When the past meets the President

COMMENT

THE major difference between Sinn Féin and the IRA today and Sinn Féin/IRA of the past is, as far as I can see, that in years gone by they were elected because of their IRA records whereas today they are elected in spite of their IRA past.

If Martin McGuinness is elected President of Ireland, it will be because people in the Republic will have put aside his IRA past. However, I do not believe that will happen. I do not believe Sinn Féin or McGuinness will have enough support in the Republic to elect him.
There is one thing that Martin McGuinness’s entry into this race has done and that is to electrify the campaign. Up to last week, it was a most boring election with most interest focused on whether or not Gay Byrne was standing or whether or not David Norris would have sufficient support to get a nomination.
Now, we really do have a campaign on our hands. There has been little talk over the last few days about the relative merits of Michael D Higgins, Gay Mitchell or the independent candidates. All the talk is about McGuinness and the campaign is not officially underway yet.
I don’t know whether this was a master stroke by Sinn Féin or if it was a major gamble that is going to blow up in their faces. We may have to wait until the votes are counted to know the answer to that one.
Since his entry into the election, McGuinness has been on the defensive and they say that if you are fighting with your back to the wall then you are losing the battle. Is he going to have to spend his time in this campaign explaining his position on the IRA? If so, then he has little hope of getting even a decent level of support.
There is no doubt about it but some of the questions put to him have rattled him.  The same, of course, could have been said about Gerry Adams when he stood for election in Louth at the last general election.
The outcome of that election was that Adams got the third highest vote in the State.  There is a huge difference, however, between standing for election as a TD for a border county and standing for election as Uachtarán na hÉireann.
This election is going to expose Sinn Féin and Martin McGuinness more than ever before. This is the first time in history that Sinn Féin have contested such a high office.  McGuinness is going to be put under enormous pressure to explain exactly when he left the IRA.
He told the Saville Inquiry into the Bloody Sunday killings by the British Army that he left the IRA in the early 70s. Nobody believes that, no more than they believe Gerry Adams when he says he never joined the IRA, which brings me back to my opening sentence. In the old days, people boasted about their IRA membership whereas today, they are denying it.
We erected monuments to honour IRA men who shot policemen such as at Rineen and Glenwood in Clare. My own father’s name is among those on a monument in Sologheadbeg in County Tipperary to IRA men who shot two policemen – one of them an Irish speaker. The fact that most of those policemen were Irish Catholics who came from the same backgrounds as those who shot them was of no relevance. The important thing was that those shootings were in the almost forgotten distant past.
Imagine the outcry there would be if anyone suggested erecting a monument to honour those who shot Jerry McCabe.
The hard fact of the matter is that in every war, some terrible atrocities are committed by every side. They were committed by the IRA and by the so-called Old IRA. They were committed by the RUC and by the Old RIC.  And, of course, by the British Army. They were committed by the Germans and by the Allies. Actually, the Allies killed far more innocent French civilians than they killed German soldiers following the D-Day landings in Normandy.
There is nothing new in that argument. The writer Brendan Behan could not understand why there was far more condemnation of the small bombs dropped by the IRA than of the big bombs dropped by bigger armies.
When Martin McGuinness was growing up in Derry he saw for himself what was happening in that city, where nationalists were denied the vote in local elections and generally treated as second-class citizens, although they were in the majority.
When they protested they were beaten by the police, put into jail and some even murdered in their own homes by the so-called forces of law and order. Fourteen of them were shot down in cold blood by crack troops of the British Army on one black Sunday in January 1972.
McGuinness witnessed all of that and it was only natural that he, like many of his friends, turned more and more to the IRA to drive those murdering forces out of their city.
They were wrong, of course, but I, for one, will not stand in judgement of them. How would I react if I saw British soldiers and police opening fire on my own people on the streets of Ennis, Kilrush and other towns and villages in Clare?
Eventually, McGuinness saw that perhaps more could be achieved through the ballot box than with the bomb or the bullet. With Gerry Adams and others he succeeded in persuading the vast majority of his comrades to lay down their arms and embrace the democratic  process.
Unbelievably, those Republicans led by McGuinness managed to do a deal with the leader of Protestant extremism, the Rev Ian Paisley, a deal that has been held up throughout the world as an example of how warring factions can get along with each other.
Since then, his dedication to the peace process has been put to the test on numerous occasions by some former comrades who want to turn back the clock and reintroduce the gun to Irish politics. On all occasions, McGuinness has stood firm and has even condemned those former friends and comrades of his as traitors.  In doing so, he has not been afraid to put his own life on the line in the cause of Irish peace and justice.
We have been through all this before and no doubt we will go through it all again as more former IRA men put themselves up for election. There is nothing new in this. 
Many old Fenians gave up the gun at the turn of the last century and condemned the young men who began to flock to the IRA. Those young men in turn grew old and turned against their angry sons and grandsons who also took up arms in future years.
The vast majority of us welcomed the fact that McGuinness and his comrades had come down from the hills and embraced the political process. Now it seems that many of us want to drive them back up again.