The dark past of Martin McGuinness
Martin McGuinness: From Guns to Government
Liam Clarke and Kathryn Johnston
Mainstream Publishing £15.99
MARTIN McGuinness is appalled by this fascinating book, which he condemns as an attempt to return to the failed policy of demonising the Sinn Féin leadership: "My focus and the focus of the Sinn Féin leadership is on building peace in Ireland not responding to this nonsense," he tells us.
You have to hand it to the Shinners. At their demand, the British taxpayer is forking out £80m to find out what happened on Bloody Sunday, last week Gerry Adams called for a full public judicial inquiry to uncover the truth about the murder of Pat Finucane, they want an international enquiry into the death of Rosemary Nelson and so on and on and on. But any investigations into what the IRA has been up to for the last 30 years are irresponsible and anti-peace.
As Liam Clarke and Kathy Johnston observe: "When republicans suffer an injury there is a requirement for closure and justice but once an action is taken by the IRA it is time to move on."
What is Martin McGuinness like?
These days, the public figure is an amiable chap, praised by his civil servants for his ability and because of his courtesy and relative straightness, much preferred by unionists to such colleagues as the vain Gerry Adams and the hectoring Bairbre de Brun.
McGuinness is known to be temperate, frugal, uxorious and a devoted father and grandfather whose greatest vice is fly-fishing. And recently, since he got wind of this book, he has been reaching out to the unionist community and sharing their pain like billy-yo.
But unfortunately, as his biographers make clear, there is the other McGuinness the chilling, implacable leader of the IRA. They quote Liam O Comain, once a colleague of McGuinness's: "I would be friendly with Martin, but I am convinced that he is a very ruthless man. Martin wasn't political, Martin was a gunman, who had a primitive, physical force philosophy about the soldiers, send them home in boxes and freeIreland."
Once McGuinness took control of Derry, he brooked no opposition. A propos Tony Miller, a member of the Official IRA, an erstwhile colleague of McGuinness's observed: "Miller was very unlucky every time he did something he got caught. McGuinness gave orders that he was to be shot in the leg."
Then there were the Provos he ordered to be tarred and feathered for negligence. And the Catholic and Protestant RUC sergeants who were the first to be murdered in Derry as McGuinness widened the definition of who constituted 'legitimate targets'. He added informers real and alleged like Kevin Coyle, hooded and abducted in 1984: "McGuinness ... visited the family, offering to act as a mediator. It had the effect of calming them down for the two days it took for Coyle to be interrogated before he was murdered and dumped."
And Frank Hegarty, who in 1987 was promised forgiveness. "Don't worry," said McGuinness to his mother. "I will bring him home to you." His body was found a few days later, hands bound behind his back, eyes taped and with bullet wounds in the back of his head.
In the late 1980s, "McGuinness was widening the IRA's list of legitimate targets to take in large swathes of the population. Not only the security forces, but people working for them or supplying them with goods or services went on the list along with loyalists and collaborators." Seamus McAvoy, for instance, who supplied Portacabins to the RUC was shot in Dublin, Harry Henry, whose brother did building work for the security forces, was put up against a wall outside his house and shot, Patsy Gillespie, in 1990, a cleaner at an army base, with his wife held hostage, was strapped into a van full of explosives, ordered to drive to a checkpoint and then blown up, and, in 1991, eight Protestant construction workers branded by the IRA as 'collaborators' were murdered by a bomb at Teebane.
These days the old enemies are off the list but dissident republicans and what are classed as the 'anti-social' are beaten and occasionally murdered by members of an organisation still in the control of McGuinness and his closeallies.
His biographers have addressed the question of how McGuinness like Adams has managed to get off almost scotfree despite all he has done. He has been in prison twice for being an IRA member, but only for very short periods and his family is intact and functional.
A few reasons are suggested: he has always avoided undue risk and he has been protected from prosecution by the British authorities, who prefer a familiar foe to a Young Turk. The McGuinness story is truly amazing: read this biography and blanch.
