Ex-IRA commander Martin
McGuiness to meet Queen Elizabeth II - CBS News
The Queen shakes hands with former IRA commander Martin McGuinness in historic first meeting behind closed doors | Daily Mail Online
Or conversely why is a former IRA commander allowing himself to be played host to by the Queen of England who still claims sovereignty over the six counties of Northern Ireland? Many grass-roots Republicans still instinctively gag at the prospect though they've no option now but to bite the bullet and get on with the business of power sharing.
They say the Good Friday Agreement is Sunningdale for slow-learners and there's a lot of merit to that although it's also misleading in some respects. This was only two years after the Arms Crisis (which demonstrated the willingness of senior Fianna Fáil ministers to assist in an armed struggle), Bloody Sunday (which demonstrated the willingness of British soldiers to fire at unarmed protestors), prior to Cruise's Broadcasting Ban (an index of the tolerance yet extended down south to both Sinn Féins and their military counterparts; the "Provisionals" and "Old " IRA as exemplified by the fiercely pro-Nationalist Irish Press) and in the midst of Paisley's daily blasts of incomparable bigotry (which typified the unwillingness of a hard-core element within Ulster Unionism to tolerate any form of compromise; the DUP didn't even sign up for the GFA originally despite international mediation and an otherwise cross-party consensus) - the world of the early 70's in other words (in which McGuinness was "active") is light years removed from the world we inhabit now.
And of course, once the island was partitioned, the Protestant dominated polity never (predictably) became representative of "democracy and order" unless you revere that type of order that gerrymanders constituencies and practices widespread discrimination against its Catholic minority. Séamus Mallon, when a young community activist, was once asked to make representations on behalf of a neighbour to a Unionist councillor to secure social housing only to be told; "no Catholic pig and his litter will ever get a house in ... as long as I'm alive". And you wonder why people take up the gun?
Not everyone has the mammoth reserves of patience and good-will evinced by the cross-community bridge-builders like the SDLP or Alliance .. an optimism which has seen them both in the end abandoned at the ballot box as the "extremists" (DUP and Sinn Féin) now monopolise the Executive ministries. You can see how much 'reason' came to play a role in the North by a brief perusal of the history of the Foyle constituency where a presumed associate of the Brighton bombers consistently tops the poll whereas a commentator as lucid as Éamonn McCann can only manage a fifth of votes.
Adams and McGuinness had sufficient gravity within the Republican movement to end the abstentionist policy, splitting (amicably enough given the circumstances) with O' Brádaigh's "purists" who stubbornly held onto second Dáil principles. Therein the seeds of an eventual political settlement were ultimately sown (as post-split Republican Sinn Féin withered in the wilderness) despite vociferous opposition down south to the Hume initiative from the revisionist Indo stable typified by Cruise O' Brien and (later) the incessant demands for decommissioning by Trimble's UUP.
The Hume-Adams agreement eventually won the support of the British and Irish governments and belatedly pulled into it's inexorable orbit the steadfast "Ulster says NO" merchants - the Paisleyite DUP. With that, and on foot of the GFA the Republic changed it's constitution and no longer makes territorial claims to the North (no party down south could get an electorate to agree to this without substantial guarantees for the North); the unification, if and when it does happen being subject to the consent of the majority within the six counties - peace and a workable power-sharing executive has been achieved with McGuinness and Paisley (formerly polar opposites in ideology) now being christened the 'chuckle brothers' such is the new found bonhomie between them.
I don't know what part of McGuinness' C.V. a quarter of a million voters in the Republic (13.7%) were more impressed by when they give him their first preference in the Presidential elections but I suspect the Good Friday Agreement, the IRA cessation/decommissioning, the cross-border institutions now in place and above all the comparative "peace" we all enjoy today were high up there in their calculations - he has no shortage of detractors, that's inevitable and understandable given what the whole island has been through but taking everything into context he got my No. 2 vote behind Michael D.
It wasn't exactly the strongest line-up of candidates either but I make no apologies for giving him my No.2. I thought he was handled disgracefully by large sections of the media down here but it was no worse than I've come to expect - ahistorical, de-contextualised sanctimonious bilge is unfortunately the by-product of two generations of revisionist whitewashing down here.
