struck by how much better he looked. In fact, most people who met him said he looked better that day than on the day of his resignation. Unfortunately, the serious illness with which he was diagnosed took hold and he died this week.
In the late Eighties, I was, on behalf of Fianna Fáil, involved in secret talks with Gerry Adams and other Sinn Féin representatives. These were the first tentative meetings between the two parties. The reason my party participated was with a view to convincing Sinn Féin, which we believed was inextricably linked to the IRA leadership, to take a solely peaceful and constitutional path in order to promote its aims. We stressed how the IRA campaign was counter-productive in any drive for a united Ireland.
DURING those early years, which witnessed some of the worst violence of the Troubles, I found it strange that Martin McGuinness didn’t participate. I often wondered was there anything more sinister in the fact that he stayed in the background.
In the early Nineties McGuinness began to appear on Sinn Féin delegations. There was a general feeling that his presence was confirmation that any commitments given by Sinn Féin representatives carried the full weight of the IRA’s approval. He was pivotal in the IRA announcing a ceasefire in August 1994. However, when negotiations stalled, that ceasefire ended in February 1996 with a huge bomb being detonated in the London Docklands. Other IRA attacks took place, including the killing in June 1996 of Detective Garda Jerry McCabe.
The elections of Tony Blair as British prime minister and Bertie Ahern as taoiseach in May and June 1997 respectively led to a new impetus in the negotiations with Adams and McGuinness. In the following month, July 1997, the IRA announced its final ceasefire. Despite many bumps along the way, in April 1998 the Good Friday Agreement was finalised, and, over the subsequent years, its implementation involved much further negotiation.
One of the key issues which caused huge difficulty was the full decommissioning of IRA weapons. The final act of verified decommissioning took place in September 2005. The St Andrews Agreement of 2006 led, eventually, to acceptance by Sinn Féin of the PSNI and the subsequent setting-up of the devolved institutions in Northern Ireland. Again, it was always the view of negotiators on both sides of the Irish Sea that having McGuinness involved in these negotiations was critical.
Throughout all of those negotiations, both governments firmly believed that negotiating with Adams and McGuinness was in effect negotiating with the IRA leadership. While the two of them would adopt the position that they would have to ‘go to the IRA’ to brief them on developments, we were fully aware that, at that time, Sinn Féin and the IRA were two sides of the one coin.
Indeed, on one occasion, when both of them stated that they would have to take certain proposals to the IRA, Brian Cowen caustically suggested they should merely ‘look into the nearest mirror’. The attitude of both governments in this respect was based on the strong opinion given by the heads of our respective security services. For instance, the £26.5million Northern Bank raid in December 2004 had huge ramifications in the negotiations. The then taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, stated that ‘this operation had been planned at a stage when I was in negotiations with those that would know the leadership of the Provisional movement’.
Again, gardaí were adamant that, despite denials by Adams, McGuinness and the IRA, the raid was carried out by IRA personnel. Shortly after the raid, Bertie Ahern, Michael McDowell and myself had a very tense face-toface meeting with Adams and McGuinness during which we stated how the robbery gave us no option but to halt further negotiations. Naturally, Adams and McGuinness denied any knowledge or involvement in the event. It took a few weeks for discussions to resume. As always, talks with Sinn Féin required a large dollop of ‘constructive ambiguity’.
During these times, I was heavily involved in discussions with all of the parties. Some of them wouldn’t even stand in the same room if others were present. And yet, we were trying to get these people to sit in government with each other. It was only when, finally, unionism, particularly in the guise of the DUP, accepted that Sinn Féin was on a solely peaceful path, without the IRA pulling the strings, that they would agree to sit down with their erstwhile enemies.
The choice by Sinn Féin of McGuinness as their nominee for deputy first minister was a masterstroke. Had they chosen anyone else, the devolved institutions would not have lasted as long. I don’t think other leading members of Sinn Féin would have been able to bite their tongue in the face of sometimes childish antics adopted by some of the unionist representatives.
McGuinness was able to work with David Trimble, who at the time was extremely nervous about the reaction of the unionist community, some of whom had been egged on by the DUP led by Ian Paisley from the sidelines. It’s to McGuinness’s eternal credit that he was able to subsequently deal with Paisley, Peter Robinson and, latterly, up to a point, Arlene Foster, after the DUP came in from the cold. Over those years, I was witness to how some of the hardline unionist representatives dealt with nationalist representatives.
TO say the least, on occasions they were downright condescending and even rude. And yet McGuinness could see the bigger picture. His calm stewardship of the relationship between the DUP first minister and himself surprised even his greatest detractors, some of whom ultimately came to trust and respect him.
On a personal note, I found McGuinness extremely easy to deal with. His friendly demeanour belied his militant past. Nearly every time we met, we discussed the respective merits of Derry City FC and Dundalk FC. Indeed, last year I bumped into him on my way to the Brandywell for a game, and he was his ever-friendly self.
Although he and Paisley were, for decades, poles apart, politically and culturally, both of them in the end, made a 180-degree turn. I found it fascinating to see at close hand how their personal relationship developed. Not only were they ‘Chuckle Brothers’ together, but McGuinness himself became very friendly with Paisley’s wife Eileen and also his son Ian Jr.
The passing of McGuinness will certainly leave a void in Sinn Féin. It remains to be seen if those younger, less experienced people coming behind him will be able to cultivate similar trusting relationships with leaders of the unionist community.
It behoves them to do everything they can to build on the legacy left by Mr McGuinness, whereby he was successfully able to put the past behind him in order to create a better future for the broader community in Northern Ireland.