Martin McGuinness: From Guns to Government
by Liam Clarke and Kathryn Johnston
Mainstream Publishing 2001

by Malachi O'Doherty

No Government Minister in Europe could survive the sort of allegations that have been made against our Martin McGuinness by Liam Clarke and Kathryn Johnston in their book published today.

Posterity may wonder how a First Minister in Scotland had to resign over past financial impropriety while an Education Minister stayed in office - as no doubt he will - while far more serious allegations were made against him.

There was a sampling of the claims made against Martin McGuinness in some of yesterday's papers but it takes you to sit down and read the book from cover to cover to get the full whack - the horrible sense that this man might have been in jail and not running our schools.

There is huge embarrassment for him in the book, even within his own support base; particularly in the claim that he fired a shot on Bloody Sunday. This version of events is different from that in the evidence of the agent, Infliction, read to the Saville Inquiry.

Clarke and Johnston have heard from an IRA man who says he was part of a team put together by Martin McGuinness, against the orders of a superior officer, to kill soldiers with a bomb in a bookie's shop. One of those who was there, they say, claims that Martin McGuinness fired a single shot from a Thompson sub-machinegun at the door of the bookie's as they aborted the operation and made their escape from soldiers coming in.

Some of the witness accounts are difficult to assess, because they come from former members of the IRA using pseudonyms, but much of evidence is attributed to properly named people.

George Harrison, who shipped guns to the IRA, gives the authors a full account of how Martin McGuinness visited him to inspect weaponry.

The authors raise the question of whether the leadership of the IRA was left in place when it might have been removed because it consisted of people like Martin McGuinness who would ultimately cut a deal, as he did.

It also raises the question of whether time was running out for that leadership, as evidence accumulated against him.

Police sources told the authors that a case had been under preparation with three witnesses ready to testify but had not been pursued, apparently for political reasons.

Of course, had the case gone ahead and had Martin McGuinness been sent down, on the same kind of charge as nailed Johnny Adair, the political deal might yet have been completed and he might still be free now and Minister of Education too.

Or the deal might have failed. Who knows?

The Republican Movement entered the peace process, I believe, with a faith that the emphasis on arms and past violence would dissipate in time. There was a clear indication of that in the famous Pat Doherty speech after the Mitchell Review, when he told a US audience in December, 1999, that he did not believe that anyone would bring down the Executive over decommissioning. He was proven wrong.

Now, it is to be hoped, with the republicans having been drawn towards partial decommissioning and the start of a process, the unionists will not resort to that threat again. No one can be confident of that, however, with a meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council pending.

Those who want to lead them away from their anxieties, may have to face the possibility that they will get worse as the difference between past and present increases.

What we are beginning to see is a sharpening contrast between normal politics and the past troubles, that will make the compromises made for peace and political progress look much murkier in retrospect than they seemed even at the time.

The Clarke/Johnston book will be especially unnerving for any unionists who might be wavering in their support for David Trimble.

In the south, Gerry Adams was brought on to Pat Kenny's Late Late Show, last Friday to contend with Ruairi Quinn, over which of them had the greater social conscience.

The mood of that audience, like the mood of the GAA delegates rejecting Rule 21, seemed underpinned by a strong conviction that political normality is overdue and that Republicans are under an onus to deliver it.

Columnists yesterday bemoaned the failure of Quinn to land a decent punch on Adams but it looks as if a latitude offered to Adams at the start of the peace process is no longer available to him, and that the mere whiff of cordite now would cost him more dearly politically than slaughter and carnage once did.

The implications of that changed mood are that in a very short period of time, the link between Sinn Fein and the IRA will have to be broken, totally and convincingly. Martin McGuinness' journey from the past is not over.

Malachi O'Doherty is a journalist whose work features regularly in the Belfast Telegraph, The Scotsman and on BBC Radio Ulster's Talkback. For more information about Malachi O'Doherty, see his web site.
This article first appeared in the November 19, 2001 edition of the Belfast Telegraph.

HOME