Bill Clinton has been mocked and condemned in Britain for speaking at the funeral of IRA commander and “Butcher of Bogside” Martin McGuinness.
Newspapers in London today poured scorn on Clinton for turning up to pay respect to the man who oversaw a brutal regime of knee-cappings and executions in Britain and Northern Ireland.
Writing about the Londonderry funeral in the Daily Mail under the headline “Pass the Semtex coated sick bag”, Robert Hardman said: “Bill Clinton popped up towards the end in aw-shucks folksy mode to reminisce about the days he’d spent turning swords into ploughshares with Messrs Paisley and McGuinness. He joked that the latter was the only one who could get a word in when Paisley was in full flow. Twinkling away, the ex-president produced one of his trademark soundbites: ‘He never stopped being who he was. A good husband, a good father, a follower of the faith of his father and mother and a passionate believer in a free, secure, self-governing Ireland.’ Millions will disagree vehemently with such saccharine sentiments.”
And having seen the photographs of Clinton embracing McGuinness’s IRA comrade, Gerry Adams, at the funeral The Sun wrote in its editorial this morning: “Yesterday, with Bill Clinton delivering a eulogy, McGuinness got a reverential funeral he did not merit. Yes, he brought peace in the end – but never repented for all the innocents shot or blown to pieces and all the families destroyed. He was guilty of heinous, psychopathic evil. And he got away with it.”
With her own reputation in the doldrums, maybe it was just as well that Clinton’s wife, Hillary, stayed away from this event.
