Sir, – The death of Martin McGuinness has unleashed a retrospective attempt to either paint him as a peacemaker or politician (News Agenda, April 11th).
McGuinness falls into the Collins scenario. A simple focus to outwit and ultimately oust British rule from Ireland. Like Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet, The Invincibles and Fenians, McGuinness was following an 800-year inbred desire that many Irish associate with.
The question that should be asked here is this. How come the secretive life-taking British- and ultimately Whitehall-overseen secret agencies were allowed to run unfettered in Ulster?
It’s not as if Dublin was immune. It suffered the greatest amount of death from British collusion with loyalists in 1974.
Martin McGuinness was a man of his times. Perhaps we might find out how a Glenanne farm inside the Border was allowed to be a staging post for disgruntled RUC and UDR men overseen by English agents.
That the McGuinnesses of this world played and outwitted those chess players of human lives deserves deeper analysis not Sinner bashing. – Yours, etc,
JOHN CUFFE,
Dunboyne,
Co Meath.