The way liberal, middle class Ireland turns up its nose and spouts pieties at all things Republican while year after year voting in so many parish-pumping & developer buddy crooks, particularly for a Fianna Fáil party whose policies & "leadership" wound up creating a multi-generational 'black hole' debt crisis which still leaves me rubbing my eyes in disbelief. The violence and waste of life in the end sickened me as much as the next man .. and I certainly do not hold out any sort of unconditional respect for McGuinness.
It's perfectly obvious to me he is a flawed individual who has shown on occasion a very suspect grasp of history but Sinn Féin are at present the only All-Ireland party the country has and despite the paucity of real talent in their ranks (with the exception mainly of Pearse Doherty & Mary Lou McDonald who are excellent Dáil performers) I think their rejuvenation down south is well overdue and needs to be encouraged.
Here's a question -
Was it "right" to take up arms against the Unionist statelet given the conditions that prevailed after the introduction of internment?
Here's a related question -
If it wasn't "right" was it at least understandable why so many did so?
Another question -
Were those who chose to take up arms supported in their aims by their own community & how widespread was this support?
And more -
Were the "gunmen" exploiting their own communities or were they in fact more or less the embodiment of its will?
Clearly, we could go on for a very long time teasing out answers to these questions, which would never be mutually conclusive, as the points of divergence would multiply forthwith immediately (cultural conditioning) - but this is the central issue when assessing a 'verdict' on a figure as proximate to all these events as McGuinness - at every step of the way you confront automatically questions which probe to the core your basic opinions on nationhood, state legitimacy, colonialism, sectarianism, the morality of the use of violence to achieve political ends etc. etc.... the lives of some figures somehow seem to encapsulate all the core anxieties of a people at a given time and Mr. McGuinness is certainly one of them.
The struggle over representation creates the world afresh every day .. is it any wonder we're all so engaged in the past?!
The war got bogged down in a senseless quagmire of increasingly destructive reprisal killings leading nowhere and having no palpable end-point other than entrenching the alienation of both communities.
Unionists had the majority where it mattered, in the executive branches of government and they used that dominance to maintain a stranglehold over local authorities - this has been so completely documented and acknowledged by all quarters (to the point of saturation) its scarcely worth refuting.
How many Protestants marched for Civil Rights in 68-69 and how many of them signed up to support the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association? Very few. It doesn't imply some of them didn't have a hard time of it, as many working class Protestants who may have wished to better their conditions of living didn't march for rights, as essentially they wished to be seen supportive of the State and not bring its sectarian mechanisms into the spotlight. Forging a cross-community working class consensus was one of the aims of the NICRA committee in the early days but Protestant leaders influenced by their politicians and lodge mandarins almost uniformly rejected their calls for participation.
The allocation of housing was not merely about grievances over cramped living conditions it was also a means of lowering the proportion of Catholics who had the vote as only rate-payers were entitled to exercise the franchise. A war of figures won't be won over this one; it was a 'Protestant run state for a Protestant people' and self-confessedly so, with the minimum amount of social housing and concessions being allocated as were consistent with law and decency (as in the case of Bernadette Devlin's family) and in many instances, not even that.
"Look after your own" is a fine evasive philosophy to adopt when Unionists enjoyed a monopoly of executive power, the bulk of local government, and the commanding heights of industry - a Catholic back then was twice as likely to be unemployed as a Protestant, principally because many employees specifically told their managers not to employ them. How was all this a formula for equity and justice? It wasn't, and when they marched to claim the rights denied them they were beaten into submission by Paisleyite thugs and a partisan police force. It's ridiculous that the RUC weren't told to pull out before the Bogside escalated into the battle it became - an entire section of the citizenry utterly alienated from its forces of "law and order" before the world's press and to the shame of all Northern Ireland.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfVhVevY8J4
Seamus Mallon talks about the refusal to be granted housing (for a client) in the above documentary. He's been interviewed by John Bowman in retirement and with the opportunity to give us his considered thoughts on over forty years in politics. I think its fair to say he's well noted for his integrity by all sides of the political divide and I personally find it inconceivable he'd simply "make up" a story like that - you need only look at his expression after he said it to see how much it still galls him.
