McGuinness: ‘I did not kill or shoot anyone’
When it was put to him on radio in Cork that he was saying he did not use guns during his time in the IRA, Mr McGuinness said he was not saying that.
Speaking to journalists, he refused to expand on his role in the IRA prior to his being elected in 1982.
“If I was to talk about what I did in the IRA, I can see tomorrow’s headlines ‘McGuinness boasts’. I’m not going to do that.”
Any questions raised about his IRA past were dismissed as the “vitriol and bile” of certain “opinion makers”.
“I don’t think that’s where the people of Ireland are at. That’s certainly not where the crowds outside Croke Park were at on Sunday or the National Ploughing Championship in Athy the other day,” he said.
He repeatedly referred to the fact that Ian Paisley and Peter Robinson were able to “make peace” with him but elements of the Irish media appeared unable to acknowledge his “journey” from IRA member to “peacemaker”.
“The amount of people in the unionist community who stood up in the past few days and said they were happy about me going forward was heartwarming to say the least. It flies in the face of what has been said down here,” he said.
He repeated his narrative of being a working-class boy who felt bound to defend Derry when its people were being treated like second-class citizens.
He said: “Those circumstances were no different from those that propelled Michael Collins, Tom Barry, Éamon de Valera or indeed Nelson Mandela to take up arms against all the injustices that existed at that time.”
Asked if had regrets about his involvement in the IRA, he said: “I have plenty of regrets, regrets that there was almost 25 years of conflict and that many people lost their lives, British soldiers, UDR men, RUC men, IRA volunteers and innocent civilians”.
