Austin Stack: 'McGuinness has no right to ask me to move on from the horror of my father's murder by the IRA'

October 13 2011 04:49 AM

I HAVE more than a passing interest in the current media and TV debates that surround the forthcoming presidential election and am especially interested in how the Sinn Fein candidate Martin McGuinness has been handling questions about his past activities.

It is quite obvious that some candidates are probing McGuinness's past for their own political ends, while some elements of the media are genuinely questioning his involvement in an illegal army and asking is this person suitable to be our president.

What has remained outside this debate and has only recently been mentioned is how the victims of McGuinness's IRA past feel about the newly reformed peacemaker and candidate for the Aras. These are the people who had loved ones murdered, who have been the victims of punishment beatings or kidnappings or who have been terrorised during bank robberies.

I am one such person. My father was Brian Stack, the chief prison officer of Portlaoise Prison, who was murdered by the IRA in 1983.

McGuinness had previously been upfront about his IRA membership but since entering the presidential contest he has tried to water down his involvement and now claims that he left the organisation in 1974.

The weight of evidence from former justice ministers, garda commissioners, intelligence chiefs and respected journalists would seem to suggest that McGuinness is being untruthful about this and was, in fact, on the IRA army council right up to decommissioning.

This is the same army council that sanctioned operations that led to 1,800 deaths during the Troubles. You would think, then, in light of his conversion to democratic politics, that McGuinness would have some feelings of guilt or a troubled conscience. But he tells us that he sleeps very well at night.

I'm glad that he sleeps so soundly but I can tell you that many of the victims of his organisation don't have this luxury as they lie awake at night, crying over their murdered husbands, wives, fathers or mothers.

Since coming in from the cold, McGuinness and his friends have never said "sorry". They have used words like "regret" and they still try to justify those 1,800 murders. But if he was a true democrat, McGuinness would realise that no amount of discrimination and gerrymandering can justify even one murder.

My father was walking down a street opposite the National Boxing Stadium in Dublin when a gunman approached him from behind and shot him in the back of the head. This callous and cowardly act against a defenceless man was sanctioned by the IRA army council, of which McGuinness was a member. He will try to justify this brutal assassination and say my father was a casualty of war. Brian Stack was targeted because, as chief prison officer in Portlaoise Prison, he was responsible for security and making sure the IRA prisoners did not escape.

The simple facts of the matter are that my father was just too good at his job and McGuinness and his friends on the army council wanted to get rid of him for good.

McGuinness still refuses to say "sorry" and to this day still protects the identity of those who murdered my father and many others.

My father was a republican in the true sense and as a young boy he tutored my brothers and me about the deeds of Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet and impressed upon us the ideals of this true republicanism.

His mother was related to Robert Emmet's fiancee, Sarah Curran, and those who knew him would testify that he had more republican blood in the tip of his little finger than McGuinness has running through his whole body.

Not satisfied with having taken my father from me as a young teenager, the McGuinness PR machine now seeks to assault the Irish republican values that he instilled in me by labelling me a "West Brit". His reason for doing this is because people like me choose to remind those not young enough to remember what he and his colleagues did in the name of their bastardised version of republicanism.

THIS slick PR manipulation has also added insult to the years of hurt by trying also to label the families of his victims as being bitter, intransigent and incapable of moving on. It may be easy for somebody who directed terrorism to move on, but McGuinness has no right to tell those of us on the receiving end of his murderous campaign to move on.

I cannot forget the night my father was shot. I cannot forget seeing him in a coma, with countless wires and tubes attached to his body. I cannot forget as a 14-year-old boy having to dress, feed and shave a brain-damaged and totally paralysed father.

And I cannot forget the day of my father's funeral, 18 months after he was shot, when I was told not to touch or kiss his head as he had been the subject of a post-mortem. These are my memories of my teenage years and McGuinness has no right to ask me to dismiss them as if they never happened.

Even though he refuses to ask for it, I forgive McGuinness and his colleagues for the pain and suffering they caused my family and continue to cause us.

I can do that because of the values my father instilled in me as a young boy -- the values of having faith in God and the values of a truly democratic society. If Martin McGuinness really is reformed, why has he not asked for forgiveness? Why is he still protecting the identities of murderers? And why is he, through his recent public comments, continuing to insult the families of his victims?

Austin Stack is a prison officer. His father Brian was the only prison officer to die in the line of duty

Austin Stack: 'McGuinness has no right to ask me to move on from the horror of my father's murder by the IRA'

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