The exact words of George Woods (the local district Unionist Councillor), who was apparently a notorious bigot, were; "No Catholic pig and his litter will ever get a house in Market Hill as long as I'm alive". Paisley, as is well known, used phrases like this (and worse) to describe Catholics on a regular basis, its his trademark rant as it were, - actually, in this very documentary he's on a podium in front of the usual massive crowd, telling Catholics they should "get back to their piggeries"!!
I recall an interview with an IRA activist who was asked why after all his years spouting hatred and monopolising the narrow ground Paisley wasn't targeted by them for assassination and he simply said; "he shows them up for what they are .. he only says what all the rest of them are thinking about". I don't believe that for a second, it's simply the distortion of reality from the prism of one extremist through that of another and I'd say the majority of Protestants were appalled by his diatribes in the early days. But once the Troubles kicked off (of which he played a major role himself in starting) he suddenly becomes transmogrified into "a man raised by God in Ulster's hour of need".
It's extremely difficult to find a commentator (let alone an actor) in this whole tragic farce who can claim they've clambered the highest mountain top to unleash thunder bolts of enlightened "reason". The mere act of commenting with however marginal a bias is enough to send heckles flying in some quarters; hence "whatever you say, say nothing". And this applies no matter what angle you approach the difficulty from .... the story of the Peace Movement is typical (Williams, Corrigan, McKeown), it petered out after the Hunger Strikes but made an impact for a few years and has been credited by some with significantly lowering the death toll from 1976 onwards.
It essentially called for an end to "violence" from all sides but republicans (for one) initially inferred a two-fold bias as in (a) sectarian killings from UDA/UVF loyalist gangs were often described as 'apparently motiveless murders' in the media at the time while the call to end "bombings" seemed to point the finger unduly at the Provos and, more obviously (b) the mere act of asking for a cessation was weighted heavily in favour of the post-Sunningdale "direct rule" status quo.
In the working class Catholic Turf Lodge the "Peace People" had to be rescued by on the spot Provos from an irate community gathering who were ready to tear them to pieces after they arrived to "investigate" the death of a local boy from a British soldier's rubber bullet. Sitting on the sidelines and merely calling for peace in this context well .. your talking about a community in siege mentality with the Provos their last line of defence. It's probably indicative that the (Protestant) Shankill peace march passed by without any major flare-ups whereas in the (Catholic) Falls they were hurdled out of it with sticks, stones, bottles and all the rest of it.
Certainly, vis-à-vis halting the downslide into collective mayhem there were always doubters on both sides and there's no shortage of evidence of attempts to call a check to proceedings at every stage but you feel there was just such an elemental fury let loose (beginning with Burntollet maybe) that it just took that long (twenty years plus) to expend itself. The politics of the day (mid-60's) was certainly geared towards the possibility of a grass-roots cross-community non-sectarian approach concentrating on Protestant and Catholic working class synergies; in fact, this was the basis of the re-organised post Border Campaign IRA's strategy who practically downed tools en masse (i.e de-militarised) under Goulding's influence (circa 1962) to allow a thoroughgoing campaign to "politicise the masses" within a Marxist-Leninist framework; education workshops, trade union infiltration etc. were now the preferred tactic while emphasising Tone's vision of a non-sectarian republic embracing "Protestant, Dissenter and Catholic"- (NICRA had possibly a quarter of IRA "campaigners" in their ranks) - yet there was no inkling seemingly of the level of resistance that would be met by entrenched Paisleyite Unionism to protect Protestant hegemony where even O' Neill's mild reforms were bellowed down with the UDA/UVF taking it's cue readily enough.
This was arguably the central plank of Bernadette Devlin's early political philosophy; to affect a cross-community working class consensus while yet advancing civil rights & de-emphasising the national question lest it alienate potential Protestant support; the very fact that this strategy was contemplated by so many in the early days gives you some idea of how transformed & polarised the landscape became within a few short months.
