As they prepared to lay the coffin containing the remains of the murderer Martin McGuinness into the ground in a place which the craven liberal British media termed Derry but which we know as Londonderry, the old killer's comrade in arms Gerry Adams screamed to the crowd "Martin McGuinness was not a terrorist". They howled their appreciation. Adams continued "Martin McGuinness was a freedom fighter". The fenians howled some more. But of course Adam was lying - not that the liberal British media dared to flag that up.
McGuinness personally killed people for the IRA. As a senior figure in the IRA he ordered countless other deaths. Some were soldiers in the British Army or loyalist paramilitaries. But I shall take the easy targets for St Peter to decide upon: the women, the children, the civilians, those who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
With one or two exceptions McGuinness did not apologise for those deaths, nor did he express remorse or regret. That makes him a murderer of innocents in my book. That he did it for a cause not pleasure makes him a terrorist.
Now Adams, who also has vast amounts of blood on his hands, says that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. We might look at Mandela as a case in point. But old Nelson expressed remorse, old Nelson tried for real reconciliation by forgiving those on "the other side" in a way that McGuinness never did, instead demanding enquiry after enquiry into what the wicked Brits did in Ulster.
But the real difference was that Mandela was fighting for a cause nearly all of us see as just. Certainly most folks in South Africa wanted an end to Apartheid. So he was fighting for freedom. From the start of the troubles to the signing of the Good Friday accord the majority of folks in the six counties wanted to stay in Britain. The IRA was killing for the cause of a United Ireland. That has always been its stated goal and was throughout the troubles.
To pretend otherwise, as the BBC and Channel 4 Fake News have been doing all week, is simply to rewrite history. Surely killing innocent folks to achieve a political structure strongly at odds with the wishes of most of the population simply cannot be described as freedom fighting. It is terrorism and the failure to accept that is one of many reasons why Mr Adams will in due course find his soul roasting in the same place as that of Mr McGuinness.