The Queen wears green as she greets Martin McGuinness - VIDEO
Historic handshake seen as the final act of Irish peace process
Published Wednesday, June 27, 2012, 7:20 AM
Updated Wednesday, June 27, 2012, 10:19 AM
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Queen Elizabeth shakes hands with Northern Ireland deputy first minister Martin McGuinness at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast this morning
Photo by Paul Faith/PA Wire
The historic handshake has taken place – Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness and the Queen of England have shaken hands twice in Belfast.
The gesture took place at the Lyric Theatre in South Belfast on Wednesday morning. Martin McGuinness spoke to her in Gaelic and wished her goodbye and Godspeed after her visit to Northern Ireland. (Slan agus Beannacht)
Witnessed by President of Ireland Michael D Higgins and Northern Ireland’s First Minister Peter Robinson, the two briefly shook hands and McGuinness also shook hands with Prince Philip.
They shook hands at a reception for Co-Operation Ireland at the theatre. Both the Queen and President Higgins are patrons of Co-operation Ireland.
The meeting was filmed and images were released for broadcast and print around the world.
Reports say the initial handshake between McGuinness and the Queen was conducted in private.
But their farewell handshake was recorded on camera and this image will be released.
McGuinness has publicly stated that he has no issue with the photographs being released.
“I do not seek secrecy in anything I do,” he stated.
A Sinn Fein spokesman confirmed that any decision on media access and photographs was down to Buckingham Palace officials.
McGuinness is also due to speak at Westminster in London on Thursday on what Sinn Féin has billed as a ‘keynote address on future British-Irish relations’.
The Belfast reception, part of the Queen’s Jubilee visit to the North, was attended by 50 guests.
Many were from the arts including the poet Michael Longley, pianist Barry Douglas, actors Adrian Dunbar and Conleth Hill, painter Colin Davidson and singer Brian Kennedy.
“This event aims to highlight how the arts have contributed to reconciliation and peace-building on the island of Ireland,” said former senior police officer Peter Sheridan, chief executive of Co-operation Ireland.
Here's the BBC report on the historic moment:108 Comments
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citizen69 | Jul 10, 2012, 07:10 AM EDT
@Sirpeter: Nonsense... 'An Tost Fada' was just a small part of my argument. You spent an inordinate amount of time dissecting one tv show (which you probably copied & pasted from some Republican website) in which your argument was more concerned about compensation and a few dates than the actual murders themselves...while at the same time completely ignoring the bulk of my other evidence.
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jerryoneill | Jul 08, 2012, 12:56 PM EDT
Historic
There are moments in time, that make you pause and look,
That you know instinctively, are destined for the history book,
That lightening flash insight, that you know the past is past,
A new dawning, a bright new day, a new die has been cast,
There comes a time when sheer insanity, gives way to common sense,
When both sides see eye to eye, and reach across the fence,
No talk of starvation or internment, or of explosions or random assassination,
Just hopeful feelings of goodwill, just an air of conciliation,
Between the once mighty British Empire and the determined Irish nation,
The men in the line, were descended from the men of 1916,
And the Queen greeted each man warmly, and the Queen wore Green.
©Jerry O’Neill July 5, 2012
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sirpeter | Jul 04, 2012, 10:08 PM EDT
RedBranch.Thanks for reading what I posted.It was quite a read.*smile.You are right..You are totally right.Stereotyping is lazy and irresponsible and it also leads to dangerous attitudes being held.I am very guilty of that and I know it.I'm going to concede on my ‘kindred spirit’ claim.You have put enough doubt in my mind for me to think I could be wrong. First of all it is great to see you have an open mind.I know you have because citizen69 put up a challenge and it's one of the more convincing ones here.As a person you have a great quality because you are a listener.I make a great effort for someone like you. It's not easy on a site like this to explain matters that are complex.IC believe those who comment here can to do so within a paragraph as you can see below it ain't easy.Revisionists need to be challenged because there is so much history and modern day "fact" that is totally untrue.RedBranch I have no agenda other than challenging weak arguments by posters.Anybody who sees me challenge an opinion/poster can make up their own minds.And if I'm wrong I'll admit it.Thanks for your second post. Stereotyping is so wrong.But I'm not really a person that's very PC or goes by the rules.I'm kind of a law unto myself.You either buy what I say or you don't.But I will always say this~~~caveat emptor.
