Martin McGuinness Asks Ireland to Forget History

commentator

Electing him would be like electing Ratko Mladic as President of Serbia.

Tom Gallagher

However repellant many of the IRA's actions were during the worst years of the Ulster Troubles, Martin McGuinness has shown himself to be a pragmatic government official willing to work with previously implacable enemies for shared ends. This compact has consolidated the peace process and may result in N. Ireland being better governed than the rest of the UK.

McGuinness does not publicly disparage Britishness or work night and day to create or reinforce enmities between Ireland and England; if you want to find a politician with absolutely no blood on his hands who is deliberately fomenting antagonisms between two partners in the shared British landmass that could in time result in blood aplenty being spilled , then I give you Alex Salmond whom Alex from Selkirk will never find it in him to describe as 'disgusting'.

Eamon de Valera trod much the same constitutional path as McGuinness and it was only reactionary last ditchers in Britain who described him in the terms used by Alex Massie; even Norman Tebbit who has, particular personal reasons to deplore the IRA and many of its works, dealt with his candidacy with the nobility and restraint absent in this piece. Mr Tebbit might even be aware that since Sinn Fein entered government, the number of Ulster Nationalists who wish to leave the UK has fallen to no more than a third (far fewer than the number of Scots who wish to abolish the Union with England).

If McGuinness makes it to Aras an Uachtarain (the seat of the Irish Presidency in Dublin's Phoenix park), then I think it will chime in with the growing 'Sinn Fein' form of nationalism that is evident in England.

Indeed it would not surprise me if the day did not occur when the British ambassador to Dublin was summoned to Phoenix park to be told of President McGuinness's anxieties about the radical multicultural policies sparking off waves of unrest in English cities and how Ireland's own stability was being jeopardised by the ensuing anarchy; as a radical secular libertarian Alex Massie who has applauded much of the social engineering visited on Britain, no doubt he finds the Catholic Irish Nationalist McGuinness tireless in the extreme but he may just have to learn to put up with him.

Trevor

Until our 6 counties are returned to Dublin, the people of Ireland will not be broken in their resolve. Martin for President.

David Lindsay

In the run-up to the tremendously successful 2011 State Visit, at least one Fianna Fáil branch raised funds, both for itself and for its local hurling team, by raffling tickets to meet the Queen, whom it described simply as “the Queen”. Of course Dublin governments have always been, in Sinn Féin’s words, “British governments by proxy”. That much has always been obvious. By adhering to the British proxy parties rather than to Sinn Féin, the voters of the 26 Counties have always made it clear that it was what they wanted. They continue to make that clear.

And who are the British proxies now? Sinn Féin has accepted that the constitutional status of Northern Ireland cannot be changed without the consent, not only of the majority of voters there, but also of the majority of those who define themselves by their opposition to any such change. In other words, the majority of those voting No would have to vote Yes. Since that is impossible, change is impossible. Sinn Féin has signed up to this. Ted Kennedy’s knighthood was an obvious dry run for that of someone from Sinn Féin, almost certainly Gerry Adams, who would thus have become the Jan Smuts de nos jours if sad revelations about his family had not intervened.

Sinn Féin’s sell-out, which is what it is, is almost universally popular. “Dissident” paramilitary activity raises the question of what we are paying for; Fianna Fáil hanged the IRA, as we had set it up to do. But no “dissident Republican” contested the 2010 General Election, and the Workers’ Party failed to contest West Belfast for the first time in living memory. Northern Nationalism as a political, rather than a cultural, phenomenon is now manifestly minimal. Any statement of such aspiration is, on any objective criterion, the very last thing made by means of a vote for Sinn Féin.

Almost never does anyone else now seem to wish to seek election on that basis, either. Those of that mind may set off bombs, or engage annually in an almost ritual example of drunken teenage rampaging. But they know that they no one would vote for them, and that quite possibly so few people would sign their nomination papers that they could not present themselves in search of votes in the first place. Beyond those under the combined influence of alcohol or other intoxicants and adolescent levels of testosterone, everyone now concedes, by deed even if not necessarily by word, that the Catholic, left-wing and all-Ireland cases are all for the Union. They regret only, in all three of those terms, the 1922 partition of the United Kingdom and of the Irish Catholic ethnic group throughout these Islands. So must we all.

Letitia faulkner

I was in Belfast last week staying in a lovely hotel, went to the crown pub only place I could be sure of being safe. I t is a very uneasy peace indeed, did I feel safe at all? Simple answer...NO!

