James Martin Pacelli
McGuinness ( ; born in Derry
on 23 May
1950) is an Irish
politician and the current deputy First Minister
of Northern Ireland.
A
Sinn Féin politician and former
Provisional Irish
Republican Army (IRA) leader, McGuinness is the
MP for the
Mid Ulster
constituency. Like all Sinn Féin MPs, McGuinness practises
abstentionism at Westminster. He is
also a member of the
Northern
Ireland Assembly for the same constituency. Following the
St Andrews Agreement and the
Assembly
election in 2007, he became
deputy First Minister
of Northern Ireland with
Democratic Unionist Party (DUP)
leader
Ian Paisley as
First Minister of Northern
Ireland on 8 May 2007. He was re-appointed, with
Peter Robinson as First
Minister, on 5 June 2008. He served as Minister of Education in the
Northern Ireland
Executive between 1999 and 2002.
Provisional IRA activity
McGuinness joined the IRA around 1970 at the age of 20, after
the Troubles broke out. By the start of
1972, at the age of 21, he was second-in-command of the IRA in
Derry, a position he held at the time of
Bloody Sunday. A claim was made at the
Saville Inquiry that McGuinness was
responsible for supplying detonators for nail bombs on Bloody
Sunday where 14 civil rights marchers were killed by British
soldiers in Derry. Paddy Ward claimed he was the leader of the
Fianna, the youth wing of the
IRA in January 1972. He claimed McGuinness, the second-in-command
of the IRA in the city at the time, and another anonymous member
gave him bomb parts on the morning of 30 January, the date planned
for the civil rights march. He said his organisation intended to
attack city-centre premises in Derry on the day when civilians were
shot dead by British soldiers. In response McGuinness said the
claims were "fantasy", while Gerry O’Hara, a Sinn Féin councillor
in Derry stated that he and not Ward was the Fianna leader at the
time.
McGuinness negotiated alongside
Gerry
Adams with the
Secretary of State for
Northern Ireland,
Willie
Whitelaw, in 1972.
He was convicted by the Republic of
Ireland's
Special Criminal
Court in 1973, after being caught with a car containing
250 lb (113 kg) of explosives and nearly 5,000 rounds of
ammunition. He refused to recognize the court, and was
sentenced to six months imprisonment. In the court he declared his
membership of the
Provisional Irish Republican
Army without equivocation: 'We have fought against the killing
of our people... I am a member of Óglaigh na hÉireann and very,
very proud of it'.
After his release, and another conviction in the Republic for IRA
membership, he became increasingly prominent in Sinn Féin, the
political wing of the
Republican Movement. He was in
indirect contact with British intelligence during the
hunger strikes in the early 1980s,
and in the early 1990s.
He was elected to a short-lived assembly at Stormont
in 1982, representing Londonderry. He
was the second candidate elected after
John
Hume. As with all elected members of Sinn Féin and the SDLP, he
did not take up his seat.He was subsequently banned from entering
Great Britain under the
Prevention of
Terrorism Act.
In August 1993, he was the subject of a two part special by the
The Cook Report, a
Central TV investigative documentary series
presented by
Roger Cook. It
accused him of continuing involvement in IRA activity, of attending
an interrogation and of encouraging Frank Hegarty, an informer, to
return to Derry from a safe house in England. Hegarty's mother Rose
appeared on the programme to tell of telephone calls to McGuinness
and of Hegarty's subsequent murder. McGuinness denied her account
and denounced the programme saying "I have never been in the IRA. I
don't have any sway over the IRA".
In 2005,
Michael McDowell, the
Irish
Tánaiste, claimed McGuinness,
along with Gerry Adams and
Martin
Ferris, were members of the seven-man
IRA Army Council. McGuinness denied the
claims, saying he was no longer an IRA member.
Experienced "troubles" journalist
Peter Taylor presented further
apparent evidence of McGuinness's role in the IRA in his
documentary
Age of Terror, shown in April 2008.
In his
documentary, Taylor alleges that McGuinness was the head of the
IRA's Northern Command which had advance knowledge of the IRA's 1987 Enniskillen
bombing
which left 11 civilians dead.
