OUR MARTIN Irish Republican Martin McGuinness by Jim McVeigh

“What politicised me was the civil rights protest. It wasn’t
anything I heard in the house, or even in my grandmother’s
house in Donegal. There was no republicanism whatsoever
in my background.”
As a teenager growing up in Derry’s Bogside area in the
1960s, Martin McGuinness quickly became aware of the
injustices heaped upon his community by decades of
unionist rule since the partition of Ireland in the 1920s. And
when people began to campaign for basic civil rights, he
saw that they were met by both loyalist and state violence,
including killings.
This had a profound impact upon the people of the
Bogside and the Creggan, including a young Martin
McGuinness, and he developed a burning desire to see an
end to inequality and injustice. Like many others of his
generation, he saw no alternative but to join the IRA.
So began the career of one of the foremost and iconic
political leaders of his generation. At the age of 22 he was
already chosen as a republican representative for secret
talks with the British in London in 1972.
The twists and turns of the IRA campaign, the rise of Sinn Féin as an electoral force and the
development of a peaceful strategy for the achievement of a united Ireland, are here described
alongside Martin’s family life: his marriage to Bernie Canning, their four children together and many
happy times at home and on holiday in Donegal.
After ten years as deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness resigned in the face of ‘the most crude
and crass bigotry’ within elements of political unionism. The institutions of the Good Friday Agreement
were becoming unworkable. Even so, he never lost sight of the importance of national reconciliation
and, to the very end, he remained committed to healing the divisions of the past.
Contents:
Foreword by Bernie Canning; 1 The Boy from the Bogside; 2 We Shall Overcome; 3 Martin and Bernie –
Anam Cairde; 4 Back Home in Derry; 5 The Peace Process; 6 A New Beginning; 7 Clann; Postscript
ISBN 978-1-914318-31-3 RRP £24.99 Hardback with dustjacket, large format (290x240mm), 144 pages including 150 black
and white photos.