Queen 'throws off shackles of troubles' on Northern Ireland visit

The Queen was hailed for her “duty, devotion and service” today as she arrived in Northern Ireland for a historic handshake with Martin McGuinness.

At a thanksgiving service in Enniskillen, the Archbishop of Armagh, the Most Rev Alan Harper, said her groundbreaking visit to the Republic of Ireland last year had helped throw off the “shackles” of conflict.

“Shackles, which had been steadily loosening since the ceasefires and the Belfast Agreement, finally fell away, giving us a new freedom to be positively, rather than merely negatively, ourselves,” he said.

Bad weather delayed the Queen’s arrival today, to the disappointment of waiting crowds, forcing her flight to be diverted from Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh, to Belfast International Airport.

She was then rushed to the service at St Macartin’s Church of Ireland Cathedral attended by 700 people.

The trip marks one of the most moving and important moments of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebration tour — a visit to a province marred by violence throughout most of her reign where until recently security experts would not allow her to stay overnight.

Enniskillen was the scene of the “Poppy Day Massacre”, when 11 people died on Remembrance Sunday in 1987 in an IRA bombing.

Tomorrow the Queen will break away from the Jubilee tour for talks with former IRA commander Mr McGuinness in an extraordinary gesture of reconciliation with a man whose organisation murdered her cousin Lord Mountbatten by blowing up his boat in 1979.

Mr McGuinness said that he was not compromising his own views by meeting the Queen. “This is about stretching out the hand of peace and reconciliation to Queen Elizabeth who represents hundreds of thousands of Unionists in the north,” he said. “It is about me representing my party, wishing to show the Unionist people in the north that we are prepared to respect what they believe in, albeit that we are still Irish Republicans.

“I am an Irish Republican now — after I meet Queen Elizabeth, I will still be an Irish Republican, and just as passionate about freedom, justice and peace, and reconciliation, as I was the day before.”

The Queen will also travel tomorrow to Stormont in Belfast for a garden party attended by 22,000 guests.