Alastair Campbell – The Martin McGuinness I Knew

In a special article for the Derry News, Alastair Campbell, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s communication chief, writes about his experiences of dealing with, and becoming friends with, Martin McGuinness.

I FIRST met Martin McGuinness in October 1997 and I liked him from the word go.

I was part of a group along Tony Blair who was meeting McGuinness and Adams for the first time.

The focus before the meeting was whether Tony would shake hands with the two men which, of course, he did.

I remember that Jonathan Powell, who was Tony’s chief-of-staff, took a decision not to shake their hands.

My memory is that I did shake their hands at the end of the meeting. The belief was that if we were going to make the peace process work we had to stop treating these people as pariahs.

From then on I got to know Martin McGuinness quite well and my relationship with him grew into a friendship.

Asked recently if I had to pick just one great memory from my time with Tony Blair in Downing Street, I went for the coming together of the Good Friday agreement that laid the foundations for peace in Northern Ireland. It was magical. A lot of that was about the collection of personalities from across politics that came together to make history – and Martin McGuinness was a big part of the success it became.

Those early talks with Sinn Fein after Labour came to power in 1997 were a risk for both sides. It was a risk for Labour politically, but it was in many ways a bigger risk for Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams.