Had the respiratory disease asbestosis not claimed the life of former IRA chief of staff Joe Cahill on Friday, he might have been taking a trip to England next month. Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor, looks back on the life of Joe Cahill.
Leeds Castle near Maidstone in Kent will be the venue in mid-September for the latest crucial peace process talks involving the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, and the Northern parties.
If they are to succeed, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness must take a monumental decision that future republican politics must be by the ballot box alone.
If republicans are up for such a deal, Mr Adams would have welcomed Joe Cahill by his side, just to put the veteran IRA man's seal of approval on whatever covenant Sinn Féin might strike with the DUP and the other parties - an old icon assisting a new republican icon.
Certainly, at key moments of this long political process going back to the IRA ceasefire of 1994, Cahill, with his cloth cap, big glasses and modest presence, would turn up at the shoulder of the Sinn Féin president.
These were times when Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness were leading republicans in choppy, uncharted waters, into a ceasefire and a peace process that initially, for many republicans, was almost tantamount to betrayal.
Cahill didn't say much on these occasions. But his reputation as a hard man who used cold and brutal violence to advance his beliefs, his display of solidarity with Mr Adams, and a few well-chosen words would have been sufficient to help persuade most republicans to accept the new republicanism of Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness.
In later years, Cahill undoubtedly played a positive role in the peace process. But he was also a ruthless IRA leader. As Mr Adams said at the weekend, Cahill was an "unapologetic physical force republican". He did express regret for the 1,800 people killed by the IRA during the Troubles. But it was along the tried and trusted lines that "no one has a monopoly on suffering", and, "in any war situation, innocent lives are lost".
He did well to survive to 84. In 1942, he faced the gallows after a botched IRA operation in west Belfast resulted in the death of Catholic RUC constable Patrick Murphy. Cahill, Tom Williams who led the IRA unit that Easter 62 years ago, and four others were sentenced to be hanged in Crumlin Road jail.
In the end, only Williams, who took full responsibility for the constable's death - even though he was struck by bullets from two guns - was executed. Cahill never publicly disclosed which other member of the unit shot Constable Murphy. Over four years ago, with full IRA honours, Williams was re-interred in Milltown Cemetery in west Belfast, attended by thousands. A similar crowd is expected for Cahill's funeral tomorrow.
Thereafter, Cahill was a career IRA member and for many years was the leader of the IRA in Belfast, although, rather oddly for a Catholic during the 1950s, he did work for a time in Harland and Wolff, where he said he contracted asbestosis.
He was interned in Crumlin Road during the IRA Border Campaign that ran from 1956-1962. He lamented that the IRA in Belfast was generally isolated from the campaign, and argued later that the campaign was badly planned.
Cahill sided with the Provisionals when the split with the Officials occurred in 1969/1970. He was on the first army council of the Provisional IRA, which was set up in January 1970, and was later a chief of staff. Sixteen years later, he sided with Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness when they abandoned the Dáil abstentionist line of Daithí Ó Conaill and Ruairí Ó Brádaigh.
One of his key functions was in arming, training and re-organising the IRA. To this end he met the Libyan leader, Muammar Gadafy, in the early 1970s in Libya. Gadafy's only quibble with Cahill was over his speaking English, not Irish. In March 1973 a shipment of Libyan arms was seized when the Claudia, with Cahill aboard, was intercepted. He was sentenced to three years in prison along with four other men.
In later years, Cahill's focus was more on Sinn Féin activity. In 1994, ahead of the IRA ceasefire, and with coaxing from the then Taoiseach Albert Reynolds, President Clinton hesitantly granted Cahill a visa to visit the US, against the wishes of the British government.
This was important as it was viewed as a propaganda victory for republicans at a time when the IRA was taking a huge step away from violence. At the Sinn Féin ardfheis last year, Cahill won a standing ovation when he said, "We have won the war, now let us win the peace."
He also said republicans were morally obliged to test whether a peaceful path could work: "If we could achieve our objectives without the loss of one more life, we were morally bound to do that." Equally, he always justified the IRA's use of violence.