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RedBranch | Jul 04, 2012, 06:00 PM EDT
Again I dispute your ‘kindred spirit’ claim. These Protestants were Irish, had lived here for generations, lived differently from their co-religionists across the water, and felt alienated when they moved there and only fear of death or penury kept many more from returning. Agreed many were unionists, but with a small ‘u’ as the saying goes. The issue is as you correctly pointed out, complex. Stereotyping as this site is apt to do is not only lazy and irresponsible it also leads to dangerous attitudes being held....
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RedBranch | Jul 04, 2012, 05:46 PM EDT
Wow sirpeter, that's food for thought. You've obviously done a lot of research on the subject and what you have stated is at odds with the revisionists you have listed. I suggest you take it up with Harris (et al.) if you believe they're so off mark. A letter to the Times, Indo or Examiner should get their attention for starters. I'll follow that 'conversation' with interest...
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sirpeter | Jul 03, 2012, 08:45 PM EDT
@citizen69 & RedBranch. Never let a good story/TV programme get in the way of the truth.
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sirpeter | Jul 03, 2012, 08:39 PM EDT
@citizen69 & RedBranch~An Tost Fada (the Long Silence)Eoghan Harris (and columnist co-thinker, John Paul McCarthy) promote a false sectarian narrative about the Irish War of Independence. Harris ignores Ulster Unionism’s sectarian barbarity. This travesty is as far from the truth as it is possible to get without seeming to lie. Eoghan Harris’s column achieved new depths on 22 April. It concerned a programme broadcast on RTE on 15 April, narrated by Harris, directed by Gerry Gregg, and (something not stated) made by their company, Praxis Productions. An Tost Fada (the Long Silence) told a compelling story of Rev’d George Salter’s father, William, being forced to abandon his farm in 1922.George Salter was in the hands of filmmakers who don’t allow accurately presented facts to get in the way of storytelling.
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sirpeter | Jul 03, 2012, 08:35 PM EDT
(more)The story was personally moving but historically incompetent and that is the fault of the programme makers. Even though it concerns a matter of public debate, the treatment of the protestant minority, the programme makers did not verify any of the misstatements they broadcast. There is no evidence that the programme makers availed of the services of a historical adviser, which might have prevented a string of foolish and also self-serving errors. Let me give some examples.Two men presented as shot in late April 1922 after the War of Independence, named Connell and Sweetman, were actually shot dead during the War of Independence in 1921 for giving evidence in court against the IRA. There is no dispute about this verifiable fact. Eoghan Harris’s narration that ‘as dawn approached’ after these particular killings (in 1921), William Salter decided to leave Cork immediately (in 1922) makes no sense. George Salter’s father did not receive, as alleged, £1,700 ‘compensation’ from the British government in 1924 ‘to help them get settled in England’. In fact, he received £1,200 in 1928.William Salter left Ireland in June (not April) 1922 with £1,900, proceeds from the sale of his farm to Auctioneer Henry Smith (William Salter claimed the farm was worth £3,200). The programme failed to state any of this.
