Opinion

Deaglán de Bréadún: We could do with Martin McGuinness and other key figures in the current climate

Former Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness
Former Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness Former Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness

I recently had the privilege of giving a talk to a group of students from the USA about the Good Friday Agreement and my experience as a journalist covering the negotiations.

In the course of preparing my remarks, it came home to me yet again how many central figures in the peace process are no longer with us.

Martin McGuinness comes to mind, obviously, as well as Secretary of State Mo Mowlam, loyalist leader David Ervine and senior Irish civil servant Dermot Gallagher. Rev Ian Paisley was of course a strong opponent of the agreement, but his approach changed in later years and he ended up making a very substantial contribution to peace. A friend of mine from college days, Rory Brady, who served as Irish Attorney General from 2002-07, played an important role in the years after Good Friday and his untimely death at 52 was a great loss.

We really could use people of such calibre in the current climate. You can’t help thinking McGuinness would have found a way to get the assembly and executive up and running again at this stage. He would surely have responded in a positive fashion, for example, to the recent olive branch extended by Arlene Foster on the issue of the Irish language, dismissed by Sinn Féin as “another cynical ploy” to divert attention from problems created by her party’s Brexit agenda.

Personally speaking, as someone who has had three books published in Irish, I find it upsetting that the language has been allowed to become a stumbling-block on the path of reconciliation. When you think of the issues that were dealt with in the past, such as power-sharing, the release of prisoners, arms decommissioning, etc., surely this one can be overcome?

Like McGuinness, Ervine made a transition from hard-line militancy to mainstream politics and their earlier activities should not be played down or forgotten. But having taken the path to peace they showed a high level of intellectual and emotional intelligence.

A prime example of the latter quality on Ervine’s part was seen after a positive development took place at an early stage of the peace process in 1999. To mark the occasion, he quoted the title of a powerful song by another native of East Belfast, Van Morrison’s ‘And the Healing has Begun’.

Ervine’s death at the age of 53 on January 8, 2007, was exactly four months ahead of the day when Paisley and McGuinness were appointed first and deputy first ministers at Stormont. In a more stable society and environment, David Ervine would have been a key figure on the left, in my view.

You can’t help wondering how the aforementioned individuals would have coped with the messy Brexit situation and what their perspective would be on the UK general election. One thinks of the famous Daily Mirror cartoon by Philip Zec to mark VE Day in 1945 where a heavily-bandaged soldier is emerging from the battlefield carrying a wreath symbolising victory and peace and the caption reads: “Here you are – don’t lose it again!”

Watching the newly-released film ‘Lost Lives’, based on the extraordinary chronicle of Troubles deaths compiled by David McKittrick and his colleagues revives memories of the terrible tragedies that occurred and must not be allowed to happen again.

Meanwhile, the Westminster election is getting under way. The DUP could lose a couple of seats in Belfast but still exert influence if the next parliament is evenly balanced. The SDLP might take back Foyle and South Belfast, ensuring that nationalists from the north would have a couple of voices inside the House of Commons. Sinn Féin will doubtless come back with a significant number of MPs who are committed to the policy of abstentionism.

I am told that, even if Jeremy Corbyn becomes prime minister and abolishes the oath of allegiance to the British monarch, the Irish republicans will not change their stance. But when I see Sinn Féin representatives being interviewed on television at the Mother of Parliaments, I can’t help thinking that, if the oath was no longer a requirement, they might be open to sitting in the chamber.

As the great Westminster troublemaker Charles Stewart Parnell might say, nobody has the right to “fix the boundary to the march of a nation”.

Ddebre1@aol.com