Died, will we ever find out what his actual involvement was with the IRA ?

He was an IRA commander, responsible for the deaths of many innocent people.

plotting to blow innocent people up going about there normal everyday duties, kidnapping people and shooting them dead in a field or if there lucky just blowing there knee caps off !

Lord Tebbit has just laid right into him on GMTV

He just summed it in a nutshell "the world is a sweeter place without him "

He never confessed his sins and shown no penance for what he has done and ended his interview by calling him a coward

May he burn in Hell.

I've never agreed with the IRA but people like Martin McGuinness were victims of the situation in Northern Ireland too.

The level of discrimination that was carried out by the local councils, RUC and government bodies triggered civil rights protests that were in turn dealt with brutally. Troops were originally sent in to protect catholic communities from the backlash against their demands for decent housing etc.

In those circumstances you can see why some people started to support more extreme paths that included violence and joining what had been a dead organisation. Doesn't justify bombing civilians but most armies and air forces do that during conflicts, sometimes deliberately, sometimes as 'collateral damage'.

Tebbit going on like that is just a throwback to the sort of blinkered views that made the troubles last so long. He might as well be an old rebel sitting in the pub getting misty-eyed about knee-capping.

A brave and astute politician who ended his turbulent and varied political career determined to create a peaceful Ireland. He put his life on the line to help broker a peace agreement between politicians and provisional dissidents. Some family members of people killed by the IRA have made the comments that they can't forgive but respect what he became and that he had his fingerprints on the bombs and on the peace process. Incredible levels of objectivity and recognition for the work did more latterly.

He is absolutely a devisive figure and Lord Tebbit is entitled to his view as his own and his families lives were changed fundamentally by the Brighton bomb. Understandable that he has an emotional and personal view on the man.

Ian Paisley Jnr has stated today that Christians would look at the man he became and forgive his earlier actions. A view many will have sympathy with and as many will struggle with.

Spot on!!!!

I dont know enough to have a controversial viewpoint on this fella.

But I DO love the hypocrisy shown by the british establishment, bearing in mind the brutal regimes we led in the past, in the name of the British Empire.

Fuck me, our leaders even enjoyed slaughtering their own troops, for ridiculous reasons, and my god did we love sending or troops to certain death by sending them over the barricades.

The british have murdered more innocent folk than the IRA ever could.

Well said ! people such as Airey Neave and Lord Mountbatten spring to mind

depends a lot on what side of the fence you sit on regards him. hero to some viiiain to others.

Yeah I see your point what with been blown up and all that by one of his lots bombs and it paralysing his wife might cloud his judgment slightly

I'm sure the reporters knew exactly what they'd get when they asked him for a quote on McGuinness - he's always happy to oblige with some pantomime bile to excite elderly bigots. They should leave the old dafty alone really.

The older I get the less easy it seems to resolve dilemmas. I certainly don't think it's right to sit back and do nothing about social ills. And is there any time in history where social ills have been resolved by ballot boxes? So, people resort to violence to break the stronghold of those who cause social ills, and violence means people get killed.

I can think of scenarios where I might get armed myself, eg if extremist groups in this country became a real threat. If innocent people got killed in the process of defeating these groups, I'd still think fighting the groups would be the right thing to do.

Think you should have left it at that mate.

Any particular reason why he should have kept quiet about the truth?

Martin McGuiness was an evil bastard.

I did, didnt I?

Because the the murder of men women and children in Enniskillen and Birmingham on the orders of Martin McGuinness does not suddenly diminish based on horrific events that every empire in the world has been party to half a century and more prior.

And this hypocrisy? I'd love to see that. He's been giving more than enough recognition for putting down his weapon in favour of immunity, privilege and wealth.

I'm not adding this revisionist tripe. Burn in hell you murdering bastard. Today is a great day.

^

Absolutely

I hope someone snaps his leg next time he plays

Its his right to have his beliefs but why doesn't he keep his stupid mouth shut

Mclean just cannot help himself.....lacking any balance as usual, interesting how he totally ignores his IRA past and pays no reference whatsoever to the hundreds of murders he was involved in........the work of a great man indeed.

Mclean appears to hates the British establishment too is more than but happy to earn his obscene wages in this country.

I await his McGuiness tattoo.

Who do you think would help you if your car was on fire on the M1 ?

