Martin McGuinness: man of violence or peace?

I COULDN’T believe the way BBC Breakfast TV fawned over the late Martin McGuinness. I was so sickened I had to turn it off. On the Jeremy Vine programme on Radio 2, it was the same until Norman Tebbit spoke. At last, someone was speaking the truth. But his comments were rather dismissed by Vine. What a lily-livered lot they are at the BBC.

JANE PROWSE, Bovey Tracey, Devon.

Why does no one say in plain words that had it not been for the violence McGuinness and his ilk created, there would have been no need for a ‘peace process’ (Mail)? But he was a most charming hard-working man and, therefore, should be forgiven. So were Stalin and Mao, even hitler. And who could forget the ebullient Goering, bursting with bonhomie, or Albert Speer, the ‘good Nazi’ who distanced himself from the slave labourers he used. The bigger the crime, the easier to get absolution — if you have charm.

WILLIAM BARRIE, Marlow, Bucks.

ONE can only condemn all the killings committed in Northern Ireland — but there are two sides to every story. It’s as well to remember what caused the ‘conflict’: the search for justice by the minority after years of injustice. And that it was Ian Paisley and his henchmen who ‘cast the first stone’ when they ambushed a peaceful march in 1969. It’s all too easy just to demonise one person.

Name and address supplied.

IN Life, McGuinness was genuinely respected outside his community because it was recognised that he was largely sincere in trying to heal the terrors of the past and maintain practical relations between the long suffering people in Ulster. let’s hope his good example will inspire his successors not to deviate from the path of reconciliation.

JOVAN RADUSIN, Bedford.