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Mr. Winnick: Is it not essential for the majority and minority communities in Northern Ireland to respect each other? We know of the disgraceful situation in which people who want to go and pray are being intimidated. Why does the hon. and learned Gentleman believe that the majority community has lost confidence in the United Kingdom when, for 26 years, successive Governments--this will continue if terrorism continues--have made it clear that, no matter what the cost in blood and money, we shall not give in to terrorism? The wishes of the majority community in Northern Ireland, whatever they may be at any given moment--we know what they are now--will be respected. There is no question of Northern Ireland being forced into a unitary state against its will. That is my view as well. Obviously, I take a different view from the hon. and learned Gentleman.
Mr. McCartney: I wish that what the hon. Gentleman has just said were true and that the perception of the majority--they are not all fools--was that successive United Kingdom Governments have given the people of Northern Ireland that assurance. With respect, that is not the case. I draw a clear distinction between democracy--the right of a majority to determine the constitutional identity of the state to which they wish to belong--and the ugly face of majoritarianism, when a majority think that they can do whatever they like because they are a majority. I am a pluralist. I believe that everyone in Northern Ireland, regardless of religion, political aspiration or background, should have equal opportunities and an equal place before the law. We should be equal in all things and other cultures should be respected.
I deplore the behaviour of those who are obstructing churchgoers at Harryville. I made it clear at the Northern Ireland forum on Friday that I thought that the behaviour of those attacking or intimidating churchgoers at Harryville was despicable and beneath contempt. I believe that those were the words that I used. Similar words were used by representatives of the Ulster Unionist party and the Democratic Unionist party. I do not want it suggested, even indirectly, that, because one is a Unionist, one is some sort of sectarian bigot. Unfortunately, that idea has been put about and has seeped by osmosis into the minds and attitudes of many hon. Members, who unthinkingly suppose that a staunch Unionist is automatically an intellectual backwoodsman or religious sectarian bigot, properly belonging in the mid-16th century. That is far from the truth.
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The Bill is welcome. It is a nice cart in which the carcase of decommissioning will ultimately be moved if we ever get the horse and some of the wheels back on. It is appropriate for doing a job, but that job has not yet been designated. I suspect, as does the hon. Member for Belfast, East that the dust will settle on the cart before it is ever put in motion to transport any weapons or Semtex to a place where they can be disposed of.
I welcome the Bill. I share the reservations of the hon. Member for Belfast, East, which I hope will be dealt with later. Like him, I view with some suspicion the five-year time span for the decommissioning process, when the negotiations and the forum have a much more limited time span. I am sure that most of those anomalies will be explained.
All hon. Members should realise that we are dealing with people committed to an idea that it is difficult for those who have not lived cheek by jowl with them all their lives to comprehend. The members of Sinn Fein-IRA are dedicated to their objectives. They have not moved an inch, nor will they. They have conned not only successive British Governments, but Senator Mitchell and his two colleagues.
The infrastructure of the Mitchell report has been destroyed. I do not want to recite the details, but we all know that, when Senator Mitchell concluded in January this year that the intentions of those in Sinn Fein-IRA were good, they had been working away through November and December preparing for Canary wharf. They were even at it during the much-heralded visit to Belfast of President Clinton. It had all been organised. Further depredations were in preparation for Hammersmith bridge and Hammersmith itself, as recent finds showed, as well as Osnabruck, Manchester and Thiepval.
Let us forget for a moment about the grand constitutional issue. If we were asked to enter into a business commitment in our everyday lives with business associates or people in whom we were required to put trust who had been behaving as Sinn Fein-IRA has behaved, with a similar track record for lies, deceit, perfidy and violence, we would say that we would rather not do business with them at all, but that if we had to it would be only with clear guarantees and absolute sureties that they would deliver on their bargain.
First, we need the terms of the contract. The declaration of a cessation of violence must be complete and permanent. Secondly, they must give a physical earnest of their good intentions and back up their words by delivering a down payment of arms and bombs to show that they mean what they say. Thirdly, if they are committed to the democratic process, they will agree that negotiations on the political strand must go on without any connection with or interdependence on the decommissioning process. There can be no question of guns and bomb-making material being handed over in return for political concessions.
Mr. Ken Maginnis (Fermanagh and South Tyrone):
First, I apologise for having arrived late as my flight was delayed by bad weather.
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I welcome the Bill and I shall explain why it is essential. I believe that it was devised not in expectation but in hope, although that hope is fairly uncertain. In order to understand the Bill, it is necessary to examine the nature of terrorism in Northern Ireland in the past 25 or 26 years.
In Northern Ireland, terrorism is not the spontaneous action of a group of people who feel aggrieved; it derives from a carefully conceived strategy that was created not by the IRA but by Mao Tse Tung in his formula for insurrection. That formula has been used by many in the past, including Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. It has been used by Sinn Fein-IRA for the past 25 years. It involves the structure of terrorism being carefully established, its final objective having been decided in advance.
