Martin McGuinness never had road to Damascus moment, says Gerry Adams

The former IRA chief of staff turned peacemaker Martin McGuinness never experienced a “road to Damascus” conversion to abandon core Irish republican principles, his closest political ally Gerry Adams has said.

As political foes and friends paid tributes to McGuinness at a special sitting of the Northern Ireland assembly on Wednesday, the Sinn Féin president stressed that McGuinness did not abandon his “IRA comrades” as a result of the peace process and later sharing power with unionists.

Adams was responding to reports that suggested McGuinness had turned his back on the tradition of revolutionary armed Irish republicanism.

A number of prominent figures from the unionist community have spoken since McGuinness’s death about the former deputy first minister’s road from violence to historic compromise.

Lady Paisley, the wife of the late Ian Paisley, McGuinness’s initial partner in the power-sharing government, even compared the Derry republican’s journey to St Paul’s conversion at Damascus.

She said: “God uses different means to speak to us. He knocked the apostle Paul off his horse on the road to Damascus. He spoke to Martin Luther by sending a lightning bolt. You don’t know what God used on Martin McGuinness, but he did change.”

Writing in the Guardian, Adams denied McGuinness had become an establishment figure.

“Martin was also a deeply committed Irish republican activist who in his youth was confronted by the naked sectarianism and injustice of the British state in Ireland and stood strong against it. As a result he was imprisoned and spent long periods on the run,” the Sinn Féin leader said.

“Reading and watching some of the media reporting of his life and death, one could be forgiven for believing that Martin, at some undefined point in his life, had a road to Damascus conversion and abandoned his republican principles, his former comrades in the IRA and joined the political establishment.”

At the Stormont assembly the first minister in the last regional government, Arlene Foster, accepted that McGuinness “wanted to do good and work for all of the people of Northern Ireland”.

While acknowledging that many republicans were missing “a leader, a friend, or a mentor”, Foster referred to the IRA’s many victims – some of whom, the Democratic Unionist leader told the devolved chamber, were “feeling very hurt at this time”.

One of Foster’s constituents from Fermanagh and South Tyrone expressed his dismay at the opening of a book of condolence for McGuinness in Enniskillen, the border town where 11 Protestants were killed in an IRA bomb on Poppy Day in 1987.

Stephen Gault, whose father Samuel was one of those who died in the bomb at the town’s cenotaph, said Enniskillen was an inappropriate place to open the book of condolence for a man who at the time of the atrocity was on the IRA’s ruling army council.

Gault said: “Fermanagh and Omagh council’s decision to open a book of condolence in Enniskillen for Martin McGuinness is hurtful to the families that his IRA murdered on Remembrance Sunday 1987.

“How would the people of Londonderry react if a book was opened there to the commander of the paras on Bloody Sunday?”

Unionists lined up alongside nationalists and non-aligned members of the Northern Ireland assembly to sign a book of condolence for McGuinness in Stormont’s Great Hall .

In an hour-long debate inside the regional parliament, Sinn Féin’s new leader in Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill, said she and her party were committed to completing McGuinness’s life work.

She urged people to “choose hope over fear” in the coming weeks, as local politicians continue negotiations aimed at restoring the power-sharing government.

The deadline for reaching agreement remains Monday, despite the focus shifting from the discussions to McGuinness’s death and funeral this week, the Northern Ireland Office said.

With the clock ticking down on negotiations, the parties will keep talking while preparations are being made for the funeral at St Columb’s church in Derry on Thursday. The inter-party discussions are expected to resume on Friday.

Among the warmest tributes to McGuinness was from the outgoing Ulster Unionist leader, Mike Nesbitt, who said the ex-IRA commander was “a man of his word, a straight-dealing individual, and he was a man of political integrity”.

During prime minister’s questions in the House of Commons, Theresa May told MPs that while she could never “condone or justify” McGuinness’s role in directing IRA violence during the Troubles, she could hail his “indispensable” role in guiding the republican movement away from terrorism to democratic methods.

“I would like to express my condolences to the family and colleagues of the former deputy first minister of Northern Ireland, Martin McGuinness,” the prime minister added.

The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, said: “Martin played an immeasurable role in bringing about peace in Northern Ireland, and it’s that peace we all want to endure.”