James Martin Pacelli McGuinness (; 23 May 1950 – 21 March 2017) was an Irish republican politician and statesman for Sinn Féin and a leader within the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) during The Troubles. He was the deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland from May 2007 to January 2017.About the Department Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister.
McGuinness served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Mid Ulster from 1997 until his resignation in 2013. Like all Sinn Féin MPs, McGuinness followed abstentionism in the Westminster Parliament. Working alongside US Special Envoy George Mitchell, McGuinness was also one of the main architects of the Good Friday Agreement which formally cemented the Northern Ireland peace process and established the Northern Ireland Assembly.
In 1998, McGuinness was first elected as the Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Mid Ulster. He served as Minister of Education in the Northern Ireland Executive under First Minister David Trimble from 1999 to 2002. Following the St Andrews Agreement and the 2007 Northern Ireland Assembly election, he became deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland on 8 May 2007, with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Ian Paisley becoming First Minister. In 2008 and 2016, he was reappointed as deputy First Minister to serve alongside Peter Robinson and Arlene Foster, respectively."Robinson is new NI first minister", BBC News, 5 June 2008. Retrieved 5 June 2008 He was Sinn Féin's candidate for President of Ireland in the 2011 Irish presidential election.
In the 2016 Northern Ireland Assembly election, McGuinness was elected as the MLA for Foyle. On 9 January 2017, McGuinness resigned as deputy First Minister in protest over the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal. He announced on 19 January that he would not be standing for re-election in the 2017 Northern Ireland Assembly election due to ill health. He reportedly suffered from amyloidosis, a condition that attacks the vital organs, and retired shortly before his death on 21 March 2017, aged 66.
IRA McGuinness acknowledged that he was a former IRA member, but stated that he left the IRA in 1974.Henry McDonald IRA victim's brother says Martin McGuinness has blood on his hands The Guardian 12 October 2011 He originally joined the Official IRA, unaware of the split at the December 1969 Army Convention, switching to the Provisional IRA soon after. By the start of 1972, at the age of 21, he was second-in-command of the IRA in Derry, a position he held at the time of Bloody Sunday on 30 January 1972, when thirteen civilians were shot and killed in the city by British soldiers of the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment during a civil rights march, with a fourteenth victim dying four months later.
During the Saville Inquiry into the events of that day, Paddy Ward stated he had been the leader of the Fianna, the youth wing of the IRA at the time of Bloody Sunday. He said that McGuinness and an anonymous IRA member gave him bomb parts that morning. He said that his organisation intended to attack city centre premises in Derry on the same day. In response, McGuinness said the statements were "fantasy", while Gearóid Ó hEára (formerly Gerry O'Hara), a Derry Sinn Féin councillor, stated that he and not Ward was the Fianna leader at the time.John Innes, "McGuinness is named as bomb runner" , The Scotsman, 21 October 2003.
The inquiry concluded that, although McGuinness was "engaged in paramilitary activity" at the time of Bloody Sunday and had probably been armed with a Thompson submachine gun, there was insufficient evidence to make any finding other than they were "sure that he did not engage in any activity that provided any of the soldiers with any justification for opening fire".
McGuinness negotiated alongside Gerry Adams with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Willie Whitelaw, in 1972. In 1973, he was convicted by the Republic of Ireland's Special Criminal Court, after being arrested near a car containing of explosives and nearly 5,000 rounds of ammunition. He refused to recognise the court, and was sentenced to six months' imprisonment. In court, he declared his membership of the Provisional IRA without equivocation: "We have fought against the killing of our people... I am a member of Óglaigh na hÉireann and very, very proud of it".