I shall not explain the strategy in detail, but say only that it involves setting up structures within every stratum of society--in educational establishments, community and housing groups, trade unions and the civil service. It seeks to permeate every level of society. It then involves various degrees of violence in an attempt to destroy the infrastructure by attacking and murdering members of the security services, the police and the Army, getting rid of political opponents and dominating certain parts of the region in order to affect every aspect of life there every day of the week and every week of the year. It involves continuing such action for as long as necessary.
It is then possible to increase or reduce terrorist activity. In August 1994, when the level of attrition against the terrorist campaign in Northern Ireland was at its highest, a saviour appeared for the IRA who suggested that its members might be interested in becoming bona fide democrats and entering the political arena on an equal basis with other politicians.
Those of us who understood the strategy employed by the IRA knew that it was a falsehood. We knew that the IRA recognised the old adage that time equals space equals will and that from time to time terrorists can concede space. That is exactly what the IRA did. In August 1994, it conceded space for 17 months. That space gave it time to change the will of society not only in Northern Ireland, but throughout the United Kingdom and further afield. That was a clever ploy that created a certain degree of complacency at the highest levels of society and at the heart of the British Government and other Governments who were interested in Northern Ireland affairs.
Everyone is wise with hindsight and it is now obvious what the IRA was up to at the time. It had time to reorganise itself and move its personnel around in order to prevent the leaks that permitted the amount of attrition that the security services had achieved until then. However, those of us who recognised what was happening were concerned about another aspect of terrorism that permeates every level of society on a daily basis. I refer to the media. I do not suggest that all those in the media are fools, but many are impressed and motivated by what Sinn Fein-IRA hopes to achieve, and press activity often affects other parts of society and the attitude of other Governments such as that of the United States.
At the time, many of us felt that we should find a means whereby international opinion could become better versed in the reality of terrorism. On that basis, the Mitchell commission was established and asked to examine from
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I do not find much fault with the conclusions of the Mitchell commission. Its three members displayed a great deal of sincerity and in section III of the report set out valid principles. However, they might well have reached those conclusions without ever setting foot in Northern Ireland. The principles defined in section III are internationally accepted. Section VI of the report sets out guidelines on the modalities for decommissioning and contains a great deal of useful material. However, having accepted that, I cannot agree with the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) that every aspect of the Mitchell report should be treated as if it were the gospel truth.
My justification for that attitude is contained in paragraph 25 of the report, which states:
I should first make my position clear by saying that my understanding of terrorism as perpetrated over the past 25 or 26 years by provisional Sinn Fein-IRA is that it intends never to abandon the strategy to which it is attached. It does not matter what we do--on that point I agree with the hon. Member for Belfast, East (Mr. Robinson) and the hon. and learned Member for North Down (Mr. McCartney). My colleagues in the Ulster Unionist party and I are not moving forward in the present process in the belief that the members of IRA-Sinn Fein are redeemable or that they want to be redeemed. They are committed to a strategy that is based on violence and that is intended to take them forward into the next millennium.
It is a strategy not only of military terrorism, but of social and economic terrorism as well. We have seen social terrorism over the past two years, when Sinn Fein-IRA orchestrated activity on the Ormeau road and on the Garvaghy road that was in direct contradiction of the very principles for which the civil rights movement had marched 27 years earlier--the freedom to go anywhere on the public highway and the freedom to be treated equally with every other citizen in Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein has told us, however, that that is not to be the case and that the Protestant community are not to be allowed to march or to engage in activities that they themselves are not prepared to sanction in certain parts of Northern Ireland.
Much as I deplore the events in Harryville in recent weeks--here I add my voice to the condemnation already expressed by the hon. and learned Member for North
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That is such a horrible thought that people will want to discard my words, saying, "He's off on a flight of fancy." I remind hon. Members that, in June 1995, when I explained that the Sinn Fein-IRA decision to call an end to the ceasefire had already been taken, people called it a flight of fancy. They did not want to believe that it could happen or that it would happen, so they turned their backs on the very thought. As legislators, we in this House have a greater responsibility--we have to face reality and understand our terrorists' overall strategy towards their ultimate goal if we are to take effective steps to counter that strategy.
Although I spell out in some detail the direction in which IRA-Sinn Fein travels, that does not mean that I believe that it is inevitable that it will reach its goal--I do not. If, however, we honestly believe that we can somehow incorporate those people into the very heart of democracy, we are riding for a fall--and a mighty fall at that. We have to look at providing, sincerely and honestly, the opportunity for Sinn Fein to move into the democratic process. I cannot say that I do not want Sinn Fein to become part of the democratic process. I want to believe that that could happen, but I am convinced that it will not. If it does not happen, we have to marginalise it and every other terrorist organisation that might decide to test the will of Government, to test the democratic process and to test the will of society as a whole.
"We"--
that is, the commission--
"have concluded that there is a clear commitment on the part of those in possession of such arms to work constructively to achieve full and verifiable decommissioning as part of the process of all-party negotiations".
Because that premise, or element of the commission's reasoning, was wrong, the logic--irrespective of how perfect it is--that ensues is flawed. In respect of the legislation, it is important that we should take the one thing that is necessary in order to progress the principles contained in the Mitchell report, without paying too much attention--I say this with the greatest respect for the three members of the commission--to the flawed reasoning that occurs in part of the report.
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