While British soldiers were initially welcomed in working class Catholic communities; anything to protect them from the oppressive state forces & loyalist pogroms which were creating one of the country's worst ever refugee crises - this enthusiasm dissipated rapidly amid house-searches, heavy-handedness, patrols, check-points, searches and the constant (well-founded) suspicion of partisanship. Once the IRA started targeting soldiers you can't really blame them given that many UDA/UVF were ex-servicemen who only had "Catholics" in their sights and thus didn't represent an immediate "existential" threat. The level and extent of collusion with loyalist gangs is of course still widely debated but that it was there no-one really disputes.
I'm not a compulsive "North-Watcher"; the fact of the matter is that the mere contemplation of the place, especially during this period, tends to drain me emotionally. God knows what it must have been like to actually serve full-time up there. Kevin Myers, whom I normally roundly disagree with on just about everything concerning the national question, did at least, put all the instability in a nutshell when entitling his account of his journalist days there Watching the Door; the idea being that when out taking a refresher in the local you sat with your back to the wall and your eyes pasted on the front door. What a way to live!
I don't recall Ciaran McKeown in his account of the Peace Movement mentioning Devlin's participation at any stage; it seems instinctively to me something she may not have wished to associate herself with at the time given it's explicit repudiation of militant republicanism. Price of My Soul, her only full-blooded account of the Troubles, only takes us up to the Battle of the Bogside, from which point she seems to have participated at some level with the Officials via her engagement with McAliskey, a 'sticky' activist. She was certainly associated with the IRSP after Costello's split from Goulding's group (on account of the Officials ceasefire) later giving the oration at INLA man, Dominic McGlinchey's funeral.
She's certainly a central figure throughout in my view (even more so during the Hunger Strikes when her oratory virtually guaranteed Bobby Sands election); you need only listen to her to know the depth of feeling involved, besides which certain passages of her analysis in Price of.. are astonishingly lucid, some of the best writing in fact on the North are in that tome. The 'guest' involvement with the Marxist-orientated IRSP is perfectly consistent with the politics she had outlined there and it's interesting to reflect too that by aligning herself with the Dublin based Officials she was perhaps self-consciously distancing herself from the Provos who after all, had definitively dropped even discussion of ending abstention and were moreover never committed to the Goulding group's policy of active involvement in politicisation. The Officials on account of this early decision to stick with the 1962 reformed plan of action & their own early ceasefire meant they retained in their ranks a lot of "sobre heads" I should say, many of whom went on to play a key role in the politics of the ROI.
Senator Eoghan Harris, a Sunday Independent contributor for instance was a Marxist ideologue in those days steering the Official's 'think-tank' on industry and commerce up until at least 1976. He now writes columns regularly denouncing Sinn Féin and has even joined the Cruise O' Brien bandwagon on 1916 revisionism, morphing into a fully-fledged HR Redmondite in the process. Tony Gregory, the great Dublin Inner City TD, who did Trojan work for two decades for this disadvantaged area, joined the IRA in 1969, stuck with the Officials during the Provo-split and again when Costello branched off to form the INLA (circa 1975). He had great respect for Costello seemingly on account of seeing the work he did for Bray constituency but the savage reprisal war with shortly broke out between both factions finally flipped him into "regular" politics - he said he used to sleep with an axe under his bed at this time. Proinsias De Rossa (MEP), Liz McManus TD, Pat Rabbitte (current Coalition Minister) and even Eamonn Gilmore (our current Tánaiste) all sprang either from the Officials themselves or the Democratic Left party which largely superceded them - all of which I'm mentioning merely to illustrate that in the time that was in it (early 70's) there were a lot of "quality" people ether engaged directly with the IRA or hovering around the margins.
The very fact that Jack Lynch (FF Taoiseach) allowed both Sinn Féin offices to function down South for so long was an index of the general public's attitudes (tolerance) of "the armed republican equation" in Irish life. It was only when the Labour/Fine Gael coalition of 1973 was formed that a general tightening of attitudes was contemplated largely through the tireless objections of Cruise O' Brien who as Communications Minister eventually succeeded in introducing the Broadcast ban (not without fierce objections from the media, RTE included). So, that's by way of illustrating I guess the general ambiguities in attitude in the early days towards militant republicanism down South - it was only as the bombing campaign by the Provos seemed to increase in intensity and civilian casualties mounted up as we moved into 1974-75 that attitudes began to harden, though this, as mentioned above, was almost as much concerned with the change of government.
