Martin McGuinness

Anyone got a view?
Tebbit hopes there's a special place in Hell for him. Maggie will have to budge up a bit.

i can understand Tebbit feeling that way as his wife was paralysed in the Brighton hotel bomb. He was a paramilitary leader but he did play a big part in the Good Friday agreement and the peace that followed so he deserves some credit for that, but in certain quarters he will always be seen as a terrorist

Being ex military, I won't miss him. Can't help but wonder at the people who say he did a good job in the peace talks, when it was his own shit he was clearing up, (and he had a lot of blood on his hands).

Fair point Glos, can't disagree really

Mr Pig, just noticed that my post went up almost the same time as yours. I wasn't commenting on your view. 

It's a difficult one. But I remember seeing him sat at a table,laughing and joking with Ian Paisley,and thinking,'Would you credit it'.

Tough one this.

We're all old enough to remember what went on in the 70's and 80's and that tars my opinion of the guy.

I'm honestly not sure how I feel about the fact that he's croaked.

I'm not reveling in it obviously, but equally, there's no great sense of loss at his passing.

The guy killed (either directly or indirectly) a lot of British people over the years and that leaves a legacy.

I fully get it that one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter and that's an easy concept to swallow when you're talking about Nelson Mandela or Che Guevara or anybody else who lived a long time ago, somewhere far away.

But this was happening on the streets of the UK when I was growing up and a lot of the IRA's victims weren't legitimate military targets; they were innocent women and kids who didn't deserve to die.

So on reflection and having just thought about it whilst typing that, fuck him.

Impeccable logic Breaders. I'm with you on this one.

There was some talk in Stormont recently that the perpetrators of war crimes on both sides were getting nearer to being revealed so it was hoped that McGuinness' death will bring that day forward. However I suspect that neither the MOD or the Provos will admit to anything or name any names.
I am only glad that he dedicated his later life to the peace process or we could still be living with the fear of the '70s.

Did he have any choice though, Lusty?

I can remember the change in public attitude (in Ulster) against the provisional IRA in the couple of years building up to the Good Friday Agreement being signed, so I think he (and Adams) faced a simple choice: Stop blowing innocent folk up and start talking or become a marginalized irrelevance.

I don't think that he (and Adams) suddenly woke up one day and said "You know what....? All this blowing people up and kneecapping them in barns is horrible really, let's stop it and try talking instead." 

So yes, he may well have embraced the new era of Anglo-Irish cooperation brought about after the GFA was signed but there's a part of me which thinks he only did so because he had no choice.

gloswhite wrote:Mr Pig, just noticed that my post went up almost the same time as yours. I wasn't commenting on your view. 

no problem mate, he was a devisive character. loved and loathed in equal measure

We need to also ask the parents of the 11 year old killed in the Warrington bomb how they feel. It's okay to remain dispassionate but the guy was an out and out murderer, caught with massive amount of explosives in the RoI and sentenced to 6 months. He may have changed his tune in later years but once a murderer etcetra. He wants to use violence against military then I can agree a certain latitude but against civilians, no chance. I'm with Tebbit on this one.

Bread2.0 wrote:Did he have any choice though, Lusty?

I can remember the change in public attitude (in Ulster) against the provisional IRA in the couple of years building up to the Good Friday Agreement being signed, so I think he (and Adams) faced a simple choice: Stop blowing innocent folk up and start talking or become a marginalized irrelevance.

I don't think that he (and Adams) suddenly woke up one day and said "You know what....? All this blowing people up and kneecapping them in barns is horrible really, let's stop it and try talking instead." 

So yes, he may well have embraced the new era of Anglo-Irish cooperation brought about after the GFA was signed but there's a part of me which thinks he only did so because he had no choice.

Possibly, but that didn't stop the emergence of the "real" IRA in the '90s so it's not as if fundamental republicanism ever went away - and they could have carried on. I say they but Jerry Adams has always insisted he was never a member of the Provos, not that I believe him.
I just think that they felt that the Brits and the UDA/other protestant paramilitary groups would have tied up a deal without them so the Republicans needed a voice at the table. Plus it's harder to prosecute someone if they are the chief negotiator for 40% of the population

A thought-provoking poem, comparing through clever extended metaphor, the difficult birth of a lamb on the poet's farm to the struggle to give birth to the Irish peace process in 1998. There is also a suggestion of the miracle of the re-birth of Jesus being comparable to the re-birth of peace.                         



                             A Difficult Birth:-Easter 1998 by Gillian Clarke

An old ewe that somehow till this year
had given the ram the slip. We thought her barren.
Good Friday, and the Irish peace deal close,
and tonight she’s serious, restless and hoofing the straw.

We put off the quiet supper and bottle of wine
we’d planned, to celebrate if the news is good.
Her waters broke an hour ago and she’s sipped
her own lost salty ocean from the ground.

While they slog it out in Belfast, eight decades
since Easter 1916, exhausted, tamed by pain,
she licks my fingers with a burning tongue,
lies down again. Two hooves and a muzzle.


But the lamb won’t come. You phone for help
and step into the lane to watch for car lights.
This is when the whitecoats come to the women,
well meaning, knowing best, with their needles and forceps.

So I ease my fingers in, take the slippery head
in my right hand, two hooves in my left.
We strain together, harder than we dared.

I feel a creak in the limbs and pull till he comes
in a syrupy flood. She drinks him, famished, and you find us
peaceful, at a cradling that might have been a death.

Then the second lamb slips through her opened door,
the stone rolled away.

I see him as a murdering bastard who turned peace maker to keep himself out of jail. Cnut of the highest order along with his hedgehog chewing mate.
How ironic he should have heart problems.

Martin McGuinness was "not a terrorist" but a "freedom fighter", Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams has claimed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-39368451

He's a twat of the first order as well.