A little violence, perhaps?

Martin McGuinness, who began as a terrorist and ended up as deputy first minister in Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government, died peacefully in hospital last Monday, aged 66.

His career spanned almost five decades in the history of that small but troubled place – and by resigning from the power-sharing government in January, he began a new and possibly final act in that long-running drama.

If it really is the last act in the Northern Irish tragedy, leading eventually to some form of “joint sovereignty” over Northern Ireland by the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic, there may be some more blood spilled. As a Catholic born in Derry, McGuinness grew up believing the Protestant majority in Northern Ireland must be forced to accept unification with the Irish Republic.

But the burning issue when he was young was the oppression of Catholics by the Protestant majority. McGuinness was one of the foremost advocates of violence, and quickly rose to become the IRA’s chief of staff.

In all, the IRA killed 1 781 people during the period when McGuinness was a senior commander, including 644 civilians, and McGuinness was probably involved in the decision-making on half of those attacks. Fintan O’Toole, a columnist in the Irish Times, recently called him a “mass killer”.

But if so, he was a pragmatic mass killer. When it became clear in the ’90s that the campaign of violence was not delivering the results McGuinness had hoped for, he was open to peaceful compromise.

He played a key role in persuading most of the more dedicated IRA killers to accept the power-sharing government embodied in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

As the leader of Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political wing, in Northern Ireland, McGuinness became the deputy first minister of the province, sharing power with the biggest Protestant party, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).

He was seen as a constructive politician during his ten years in office – but he never lost sight of his goal. When he resigned in January, he had two excellent pretexts for doing so. First, he knew he was dying from a rare heart condition.

Second, First Minister Arlene Foster, leader of the DUP and his partner in office, was entangled in an embarrassing energy scandal but was stubbornly refusing to step aside.

However, McGuinness was also well aware that Britain’s decision to leave the European Union in last June’s referendum created new possibilities in Northern Ireland (which voted heavily to stay in the EU). When Britain leaves the open border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic will inevitably become a “hard” border that controls the movement of goods and people.

That would anger the Catholics of Northern Ireland, and if Sinn Fein goes on refusing to appoint a deputy prime minister no new power-sharing government is possible either. McGuinness was probably not hoping for a return to violence, but he was undoubtedly open to it.

Solving the border issue will require creative thinking all round, and could lead to outcomes the IRA and Sinn Fein would welcome – like joint British-Irish sovereignty over Northern Ireland.

A little violence could help to stimulate that kind of thinking.

Gwynne Dyer