“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

Hardback with dustjacket, large format (290x240mm), 144 pages including 150 black and white photos.

About the author:

James McVeigh is a lifelong Irish republican who served two terms of imprisonment during the conflict. He was the last Officer Commanding of the IRA prisoners in the H-Blocks before they were closed in July 2000 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

While in the H-Blocks he studied with the Open University, graduating with an honours degree in History. On release he went on to complete a masters degree in Human Rights at Queen’s University Belfast.

In 2011 he was elected to Belfast City Council where he led the Sinn Féin council group for two terms before standing down to devote himself to trade union organising and fighting for workers’ rights.

He is the author of two Irish history books, Executed: Tom Williams and the IRA and Goodbye, Dearest Heart: The Story of Lieutenant General Joseph McKelvey 1898-1922. He recently published his first novel Stolen Faith (O’Brien Press), an historical thriller based on Ireland’s mother and baby homes scandal.