McGuinness did change, but his many victims still suffer

He went from helping run one of the most determined terror groups in modern history, being despised in Britain and not much liked in the Irish Republic either, to a recipient of tributes from a Conservative prime minister and the Queen, who lost a relative to the IRA.

The full story of Mr McGuinness has not been told and perhaps never will be. We do not know if former associates in the republican movement will one day divulge information about him or whether he recorded anything about his own past.

This is a time when his family are mourning and his supporters too. Bishop Donal McKeown yesterday made the entirely reasonable plea that everyone “be sensitive to how his death will be felt across this community”. That sensitivity was so widely shown that some senior unionist and Conservative politicians did not criticise his past at all. It was a sign of great generosity by those who are often maligned for their tone.

But this newspaper is one of the few voices now that will even use the word terrorism and will make space for those of its victims that are not reconciled to a political process that had to include its leaders. We will always recognise their suffering from a murder campaign that did not need to happen.

That pain must be acute today amid warm tributes to Mr McGuinness, often with no caveats, despite the unforgivable fact that he felt he had the authority to end other people’s lives.

But while we emphatically recognise that, it is clearly significant that all of the unionist leaders who had to work with Mr McGuinness – David Trimble, Ian Paisley, Peter Robinson and Arlene Foster – have had positive things to say about his constructive side.

Much less constructive forces are always present in republicanism and seem even to be coming to the fore in these turbulent times.

Mr McGuinness did not live to take his journey as far as his critics, us among them, wanted.

That, and the weakened, less stable Sinn Fein that he leaves, are sources of regret today.