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sirpeter | Jul 03, 2012, 08:33 PM EDT
more)William Salter made no claim, contrary to what was asserted, that all personal possessions were abandoned. Henry Smith, auctioneer, resold the farm at public auction at a £300 loss in September 1926, for £1,605. Salter later claimed that the difference was because stock and implements were not part of 1926 sale, whereas they were in 1924. However, as was stated in a letter supporting William Salter’s compensation claim, ‘the state of the country in 1922 temporarily affected the value of all land’. This was all ignored. After the subsequent Civil War, William Salter returned and bought a farm in Castle-townshend in 1924, where George was born in 1925.This detail is in William Salter’s 1928 compensation claim, as a loyalist, to the British Government’s Irish Grants Committee. The programme makers ignored it. By using the word ‘compensation’, they were aware the claim existed in Kew, London. It is the sheerest incompetence or entirely disingenuous if they assert otherwise. In his 1928 compensation claim presented by the Southern Loyalists Relief Organisation, William Salter claimed £2,195 and was awarded £1,200. In a supportive letter, the former Crown Solicitor and 1927-33 TD for West Cork, Jasper Wolfe, stated that it was ‘owing to [William Salter’s] loyalty’, about which there was ‘no question’, that ‘he suffered the persecution which he went through’. Wolfe stated on numerous occasions that there was little or no nationalist sectarianism, (see, by his grandson, Jasper Wolfe of Skibbereen, 2008
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sirpeter | Jul 03, 2012, 08:23 PM EDT
(more)William Salter claimed in his file that he refused at one time to pay into the IRA arms fund during the War of Independence, a tax enforced on substantial property holders during the conflict. This began a cycle of fines and confiscation of animals. He claimed that he received letters from the IRA prior to the Civil War demanding that he leave and claimed that the IRA forced him to sell to the Auctioneer. No copies of such letters are in the file and, as is usual in most Grants Committee files, no detail on the loyalty claimed by William Salter as a Crown Subject exists either.Why did the programme makers avoid all of these facts many of which contradict those broadcast? It can only be because it did not suit their purpose. Eoghan Harris gives ethical advice to broadcasters regularly. He sometimes calls for them to be sacked. What happened in late April 1922 in West Cork, four months after the Anglo-Irish Treaty split and two months before the onset of civil war?Thirteen Protestant civilians were killed or disappeared, while three leading British intelligence officers and their driver disappeared from Macroom.Apart from the first three victims being held responsible for shooting dead an IRA officer, the precise reason for the following ten civilian deaths is unknown. So also is whether these killings were connected with the nearby disappearance of the British Army personnel.
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sirpeter | Jul 03, 2012, 08:21 PM EDT
(more)The possibility that civilian informer intelligence information was divulged has also been speculated upon. In the immediate aftermath, the 13 killings were thought to be revenge for unrelenting attacks on Catholics in the new state of Northern Ireland. Was it a one-off sectarian response to unionist sectarianism?Dorothy Macardle in The Irish Republic (1937) thought this might have been the reason and listed the extent of republican condemnation.Both sides of the Treaty divide, including Griffith and De Valera, and local republicans, condemned the killings. The Cork IRA leadership, who were away at army unity talks in Dublin, returned and organised guards on loyalists thought to be vulnerable. One so guarded was the Rector of Macroom who told a British officer looking for the missing officers he had no complaints about IRA treatment. That is what his son, AJS (Stephen) Brady, reported in his memoir, The Briar of Life (2010). The IRA guard in this case was the father of distinguished UCC Historian, Professor John A Murphy. Subsequent research has undermined the sectarianism explanation and has exposed ethical failures in historian Peter Hart’s commentary in The IRA and its Enemies (1998). Eoghan Harris promotes Hart’s history. We can have an open mind on the cause of those events. While some are more open to one or other theory, Eoghan Harris and John Paul McCarthy’s is not only closed, the hatches in their heads are well and truly battened down.
