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Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness dies aged 66

fay spook

pfm Member
There was a devisive figure.

He had strived for peace. But he had tried to kill me. Luckily he only achieved one but I was still never sure of his ultimate motivations.

The headline could also have said Sinn Féin and IRA's MmcG.
 
He was involved in the killing of one of my friends, the cvnt can rot in hell.
 
I do find it difficult to balance the horrific crimes he was involved in and his later 'conversion' to peace. I suppose we will never know how many of the loyalist politicians were equally guilty of atrocities so perhaps we just have to move on. A pity that the bickering members of the Northern Ireland Assembly can't seem to move on though.
 
He achieved a colossal amount. Building PIRA into a credible threat to force UK government to push through a political alternative, and in parallel, bringing hard-line PIRA membership for the most part, along.

Despite the odds managed to more or less hold the GFA and the ceasefire until finally forming a power sharing government of sorts in Stormont.

Massive achievement that I hope will be recognised.
 
Couldn't be more pleased, utter vile individual. Corbyn will be devastated no doubt, what a fool.
 
He achieved a colossal amount. Building PIRA into a credible threat to force UK government to push through a political alternative, and in parallel, bringing hard-line PIRA membership for the most part, along.

Despite the odds managed to more or less hold the GFA and the ceasefire until finally forming a power sharing government of sorts in Stormont.

Massive achievement that I hope will be recognised.

I would recognise that if he had managed to do it from a prison cell, having confessed to all his crimes, serving a life sentence.

The terrorist Blair coming out and praising him for his involvement in the peace process is a multi-layered cake of much irony.

RIH.
 
I would recognise that if he had managed to do it from a prison cell, having confessed to all his crimes, serving a life sentence.
Your comment would carry more weight if you had also called for jail time for all the british military who have happily attacked and killed irish civillians throughout their failed occupation of Ireland.

Even after the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, the gutless back shooting Parachute Regiment won't see the inside of a jail cell.
 
I suspect he probably did more good than bad overall, though he did so by first doing a lot of real bad and later a lot of real good rather than the minor shifts from the centre-line the way most live their lives. It will be interesting to see if NI descends back into civil war without him. RIP.
 
I grew up with people who went to school with Tim Parry. I won't be mourning him.

Quite frankly, John Hume showed far more character than he or Gerry Adams ever did.
 
Occupying other people's countries by force, killing folk, nicking their land and starving them gets people upset and Martin seemed more prone to getting upset than most.

Personally I think he did well to make the turn and use his credibility to work for peace in the latter part of his life.

As for NI when this silly Brexit thing is over and the consequential break up of the union there will be no case for it's existence at all. Also it will be a cheaper to police a border with sea in the ditch. The ridiculous 'orangemen' can all come and live in Ingerland and march about here, they would fit in well.
 
Your comment would carry more weight if you had also called for jail time for all the british military who have happily attacked and killed irish civillians throughout their failed occupation of Ireland.

Even after the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, the gutless back shooting Parachute Regiment won't see the inside of a jail cell.

Any British military personnel involved in the killing of innocent people should be called to justice. They can rot in hell too.
 
As the resident Northern Prod (I think) on this site, I am sorry to hear of Martin McGuinness’s death. While I abhor the violence on both sides (and it needs to be remembered that the barbarity of the “Shankill Butchers” made the IRA look like a Sunday school picnic), one can only comprehend it in the light of history, of an island that only wanted to be left alone, and whose only “invasion” of anyone was distinctly beneficial:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_the_Irish_Saved_Civilization

Cahill’s account is exaggerated, but he does have a point. The stunning Stiftskirche in St. Gallen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbey_of_Saint_Gall

was founded by Irish monks and the books of the extraordinary Stiftsbibliothek

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbey_library_of_Saint_Gall

go back to the manuscripts of those early monks.

The Plantation of Ulster, the most Gaelic of the Irish provinces, by James I was the start of the troubles in the North that continue to this day. Most of all, the combination of English callousness during the potato famines of the 1840s (the only English who come out of it with any credit are the Quakers, who mounted the world’s first international relief effort) and the Partition of Ireland in 1921, with the establishment in the North of “a Protestant Parliament for a Protestant people” set the scene for what was to come. That Protestant parliament (“No surrender!” “Not an inch!”) set out to discriminate against Catholics in all walks of life, to ensure that the Protestants would remain top dog. It did it in jobs, in housing, in gerrymandering of voting areas (in Mr. McGuinness’s Derry, the boundaries guaranteed that a predominantly Catholic city would always have a Protestant-dominated city council).

