Martin McGuiness dead

RIP

child murdering scumbag, rot

Chrissy\\\'s Army!! said:

This 1 will divide opinion!

It shouldn't do.

RIP - to the thousands of IRA victims.

I hope it hurt. BIH

Rest in peace to all his victims.

Lord Tebbit has said a fair bit about his passing today which I totally agree with and defend his right to say, especially after what the IRA did to him, but this one sentence sums up my views.......

'There can be no forgiveness without a confession of sins'

Let's face it this scumbag should have died in gaol.

66 is the devils number. Nuff said.

I came face to face with McGuinness in, I think 1998, and in the weirdest of circumstances.

I was sitting on the Heathrow Express waiting to leave Paddington. It was a few days before Christmas. On the front page of the paper I was reading were the pictures from the previous day's meeting at Downing Street. Blair, Adams, and McGuinness, smiling and shaking hands. Talk of a historic peace agreement.

The doors started to close and there was a kerfuffle as a group scrambled to get in. They installed themselves in the open standing space in front of me. I was gobsmacked to see it was them. McGuinness, Adams, two other blokes and two women.

Now I'm the type of person who believes in "engaging" with politicians and public figures at every chance, believing it promotes democracy. But a raging conflict kicked off in my head. I'd grown up with the IRA terror, and never had an ounce of sympathy for its tactics. Taken on the leftie apologists in the Student Union. Part of me wanted to say, "you fuckers, you nearly killed my sister with the Harrod's bomb" . Another part of me looked back at my paper, and thought, this is really good news, especially for the long suffering people of Northern Ireland. Should I not embrace that thought and wish them a Merry Christmas?

I never resolved that battle on the 15 minute journey, and felt vaguely angry with myself. I feel just as conflicted today.

In the end, the fact is that he turned the Republicans away from armed conflict. You can say that he also spearheaded said armed conflict in the first place. But wars end when people on both sides realise there has to be a better way.

With that thought, RIP.

I hope that you rot in hell.

I think history will judge him better than some of us. You can understand people not forgiving a former IRA commander with blood on his hands, but he was instrumental in the peace process which has prevented much bloodshed. The problem is, you can't create the people to deal with, enemies have to deal with each other and they have to put aside the hatred. The Rev Ian Paisley found it possible to actually strike up a friendship with him and he was as hardline a unionist as they come. The Queen shook his hand. I think the healthy position is to respect the man he became rather than the man he was. Accepting that, some people rightly can never forgive him for what the IRA did to their families. But there are people on the other side with a hatred of the British with good reason too. You can't hate for ever and when all of us are dead and gone the foundations McGuiness helped build will be his legacy - I hope.

Every death is, in some way, a tragedy, including those with which Martin McGuinness was associated during the Troubles, but also his own.

I hold no truck with the IRA, or any other terrorist organisation, but, in any conflict resolution with such groups, it is necessary to talk with men of violence. It is equally necessary that those with whom you talk can bring their colleagues with them away from the bullets and bombs to the ballot box. In this McGuinness (and Adams) were hugely successful, and across the world you see other similar groups attempt to mimic their success. With the loss of David Ervine, the loyalist terrorists lost their only hope of a similar leader.

I don't have to like people to be able and willing to work with them (though the evidence suggests that McGuinness was personally likeable), it's the result that matters.

I will say RIP, because in my mind that is associated with others living in peace. The truth is that Northern Ireland can little afford to lose him, as with Ian Paisley (and who would have thought in the 1980s and 1990s that that might be the case), particularly with the additional pressures of today's politics.

RIP Johnathan Ball and Tim Parry, 24 years ago, yesterday