| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
9.11 pm
Mr. Mallon: I wish to associate myself with the remarks of those who were on the Standing Committee.I thank the Minister and all the other members of the
Committee. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington) and to his colleagues for a remarkably good presentation of the position, and to all the people on the Standing Committee, including the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. Maginnis): when the day comes, as it inevitably will, that he and I are not on Committees dealing with emergency legislation there will be a massive gap, albeit one related more to our sizes than to our contributions.
I am delighted to see the right hon. Member for Chelsea (Sir N. Scott) in his place. I went through the records in relation to previous legislation and I was struck by two comments made by the right hon. Member when he was the Minister dealing with the emergency provisions legislation for Northern Ireland. I think he will agree with me--if about nothing else--that that was some time ago. In Northern Ireland, we look upon the right hon. Member with affection and great respect. When he was a Conservative Front-Bench spokesman, dealing with emergency legislation right in the middle of the most awful violence that we have seen in the north of Ireland, he made a speech in Munich in advance of a previous Standing Committee. I shall quote two extracts, which are as relevant now as they were then. He said:
I agree with that statement. He also said in the same speech:
I agree with that, too. I believe that that thesis is equally valid now, and it was equally valid long ago when Thomas Jefferson said--in a different context--that if one sacrifices justice for security one ends up losing both. We must never lose sight of that principle--the principle enunciated by the right hon. Member for Chelsea--when we are dealing with legislation of this kind.
I should like to deal with many elements of the legislation in detail, but I have had my chance over many years in a number of Committees, and I hope that this will be my last chance to speak about such legislation. I hope that nothing that I say on the Floor of the House will exacerbate a tense and difficult situation, and for that reason I do not intend to refer directly to the political dimension that we are discussing. It would be easy to provide not a reason but an excuse for avowed terrorists to use whatever is said here as a spurious justification.
I know that it was not intended, but it has been suggested in today's debate that the suffering of those who were killed, maimed or bereaved in London was somehow less immediate for us in the north of Ireland than it would have been if the bomb had gone off in Belfast, Derry or anywhere else in the north of Ireland.I know that I speak for every other hon. Member representing the north of Ireland when I say that that is not true. The compassion and the sympathy are felt by everyone in the north of Ireland. They are tangible: they are there to be seen and touched. They are no less immediate because the Irish sea lies between the two islands.
People here should realise that. At some stage during the debate, it has been implied that violence here is bad because it might start up violence in the north of Ireland
again. That is true, but let us not forget that everyone, no matter where they live, must be protected from violence of this kind. Send not to know for whom the bell tolls: it tolls wherever it may toll, and human nature and the human condition are lessened by it, no matter where.
I wish to challenge two other theses. In this context, I turn to another British poet--Wilfred Owen--who in one of his poems challenged the great lie:
"It is a good and noble thing to die for one's country".I also challenge that thesis. No one on the island of Ireland or outside it has any right or mandate from the Irish people to say that they are killing in the name of the Irish people. I give no one that right and I attribute it to no one. The wish of the Irish people, as determined--indeed, self-determined--by them is that violence cannot be exercised in their name. I call upon those within the so-called republican movement--I use that term because I regard myself as a republican in the true sense of the word, and I believe that they have besmirched it--to stop telling the great lie to young people in our country: stop propagating the awful untruth that somehow it is noble to kill other people for a spurious type of Irish unity which would not be worth the paper it was written on if it were obtained by the deaths of the two people of Canary wharf, and the thousands of other deaths.
I also challenge the notion, and I do so at every opportunity, that there is not a nationalist consensus.I repeat that there is, there was, and there will be, and that it is based on three principles. First, no one has the right to use violence in the name of the Irish people to solve the problems in Ireland. I stand by that principle. Secondly, if we have the right to self-determination, as recognised in the joint framework document, the Irish people have the right to decide how it will be exercised, and they have self-determined that it shall not be exercised in that way. The third principle is that of consent. All political parties, outside Sinn Fein, on what is loosely called the nationalist side, have a consensus. It is not something for the mood of the moment. It is not something to be used just when it suits. It is a basic principle.
In our debate earlier, the central point was missing. What has happened is that the IRA and Sinn Fein have seemed to be outside the nationalist consensus, to be outside the consensus that is based on those three principles, to be outside what is a positive and constructive dynamic within Irish life, and they will remain so. The people who stand outside it are Sinn Fein and the IRA. Is that new? They stood outside the Sunningdale agreement and blew it to smithereens. On the Anglo-Irish Agreement, there were three factors against it: the Unionists, the IRA and Conor Cruise O'Brien. Then there was the joint declaration. They stood outside consensus on that, and the framework document, and the report of the new Ireland forum, and the Mitchell report. The tragedy of the Mitchell report was that it was not tested on the Floor of the House the day it was brought out.
We can surmise, but the basic thesis of the IRA position is this, and I challenge it. The most chilling part of the IRA's statement of last Thursday was its reference to "Irish national rights". That is its definition of the three principles. Its definition of the three principles is contained in those three words. I put this to the IRA and to everybody. Do they for one moment imagine that my
party, or the Irish Government, of whatever hue, or the number of parties that make it up, or all the parties that signed the forum report, or the United States Government, will ever resile from those three principles? If they do, their case is fatally and fundamentally flawed, because what they mean when they talk about a pan-nationalist front is changing and diluting those principles. The assumption, which is wrong, is that the SDLP will change its view on those three principles. It will not, and neither will any other party in Ireland. We stand by that nationalist consensus and on no other ground. That is the greatest strength in terms of argument in the entire equation.
The British will, of course, always be wrong; no matter what they do, IRA-Sinn Fein will have a reason to say that. The British can be plausible, easy or populist, but they will be wrong. The Irish Government will be wrong, as they are at the moment. I take this opportunity to say again that I support the stance taken by the Irish Government. They are the sovereign Government of the Republic of Ireland and I totally support their stance of not speaking at ministerial or Government level with people who are connected with violence. However, they are wrong, too, and we are wrong. I remember when, not so long ago, we were Lundies and sell-outs, and I was a west Brit.
"Democracy should seek to derogate as little as possible from the normal standards of justice and government which would normally apply."
"Progressive policies without regard to moderation, civilisation and restraint could actually feed terrorism."
"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori"--
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |