Why I will be voting for Martin McGuinness

I have changed my mind about who to vote for in the Presidential election. I had planned to give my Number One vote to Labour’s Michael D Higgins. Now I think Labour must once again wait. I now intend to give my Number One to Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin. Michael D will get my Number Two. This is no reflection on Michael D Higgins or indeed on the Labour Party for that matter. I believe the Clareman would make a fine President of Ireland and that my second-preference vote will help him on his way to Aras an Uachtaráin.

The entry of Martin McGuinness to the race two weeks ago changed everything, as far as I am concerned. I do not expect he will have enough support to win the Presidency. But I would like to see him get enough votes to send out a strong message to all those, especially in the Dublin media, who have no understanding about history or, perhaps, they don’t want to understand. There are none so blind as those who don’t want to see.
Let me set the record straight here so that you may understand where I am coming from. I joined the IRA in January 1957, immediately after the funeral of Sean South of Garryowen. I never formally resigned but I let my membership lapse as I moved from Limerick to Dublin. That was in 1961. So I have had no connection with the IRA or with Sinn Féin for over 50 years. I joined the Labour Party in the late 1960s but I also let my membership of that party lapse, as I saw that the ’70s were not going to be socialist.
Since then, I have not been a member of any political party and I have voted all over the place.
I worked in Belfast as a reporter for the Irish Independent in the early 1970s and covered The Troubles as deaths from violence climbed to new and bloody heights.
I had, of course, huge sympathy for beleaguered Catholics in the most deprived areas of Belfast who had nobody to defend them from blood-thirsty loyalist mobs until British soldiers were deployed on the streets in a defensive role by the Labour Government in Westminster.
If you were to talk to Catholics in the North in those days, they would tell you that the letters ‘IRA’ stood for ‘I Ran Away’, as Republicans then were more interested in creating a Marxist society in Ireland than in solving the immediate problem of how to protect Catholics and Nationalists.
Eventually, the British army adopted a more aggressive role, exemplified in the shooting dead of 14 innocent and unarmed civilians on the streets of Derry in January 1972.
Catholics and Nationalists flocked to join the IRA. The rest is well-known history to those who want to know.
Despite the fact that my sympathies were with the Nationalists, I was totally opposed to the IRA’s campaign of armed struggle. I knew it was futile and would cause still more hardship and misery to the very people it was intended to help.
While I would not agree with Martin McGuinness, I could well understand what drove young men like him into the arms of the IRA.
There is no basic difference between the emotions that motivated Martin McGuinness and his comrades and those that propelled men like Michael Collins, Eamon de Valera, Sean Lemass, Sean MacEoin and Sean McBride into the IRA.
Those that see big differences or pretend to see them either don’t know their history or don’t want to know it.
They wonder how could McGuinness possibly become, as President, commander-in-chief of the Irish army or Óglaigh na hÉireann, when the IRA also styled itself Óglaigh na hÉireann.
Our second President, Seán T Ó Ceallaigh, actually fought against the Irish army just a few years before becoming minister for defence in charge of the same army. He went on to serve 14 years as President and I have no recollection of him being questioned about his previous role in the IRA. Frank Aiken was chief of staff of the IRA after the Civil War and went on to take charge of several Government departments, including defence.
However, the world is full of people who started out as ruthless gunmen going on to become senior statesmen on the international stage.
They want McGuinness to come clean on all his activities in the IRA. They accuse him of telling lies about his past. You would think, listening to them, that politicians never tell lies.
I would be amazed if Mr McGuinness or any other senior member of the IRA revealed what they did in the past. If, for example, McGuinness admitted he shot a man, the question would then arise, who was that man? What about his family?
There are people in governments all over the world who will bring bloody secrets with them to the grave. The British Government, for example, refuses to hand over papers relating to the murder of innocent people in Dublin and Monaghan in May, 1974. There is, of course, strong evidence that British army officers were implicated in those murders. They are determined to prevent us from getting at the truth. It’s ok for them to cover up but not for Martin McGuinness.
Meanwhile, as the Presidential election campaign gets underway officially this week, Senator David Norris will be standing as a candidate. To deny him his opportunity when he clearly has the support of a huge number of Irish people would have been a blow against the democratic will of the people. One does not have to support him to believe he has won the right to put himself before the people.
One does not have to support the IRA’s campaign of violence in the North to be able to vote for Martin McGuinness, the peacemaker.