Martin McGuinness Eraser Address

TPQ features Martin McGuinness’s Eraser Sunday oration today. It initially featured on his blog The Expensive Quail and has been republished here with royal prerogative.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer has this day appointed James Martin Pacelli McGuinness to be Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead - British Treasury

Comrades, we stand here today at the graves of these traitors not in their honour, but to assert forthrightly: never again will Sinn Fein allow the type of treachery and terrorism that these men and women prosecuted against peace to have any place in our society. The arrogance that those who have inherited the legacy of such traitors display in thinking they have a right to wage armed rebellion against the overwhelming wishes of the people of Ireland must be checked. They have delivered nothing to this country. Their achievements are to be found inscribed on headstones in the cemeteries we visit this very day - Franko Hegarty, Joanne Matthers, Patsy Gillespie.

These men and women of the republican physical force tradition are consumed by a self destructive cocktail of hubris and hatred. Unlike the leadership of Sinn Fein, the "humility" word has no meaning for them. Theirs is the politics of coercion, ours is the politics of persuasion. We have long sought to persuade our followers that we are as stupid as them so that they can think they are as clever as us.

The message that goes out from these gravesides this Eraser Sunday is that anyone seeking to carry on in the tradition of the dead who lie here will face the full vigour of Her Majesty’s security services. It is the patriotic duty of Sinn Fein members to report traitors to the island of Ireland to the PSNI who will cart them off to Diplock Courts where the Crown will ensure they are speedily sent down to join fellow traitors McCrory, Fitzimmons, Duffy and their ilk in Her Majesty’s Prison Maghabery.

Lest we forget, it was the opposition and handiwork of the traitors who fill these graves that had to be overcome in order for the peace process built by myself and Gerry Adams to prove successful. That is why on occasion they were terminated with extreme prejudice in Loughall, Coalisland and elsewhere. In that respect our very own SS, Stakeknife and Snakeknife, worked tirelessly and in tandem in an agential capacity to ensure that the actions of those who lie beneath the sod would never come to fruition.

This leadership has ruthlessly demonstrated its commitment to peace. Let there be no doubt about our willingness to crush these physical force advocates just as our forefathers did to Brugha and his lot in the Four Courts. When those violent hunger strikers got uppity we stepped in and faced them down. Even our critics on the traitor infested Pensive Quill acknowledge that when Mountain Climber sent Social Climber into the prison on the 5th July 1981 with an offer to end the hunger strike, Social Climber stood his ground. He remained resolute in his determination that there would be no Thatcherite sop to the protesters. And what a job he did, filling these graves with six of them.

The truth of the 5th July controversy is that this leadership stood up to the hunger strikers at a time when Margaret Thatcher was about to cave into their demands. We ensured that did not happen. Let no one therefore question our commitment to the writ of Her Majesty’s law and order. Most people respect this. That is why our political careers have been on the up ever since and the DUP after years of holding their noses can now stand the stench of myself and Gerry Adams.

In our bid to halt the traitorous campaign of armed struggle both Gerry Adams and I felt morally compelled to infiltrate the IRA and serve back to back as its chief of staff. We knew after the 1972 talks in London that there could be no other way. At those talks I was a young activist in a five man IRA delegation. Myles Shevlin attended in his capacity as a lawyer while Gerry Adams was the spiritual advisor. I realised on the plane back that the other four in the IRA delegation had no commitment to peace. Two years later I left the IRA in protest at its rejection of the Sunningdale Agreement. I rejoined surreptitiously in 1978 after attending a prayer meeting with Gerry Adams but never took the oath or its Green Book procedure. My intention was to lead the organisation back to the 1974 Arrangement.

It was an odious task but peace does not come easily or without getting the hands of the peacemakers soiled. Myself and Gerry Adams were the only two civilians in the history of the organisation to have served as its chief of staff, Gerry from November 1977 to February 1978 and myself from February 1978 until November 1982. Any criticism of ourselves for having taking on that most difficult of roles must be weighed against our peaceful achievements. Apart from dismantling the IRA we have ministerial representation on both sides of the border, rendering the partition line meaningless. Ireland might as well be united for all the difference it makes. I am Peter Robinson’s deputy first minister in Stormont and Deputy Adams is Minister for the Disappeared in the Dail.

Revisionists today claim that we were once opposed to law enforcement, that we chanted “SS RUC” when in fact we were shouting “Yes Yes RUC.” We were accused by the same revisionists of having shouted “Victory to the Blanket men” when in fact it was “Victory to the Banquet men.” Securocrats were conspiring with the traitors in these graves to have our meaning garbled. Censorship laws on both sides of the border prevented our true message from being heard.

Let me tell you that I am proud to stand before you today and proclaim that I was one of those banquet men. No easy prison time for me. I struggled valiantly to burst a gut with quail and halibut. The port that followed it was so copious one can only describe it as being water boarded. Comrades, I know what real struggle is.

When I stood shoulder to shoulder with colleagues Red Hugh Orde and Progressive Pete Robinson I set my face like stone against the type of people who lie in these graves. How dare they threaten my political career or that of Gerry Adams who has always stood behind me whispering words of encouragement in my ear.

Cartoon by Brian John Spencer

These Easter Sunday revolutionaries amount to nothing. Good Friday is from where we draw our inspiration not the traitors of Easter Sunday. That is why for us today is Eraser Sunday: together we shall erase everything about our past that is inconvenient or which causes people to laugh at us when they see us running around in bow-tie-and-tails like establishment mimic men.

Remember:

It is not those who inflict the most that shall prevail

but those who can endure the taste of quail.

Victory to the Banquet men

God Save the Queen.

Into the Ashes Fell the Provisionals!