The Rev Harold Good has a book out today. It is Called In Good Time: A Memoir, and it was written with former journalist and Irish News Editor Martin O’Brien.
Over in the BelTel, Sam McBride covers some of the juicy bits. From the article:
A cleric who facilitated top secret discussions between the DUP and Sinn Féin has revealed the truth of what went on, exposing years of DUP lies.
The DUP has always denied it ever sat down with republicans for direct talks prior to the day before Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness met in March 2007 as they agreed to enter power-sharing.
Now, the person who knows the real story has spoken out.
Rev Harold Good, a former president of the Methodist Church, is best known as the man who, along with Fr Alec Reid, oversaw IRA decommissioning. But that was only one of his roles in the peace process. For years he had been meeting with senior republicans and loyalists for discreet, off-the-record conversations.
That changed in the early 2000s when Jeffrey Donaldson agreed to covertly meet McGuinness in the churchman’s home.
In a memoir published today, the veteran cleric, who has a reputation of unimpeachable integrity, sets out how those talks expanded to include Timothy Johnston, the DUP’s chief spin doctor and now the party’s most powerful backroom figure, and Sammy Wilson, with Paisley being kept informed by phone.
Refusing to talk to Sinn Fein was one of the DUP’s central policies, and had the discussions been revealed it could have crippled it. In January 2004 Donaldson took part in a debate at the Oxford Union, arguing in favour of the motion ‘This House would not talk to Sinn Fein’.
Lies and hypocrisy from the DUP? My pearls have never been clutched so tightly.
I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism, I am not a member of any political party. Oddly for a member of the Slugger team, I am not that interested in daily politics, preferring to write about big ideas in society. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.
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