Tony Blair, his henchmen and a shameless bid to rob John Major of his brave legacy
Desperate for any chance to try to redeem his indelibly tarnished reputation, tony Blair jumped at the opportunity of Martin McGuinness’s death to remind people of his own role in the Northern Ireland peace process.
this is perhaps understandable. Mr Blair cannot remove the catastrophe of the Iraq War, with all its terrible consequences — the deaths of 179 British service men and women as well as continuing toxic instability across the Middle east — from his legacy as prime minister.
Likewise, his sordid dealings with a long list of international dictators since leaving Downing street irrevocably stain his record.
the public are nauseated, too, by his obscene obsession with making huge sums of money.
However, it is undeniably the case that Northern Ireland is a much happier and safer place now than it was 25 years ago — and we can all agree that Mr Blair played a leading role in the peace process culminating in the Good Friday agreement in april 1998.
But for his supporters to claim that his achievements are worthy of a global accolade is a travesty of the truth.
the fact is Mr Blair merely completed a process that involved many other politicians. I was particularly disturbed by the way his former henchman, Jonathan powell, went on BBC2’s Newsnight to eulogise over his boss’s role, after the death of the one-time Ira commander-in-chief McGuinness.
His account was accurate so far as it went, but suffered from one very serious omission. He completely failed to mention the role of sir John Major — Mr Blair’s tory predecessor as prime minister — who negotiated the first ceasefire with the Ira.
In the early Nineties, McGuinness and his fellow Ira godfathers knew they were losing the war against the British and that their bloody armed struggle was going nowhere.
Cynically, they put out feelers to the London government for a negotiated peace. after the dreadful carnage and killings they had inflicted over the years, it took huge moral courage for Major to begin talks with them.
Indeed, I would argue it was far more difficult for Major in 1994, than it was for Blair three years later, to negotiate with McGuinness and the Ira.
Never forget that Ira terrorists tried to kill Major with a mortar attack on Downing street in 1991 during a Cabinet meeting.
Irish terrorists very nearly murdered his predecessor, Margaret thatcher, with the bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton in 1984, which killed five people and left Norman tebbit’s wife Margaret paralysed for life.
Nor should it be forgotten that Major’s political position was extremely precarious when he entered into negotiations with the Ira. He had only a small Commons majority and relied on Ulster Unionist Mps — who had a visceral hatred of the Irish republicans — to keep his government afloat. But Major was ready to anger these parliamentary allies by supping with people they equated with the devil, and thus put his own political survival at risk.
significantly, former cabinet secretary Lord Butler has said Major took greater risks to secure peace in Northern Ireland than Blair — adding that his record has been unfairly overlooked.
the mandarin praised the tory pM for facing down Cabinet sceptics worried about the secret talks Major initiated with sinn Fein.
Lord Butler said: ‘One has got to remember that in terms of the politics, John Major took the bigger risk because there were more people in his party who were, because of their link to the unionists, and because they felt that you’d never get anywhere with these people [republicans], very willing to criticise it if it went wrong.’ Mr Major courageously laid the basis for the 1998 Good Friday agreement by securing the 1993 Downing street Declaration with his Irish counterpart, albert reynolds. It enshrined the principle of consent — seen as the foundation of the peace process — which stipulated that Northern Ireland’s future could only be decided by its people.
admittedly, Mr Blair deserves credit, too. But he merely continued his predecessor’s engagement with McGuinness and Gerry adams. Indeed, I am convinced that — while there are many grave negatives on his record as PM — bringing peace to Northern Ireland was Mr Blair’s greatest achievement in No. 10.
Yet, this week, he and his acolytes — with characteristic dishonesty — failed to properly acknowledge the groundwork done by Major’s government. this is not just ungracious, it is also a distortion of the historical record. this emphasis on the endgame and the sidelining of the work that had gone on before, has, most egregiously, also led Blairites to misunderstand the true nature of Martin McGuinness.
THE truth about McGuinness is much darker than Blair seems prepared to accept. He was a sadist and a mass murderer, responsible for the destruction of countless lives, including children. He used violence to achieve his political ends and he had no scruples about how he set about it.
In fact, many other brave and honourable Catholic politicians were just as committed to the cause of Irish nationalism as McGuinness and his Ira killers, but never turned away from the path of peace.
Consider John Hume, the then leader of the social Democratic and Labour party. He proudly eschewed violence. Mr Hume and his Ulster Unionist counterpart, David trimble, are the heroes of the Ulster peace process. along with the British army, the Intelligence services and countless ordinary Irishmen from all sides of the sectarian divide who refused to join the armed struggle.
It is telling to compare the reactions of tony Blair and sir John Major to the news of McGuinness’s death. Blair dashed on to the airwaves to hail the Ira thug and murderer as a ‘great peacemaker.’
Major spoke more soberly, and was careful to highlight the atrocities for which McGuinness never once apologised — adding: ‘He had a lot of blood on his hands.”
Blair’s glorification of McGuinness was not just deeply offensive to the thousands who were killed or maimed by Ira thugs but sent out the very terrifying message that terrorists can bomb and murder their way to power.