Chief negotiator and Minister of Education
He became Sinn Féin's chief negotiator in the time leading to the
Belfast Agreement. He was elected
to the
Northern Ireland Forum
in 1996 representing
Foyle. Having contested Foyle
unsuccessfully at the 1983, 1987 and 1992 Westminster elections, he
became MP for Mid Ulster in 1997, and after the Agreement was
concluded, was returned as a member of the Assembly for the same
constituency, and nominated by his party for a ministerial position
in the power-sharing
executive, where he became
Minister of Education. One of his controversial acts as Minister of
Education was his decision to scrap the
11-plus exam, which he himself had failed
as a schoolchild. He was re-elected to the Westminster Parliament
in 2001 and 2005, but along with the rest of his party has refused
to take his seat there (see
abstentionism).
In May 2003, transcripts of telephone calls between McGuinness and
British officials including
Mo Mowlam, the
Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and Jonathan Powell,
Tony Blair's Chief of Staff, were
published in a biography of McGuinness entitled
From Guns to
Government.
The tapes had been made by MI5
and the
authors of the book were arrested under the Official Secrets
Act. The conversations showed an easy and friendly
relationship between McGuinness and the British. He joked with
Powell about Unionist MPs while Mowlam referred to him as "babe"
and discussed her difficulties with Blair. In another transcript he
praised
Bill Clinton to
Gerry Adams.
St Andrews Agreement
In the weeks following the
St
Andrews Agreement between Paisley and Adams, the four parties —
the DUP, Sinn Féin, the UUP and the SDLP — indicated their choice
of ministries in the Executive and nominated members to fill them.
The Assembly met on 8 May 2007 and
Ian
Paisley and Martin McGuinness were nominated as First Minister
and Deputy First Minister. On 12 May the Sinn Féin Ard Chomhairle
agreed to take up three places on the Policing Board, and nominated
three MLAs to take them.
On 8
December 2007, while visiting President Bush in the White House
with the Northern Ireland First Minister Ian
Paisley, Martin McGuinness, the deputy First Minister, said to the
press "Up until the 26 March this year, Ian Paisley and I never had
a conversation about anything – not even about the weather – and
now we have worked very closely together over the last seven months
and there's been no angry words between us. ... This shows
we are set for a new course."
Personal life
McGuinness married Bernadette Canning in 1974. They have four
children, two girls and two boys. McGuinness is a fan of the
Derry Gaelic
football and
hurling teams and played
both sports when he was younger.
He grew up just 50 yards from Celtic
Park
, the home of Derry GAA. His brother
Tom played Gaelic
football for Derry and is regarded as one of the county's best ever
players. Among his honours are three
Ulster Senior Football
Championship medals, as well as
Ulster Under 21 and
All-Ireland
Under 21 Championship medals.
McGuinness is also a fan of
Derry City
F.C. Another brother, Paul, played senior
football for
Derry City F.C.,
Finn Harps F. C. and
Sligo
Rovers F.C..
McGuinness is also a keen fisherman.
See also
References
- Ag cur Gaeilge ar ais i mbéal an phobail - Fórógra Shinn
Féin do na Toghcháin Westminster — Sinn Féin press release, released 22
April 2005.
- BBC Profile BBC News]
- "Robinson is new NI first minister", BBC News, 5 June
2008. Accessed 5 June 2008.
- McGuinness confirms IRA role BBC News website, 2 May
2001
- McGuinness is named as bomb runner by John
Innes, The Scotsman, 21 October 2003
- Setting the Record Straight Sinn Féin
website
- Martin McGuinness: From Guns to Government Liam Clarke
and Kathryn Johnston, ISBN 1-84018-725-5
- Adams and McGuinness named as IRA leaders
Daily
Telegraph 21 February 2005
- Age of Terror, BBC,
21 April 2008
- McGuinness: Let's work together BBC News website 4
December 1999
- Martin McGuinness Wiretap Transcripts
- Staff. Paisley and McGuinness in US trip, BBC 3 December
2007, (Reference for deputy First Minister)
- Martina Purdy 'Charming' ministers woo president BBC, 8 December
2007 (Reference for the quote)
- Campbell, Denis. " My team - Derry City: An interview with Martin
McGuinness", The Guardian, 8 April 2001. Retrieved on 8
May 2007
-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/mar/14/northern-ireland-martin-mcguinness
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