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CNN Live Sunday
Dying for Peace: The Conflict in Northern Ireland
Aired June 24, 2001 - 17:43 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
STEPHEN FRAZIER, CNN ANCHOR: Today, Northern Ireland's first minister repeated his threat to resign his government position unless the Irish Republican Army, also part of the coalition government, begins to scrap its weapons. Violence between Protestants and Catholics in the region is intensifying, after years of peace, and David Trimble says if IRA guerrillas don't start to disarm, Northern Ireland's home rule government could be threatened.
CNN's Nic Robertson covers the 30-year conflict in a one-hour special tonight, "Northern Ireland: Dying for Peace." Here's a preview.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ... family has escaped injury in a pipe bomb attack in North Belfast. A 15-year-old boy has been shot in the ankles in (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Police say the boy was attacked at a (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Detectives have appeal for information.
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Thirty years of conflict, pitting Catholic against Protestant, turning neighbor against neighbor, has an left uneasy peace. There's a sense that war could be just around the corner.
This is the story of the battle for peace in Northern Ireland, and the story of the most controversial politician in Britain, IRA commander turned peace-maker Martin McGuinness. Many question his motives. No one can ignore that this man is risking his life for peace. At stake is the fate of a divided people.
He lives where he was born, in a tight-knit Catholic community of the Bogside, in are a city whose name even denotes division. To Protestants, it's Londonderry. But to its residents, especially Catholics like McGuinness, it's Derry.
In 1969, when he was 18 years old, these streets were engulfed in a political firestorm. Derry's Catholic working class rose up in anger against their Protestant rulers. They claimed they were second- class citizens; that they couldn't get decent jobs or houses. McGuinness joined the protesters, demanding equality for Irish Catholics.
The largely Protestant police force responded with brutality. It was to be a wake-up call for a whole generation of Catholics, including the young McGuinness.
MARTIN MCGUINNESS, NORTHERN IRELAND MINISTER OF EDUCATION: The first time I picked up a stone was during the battle of the Bogside, which was 1969, whenever the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) effectively erupted.
ROBERTSON: At the battle of the Bogside, the police were overwhelmed, and British soldier were brought in to control the riots. In the months that followed, gun battles raged in the streets of Derry. McGuinness witnessed friends and neighbors shot dead.
MCGUINNESS: That scared the living daylights out of me. That really did, and at that stage, I suppose I realized that we had a very bad situation. People were being killed, were being shot dead by the British army.
ROBERTSON: As tensions escalated, this devout Catholic teenager emerged from the shadows as the brazen face of militant Irish Republicanism. Then, as now, mention the name Martin and everyone knows who you're talking about.
Thirty years ago, Eamonn McCann was a civil rights agitator.
EAMONN MCCANN, FRM. CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER: Martin was always one with the lads. And yet, at the same time, he stood up as being more articulate than most, and enormously more self-confident. Obviously, the genial, pleasant exterior to Martin McGuinness is not all that there is to him.
ROBERTSON: 1971 ended with McGuinness second-in-command of Derry's small, but resurgent, IRA. Within weeks, he'd be a Republican hero. On Sunday the 30th of January, 1972, British paratroopers shot 27 unarmed Catholics in Derry's Bogside during a civil rights march.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do not fire back on the Derry men, unless you identify a positive target.
ROBERTSON: Fourteen were killed. The British army claimed the IRA fired first. The IRA denied it. Bloody Sunday, as it was to become known, was to prove a watershed in the history of Irish Republicanism.
Today, there is an uneasy peace. Northern Ireland is governed by Northern Irish politicians, Protestant and Catholic. If Martin McGuinness had not let militant Republicans to the negotiating table, this could not ever happened.
In 1995, David Trimble was himself: A rabble rousing hero of die- hard loyalists. They didn't want McGuinness in government until after the IRA guns were decommissioned. Trimble moved forward on trust, and lost support in his party. He has been paying the price for his leap of faith ever since.
DAVID TRIMBLE, NORTHERN IRELAND FIRST MINISTER: The problem is, as far as I can see, Martin McGuinness has not kept the agreement because in the agreement, he accepted an obligation to achieve decommissioning. ROBERTSON: That hasn't been achieved, and Protestants won't be convinced Republicans want peace until McGuinness delivers the IRA's guns. The success of the Good Friday peace deal and the future of this parliament hangs on that. So far, not one bullet has been decommissioned.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: McGuinness and company promised arms. There's no way on this Earth it's going to happen. Irish people do not hand weapons to angry people. It's simply not going to happen, and people better wake up and realize that.
ROBERTSON: Behind doors normally barred to journalists, a top level Sinn Fein meeting is under way, and there is little debate on handing over weapons. Despite the agreement, most here would consider that tantamount to surrender.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The IRA's guns are quiet. I think Republicans have made a huge contribution, a major contribution to the search for peace in Ireland.
ROBERTSON: The future of IRA weapons like this, captured by Irish police, is proving dangerously divisive for Republicans.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FRAZIER: Nic Robertson reporting there, and you can see Nic Robertson's examination in full on the crisis in Northern Ireland later. "Dying for Peace" at 10:00 p.m. Eastern time, 7:00 Pacific here on CNN.
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