Letters | 20 December 2008

Why did Gatland resign?

Sir: The uproar over the strange case of Maria Gatland McGuire seems almost incomprehensible from a Belfast perspective. At the beginning of December she was compelled to resign as the cabinet member for education on Croydon council when it was revealed that she was also Maria McGuire, who famously was involved with the IRA leadership in 1971–72. Maria McGuire is the author of an interesting book, To Take Arms — A Year in the Provisional IRA, published in 1973. The book makes clear that she has made a radical break with the IRA’s violent campaign. It seems that the final straw came on 21 July 1972, Bloody Friday, when at least 22 car bombs were detonated in Belfast, killing 11 people and injuring 130.

Why, given her clear rejection of terrorism, sustained over many decades, has Maria Gatland had to resign her position? After all, Martin McGuinness was deemed to be a fit person to be Minister for Education in Northern Ireland as long ago as November 1999 and, indeed, he is today one half of the collective political First Citizen of Northern Ireland. What is the difference between the two cases, except that Maria Gatland’s rejection of terrorism has been of much longer standing and is arguably more profound?

Paul Bew
House of Lords, London SW1

A British Napoleon

Sir: Never mind Napoleon’s piles at Waterloo, which Matthew Parris wrote about the other week (Another Voice, 6 December); as a very young man Napoleon — who even then had a thrusting military ambition — sought service with the greatest fighting force of the age and wrote accordingly to the Admiralty in London. His approach was ignored.

But what if it had been accepted? There would be no ‘Trafalgar’ Square or ‘Waterloo’ Station; Arthur Wellesley wouldn’t have been more than a sepoy general, never mind prime minister, and Horatio Nelson would have retired as a captain having served much of his career on half-pay.