Former IRA chief of staff and Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness, has stated that he likes the Queen.
Paying tribute to the monarch, who is the head of the British army he once fought against, McGuinness praised her courage for meeting him.
The Sinn Féin chief negotiator during the peace process first met the Queen at a charity event in 2012. In June, McGuinness became her tour guide around Belfast’s Crumlin Road jail where both he and first minister Peter Robinson were incarcerated during the Troubles.
He said the Queen understood the significance of the peace process and the symbolism of the two of them shaking hands. “I know who Queen Elizabeth represents. I know she’s the head of the British state. I know she has all sorts of titles in relation to different regiments in the British army.
“She knows my history. She knows I was a member of the IRA. She knows I was in conflict with her soldiers, yet both of us were prepared to rise above all of that,” McGuinness told a BBC Radio Ulster documentary on Sunday.
Reflecting on his meetings with the Queen, McGuinness said: “I liked her courage in agreeing to meet with me; I liked the engagements that I’ve had with her. There’s nothing I have seen in my engagements with her that this is someone I should dislike – I like her.”
The documentary, History in Our Hands, features the chairman of Co-Operation Ireland, a charity founded to promote better relations on the island. The charity’s chairman, Christopher Moran, who knows the Queen, said she was very happy how the peace process has turned out.
“The Queen sees the improvement in Anglo-Irish relations and the huge progress that has been made in the peace process in Northern Ireland as one of the great achievements in her long and glorious reign,” he said.