Vincent O'Connell

It will be up to the Irish electorate to decide the future Uachtarán and not publications such as the Spectator which in my view is the one guilty of living in the past. If you really wish to bring up the past, why not provide a fair and unbiased analysis of the period of anti-Catholic discrimination in Northern Irealnd that preceded the Troubles.

Chrissy Chris

Typical British newspaper, if the Brits were such brutal dictators of "democracy" up north, the IRA and other groups would not have to go to such measures. The west Brit Dublin media is against him, everything you write is lies. Shame on you

mick co antrim

i am sick listening to this crap about mmg there was a war in the north because there was no other option as all peaceful means where meet with the gun of the british state so armed resistance was the only option left, yes the war got ugly and many people got killed and injured that shouldnt have on both sides but it was the british state that started the war.But when the prime minister or the queen visited ireland {which i dont have a problem with} did anyone ask them about there countrys role in the trouble no they where welcomed and not a word said but mmg is because he didnt stand bye and let his people get kicked any further into the ground unlike the irish goverment of the time which did.mmg is by far the best candadate in this lets stop looking to the past and think to the future and give mmg a break

Noa.

A good post Mr Massie.

David Lindsay

Vincent O’Connell, et al, since you ask:

The Orange Lodges opposed the Act of Union of 1800, the best thing that ever happened to Ireland, which incorporated one of the most backward countries in Europe into what became in the nineteenth century the most advanced country in the world, an advance not least by the efforts of Irish Catholic labourers throughout the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The consequent improvements in Ireland’s agriculture, industry, education, infrastructure, welfare provision, honest and responsible administration, and so on, were almost incalculable, and enjoyed the strongest possible support of the Catholic Church, without which many, most or even all of them could not have happened, especially at local level.

What about the Potato Famine? Well, what about it? It was a natural disaster, which would have happened anyway. It was not as if Queen Victoria had poisoned the potatoes. But trying to make that point can be like trying to explain to the blight-wavers that they must be descended from survivors rather than exclusively from victims, a point which it can be almost as difficult to make in relation to the Holocaust, suggesting that that will be just as difficult when the 1940s are as distant as the 1840s are today. Furthermore, what does anyone imagine to have been the conditions of the rural poor in England, Scotland or Wales in the 1840s? That is the context in which it is necessary to assess the enormous efforts made by Westminster, in partnership with the Church, to relieve the Famine, efforts of which an Ireland outside the Union could not have dreamt. And it must be repeated that an Ireland outside the Union would still have had to have dealt with exactly the same situation.

But to the Orangemen, the Union meant Catholic Emancipation, and indeed the necessary Unionist majority in the former Irish Parliament was secured on that very basis, by Protestant Emancipationists who secured the votes of the Catholic commercial class by promising to deliver the Union that would deliver to those voters the right to sit in Parliament. Those voters delivered that majority, that majority delivered the Union, and the Union delivered Catholic Emancipation, which the old Irish Parliament would simply never have countenanced. Protestant pioneers are sometimes produced by Republicans as a sort of trump card. But those believed their own Protestant, “Saxon” nation to be the only nation, as such and with all national rights accordingly, on the Irish island. They had no more interest in or regard for Gaels or Catholics than their contemporary, Thomas Jefferson, had either for the “Indians not taxed” (in a context of “no taxation without representation”, and therefore also of the reverse) or for his own slaves.

Separatist leaders as late as the 1870s seized on the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland, with all its implications for the system of tithes, as a nullifying breach of the Act of Union. However, that the only Established Church in Ireland’s history was an Anglican one, however few people might have been in it, is an important example of what is still the utter Englishness of numerous Irish institutions, created by or as a result of the Act of Union. Ireland is an English-speaking country with a Common Law system, the most English place in the world outside England herself.

That red saltire on the Union Flag was, and is, no word of lie. The Irish were vigorous participants in British imperialism, and especially in its military aspects. It was under that Flag, and by those means, that they propagated the Faith to the ends of the earth. When he visited Ireland, Blessed John Paul the Great condemned “the use of force by Irishmen, overwhelmingly Catholic Irishmen, against the continuing British presence”. The Irish language is only still spoken at all thanks to the efforts of Anglo-Irish aristocrats and of Protestant clergymen (there remains at least one very Protestant, very Unionist clergyman, Dr Eric Culbertson, who is active in its cause in Northern Ireland today), and it is now much more secure within the United Kingdom than outside, as surely as are Catholic schools and as surely as is the protection of the child in the womb.

