Martin McGuinness

there’s a lot of blood shed on all sides which can be remembered with bitterness and revenge.

I’m old enough to remember the start of the Troubles, back in 68-9, when the IRA’s main campaign was a small bunch of old hands who gathered for drink nights to sing the old songs and remember past times. It was Ian Paisley’s bunch, together with the armed para-military police thugs known as the B Specials (disbanded at the end of 69 by Britian’s then Labour governemnt, too late) who turned violently on unarmed civil rights protestors demanding equal votes and an end to discrimination which led to the rioting, and thence to British army involvement, and thence to a sickening cycle of violence and counter-violence.

It began with B Special armoured cars shooting up flats in Belfast which killed a young kid in his room. IRA-I Ran Away – was the taunt in belfast at that time, apparently, and led to the split which gave birth to the Provos. Internment and sectarian rioting in August 71 gave the Provos their support.

Death has visited every side and none. The British army have been as guilty of death as the para military forces – the uninvestigated Ballymurphy massacre of Aug 1971, Bloody Sunday, the murder of the civil rights lawyer, Pat Finucane are among the more specatcular events.

I could list IRA atrocities, and Protestant atrocies too (the Shankill Butchers spring to mind). I list the above because only IRA violence has been listed by posters.

At Bloody Sunday protests back in 72, one of my friends was beaten to the ground by a squaddie on leave – she was heavily pregnant. The squaddie just didn’t realise – he was genuinely stricken with remorse when he realised what he’d done, but he was so angry that he genuinely saw red.

That anger, along with the removal of the threat of sudden death from a bomb attack anywhere, is why I breathe a long sigh of relief., even now.

A friend of mine once told me how she rushed to the scene of a bomb attack in Belfast back in 72, when it got real bad. The sickening stench of blood, the white faces, the shock, the little laddie calling for his mummy coz he had no legs any more.

I look at McGuinnness and Paisley working together, the Quenn shaking hands with McGuinness, and I think was this what all that suffering was meant to bring about – a nice government job??

But I am also mighty, mighty relieved.

Time to put anger aside and grieve.

@tinks wrote:

The one thing you can’t do is fault the Queen……….she has always behaved with impecible decorum right throughout her reign ……I’m in no way a royalist but having to shake that man’s hand must have struck a serious chord with her…………and there must be guilt in that man’s mind too after everything that he’s been a part of………..as there should be.

I agree Tinks and the Queen, as an intelligent and educated woman, is as aware of the legacy of innocent blood that put McGuinness where he is as she is of the one that supports the British Crown. I don’t romanticise either position.

But she is a figurehead, her public role is to represent something worth dying for and she does that job very well. She has shaken hands with evil leaders through her career. Some of them as our allies.

As an established head of state she cannot get personally involved in bloodshed although her male relatives are expected to while young and as soldiers they will carry out their duties and support their comrades through thick and thin. The fact that she has lost family members to the IRA adds to our sense that the Royals somehow share our burdens. Undoubtedly there have been royal losses of which we are less conscious.

The bigger reality is that, as someone who really enjoys the 21st century, I rest on that legacy of blood as surely as she does. So, whether because of pragmatics or principle, I agree with Pepper that it is time to lay the past to rest. If we want any kind of security we must secure a peaceful and no-violent present and build a hopeful future.

I admire the British Soldier’s (and I include warriors at air and sea, hence the capitalisation) devotion to duty, I believe that for as long as we ask them to do their job we should support them as people and should let our politicians know how important is their welfare. Many of them get still treated shamefully and end up damaged and disadvantaged.

@sceptical guy wrote:

there’s a lot of blood shed on all sides which can be remembered with bitterness and revenge.

I’m old enough to remember the start of the Troubles, back in 68-9, when the IRA’s main campaign was a small bunch of old hands who gathered for drink nights to sing the old songs and remember past times. It was Ian Paisley’s bunch, together with the armed para-military police thugs known as the B Specials (disbanded at the end of 69 by Britian’s then Labour governemnt, too late) who turned violently on unarmed civil rights protestors demanding equal votes and an end to discrimination which led to the rioting, and thence to British army involvement, and thence to a sickening cycle of violence and counter-violence.

It began with B Special armoured cars shooting up flats in Belfast which killed a young kid in his room. IRA-I Ran Away – was the taunt in belfast at that time, apparently, and led to the split which gave birth to the Provos. Internment and sectarian rioting in August 71 gave the Provos their support.

Death has visited every side and none. The British army have been as guilty of death as the para military forces – the uninvestigated Ballymurphy massacre of Aug 1971, Bloody Sunday, the murder of the civil rights lawyer, Pat Finucane are among the more specatcular events.

I could list IRA atrocities, and Protestant atrocies too (the Shankill Butchers spring to mind). I list the above because only IRA violence has been listed by posters.

At Bloody Sunday protests back in 72, one of my friends was beaten to the ground by a squaddie on leave – she was heavily pregnant. The squaddie just didn’t realise – he was genuinely stricken with remorse when he realised what he’d done, but he was so angry that he genuinely saw red.

That anger, along with the removal of the threat of sudden death from a bomb attack anywhere, is why I breathe a long sigh of relief., even now.

A friend of mine once told me how she rushed to the scene of a bomb attack in Belfast back in 72, when it got real bad. The sickening stench of blood, the white faces, the shock, the little laddie calling for his mummy coz he had no legs any more.

I look at McGuinnness and Paisley working together, the Quenn shaking hands with McGuinness, and I think was this what all that suffering was meant to bring about – a nice government job??

But I am also mighty, mighty relieved.

Time to put anger aside and grieve.

A highly emotive post scept, this whole thread is good with some great input from many sides, i don’t really have enough knowledge on the subject to comment any more than you’s all have done already, but just reading has been enlightening. ty

No comment.