Attempts at peaceful protest (inspired by Martin Luther King) were met with Protestant violence, which led to the return of the then moribund IRA and the “Troubles”.

McGuinness and Adams were ardent Republicans (Adams in particular is Republican “royalty” – his father was interned during the Second World War when the Germans were trying to encourage insurrection in the North). However, they both realised that the old Republican romantic attachment to the gun and the bomb wasn’t going to work – “the bullet and the ballot” as Adams said. Both had the credence within the movement to push most of a notoriously fractious movement in a different direction. The British, to their credit, recognised this, opened negotiations and the result (with the help of the Irish government and, finally, the recognition of the Prods) was the Good Friday Agreement, and peace. Northern Ireland is still far from perfect, but it has come a long way.

I can sympathise with people who lost friends and acquaintances in IRA atrocities – I have too, and my mother narrowly avoided death in a bomb blast in central Belfast. The history doesn’t justify these atrocities in any way, but they are ultimately the products of much misguided thinking and acting by politicians and rulers who suffered none of the consequences of their stupidity – it’s the ordinary folk, on both sides of the divide, who, as usual, get to do the suffering and dying. As the Queen memorably said in her speech at her Dublin reception a few years ago, in retrospect, there are things that the British would have done differently, or not at all.

So, where do we go from here? I’d like to see reunification, but many of my countrymen are very much against that. And Ireland desperately doesn’t want three-quarters of a million unwilling Unionists. I think that Adams and McGuinness recognised this and were happy to kick that particular can down the road. Brexit has thrown a massive spanner in the works, for both parts of Ireland. There are big problems to be solved, but the joy is that nobody, apart from a few fanatics on both sides, wants to go back to war over it. And part of the credit for that belongs to Martin McGuinness. RIP.
 
I can sympathise with people who lost friends and acquaintances in IRA atrocities – I have too, and my mother narrowly avoided death in a bomb blast in central Belfast. The history doesn’t justify these atrocities in any way, but they are ultimately the products of much misguided thinking and acting by politicians and rulers who suffered none of the consequences of their stupidity – it’s the ordinary folk, on both sides of the divide, who, as usual, get to do the suffering and dying. As the Queen memorably said in her speech at her Dublin reception a few years ago, in retrospect, there are things that the British would have done differently, or not at all.

So, where do we go from here? I’d like to see reunification, but many of my countrymen are very much against that. And Ireland desperately doesn’t want three-quarters of a million unwilling Unionists. I think that Adams and McGuinness recognised this and were happy to kick that particular can down the road. Brexit has thrown a massive spanner in the works, for both parts of Ireland. There are big problems to be solved, but the joy is that nobody, apart from a few fanatics on both sides, wants to go back to war over it. And part of the credit for that belongs to Martin McGuinness. RIP.

You come over (once again) as one of the most knowledgeable, thoughtful and sensible commentators on pfm.
 
Outstanding post Tones. Complicated issues like NI are never black and white no matter how much fools try to paint them that way,
 
Credible account, Tones, but as in many other parts of the world, religion and its inherent intolerance is, I feel, largely to blame, as it has been throughout history. I find it hard to believe that we still have theocracies in the 21st century !

Presumably, all Ireland was Catholic before the influx of Scottish immigrants, but it seemed that the Ulster troubles only came to the fore after 1921; a fair bit after, too. My history is hazy on this, though religious sectarianism often seems to manifest itself in nationalism.
 
Three words spring to mind, all of which should go on his gravestone:

Murderer
Bible Basher
Politician

Killing civilians, in particular, children, on either side is not acceptable, regardless of the situation. When children die, it becomes black and white to me that whoever did it is a cnut. Why would I be labelled a fool for thinking this. I get the history, it's human nature for people to be mean to each other, unfortunately. The strong will kick the weak. The weak will retaliate etc. Just look at the shit people sling at each other on this forum for starters.

Even if the war was legitimate, he stands accused by many of being a war criminal within it, instructing torture and executions.

Imagine what the press and sympathisers would be saying if his 'career' was flipped the other way, starting off 20 years as a politician, then 20 years as a terrorist.

I think it is time for me to take a sabbatical from PFM....adios for now, and happy bickering, fishies!
 


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