Do you want any more? I have plenty.

Hugh McCaw

Martin can claim to be a peacemaker but I grew up in his type of Ireland. He and his friends decided that their politcal ideals were worth more than the lives of innocent civilians. . . . that it was their duty to kill anybody that they wanted. We still do not know what happened to many of their victims.. or why? They decided to use religion as an excuse for 'war' by chanting that, 'they do not want a Catholic about the place'... when really it was about class. I grew up as a working class Protestant who did not have the vote so I think I am in a position to comment. I was born into real poverty but murder was never on my agenda. Who were they fighting....was it 'The Brits' or was it....'The Innocent Irish & British Civilians'? I have lived my life in the northern madhouse but if the people of Ireland vote him to be their President then they too will be completely lost.

brian mcfadden

Jesus this buck chats some shite and i dont even support sinn fein or any of the clowns running. i think massie you have some issues you need to talk to somebody about because anybody that can spout that much waffle is in need of help

bernard

As a young man growing up in Belfast post troubles era I have a great amount of thanks and respect for Mr McGuinness and his collegues in Sinn Fein. I am also thankful for the brave PIRA men who stood up to the terrifying might and oppression of the British armed forces in Ulster. It is safe to say that there is a chance that I may not even live to write this comment but for the protection of such men and their subsequent peace keeping efforts. I stand by Sinn Fein because Sinn Fein stood by my father and my mother, because Sinn Fein stood me and guaranteed my existence and future.

Shane

After the war, after the conflict, during which many British military personnel brought dishonour on themselves and on the British forces by acts of murder, brutality, torture and collusion with Loyalist paramiitary organisations, and not forgetting the role of the intelligence services with informers on both sides of the divide in particular with Brian Nelson and the cache of weapons which reached the streets of Belfast from South Africa and, separately,with advance information about the Omagh bomb and bombers; after our recent war and British Internment without Trial in Northern Ireland, after non-jury courts and a penal system which treated British soldiers convicted of murders of civilians to instant transfers to 'mainland' UK prisons and release shortly after, with re-entry into the British Army thereafter - after our recent conflict, it is a credit to Martin McGuinness that he was willing to risk his life to try to bring peace to the three warring parties in Ireland, the British, the Irish Republicans and the Ulster Loyalists.
How eternally horrifying to many Irishmen that former British Army officers with service in Northern Ireland end up in the House of Commons or as Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland - such examples of neutral ex-combatants; how horrifying to many Irish Catholics that a Catholic may not occupy the highest political office in the UK and that within the Royal Family there exists religious discrimination still against marriage to Roman Catholics...
How sad that a small island adjoining a much bigger island still bears the scars of occupation, partition and post-colonial wounds brought our shores by your gunmen. Nothing democratic about the long British occupation of Ireland, about the Penal Laws against the Roman Catholic religious faith, about the partition of Ireland which disfigures our island still.
All hail the respect and honour given to British War Dead who fought and died for British Freedom and Empire.
Where the respect and honour given to Irish War Dead who fought for Irish freedom from British Occupation? Why double standards?
All hail, therefore, late convert to pacifist ways who worked for peace between our wounded peoples - Martin McGuinness is far from perfect, but he has fulfilled the many criteria for the status of Prodigal Son and has of course expressed sorrow for many actions of the IRA.
It was very agreeable to experience Elizabeth Regina in Ireland recently who complemented Irish efforts at peacemaking between our peoples by laying a wreath to commemorate IRA war dead who fought the British Empire. Her words later in Dublin Castle expressing regret for much that had happened in British/Irish relations, and for much that we all wish should not have happened, were a salve to a wounded people.
Let us all embrace the new peace and new relations existing between Irish Republicans and Brits and Loyalists.
Martin has a right to stand in a democratic election for the office of non-executive President of the new Ireland.
Peace be with us all...

Gordon

It's worth remembering that the Queen of England labelled Nelson Mandela a terrorist. I wonder how valid an opinion that was given modern interpretation of history? The emotional immaturity shown in your article is striking. The article is presented as against someone of violence, yet the only hatred and aggression apparent is the child-like ramblings of the buffoon who wrote it. I would also appreciate if you refrained from calling any of our presidential candidates a 'bastard' - directly or through quotation.

John J Quaid

Martin McGuinness for President, not a problem really, we had De Valera and check out the way he helped destroy the country, wake up Ireland its time to radical.