1.The Queen
2.Jeremy Corbyn
3. Arthur Scargill
4.George Osborne
5.Martin MCGuinness
6. Nigel Farage

My guess would be 2.3 and 5

McGuinness probably caused it to be on fire in the first place.
Corbyn would be pretending to not find a seat on an empty train.
Farage would be berating the foreign manufacturer of your car from a different country whilst pretending to be working class and drinking a pint.

I asked you a question , you never answered !

The Queen (or certainly her fire brigade).

What if it was the M3 near Winchester?

I thought the answer was Winston Wolf

Any chance you could actually say something, instead of this pathetic sitting on the fence?

Pretty damn sure that the corpse of Martin McGuiness wouldn't rescue me

Who are these extremists you'd kill innocents for?!?

UKIP, and its little brother the BNP?

UKIP are extremists?

In that case, prepare for the 'extremist' above to start killing innocents seeing as UKIP were the third popular party at the last General Election and most popular in the European elections.

Am I alone in thinking that someone saying the death of innocents is acceptable under such circumstances? WTF is going on in this world?

I think its more a case of you taking things a little too seriously and literally on here.

Ukip are extremely stupid. If that helps.

Bollocks. Grabec meant what he said.

There is no doubt that Mcguiness changed course and worked on peace in the last 20 years of his life....to a degree.

What he failed to do in that period and which has never fully been reasoned is why he did not provide information on where dozens of missing murdered people are buried.

A man of real peace I feel would have divulged this information.

He did not. This fact alone tells me he was not fully reformed.

Let's get something straight, McGuiness and the IRA did not come to the negotiating table by choice, the did it because the IRA was finished and beaten. They had been brought to their knees by the security services but that had happened before. What killed them off was two women called McCartney. They publically stood up to the IRA after their brother was murdered and the edifice fracked. Very quickly the IRA lost the support of their communities and the fear that held it all together fell away.

Adams appeared on TV asking for witnesses when all around knew exactly who had done what was pitiful. Shortly afterwards SF support started to fall away.

The reality was that the communities developed contempt for the gangsters proporting to represent republicanism and informing on them went to an all time high. When the fear and respect for the remaining c200 members disappeared they were history. This is why they talked to the British government and not a change of heart by 'Machine gun marty'

If that was the case surely the British government wouldn't have spoken to them if they were imploding!!!!

Wrong again Despite saying they would never bow to terrorism or talk with with the IRA , it is now well known, though it was never disclosed at the time, for fear of making it looks as though the British government were rocking, the IRA were invited to Downing Street for talks in the mid 70s. It was the bombing of Canary Wharf , the financial heart of London, that put the fear of god into the government and set the scene for peace. The IRA and Sinn Fein never got what they really wanted ,that was a united Ireland, though I'm sure that will happen eventually, as the recent election results in Northern Ireland testify. It was in my view the British government who backed down in the end not the IRA, the result for now, a country living in peace , albeit a tentative peace.

I would never condone the murder of innocent people or support any organisation that did so.
BUT WAIT.
My Government in recent years passed a vote in Parliament to contribute to bombing in Syria. Inevitably, because of that bombing, innocent people including children were going to be killed, maimed, lose their homes, lose their right as children to grow up safe and secure etc etc etc.
Does that make me and the rest of us who just sat back and accepted the inevitability of that decision, just as guilty.
Were the Allies, in the second World War, justified in what happened to Dresden, Nagasaki and Hiroshima???
Of course that was "different" or was it????

On a personal note. If what we, as Englishmen, consider to be a foreign power or influence took control of our country and exercised that power to limit our freedom, then old as I am I would join the ERA. Would I be a Terrorist or a Freedom Fighter ????
We all like to pontificate over other people's actions but what would we do in their circumstances????

And you would kill innocent civilians of that perceived foreign power?

Please say that's not what you're saying.

What evil act did Tebbit do? I know because of his being a conservative people despise him just for that but evil?

I don't really know what I would do to be honest. I would only find out if I was faced with it. That's my point. Because we've never been subjected to invasion and it's consequences who knows where we would end up and to what extent we would go to rid ourselves of occupation. I am convinced I would join some sort of underground movement so I would probably do as I'm told just like our current bomber pilots do. I don't know what goes through their minds when they press the button knowing there's a good chance the bombs could hit innocent people.

This world is more fucked than I thought.

Anyone who would trigger an equivalent of the bombs in Warrington, Omagh or Canary Wharf has more than their fair share of evil in their genes.

This is so depressing.

Personally I would not condone doing the equivelent but I would still hate the evil so and so who did it and wish they would burn in hell.

That's understandable.