MARTIN AGAINST CRUELTY

Ruth Dudley Edwards discovers a form of killing at which IRA apologist

McGuinness draws the line

GERRY Adams and Martin McGuinness will not take their Commons seats, but they intend to open a London office, be very visible around Westminster and cosy up to the press. So here, for journalists anxious to find ways of interviewing them fruitfully, is a tip — avoid the Sinn Fein agenda and impose your own. It was by doing that during the run-up to the elec- tion that I gained from McGuinness an invaluable insight into how IRA violence can be brought to an end.

It was about six months ago that I first met McGuinness, who along with Adams is one of the two most high-profile and influential leaders of the Irish republican movement. The pair go back a long way. In 1972, these two street kids who had never as much as been on an aeroplane were brought to London for talks with the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Willie Whitelaw. If they were that impor- tant in the movement then, think how important they are now, after 25 years in control.

With their colleague, Pat Doherty (who mercifully just failed to become an MP this time around), this troika is the intellectual driving force of Sinn Fein/IRA. I have a fair idea of what they have been up to in the last 25 years and I don't like any of it, so I have always found the notion of shak- ing hands with them or engaging in social chit-chat difficult to stomach.

Not that they are keen on me either. I've been writing for some years now about the cynicism, hypocrisy and downright wicked- ness of the leadership of Sinn Fein/IRA, and of how I believe in their urge to make peace like I believe in water babies.

So when last autumn I was asked to appear on the Irish equivalent of Question Time with McGuinness, I didn't want to do it. It wasn't so much the debate that wor- ried me, although I was apprehensive about being wrongfooted by Sinn Fein- speak; I just didn't want to have to touch McGuinness. My only consolation was that it would have been worse with Gerry Adams, who is vulpine and sanctimonious as well as everything else.

But (military metaphors being appropri- ate) I bit the bullet, flew to Cork and was distinctly unamused when an innocent employee of Radio Telefis Eireann deliv- ered me to a hospitality room occupied solely by McGuinness and two of his min- ders. An example of the excellent training republican leaders acquire prior to coming into polite society, McGuinness stood up, strode across the room with a pleasant smile and said, 'Nice to meet you, Ruth. Mitchell [McLaughlin, chairman of Sinn Fein] told me you were in Derry recently.' And with as good grace as I could manage — since I couldn't think of anything else to do — I shook his hand and we both engaged in the thinnest of thin small talk about methods of travelling to Cork, until we were rescued by the arrival of a brace of constitutional politicians.

Part of the Sinn Fein training is to get on first-name terms with everyone. You hear them calling their interviewers David and Jeremy and John to seduce them into reciprocating in a chummy way. I had res- olutely decided that I would not fall for this ploy and remained formal for most of the programme; however, McGuinness won towards the end. In the midst of a lively exchange (I was describing Sinn Fein/IRA as fascists and had just said I would intern McGuinness and his chums tomorrow) I forgot myself and called him Martin; once you've done that, you can't go back. At the end I had to admire his discipline when he still proffered his hand to me after the programme and stayed civil. I just managed to emulate him.

I fear that since then I have not risen in McGuinness's esteem by becoming a cam- paigning ally of Sean O'Callaghan's, the ex- IRA terrorist who repents of his deeds and now campaigns against the IRA, and about whom republicans feel rather as did the denizens of the Home Counties about Lord Haw Haw. Sinn Fein propaganda puts it about that I work for MI5. Yet on a recent Saturday in Northern Ireland, when I had a few hours to kill and heard that McGuin- ness would be available to journalists while canvassing for the mid-Ulster seat, I dis- covered to my slight surprise that I had an urge to attend on him and see how he dealt with a foe on his own territory.

Sinn Fein go in for flexitime, so with two other journalists and a photographer I had to hang around for an hour and a half. Then a car arrived and out jumped the can- didate, three minders and a bearded repub- lican called Francie Molloy, who recently attracted attention by introducing a couple of chaps with balaclavas and machine-guns to a gathering in North Belfast while allegedly explaining that the IRA wouldn't rest until Ireland consisted of 36 counties. I didn't, alas, have time to ask Molloy where the extra four counties were to come from. Really, the demands of republicans become increasingly rapacious.

When our little group joined McGuin- ness, he looked at me, and, to his credit, said to my companions, 'So you've brought my number one fan,' smiled broadly, put out his hand and said, 'Nice to see you again, Ruth.' I shook hands with him and Molloy gaily, for I had just learned a great truth which republicans already know: it can be wonderful fun to trespass on your enemy's ground. I was already regretting I wouldn't have time to meet up with Gerry Adams on the campaign trail in West Belfast.

McGuinness began chatting to a journal- ist about a seven-pound trout he had caught the previous week, and I had a flash of inspiration. 'Martin,' I asked, 'do you agree with the decision to ban stag-hunting on National Trust land?'

`Yes,' he answered, rather guardedly. `Because it is cruel?'

`Yes.'

`But you're a keen fisherman?'

`Indeed I am.'

`There's a study being undertaken to ascertain if fishing is cruel,' I told him.

`I will be interested scientifically in its findings.'

`And if they conclude that it is cruel, will you give up fishing?'

`I expect so.'

So there you have it from the horse's mouth. If we can only provide him with independent research that proves that it is cruel to shoot people, blow them up or beat them savagely with nail-studded base- ball bats, Martin will instruct his colleagues to desist. Why didn't anyone think of that before?

Interviewers might try a complementary tack with Gerry. Try asking how he feels about capital and corporal punishment.