David Lindsay

When, exactly, was Nelson Mandela ever branded a terrorist by the Queen, as Fianna Fáil calls her without qualification when raffling tickets to meet her?

Britain set up Fianna Fáil. No one else could have engineered that 1926 secession from Sinn Féin, which duly went on to hang the IRA. Likewise, only Britain could have engineered the 1933 merger of the Blueshirts, Cumann na nGaedheal and the National Centre Party, complete with a commitment to Commonwealth membership (which in those days necessitated retention of the monarchy, and a very high degree of integration in foreign policy and defence), albeit for a United Ireland as the ultimate aim.

Fine Gael went on to be outmanoeuvred into declaring the 26-County Republic that neither it nor anyone else then wanted as such, but before that, while the King retained certain functions as Head of the Commonwealth, Fianna Fáil had already felt obliged to install as the first (internal) President Douglas Hyde, an antidote to the historically illiterate association of the Irish language with Nationalism.

The Irish Labour Party has always been funded by trade unions which exist throughout these Islands and are headquartered in Britain, and in Conor Cruise O’Brien it returned to the Dáil probably the only full-blown Unionist ever to sit in it.

All in all, British proxies indeed. But who are the British proxies now?

The comments on here illustrate a very important point. It is true that there is no desire in the Republic, either for the much higher taxes necessary to maintain British levels of public spending in “the Six Counties”, or for the incorporation of a large minority into a country which has developed on the presupposition of a near-monoculture. But if anything, the Republic would find it even harder to assimilate Northern Nationalists, who would be rather like hopelessly unrealistic third, fourth or fifth generation colonial returnees to Britain from Africa or India.

As much as anything else, theirs is not the heritage of the greater number of people from the officially neutral Free State than from Northern Ireland, where there was no conscription, who joined the British Armed Forces during the Second World War. Nor of the continuing Irish Regiments of the British Army, such as the Irish Guards who carried the Queen Mother’s coffin and who were the first to greet their newly married Colonel, the Duke of Cambridge, and his bride, despite, most unfortunately and probably not for much longer, not being Commonwealth citizens. Nor of the very active Royal British Legion throughout Ireland.

Northern Nationalists are no more typically or normally Irish than it is typically or normally British to march through the streets behind a Union Flag while wearing a bowler hat.

wrinkled weasel

Has anybody bothered to watch and listen to Mr McGuinness in the NI Assembly? He's utter shite!

He can barely read from a prepared statement. I never credited him with much intelligence, but his efforts do not bode well for a presidential role.

Those who still have a nationalist axe to grind can take comfort in the fact that, having won some important concessions on the road to a united Ireland, they have willingly given up those concessions, and a lot more, to Brussels.

And just look how successful that has been.

Ed

I am dismayed but not surprised by the wealth of "Irish nationalist" comments here. I predicted that this would happen as the flow of EU cash towards Ireland slowed down in 2007. It turns out that the Irish are happy to give up their freedom when they are being paid handsomely for doing so.

Quite why any Irishman thinks any Brit should care at all about their country is beyond me. It is because of a sad historical accident that we unfortunately have to keep paying directly for the northern part, whilst we pay for the southern part now as well through Brussels. I went there recently, and can unfortunately see no potential end to this massive subsidy scheme.

If Ireland wants to have someone who has murdered British citizens as its president then we should treat the Irish in the same way that we should have treated Gaddafi all along. It is not our place to tell them what to do, but they ought to have enough respect for their neighbour to vote for someone honest.

Maddy1

It is all good clean evolution, for the usual players. They metarmorphised Mandela, why not re market Guiness ffor the young? They cleaned up Uncle Joe another hundred years Hitler will be reinvented as a youth social worker. Undfortunately Arafat died or even he could have becone the Patron Saint of Aids Victims!

Austin Barry

I wouldn’t worry, the squalid hypocrisy of Sinn Féin/IRA’s attempt to annex the Áras an Uachtaráin will be eclipsed by the currently contingent candidacy of David Norris, ironically the almost perfect personification of a “‘West Brit”.

That Norris is a theatrical old queen from the Micheál MacLiammóir school of portentous pronouncement and an apparent apologist for criminal paedophilia, will cause much snarling among republicanism’s junkyard dogs.

The rest of us will roar with laughter.

johnny english

Such a shame that Michael Stone never got into stormont - Martin wouldnt have even been standing for president