The Queen shakes hands with former IRA commander Martin McGuinness in historic first meeting behind closed doors | Daily Mail Online
Or conversely why is a former IRA commander allowing himself to be played host to by the Queen of England who still claims sovereignty over the six counties of Northern Ireland? Many grass-roots Republicans still instinctively gag at the prospect though they've no option now but to bite the bullet and get on with the business of power sharing.
They say the Good Friday Agreement is Sunningdale for slow-learners and there's a lot of merit to that although it's also misleading in some respects. This was only two years after the Arms Crisis (which demonstrated the willingness of senior Fianna Fáil ministers to assist in an armed struggle), Bloody Sunday (which demonstrated the willingness of British soldiers to fire at unarmed protestors), prior to Cruise's Broadcasting Ban (an index of the tolerance yet extended down south to both Sinn Féins and their military counterparts; the "Provisionals" and "Old " IRA as exemplified by the fiercely pro-Nationalist Irish Press) and in the midst of Paisley's daily blasts of incomparable bigotry (which typified the unwillingness of a hard-core element within Ulster Unionism to tolerate any form of compromise; the DUP didn't even sign up for the GFA originally despite international mediation and an otherwise cross-party consensus) - the world of the early 70's in other words (in which McGuinness was "active") is light years removed from the world we inhabit now.
And of course, once the island was partitioned, the Protestant dominated polity never (predictably) became representative of "democracy and order" unless you revere that type of order that gerrymanders constituencies and practices widespread discrimination against its Catholic minority. Séamus Mallon, when a young community activist, was once asked to make representations on behalf of a neighbour to a Unionist councillor to secure social housing only to be told; "no Catholic pig and his litter will ever get a house in ... as long as I'm alive". And you wonder why people take up the gun?
Not everyone has the mammoth reserves of patience and good-will evinced by the cross-community bridge-builders like the SDLP or Alliance .. an optimism which has seen them both in the end abandoned at the ballot box as the "extremists" (DUP and Sinn Féin) now monopolise the Executive ministries. You can see how much 'reason' came to play a role in the North by a brief perusal of the history of the Foyle constituency where a presumed associate of the Brighton bombers consistently tops the poll whereas a commentator as lucid as Éamonn McCann can only manage a fifth of votes.
Adams and McGuinness had sufficient gravity within the Republican movement to end the abstentionist policy, splitting (amicably enough given the circumstances) with O' Brádaigh's "purists" who stubbornly held onto second Dáil principles. Therein the seeds of an eventual political settlement were ultimately sown (as post-split Republican Sinn Féin withered in the wilderness) despite vociferous opposition down south to the Hume initiative from the revisionist Indo stable typified by Cruise O' Brien and (later) the incessant demands for decommissioning by Trimble's UUP.
The Hume-Adams agreement eventually won the support of the British and Irish governments and belatedly pulled into it's inexorable orbit the steadfast "Ulster says NO" merchants - the Paisleyite DUP. With that, and on foot of the GFA the Republic changed it's constitution and no longer makes territorial claims to the North (no party down south could get an electorate to agree to this without substantial guarantees for the North); the unification, if and when it does happen being subject to the consent of the majority within the six counties - peace and a workable power-sharing executive has been achieved with McGuinness and Paisley (formerly polar opposites in ideology) now being christened the 'chuckle brothers' such is the new found bonhomie between them.
I don't know what part of McGuinness' C.V. a quarter of a million voters in the Republic (13.7%) were more impressed by when they give him their first preference in the Presidential elections but I suspect the Good Friday Agreement, the IRA cessation/decommissioning, the cross-border institutions now in place and above all the comparative "peace" we all enjoy today were high up there in their calculations - he has no shortage of detractors, that's inevitable and understandable given what the whole island has been through but taking everything into context he got my No. 2 vote behind Michael D.
It wasn't exactly the strongest line-up of candidates either but I make no apologies for giving him my No.2. I thought he was handled disgracefully by large sections of the media down here but it was no worse than I've come to expect - ahistorical, de-contextualised sanctimonious bilge is unfortunately the by-product of two generations of revisionist whitewashing down here.
