Martin McGuinness
James Martin Pacelli McGuinness (Irish: Séamus Máirtín Pacelli Mag Aonghusa;[1] 23 May 1950 – 21 March 2017) was an Irish republican politician and statesman for Sinn Féin and a leader within the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) during The Troubles. He was the deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland from May 2007 to January 2017.[2]
Martin McGuinness
Peter Hain[b] (As Secretary of State for Northern Ireland)
Mark Durkan (2002)
Michelle O'Neill (2020)
David Trimble (FM)
Seamus Mallon (dFM)
Mark Durkan (dFM)
Office established
15,363 (37.6%)
21 March 2017 (aged 66)
Derry, Northern Ireland
Irish
4
McGuinness served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Mid Ulster from 1997 until his resignation in 2013.[3][4] Like all Sinn Féin MPs, McGuinness followed abstentionism in the Westminster Parliament. Working alongside US Special Envoy George Mitchell, McGuinness was also one of the main architects of the Good Friday Agreement which formally cemented the Northern Ireland peace process and established the Northern Ireland Assembly.[5]
In 1998, McGuinness was elected as the Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Mid Ulster. He served as Minister of Education in the Northern Ireland Executive under First Minister David Trimble from 1999 to 2002. Following the St Andrews Agreement and the 2007 Northern Ireland Assembly election, he became deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland on 8 May 2007, with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Ian Paisley becoming First Minister. In 2008 and 2016, he was reappointed as deputy First Minister to serve alongside Peter Robinson and Arlene Foster, respectively.[6] He was Sinn Féin's candidate for President of Ireland in the 2011 Irish presidential election.[7][8][9]
In the 2016 Northern Ireland Assembly election, McGuinness was elected as the MLA for Foyle. On 9 January 2017, McGuinness resigned as deputy First Minister in protest over the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal.[10] He announced on 19 January that he would not be standing for re-election in the 2017 Northern Ireland Assembly election due to ill health. He reportedly suffered from amyloidosis, a condition that attacks the vital organs, and retired shortly before his death on 21 March 2017, aged 66.[11][12]
Provisional IRA activity[edit]
McGuinness acknowledged that he was a former IRA member, but stated that he left the IRA in 1974.[13] He originally joined the Official IRA, unaware of the split at the December 1969 Army Convention, switching to the Provisional IRA soon after. 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 on 30 January 1972, when thirteen civilians were shot and killed in the city by British soldiers of the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment during a civil rights march, with a fourteenth victim dying four months later.[14][15]
During the Saville Inquiry into the events of that day, Paddy Ward stated he had been the leader of the Fianna, the youth wing of the IRA at the time of Bloody Sunday. He said that McGuinness and an anonymous IRA member gave him bomb parts that morning. He said that his organisation intended to attack city centre premises in Derry on the same day. In response, McGuinness said the statements were "fantasy", while Gearóid Ó hEára (formerly Gerry O'Hara), a Derry Sinn Féin councillor, stated that he and not Ward was the Fianna leader at the time.[16]
The inquiry concluded that, although McGuinness was "engaged in paramilitary activity" at the time of Bloody Sunday and had probably been armed with a Thompson submachine gun, there was insufficient evidence to make any finding other than they were "sure that he did not engage in any activity that provided any of the soldiers with any justification for opening fire".[17]
McGuinness negotiated alongside Gerry Adams with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Willie Whitelaw, in 1972. In 1973, he was convicted by the Republic of Ireland's Special Criminal Court, after being arrested near a car containing 250 pounds (110 kg) of explosives and nearly 5,000 rounds of ammunition. He refused to recognise the court, and was sentenced to six months' imprisonment. In court, he declared his membership of the Provisional IRA 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".[18]
After his release, and another conviction in the Republic of Ireland for IRA membership in 1974,[19] he became increasingly prominent in Sinn Féin, the political wing of the republican movement. He was in indirect contact with British intelligence during the 1981 hunger strikes, and again in the early 1990s.[20] He was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont in 1982, representing Londonderry. He was the second candidate elected after Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) leader John Hume. As with all elected members of Sinn Féin and the SDLP, he did not take up his seat.[21] On 9 December 1982, McGuinness, Gerry Adams and Danny Morrison were banned from entering Great Britain under the Prevention of Terrorism Act by the Home Secretary, William Whitelaw.[22]
In August 1993, he was the subject of a two-part special by 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".[23]
In 2005, Michael McDowell, the Irish Tánaiste, stated McGuinness, along with Gerry Adams and Martin Ferris, were members of the seven-man IRA Army Council.[24] McGuinness denied this, 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.[25] In his documentary, Taylor alleges that McGuinness was the head of the IRA's Northern Command and had advance knowledge of the IRA's 1987 Remembrance Day bombing, which left 12 people dead.[26]
Resignation from the House of Commons[edit]
On 30 December 2012 McGuinness announced that he had formally resigned as the MP for Mid-Ulster stating "I have served formal notice of my resignation from the position of MP for Mid-Ulster with immediate effect. This is in line with my party's commitment to end double jobbing."[43] To do this, he was made Steward of the Manor of Northstead on 2 January 2013 by Chancellor George Osborne, making him an employee of the Crown and thus ineligible for membership of the House of Commons.[44][45]
Personal life[edit]
McGuinness's mother was from Donegal in the north-west of Ireland.[54] She moved to Derry to work in a shirt factory.[54] It was in Derry that she met McGuinness's father.[54]
One of McGuinness's middle names, Pacelli, is after Pope Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli).[55]
McGuinness attended St. Eugene's Primary School and later the Christian Brothers technical college, leaving school at the age of 15.[56]
McGuinness married Bernadette Canning in 1974; they had four children, two girls and two boys.[57] He was a fan of the Derry Gaelic football and hurling teams[58] and played both sports when he was younger.[58] He grew up just 50 metres from Celtic Park, the home of Derry's Gaelic Athletic Association.[58] His older brother Tom played Gaelic football for Derry.[58] He supported Derry City F.C. where his younger brother Paul played for the Candystripes.[59]
McGuinness supported Manchester United from the age of eight.[60] McGuinness also had an interest in cricket – sometimes extending his support to the England cricket team, as well as that of Ireland.[61]
In March 2019, McGuinness was posthumously awarded a certificate of honour by mayor of San Francisco London Breed for his "courageous service in the military." The nomination had been made by the United Irish Societies who had appointed him honorary marshal in the St. Patrick's Day parade.[62] Breed apologised two days later following controversy.[63]