MARTIN MCGUINNESS, once of the IRA and the recent former Deputy Northern Ireland Minister, has passed away at the age of 66 (Echo, March 22).

I am not sure how this Northern Ireland politician will be remembered.

Did McGuinness go from a man of violence to a man of peace?

Lord Norman Tebbit’s comments about McGuinness having a special place in hell were very telling and critical, when many other former politicians were less critical.

History normally makes a judgement on such controversial figures. Hence, time will tell.

George Robert Dunning, Ormesby

CLEARLY, Martin McGuinness and the IRA were responsible for much of the violence in Northern Ireland, but the origins of the so called ‘Troubles’ rest elsewhere.

In 1967, the Martin Luther King inspired, entirely peaceful, Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association launched a series of marches and sit downs demanding equal rights for Roman Catholics in Ulster.

The Unionist government were not prepared to compromise and its brutal sectarian police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, launched a campaign of violence, intimidation, torture, arrest without trial and even murder against anyone who threatened the rule of the Protestant elite.

In 1969 the Royal Ulster Constabulary, its reserve militia the B Specials and Loyalist goon squads attacked Roman Catholics in their own homes in Derry in the so called Battle of the Bogside.

At the same time Loyalists, with police connivance, burned down scores of Catholic homes in the Clonard area of Belfast and ethnically cleansed over 1,000 Catholics from the area.

The next time the Loyalists came to burn down Catholic homes a handful of armed volunteers successfully defended the Catholic Short Strand area of Belfast.

These armed volunteers soon became the Provisional IRA.

It was in such an atmosphere that Martin McGuinness, Gerry Adams and others became terrorists to the British and the Unionist state, but to many Roman Catholics they were regarded as freedom fighters.

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