The way liberal, middle class Ireland turns up its nose and spouts pieties at all things Republican while year after year voting in so many parish-pumping & developer buddy crooks, particularly for a Fianna Fáil party whose policies & "leadership" wound up creating a multi-generational 'black hole' debt crisis which still leaves me rubbing my eyes in disbelief. The violence and waste of life in the end sickened me as much as the next man .. and I certainly do not hold out any sort of unconditional respect for McGuinness.
It's perfectly obvious to me he is a flawed individual who has shown on occasion a very suspect grasp of history but Sinn Féin are at present the only All-Ireland party the country has and despite the paucity of real talent in their ranks (with the exception mainly of Pearse Doherty & Mary Lou McDonald who are excellent Dáil performers) I think their rejuvenation down south is well overdue and needs to be encouraged.
Here's a question -
Was it "right" to take up arms against the Unionist statelet given the conditions that prevailed after the introduction of internment?
Here's a related question -
If it wasn't "right" was it at least understandable why so many did so?
Another question -
Were those who chose to take up arms supported in their aims by their own community & how widespread was this support?
And more -
Were the "gunmen" exploiting their own communities or were they in fact more or less the embodiment of its will?
Clearly, we could go on for a very long time teasing out answers to these questions, which would never be mutually conclusive, as the points of divergence would multiply forthwith immediately (cultural conditioning) - but this is the central issue when assessing a 'verdict' on a figure as proximate to all these events as McGuinness - at every step of the way you confront automatically questions which probe to the core your basic opinions on nationhood, state legitimacy, colonialism, sectarianism, the morality of the use of violence to achieve political ends etc. etc.... the lives of some figures somehow seem to encapsulate all the core anxieties of a people at a given time and Mr. McGuinness is certainly one of them.
The struggle over representation creates the world afresh every day .. is it any wonder we're all so engaged in the past?!
The war got bogged down in a senseless quagmire of increasingly destructive reprisal killings leading nowhere and having no palpable end-point other than entrenching the alienation of both communities.
Unionists had the majority where it mattered, in the executive branches of government and they used that dominance to maintain a stranglehold over local authorities - this has been so completely documented and acknowledged by all quarters (to the point of saturation) its scarcely worth refuting.
How many Protestants marched for Civil Rights in 68-69 and how many of them signed up to support the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association? Very few. It doesn't imply some of them didn't have a hard time of it, as many working class Protestants who may have wished to better their conditions of living didn't march for rights, as essentially they wished to be seen supportive of the State and not bring its sectarian mechanisms into the spotlight. Forging a cross-community working class consensus was one of the aims of the NICRA committee in the early days but Protestant leaders influenced by their politicians and lodge mandarins almost uniformly rejected their calls for participation.
The allocation of housing was not merely about grievances over cramped living conditions it was also a means of lowering the proportion of Catholics who had the vote as only rate-payers were entitled to exercise the franchise. A war of figures won't be won over this one; it was a 'Protestant run state for a Protestant people' and self-confessedly so, with the minimum amount of social housing and concessions being allocated as were consistent with law and decency (as in the case of Bernadette Devlin's family) and in many instances, not even that.
"Look after your own" is a fine evasive philosophy to adopt when Unionists enjoyed a monopoly of executive power, the bulk of local government, and the commanding heights of industry - a Catholic back then was twice as likely to be unemployed as a Protestant, principally because many employees specifically told their managers not to employ them. How was all this a formula for equity and justice? It wasn't, and when they marched to claim the rights denied them they were beaten into submission by Paisleyite thugs and a partisan police force. It's ridiculous that the RUC weren't told to pull out before the Bogside escalated into the battle it became - an entire section of the citizenry utterly alienated from its forces of "law and order" before the world's press and to the shame of all Northern Ireland.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfVhVevY8J4
Seamus Mallon talks about the refusal to be granted housing (for a client) in the above documentary. He's been interviewed by John Bowman in retirement and with the opportunity to give us his considered thoughts on over forty years in politics. I think its fair to say he's well noted for his integrity by all sides of the political divide and I personally find it inconceivable he'd simply "make up" a story like that - you need only look at his expression after he said it to see how much it still galls him.
