Martin McGuinness Quotes
In 2016, let us all join the Rising, and the only final message is this very clear: Up the Rebels. Up a sovereign and independent Irish republic.
McGuinness, Martin. "Address to the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis." Millennium Forum, Derry. 7 Mar. 2015. Speech.
He was executed by the English for his part in the Easter Uprising. Given to his daughter Nora Connolly on eve of his execution by the British.
Executed by the English for his part in the Easter Uprising.
He was elected to Parliament while in jail and never took his seat as he died as the result of a hunger strike in jail.
The “Defenders” were the Catholic terrorists who along with their Protestant Orange Order counterpart were in sporadic acts of violence and terrorism with no military objective. The French Army was not to sail for Ireland where they would link up with The Defenders and take Ireland from the English. The invasion failed when terrible weather forced the French troop ships carrying more than 45,000 invading soldiers to cut their anchor cables and return to France.
He had been exiled to the United States.
A delegation from Sinn Fein, headed by Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins, had negotiated a treaty of Irish Independence except that it did not cover Northern Ireland where the majority of the people wanted to stay a part of Britain. For 700 years, the Irish had fought for independence, and finally they got it for the vast majority of Ireland and the overwhelming majority of the Catholics of Ireland. The alternative to agreeing to the treaty was to continue the war between the IRA and the British Troops. At the time, the IRA was just about totally beaten and probably could not hold out another month. De Valera, a very shrewd politician, as the leader of Sinn Fein (and the IRA) would normally have headed the Irish Delegation. But he chose not to because he realized that they would never get independence for all 32 counties of Ireland as the British would not leave the Northern Ireland Protestants to their fates against their will. The best Ireland could get was Independence for all of Catholic majority Ireland. And he knew that public opinion would oppose giving up even one county becuse that was what the leaders had told the people for years. So De Valera let his two associates take the popular blame after he denounced the treaty with his famous quotation {639690}. Shortly after that, Michael Collins, the brilliant military Commander of the IRA who signed the treaty was assassinated. To many, it was as if De Valera had pulled the trigger. The treaty was ratified by a 7 vote margin by the Dail as there was no army left to fight, and the angry Irish electorate voted for De Valera as Ireland’s first President. The politician had won; the patriot had died.
He had been exiled to the United States.
James Martin Pacelli McGuinness was an Irish republican Sinn Féin politician and a former leader within the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). McGuinness was the deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland from May 2007 to January 2017 and was the MP for Mid Ulster from 1997 until his resignation in 2013. Like all Sinn Féin MPs, McGuinness abstained from participation in the Westminster Parliament. Following the St Andrews Agreement and the Assembly election in 2007, he became deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland on 8 May 2007, with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Ian Paisley becoming First Minister. On 5 June 2008, he was re-appointed as deputy First Minister to serve alongside Peter Robinson, who succeeded Paisley as First Minister. McGuinness previously served as Minister of Education in the Northern Ireland Executive between 1999 and 2002. He was Sinn Féin's candidate for President of Ireland in the 2011 election.
