The death of Martin McGuinness this past week led me to ponder some thoughts about Ireland that I’ve had over the years.
McGuinness led a truly transformative life when it came to bringing peace to Northern Ireland.
A native of Derry (what the British call Londonderry) and a year younger than I, he became the Deputy Commander of the Provisional Irish Republican Army at the age of 21.
Unlike many IRA “Provos” he did not hide behind a mask when it came to stating the IRA’s positions during press conferences.
McGuinness would follow a path in the “troubles” that many Irish leaders, like Michael Collins, had trod before him.
He would enter into secret talks with the British, along with other IRA leaders and when the talks broke down, he would become a fugitive and guerrilla leader again. He planned and led some of the IRA’s most devastating operations and was responsible for many lives being lost.
To understand McGuinness’s life requires an understanding of Ireland and Northern Ireland’s history.
From the late eighteenth century forward, Ireland had a “Rising” about every fifty years.
They occurred both before and after the “potato famine” which the leaders and writers both then and now recognize as “ethnic cleansing” a form of genocide.
I learned much about this history while writing the biography of my great-uncle, James K. McGuire and came to appreciate the role that Americans like him and others played in bringing about the historical war for independence that the IRA and its forerunner the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) waged against the British into the early twentieth century.
Throughout those years, Irish rebels and the Irish people were subjected to every oppression and indignity that the British Empire could inflict upon them and the other colonies that they held.
It was once said that “the sun doesn’t set upon the British Empire” and it wasn’t a friendly, welcoming or warm sun.
While Ireland went from being a “Free State” and a dominion of Britain to becoming a Republic, Northern Ireland remained a part of the British Empire after Britain, again, withdrew from the commitments it had made during the end of its war with the Irish Provisional Government in 1919.
For the Catholics in Northern Ireland, discrimination was a way of life.
The Protestant dominated government created a virtual caste system in which Catholics existed one rung above slaves.
Protestants controlled all levels of government and agencies. They gave preference to Protestant citizens in all services involving housing, employment and other government functions.
When the “troubles” exploded following the massacre of Catholic protesters on what became known as “Bloody Sunday,” McGuinness was in the leadership of the Provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army that became known as the “Provos.”
The “troubles” became a war between the IRA and British troops and the paramilitaries supporting each side.
For almost two decades, all sides inflicted terrible damage on each other and the people of Northern Ireland.
3,700 lives were lost and the world watched, in horror, as young men in British prisons starved themselves to death rather than submit to being treated as common criminals.
In 1998, former Senator George Mitchell, President Clinton’s envoy to Northern Ireland, managed to conclude the Good Friday Agreement bringing an end to the “troubles.”
Martin McGuinness was the chief negotiator for Sinn Fein the political party that represented the Irish Republican Army. He and Gerry Adams succeeded in persuading the IRA to decommission and dispose of its weapons.
McGuinness went on to serve in the home rule government that grew out of the Good Friday Agreement.
He served as deputy leader of Northern Ireland’s power sharing home rule government in which the Reverend Ian Paisley served as First Minister.
McGuinness’s willingness to work with Paisley was no small sacrifice, since for decades Paisley had led the Protestant Democratic Unionist Party that had been the chief oppressor of the Catholics in Northern Ireland. Together, they kept Northern Ireland from sliding back into sectarian violence and the country remains at peace today.
As someone who has followed the events in Northern Ireland closely since the start of the “troubles,” I can say candidly that I never thought I’d see the day that peace would come.
Ireland and Northern Ireland’s Catholics had been in conflict with Britain and its colonial government of Ulstermen for centuries.
I genuinely believed that peace would come to the Mid-East, a far shorter conflict, before it would come to Northern Ireland.
McGuinness’s life demonstrates that men of good will can make a positive contribution no matter what their history is.
If it could happen in Northern Ireland, it can happen in the Mid-East.
Anything is possible.