The exact words of George Woods (the local district Unionist Councillor), who was apparently a notorious bigot, were; "No Catholic pig and his litter will ever get a house in Market Hill as long as I'm alive". Paisley, as is well known, used phrases like this (and worse) to describe Catholics on a regular basis, its his trademark rant as it were, - actually, in this very documentary he's on a podium in front of the usual massive crowd, telling Catholics they should "get back to their piggeries"!!
I recall an interview with an IRA activist who was asked why after all his years spouting hatred and monopolising the narrow ground Paisley wasn't targeted by them for assassination and he simply said; "he shows them up for what they are .. he only says what all the rest of them are thinking about". I don't believe that for a second, it's simply the distortion of reality from the prism of one extremist through that of another and I'd say the majority of Protestants were appalled by his diatribes in the early days. But once the Troubles kicked off (of which he played a major role himself in starting) he suddenly becomes transmogrified into "a man raised by God in Ulster's hour of need".
It's extremely difficult to find a commentator (let alone an actor) in this whole tragic farce who can claim they've clambered the highest mountain top to unleash thunder bolts of enlightened "reason". The mere act of commenting with however marginal a bias is enough to send heckles flying in some quarters; hence "whatever you say, say nothing". And this applies no matter what angle you approach the difficulty from .... the story of the Peace Movement is typical (Williams, Corrigan, McKeown), it petered out after the Hunger Strikes but made an impact for a few years and has been credited by some with significantly lowering the death toll from 1976 onwards.
It essentially called for an end to "violence" from all sides but republicans (for one) initially inferred a two-fold bias as in (a) sectarian killings from UDA/UVF loyalist gangs were often described as 'apparently motiveless murders' in the media at the time while the call to end "bombings" seemed to point the finger unduly at the Provos and, more obviously (b) the mere act of asking for a cessation was weighted heavily in favour of the post-Sunningdale "direct rule" status quo.
In the working class Catholic Turf Lodge the "Peace People" had to be rescued by on the spot Provos from an irate community gathering who were ready to tear them to pieces after they arrived to "investigate" the death of a local boy from a British soldier's rubber bullet. Sitting on the sidelines and merely calling for peace in this context well .. your talking about a community in siege mentality with the Provos their last line of defence. It's probably indicative that the (Protestant) Shankill peace march passed by without any major flare-ups whereas in the (Catholic) Falls they were hurdled out of it with sticks, stones, bottles and all the rest of it.
Certainly, vis-à-vis halting the downslide into collective mayhem there were always doubters on both sides and there's no shortage of evidence of attempts to call a check to proceedings at every stage but you feel there was just such an elemental fury let loose (beginning with Burntollet maybe) that it just took that long (twenty years plus) to expend itself. The politics of the day (mid-60's) was certainly geared towards the possibility of a grass-roots cross-community non-sectarian approach concentrating on Protestant and Catholic working class synergies; in fact, this was the basis of the re-organised post Border Campaign IRA's strategy who practically downed tools en masse (i.e de-militarised) under Goulding's influence (circa 1962) to allow a thoroughgoing campaign to "politicise the masses" within a Marxist-Leninist framework; education workshops, trade union infiltration etc. were now the preferred tactic while emphasising Tone's vision of a non-sectarian republic embracing "Protestant, Dissenter and Catholic"- (NICRA had possibly a quarter of IRA "campaigners" in their ranks) - yet there was no inkling seemingly of the level of resistance that would be met by entrenched Paisleyite Unionism to protect Protestant hegemony where even O' Neill's mild reforms were bellowed down with the UDA/UVF taking it's cue readily enough.
This was arguably the central plank of Bernadette Devlin's early political philosophy; to affect a cross-community working class consensus while yet advancing civil rights & de-emphasising the national question lest it alienate potential Protestant support; the very fact that this strategy was contemplated by so many in the early days gives you some idea of how transformed & polarised the landscape became within a few short months.
