MARTIN McGuinness helped bring about the peace process but "without him and others like him we wouldn’t have needed one", Gregory Campbell has claimed.
The DUP MP, a fierce critic of republicans, said although his family should be given space to grieve "when it is someone as controversial as the former deputy first minister Martin McGuinness, it is essential that the truth insofar as is possible is told about the life that was lived and how it affected others".
Writing in the News Letter, he said Mr McGuinness "more than any other individual brought violent Irish republicanism to the democratic table".
"We will probably never know, however, whether this was because he helped initiate it or responded to events that he knew were inevitable after 9/11 with the Provos being riddled with informers," he said.
Criticising Mr McGuinness for not expressing regret for past actions, Mr Campbell acknowledged that before 1969 there were "obviously massive social problems across Northern Ireland".
Thousands of people lined the streets of Derry for the funeral of former NI deputy first minister Martin McGuinness https://t.co/pQXcFyjrOE pic.twitter.com/JiE67ASat4 — RTÉ News (@rtenews) March 23, 2017
But he claimed Catholic and Protestant working-class communities "faced the same disadvantage, the same discrimination and the same lack of opportunities".
"The crucial difference is that I didn’t kill anyone to try and bring about change," he said.