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sirpeter | Jul 03, 2012, 08:16 PM EDT
(more) Harris generates a propaganda diet reminiscent of that promoted by Carson and Craig in Northern Ireland. They drove thousands of Roman Catholics out of jobs and houses in 1920-22. Brave Protestant socialists who opposed this unionist drive to divide the working class in Northern Ireland also lost their jobs. Harris, Gregg and McCarthy are not interested. Carson and Craig did not get away with it then. Harris, Gregg and McCarthy might get away with it now. Luckily, testimony from southern Protestants who refused to play the Ulster Unionist sectarian game is available. These are the people Harris referred to contemptuously on 22 April 2012 as ‘lie down and die’ Protestants. They are further derided as ‘rabid rhetorical republicans’ seeking ‘instant integration’. Harris has in the past used this sectarian language to describe the historian and Fianna Fail politician Martin Mansergh. It is bullyboy language.Harris’s understanding of the role of Erskine Childers, Robert Barton, Dorothy Stopford, Alice Stopford Green, Kathleen Lynn, Dorothy Macardle, Ernest Blythe, Sam Maguire and others is risible. It is how an apartheid defender in South Africa might have described white supporters of Nelson Mandela, when Mandela was incarcerated as a ‘terrorist’ in Robben Island.But it was not Protestant nationalists who opposed Carson and Craig.Southern unionists and Protestant clergy protested against Ulster Unionist propaganda. Some were attacked, by the Black and Tans.
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sirpeter | Jul 03, 2012, 08:15 PM EDT
(more)That is what happened to Unionist businessman GW Biggs of Bantry in July 1920 after protesting about Carson in the Irish Times. His substantial business was burned down and his family driven out when the family home was taken over by the military. Biggs’s case was taken up in September 1920 in the Times (Lon) by J Annan Bryce of Glengarriff, brother of a former Irish Secretary. He told how, ‘The July burning [of Biggs’s business] was part of a general pogrom, in which a cripple, named Crowley, was deliberately shot by the police while in bed and several houses were set on fire while the people were asleep.’Annan Bryce reported later that his wife was arrested and deported from Wales for attempting to speak on British reprisals there.Southern unionists were outraged by British military policy. They feared Crown Forces who rampaged through towns and villages throughout southern Ireland. How do we know? They said so.These were stand up and speak Protestants. They don’t interest Harris, McCarthy and Gregg.How also do we know? The British Army also said so. 17th Infantry Brigade Major (later Field Marshal) Bernard Montgomery said, ‘I regarded all civilians as Shinners’ and ‘It didn’t bother me how many houses were burned’.All civilians’, including Protestants, their houses and their businesses. Harris, McCarthy and Gregg are not interested.After the April 1922 killings a Protestant Convention, fully representative of southern Protestantism, met in the Mansion House. On 11 May they resolved,
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sirpeter | Jul 03, 2012, 08:13 PM EDT
(more)‘that until the recent tragedies in the County Cork, hostility to Protestants by reason of their religion, has been almost if not wholly, unknown in the twenty six counties in which Protestants are in a minority.’ In other words, Protestants regarded the April killings as exceptional. Harris, Gregg and McCarthy ignore uncomfortable (to them) facts such as these.Protestants who speak out today are not subject to the depredations of the Black & Tans. They are subject to Eoghan Harris’s attempt to intimidate those who question him.This happened to a Church of Ireland clergyman who criticised Eoghan Harris for resuscitating his 1985 Souper Sullivan play in 1995 as The Apostasy of Mathew Sullivan. Harris responded by accusing the Protestant clergyman of writing ‘against his own real wishes’ and moaned again that Protestants should ‘[stand] up for themselves’. The Rev’d N. M. Cummins did and derided the suggestion that he did not know and express his own mind. He especially stood up for himself by concluding,‘This correspondence raises an even deeper issue. In Eoghan Harris’s brave new Ireland there seems to be a place for everyone who agrees with him, but none for divergent opinions, constructive criticism or even rational debate. This falls very short of the noble republican ideal to cherish all the people of the nation equally’.The Rev’d Cummins ministered in Altar Rectory, Tooormore, Goleen, Cork, the church built in 1847 that was the centrepiece to Harris’s farcical and sectarian Souper Sullivan famine play.Gerry Colgan wrote about the 1995 production in the Irish Times that it ‘does not and probably could not transcend the limitations of the script’. The same is true of Harris propaganda today. It is the sound of one hand clapping itself on the back. Readers should go elsewhere for an alternative and objective view.This is the general consensus.
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