After his release, and another conviction in the Republic of Ireland for IRA membership in 1974, he became increasingly prominent in Sinn Féin, the political wing of the republican movement. He was in indirect contact with British intelligence during the 1981 hunger strikes, and again in the early 1990s. He was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont in 1982, representing Londonderry. He was the second candidate elected after Social Democratic and Labour Party leader John Hume. As with all elected members of Sinn Féin and the SDLP, he did not take up his seat.Martin McGuinness: From Guns to Government by Liam Clarke and Kathryn Johnston (), pages 152–153 On 9 December 1982, McGuinness, Gerry Adams and Danny Morrison were banned from entering Great Britain under the Prevention of Terrorism Act by the Home Secretary, William Whitelaw.Martin McGuinness: From Guns to Government by Liam Clarke and Kathryn Johnston (), page 155
In August 1993, he was the subject of a two-part special by 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, a British 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".Martin McGuinness: From Guns to Government by Liam Clarke and Kathryn Johnston (), page 222 The editor of the Cook Report accused the British government of failing to prosecute McGuinness, which resulted in the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) launching Operation Taurus; an investigation into McGuinness's IRA activity.Martin McGuinness: From Guns to Government by Liam Clarke and Kathryn Johnston (), page 200 Following the IRA ceasefire in August 1994, detectives were refused permission to arrest and question McGuinness due to an RUC internal memo stating "that the UK government may soon be meeting senior members of Sinn Féin, including Mr McGuinness".Martin McGuinness: From Guns to Government by Liam Clarke and Kathryn Johnston (), pages 205-206 On 10 March 1995 the Director of Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland, Alasdair Fraser, stated there was insufficient evidence against McGuinness to ensure a reasonable chance of obtaining a conviction.Martin McGuinness: From Guns to Government by Liam Clarke and Kathryn Johnston (), page 210
In 2005, Michael McDowell, the Irish Tánaiste, stated McGuinness, along with Gerry Adams and Martin Ferris, were members of the seven-man IRA Army Council. McGuinness denied this, saying he was no longer an IRA member. Experienced Troubles journalist Peter Taylor presented further apparent evidence of McGuinness's role in the IRA in his documentary Age of Terror, shown in April 2008.Age of Terror, BBC News, 21 April 2008 In his documentary, Taylor alleges that McGuinness was the head of the IRA's Northern Command and had advance knowledge of the IRA's 1987 Remembrance Day bombing, which left 12 people dead.
Chief negotiator and Minister of Education
He became Sinn Féin's chief negotiator in the Northern Ireland peace process negotiations which led to the Good Friday Agreement. At the time of his death, former US president Bill Clinton noted that McGuinness was the one who personally oversaw the agreement's arms decommissioning phase. Former British prime minister Tony Blair also acknowledged the leading role which McGuinness had in ensuring the agreement would be enforced.
He was elected to the Northern Ireland Forum in 1996 representing Foyle. Having contested Foyle unsuccessfully at the 1983, 1987 and 1992 Westminster elections, he became MP for Mid Ulster in 1997 and after the agreement was concluded, was returned as a member of the Assembly for the same constituency. He was nominated by his party for a ministerial position in the power-sharing executive, where he became Minister of Education. One of his acts as Minister of Education was his decision to scrap the 11-plus exam, which he had failed as a child. He was re-elected to the Westminster Parliament in 2001, 2005 and 2010.
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 by Kathryn Johnston and Liam Clarke. 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 Powell. 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.
St Andrews Agreement and deputy First Minister In the weeks following the St Andrews Agreement, the four biggest parties—the DUP, Sinn Féin, the Ulster Unionist Party and the SDLP—indicated their choice of ministries in the Executive and nominated members to fill them. The Assembly convened on 8 May 2007, and Paisley and McGuinness were nominated as First Minister and deputy First Minister respectively.
On 8 December 2007, while visiting President of the United States George W. Bush in the White House with the Northern Ireland First Minister Ian Paisley, McGuinness said to the press, "Up until the 26 March this year, Ian Paisley and I never had a conversation about anything—not even about the weather—and now we have worked very closely together over the last seven months and there's been no angry words between us.... This shows we are set for a new course."Paisley and McGuinness in US trip BBC News, 3 December 2007Martina Purdy 'Charming' ministers woo president BBC News, 8 December 2007
2011 Irish presidential campaign
On 16 September 2011, McGuinness was announced as the Sinn Féin candidate in the 2011 Irish presidential election. In the election held on 27 October 2011, McGuinness received 243,030 first preference votes, placing third behind Michael D. Higgins (elected president) and Seán Gallagher. McGuinness had earned endorsements from Colm Meaney, Roma Downey, and Fionnula Flanagan among others; and had performed well considering Sinn Féin's position in the Republic at that time.
McGuinness was the only candidate ineligible to vote in the election as, although an Irish citizen, he was not ordinarily a resident in the Republic of Ireland. Following the election, McGuinness formally returned to the role of deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland on 31 October.
Resignation from the House of Commons On 30 December 2012 McGuinness announced that he had formally resigned as the MP for Mid-Ulster, stating "I have served formal notice of my resignation from the position of MP for Mid-Ulster with immediate effect. This is in line with my party's commitment to end double jobbing.""Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness resigns as Mid-Ulster MP" , BBC News To do this, he was made Steward of the Manor of Northstead on 2 January 2013 by Chancellor George Osborne, making him an employee of the Crown and thus ineligible for membership of the House of Commons.
Resignation as deputy First Minister