Martin McGuinness

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Martin McGuinness MP MLA

Education Spokeperson (Minister for Education)
Incumbent
Assumed office 1998
Succeeded by	Incumbent
Constituency	Mid Ulster MP & MLA

Born	May 23, 1950 (age 56) Derry, Northern Ireland
Political party	Sinn Féin
Website	Martin McGuinness MP MLA

James Martin Pacelli McGuinness (Irish: Máirtín Mag Aonghusa,^[1] born in Derry 23 May 1950) is an Irish Republican politician and Member of Parliament, and a former Provisional IRA leader.

He is the Sinn Féin MP for Mid Ulster, the seat once held by Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, but like his party colleagues, he has refused to take his seat in Westminster. He is also a member of the currently-suspended Northern Ireland Assembly, and served as Minister for Education in the Northern Ireland Executive between 1999 and 2002. Following the St Andrews Agreement, and the election in 2007 Sinn Fein has nominated him to be Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, Ian Paisley has been nominated as First minister.

1 Provisional IRA activity
2 Chief negotiator and Minister for Education
3 British agent speculation
4 References
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Provisional IRA activity

He joined the Provisional IRA around 1970 at the age of 20, after the Troubles broke out. In November 2003 he confirmed to the Bloody Sunday Inquiry that he had been second-in-command of the Provisional IRA in Derry in 1972, at the time of Bloody Sunday at the age of 21, but he refused to divulge any information about other Provisional IRA members.^[2]

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, Ireland. 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 Provo 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 noted 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.^[3]

Peter Lilley a British MP, speaking under cover of parliamentary privilege in a Westminster debate on 13 December 2001 recalled that McGuinness while a commandant of the IRA in Derry claimed to have "had a dozen Catholic informers killed".^[4]

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 Irish Republican Army without equivocation: 'We have fought against the killing of our people...I am a member of Oglaigh na hÉireann and very, very proud of it'.^[5]

After his release, and another conviction in the Republic for IRA membership, he became increasingly prominent in Sinn Féin, the political wing of the IRA. He has been in contact with British intelligence since the 1980 hunger strike.^[6] He was elected to a short-lived assembly at Stormont in 1982, and was then banned from entering Great Britain under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.^[7]

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".^[8]

In 2005, Michael McDowell of the Irish government claimed McGuinness, along with Gerry Adams and Martin Ferris, were members of the seven-man IRA Army Council.^[9] McGuinness denied the claims, saying he was no longer an IRA member.

[edit] Chief negotiator and Minister for Education

He became Sinn Féin's chief negotiator in the time leading to the Belfast Agreement. He became MP for Mid Ulster in 1997, and after the Agreement was concluded, was returned as a member of the Assembly, and nominated by his party for a ministerial position in the power-sharing executive, where he became Minister for Education. One of his controversial acts as Minister for Education was his decision to scrap the 11-plus exam, which he himself had failed as a schoolchild.^[10] He was re-elected to the Westminster Parliament in 2001, 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.^[11]

[edit] British agent speculation

On 28 May 2006 the Sunday World newspaper claimed in its front page headline that "McGuinness was a Brit Spy".^[12] A former agent handler in the covert Force Research Unit, Martin Ingram, who also unmasked the spy Freddie Scappaticci codenamed "Stakeknife" backed the claim. He said that McGuinness had been working for MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service, since the 1980s and produced what purported to be a transcript of a meeting between McGuinness and an MI6 handler. Ingram had also stated that McGuinness was instrumental in the use of Proxy Bomb attacks in late 1990. McGuinness dismissed the claims as "total and absolute nonsense".^[13]

[edit] 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.
^ McGuinness confirms IRA role BBC News website, 2 May 2001
^ McGuinness is named as bomb runner by John Innes, The Scotsman, 21 October 2003
^ Commons offices for Sinn Fein by Patrick Wintour, Guardian Unlimited, 14 December 2001
^ Taylor, Peter (1997). Provos The IRA & Sinn Fein. Bloomsbury Publishing, pp. 152-153. ISBN 0-7475-3818-2.
^ Setting the Record Straight Sinn Féin website
^ Martin McGuinness MP Mid Ulster. Retrieved on March 22, 2007.
^ 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
^ McGuinness: Let's work together BBC News website 4 December 1999
^ [1]
^ Newspaper articles Tapped telephone calls of McGuinness speaking to British Officials and Gerry Adams
^ Spy claims are total nonsense - McGuinness RTÉ News report, 30 May 2006

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by William McCrea	Member of Parliament for Mid Ulster 1997 – present	Incumbent
Northern Ireland Assembly
Preceded by Seamus Mallon	Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland 2007 – present	Incumbent