While British soldiers were initially welcomed in working class Catholic communities; anything to protect them from the oppressive state forces & loyalist pogroms which were creating one of the country's worst ever refugee crises - this enthusiasm dissipated rapidly amid house-searches, heavy-handedness, patrols, check-points, searches and the constant (well-founded) suspicion of partisanship. Once the IRA started targeting soldiers you can't really blame them given that many UDA/UVF were ex-servicemen who only had "Catholics" in their sights and thus didn't represent an immediate "existential" threat. The level and extent of collusion with loyalist gangs is of course still widely debated but that it was there no-one really disputes.
I'm not a compulsive "North-Watcher"; the fact of the matter is that the mere contemplation of the place, especially during this period, tends to drain me emotionally. God knows what it must have been like to actually serve full-time up there. Kevin Myers, whom I normally roundly disagree with on just about everything concerning the national question, did at least, put all the instability in a nutshell when entitling his account of his journalist days there Watching the Door; the idea being that when out taking a refresher in the local you sat with your back to the wall and your eyes pasted on the front door. What a way to live!
I don't recall Ciaran McKeown in his account of the Peace Movement mentioning Devlin's participation at any stage; it seems instinctively to me something she may not have wished to associate herself with at the time given it's explicit repudiation of militant republicanism. Price of My Soul, her only full-blooded account of the Troubles, only takes us up to the Battle of the Bogside, from which point she seems to have participated at some level with the Officials via her engagement with McAliskey, a 'sticky' activist. She was certainly associated with the IRSP after Costello's split from Goulding's group (on account of the Officials ceasefire) later giving the oration at INLA man, Dominic McGlinchey's funeral.
She's certainly a central figure throughout in my view (even more so during the Hunger Strikes when her oratory virtually guaranteed Bobby Sands election); you need only listen to her to know the depth of feeling involved, besides which certain passages of her analysis in Price of.. are astonishingly lucid, some of the best writing in fact on the North are in that tome. The 'guest' involvement with the Marxist-orientated IRSP is perfectly consistent with the politics she had outlined there and it's interesting to reflect too that by aligning herself with the Dublin based Officials she was perhaps self-consciously distancing herself from the Provos who after all, had definitively dropped even discussion of ending abstention and were moreover never committed to the Goulding group's policy of active involvement in politicisation. The Officials on account of this early decision to stick with the 1962 reformed plan of action & their own early ceasefire meant they retained in their ranks a lot of "sobre heads" I should say, many of whom went on to play a key role in the politics of the ROI.
Senator Eoghan Harris, a Sunday Independent contributor for instance was a Marxist ideologue in those days steering the Official's 'think-tank' on industry and commerce up until at least 1976. He now writes columns regularly denouncing Sinn Féin and has even joined the Cruise O' Brien bandwagon on 1916 revisionism, morphing into a fully-fledged HR Redmondite in the process. Tony Gregory, the great Dublin Inner City TD, who did Trojan work for two decades for this disadvantaged area, joined the IRA in 1969, stuck with the Officials during the Provo-split and again when Costello branched off to form the INLA (circa 1975). He had great respect for Costello seemingly on account of seeing the work he did for Bray constituency but the savage reprisal war with shortly broke out between both factions finally flipped him into "regular" politics - he said he used to sleep with an axe under his bed at this time. Proinsias De Rossa (MEP), Liz McManus TD, Pat Rabbitte (current Coalition Minister) and even Eamonn Gilmore (our current Tánaiste) all sprang either from the Officials themselves or the Democratic Left party which largely superceded them - all of which I'm mentioning merely to illustrate that in the time that was in it (early 70's) there were a lot of "quality" people ether engaged directly with the IRA or hovering around the margins.
The very fact that Jack Lynch (FF Taoiseach) allowed both Sinn Féin offices to function down South for so long was an index of the general public's attitudes (tolerance) of "the armed republican equation" in Irish life. It was only when the Labour/Fine Gael coalition of 1973 was formed that a general tightening of attitudes was contemplated largely through the tireless objections of Cruise O' Brien who as Communications Minister eventually succeeded in introducing the Broadcast ban (not without fierce objections from the media, RTE included). So, that's by way of illustrating I guess the general ambiguities in attitude in the early days towards militant republicanism down South - it was only as the bombing campaign by the Provos seemed to increase in intensity and civilian casualties mounted up as we moved into 1974-75 that attitudes began to harden, though this, as mentioned above, was almost as much concerned with the change of government.
