THE Queen played a key role in the peace process in Northern Ireland, according to a leading political commentator.
Eamonn Mallie told GB News: “In my reporting days, the Queen only visited Unionist towns and cities across Northern Ireland.
“You would not get the Queen visiting nationalist areas per se. It just didn’t happen.
“Remember, there was a time when the IRA would have killed the Queen, if the opportunity arose, they would have killed her.
“They killed Earl Mountbatten, for example, such an important figure in the whole area of the royalty, so things have changed.”
He said: “Why have they changed? Because of the personalities of the Queen herself and Mary McAleese, the former president of Ireland.
“She was born and raised in the Ardoyne in North Belfast. When she met the Queen she was very much in our capacity as president of Ireland involved in reconciliation across the community in Northern Ireland, particularly under the auspices of her husband Martin.
“It was meeting with the Loyalists throughout her tenure of office in governance. And when Mary McAleese met the Queen, the Queen acknowledged that Mary McAleese was very much given to cross-community reconciliation.”
He added: “She invited the Queen to Dublin, when the Queen went to Dublin, it was a remarkable development.
“She spoke in Dublin Castle. She opened her remarks with ‘president and people’, it was remarkable the Queen’s speaking Irish – exemplary Irish at that, it wasn’t a broken Irish.
“And then she made remarkable remarks about the relationships with the peoples of these islands and the Irish and the British. She wished that people had done things differently.
“There was a sense it wasn’t quite an apology but it was an acknowledgement that we hurt each other and, of course, she spoke of the personal hurt.”
Mr Mallie said: “She obviously had in mind the death of Earl Mountbatten – and the other people who had lost their lives in the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
“She did three things in Dublin – remarkable. She went to the Garden of Remembrance, that’s where the people who fought to win Irish freedom were buried.
“Secondly, she went to Croke Park, the home of the Gaelic Athletic Association. Previously, in the 1920s, British soldiers and security services shot that particular ground up and a young man called Michael Hogan was shot dead.”
He added: “She did extraordinary things when she was in Dubli, extraordinary things, and that was not lost on the broad nationalist people.
“Flowing from that, people like Martin McGuinness realised they had made a big mistake by boycotting the Dublin Castle meeting and he took steps to find a pathway to acknowledge the Queen.
“When she was coming to Northern Ireland, engaged in that handshake, it was a remarkable moment in time and that’s why the mood has changed.
“I don’t think everybody is gone royalist in the nationalist community, no, but there’s a greater understanding.
“The Queen showed leadership and McGuinness and those people showed leadership as well.”
