rlnobody above the law?rl

If Lizzie had turned to her Lady in Waiting and asked for Pappa's old service revolver, before accurately shooting MacGuiness between the eyes, do we think there is the slightest chance of her appearing in the Old Bailey dock?

Possibly not, but it would probably have led to a constitutional crisis ultimately leading to the ending of constitutional monarchy and a republic taking its place.
I know to many that is almost the perfect definition of "2 birds with 1 stone" but I'm not sure it would be in the Queen's best interests and she doesn't appear particularly stupid to me.

No, but it's a lovely idea.

......Must say chaps, I'm loving the one-eyed, blinkered view of Irish history we've got on this thread.

To be fair, McGuiness has as much to be peeved about concerning recent history than the Queen or Prince Philip.....Don't forget that it was HER army that carried out innocent slaughter on Bloody Sunday....I don't think our boys were really heroes on that day, were they???

Despite what some of you think, I thought the actions of BOTH McGuiness and the Queen were commendable yesterday.....Whilst some of you seem to think the Queen should have had some murderous animosity towards McGuiness, I'll argue that he is equally as valid to feel the same.

Eh? Regina -v- Regina? How would that work then?

Don't think you could have The Crown vs The Crown in a court of Law.

I hope I never find myself "fighting" for a cause where I walk into someones house and shoot them infront of their kids while they beg for their lives. No matter what "side" I'm on.

I'm glad the terrorist scum have finally realised that they can actually achieve more by being part of the democratic process and I'm glad the UK government has realised treating Northern Irish Catholics like animals is wrong. It's a win-win.

Do I give a f*** about Martin McGuiness? No. A small man who crawled his way up the republican ladder over a pile of bodies (I really wouldn't want to argue with that little c*** about anything - even now). The Queen did what she's been trained for her whole life to do - shake hands and wave.

The Republican movement was moving trowards politics for a long time before these two events. The slogan the ballot box and the armalite was an indication of this. The election of Bobby Sands to parliament in 1981 was the catalyst for this change in policy. The fact that it took so long was due to two main reasons.
!/ The SF leadership knew they had to bring the majority of the provisionals with them otherwise there would have just been the same situation as the split between the Pira and Officials IRA in the 70s where the officials went political and everyone left them to join PIRA.

2/ it took a lot longer to convince the Loyalists to agree to power sharing
because they knew they would have to give up a lot more political and economic power than the nationalists.

Ha ha. The ANC were a ruthless organisation and Mandela was the head of it. Necklacing was a regular form of dealing with dubious Africans and it was lot less civilised than kneecapping.
Umkhonto we sizwe were not a small prayer meeting preaching non violence
Whether Mandela was direvctly involved in their activities is irrelevant he was the spokesman and head of a terrorist organisation no different to McGuinness.

The situation in NI is directly comparable to Apartheid except it was less overt and presented more subtley. The situation in NI was not just a bit of vote rigging and Gerrymandered boundaries. It stopped catholics getting middle to senior jobs in the civil service and local government, proper housing and acess to resources. You could not get a job in the biggest employers in NI at Shorts or Harland and Wolf. Less money was spent on infrastructure and education. Look at Coleraine university built in a protestant area rather than in NIs second city Derry so that it could be a protestant university etc etc.

And as for your argumenta bout Wilson etc it is rubbish NO British government at the time was prepared to take on the Loyalists hence the success of the UWC strike.

Dont start rewriting history juts to excuse British actions.

It is always easier to support freedom fighters when they are not fighting against your country etc.

I'm not arguing against the NI Catholic's grievances, I never have.
I do think that McGuinness's gangsters killing random innocents was wrong, totally wrong.

Nelson Mandela has never, ever been evidencially linked with necklacing, not least because he was in jail for 27 years.
Tutu actually risked his own life to save one victim.
Even Winnie Mandela (whom I loathed) only "appeared" to condone it (however, I'm not going to defend her, she had plenty to be ashamed of).
Necklacing was actually condemned by the ANC.
So, I'm sorry, I cannot accept your similarity between Mandela and McGuinness.

Kneecapping in NI was a routine punishment, not for being on the other side per se but as part of the IRAs gangsterism and power retention, rather like the Kray regime in the East End of London, whereas the (inexcusible) necklacing in SA was largely part of mob rule.

Either way, we can agree on the step in the right direction that the handshake represents.

A quick scan of Wikipedia shows the following. Change Mandela to McGuinness and SA to NI and there is not much difference.

Umkhonto we Sizwe (or MK), translated "Spear of the Nation," was the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC), co-founded by Nelson Mandela, which fought against the South African apartheid government.

Nelson Mandela said.Firstly, we believed that as a result of Government policy, violence by the African people had become inevitable, and that unless responsible leadership was given to canalize and control the feelings of our people, there would be outbreaks of terrorism which would produce an intensity of bitterness and hostility between the various races of this country which is not produced even by war. Secondly, we felt that without violence there would be no way open to the African people to succeed in their struggle against the principle of white supremacy. All lawful modes of expressing opposition to this principle had been closed by legislation, and we were placed in a position in which we had either to accept a permanent state of inferiority, or to defy the Government. We chose to defy the law. We first broke the law in a way which avoided any recourse to violence; when this form was legislated against, and then the Government resorted to a show of force to crush opposition to its policies, only then did we decide to answer violence with violence."

Landmark events in MK's military activity inside South Africa consisted of actions designed to intimidate the ruling power. In 1983, the Church Street bomb was detonated in Pretoria near the SA Air Force Headquarters, resulting in 19 fatalities and 217 persons injured. During the next 10 years, a series of bombings occurred in South Africa, conducted mainly by the military wing of the African National Congress. In the Amanzimtoti bomb on the Natal South Coast in 1985, five civilians were killed and 40 were injured when MK cadre Andrew Sibusiso Zondo detonated an explosive in a rubbish bin at a shopping centre. In a submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), the ANC stated that Zondo acted in anger at a recent SADF raid in Lesotho.[9]

A bomb was detonated in a bar on the Durban beach-front in 1986, killing three civilians and injuring 69. Robert McBride received the death penalty for this bombing which became known as the "Magoo's Bar bombing". Although the subsequent Truth and Reconciliation Committee called it a "gross violation of human rights", McBride received amnesty and became a police officer.

In 1987, an explosion outside a Johannesburg court killed three people and injured 10; a court in Newcastle had been attacked in a similar way the previous year, injuring 24. In 1987, a bomb exploded at a military command centre in Johannesburg, killing one person and injuring 68 military personnel.

The bombing campaign continued with attacks on a series of soft targets, including a bank in Roodepoort in 1988, in which four were killed and 18 injured. Also in 1988, in a bomb detonation outside a magistrate’s court killed three. At the Ellis Park rugby stadium in Johannesburg, a car bomb, killed two and injured 37. A multitude[citation needed] of bombs in "Wimpy Bar" fast food outlets and supermarkets occurred during the late 1980s, killing and wounding many people. Wimpy were specifically targeted because of their perceived rigid enforcements of many Apartheid-era laws, including excluding people of colour from their restaurants. Several other bombings occurred, with smaller numbers of casualties.

The suggestion that there is no evidence to link Mandela to any killings and this makes him any better than McGuiness is laughable.

Show me any evidence that directly links McGuinness to any kilings. I know he was head of the IRA but Mandela was the head of the ANC .

They were both freedom fighters or terrorsits depending on your viewpoint.

The fact that one fought aginst whitey 3000 miles away and the other fought against the British on your doorstep is the only real difference.

Most of my Irish mates back in the 80's wanted someone to take the North and sink it in the middle of the Atlantic - Orangemen, Republicans and all.