Irish rebel turned politician dies at 66

Martin McGuinness, a former IRA commander, turned peacemaker to end decades of violence in Northern Ireland

LONDON // Martin McGuinness, the Irish Republican Army commander who led his underground paramilitary movement to reconciliation with Britain, died yesterday. He was 66.

Turning from rebel to peacemaker, McGuinness served as Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister for a decade in a power-sharing government.

He played a central behindthe-scenes role in negotiating a peace deal in 1998, which ended three decades of conflict in Northern Ireland that killed more than 3,500 people.

“It is with deep regret and sadness that we have learnt of the death of our friend and comrade Martin McGuinness, who passed away in Derry during the night,” said his Sinn Fein party, which is opposed to British rule in Northern Ireland.

The BBC said he had died of a rare heart condition. “While I can never condone the path he took in the earlier part of his life, Martin McGuinness ultimately played a defining role in leading the republican movement away from violence,” said UK prime minister Theresa May.

“In doing so, he made an essential contribution to the extraordinary journey of Northern Ireland from conflict to peace.”

Colin Parry, whose 12-year-old son Tim died in an IRA bomb in the English town of Warrington in 1993, said he could not forgive the IRA but paid tribute to McGuinness’s “desire for peace”. McGuinness was “a brave man, who put himself at some risk” from more hardline members of the republican movement, Mr Parry said.

Irish president Michael Higgins said: “The world of politics and the people across this island will miss the leadership he gave, shown most clearly during the difficult times of the peace process, and his commitment to the values of genuine democracy that he demonstrated in the development of the institutions in Northern Ireland.” McGuinness’s transformation as peacemaker was all the more remarkable because, as a senior IRA commander during the years of the gravest Catholic-Protestant violence, he insisted that Northern Ireland must be forced out of the United Kingdom against the wishes of Protestants.

Even after the Sinn Fein party – the IRA’s legal, public face – started to run for elections in the 1980s, McGuinness insisted as Sinn Fein deputy leader that “armed struggle” remained essential.

“We don’t believe that winning elections and any amount of votes will bring freedom in Ireland,” he told a BBC documentary team in 1986.

“At the end of the day, it will be the cutting edge of the IRA that will bring freedom.”

AFP Martin McGuinness outside 10 Downing Street in London last year. In his later years the former IRA commander became deputy first minister of Northern Ireland before stepping down this year.