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4.45 pm

Mr. Ken Maginnis (Fermanagh and South Tyrone): I am grateful to the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) for providing a clever means of ensuring that we have an opportunity now, at the Bill's Report

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stage, to debate all the Bill's facets. He has made the important point, with which I agree, that Sinn Fein-IRA, in particular, are an irredeemable organisation, and that nothing will facilitate their disarmament and movement from violence to democratic practice, because they do not want such movement. He was absolutely right when he said that there is confusion in Northern Ireland between a political process and a peace process, because they have successfully been confused by Sinn Fein-IRA and by those who support or tolerate that organisation.

The political process should stand alone. One of the difficulties encountered by those of us involved in the current talks process is that politics and peace are so closely connected in people's minds. Politics in Northern Ireland should be purely about political, social, economic and other accommodations between the two traditions. Peace should be about ensuring that the terrorists are totally neutralised and have no ability to wreak havoc, as they have done over the past 25 years and longer.

Like the hon. Gentleman, I am--or at least I hope that I am--a realist. After living in a culture of violence which has lasted for more than 25 years, I know that no sudden development will cause people to shift overnight from a violent to a democratic outlook. I understand that, irrespective of the intentions of the leadership of various organisations, it will be exceedingly difficult to control everyone who has been part of that culture of violence for so many years.

We should look to the leadership of those organisations to discover whether they are making the maximum effort to end their forces murdering and inflicting so-called punishment beatings, which are acts of intimidation, to which many of those in what they deem to be their own traditions are subjected. There is a major difference between what is happening with loyalist paramilitary organisations and with Sinn Fein-IRA, because Sinn Fein-IRA continue to espouse the right of people to act against society's democratically expressed will and to use violence when it suits them.

At least those in the leadership of loyalist paramilitary organisations have constantly pleaded, publicly and privately, for those in possession of guns and other weapons of war to stay their hand and not to embark once again along the road of murder and violence, whether the violence is proactive or retaliatory.

Mr. Robert McCartney: I assume that the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that we should reward not good intentions expressed by political leaders of organisations with violent propensities, but factual and manifest demonstrations of non-violence by their followers. I take it that the hon. Gentleman is not drawing a distinction between acts of violence that are committed by Sinn Fein-IRA and acts of violence committed by loyalist organisations purely on the basis of what their leaders expressly claim for them.

Mr. Maginnis: The hon. and learned Gentleman knows me better than that. I do not tolerate violence from any source. As a practical individual, I like progress to be genuine. When I contemplate the IRA attacks on Canary wharf, Manchester, Osnabruck and Thiepval and its other attempts to take life and increase terrorism, and then, with some satisfaction, the absence of violent reaction from loyalist paramilitaries, I regard it as progress. Those who

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speak on behalf of loyalist organisations deserve, if not credit, at least my acknowledgment of their success in curbing the activities of their acolytes. Long may it continue.

I return to the part that the Government expect us to play in the talks process. We entered that process on the understanding that there are two separate and distinct tracks that are never to be joined and have no cross-ties--one dealing with political accommodation and the interests of society and the other intending to lead to the end of all violence, disarmament and the verification of the decommissioning process.

The Irish Government have shown no good intent to keep the two processes apart, but have tried to draw us into the trap whereby every gun that is decommissioned will attract a political reward for the most evil in society. If I read new clause 1 aright, the hon. Member for Spelthorne was concerned with that specific issue. He perceives that the decommissioning Bill contains concessions for terrorists. If it did, I would repudiate it. It would not be worth the paper it is printed on. If I catch your eye again, Madam Deputy Speaker, I shall address the issue again on Third Reading. The Bill has another purpose in addition to the practical issue of decommissioning.

Under new clause 1, a ceasefire will not be accepted until 12 months have elapsed since any act of terrorism. As the hon. Gentleman might expect, my party does not find that acceptable because IRA-Sinn Fein have never worked to a time scale. Between 1962 and 1969, they were in a virtually non-violent mode, but of course they were planning future action. As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, even during the 17 months between August 1994 and February 1996, in addition to planning the bomb at Canary wharf and training, recruiting and targeting, IRA-Sinn Fein were involved in another variety of terrorism--social and economic terrorism--alongside the gunfire and the bombs.

The hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) was quite right to ask how we defined terrorism. I believe that, when the time is right and when IRA-Sinn Fein consider that enough people are sufficiently naive to believe them, they will be willing to put their guns away for a while. However, they will continue using intimidation and the boycotts to ghettoise Northern Ireland. Only through ghettoisation can IRA-Sinn Fein move towards their ultimate goal--a Bosnia-type situation. I have mentioned that before in the House. They will achieve that by totally controlling significant territories--housing estates or entire districts--within Northern Ireland. That is one reason why my party spoke out about the events at Harriville, saying that they were morally wrong and that such action plays into the hands of those who would ghettoise Northern Ireland.

Although I appreciate what the hon. Member for Spelthorne has attempted to do and I am grateful for the opportunity to address issues that concern us both, I cannot support new clause 1 as it will not deliver what he requires--a guarantee that the Government will take such steps as are necessary to ensure that not only the words but the actions and the circumstances are right before we accept that the leopard has changed its spots.

Mr. Mallon: I thank the hon. Member for Spelthorne

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(Mr. Wilshire) for attempting to clarify new clause 1. So far, however, either through my deficiency in understanding or through his deficiency in explaining, he has not fulfilled that objective.

It is important that we address any proposed amendments to the legislation. It would be easy to toss new clause 1 away: we could say that we will not vote for it because it is not realistic, but that it provides the opportunity to make certain comments. However, that would be the wrong approach to any serious amendments to a serious measure.

I ask the hon. Gentleman to accept that, rather than help the situation, the new clause--or any similar measure--would postpone and enlarge the period of opportunity, if one existed. It assumes a peaceful situation for 12 months, after which legislation would have to be introduced to deal with the consequences of that period.

The Bill is essentially enabling legislation that will enable decisions on some of the crucial matters to be implemented by order of the Secretary of State when and if an opportunity arises. We do not know when an opportunity will arise.

Forgive me if I do not join the absolute pessimism that has already been expressed. Forgive me also if I do not engage in a beauty contest on who is most opposed to violence. I assume that every hon. Member, as a democrat, is opposed to violence in any form and that we all accept that to be every hon. Member's position.

5 pm

I ask the hon. Member for Spelthorne to accept that there is a fundamental difference between us on the basis on which decommissioning can be dealt with. It has been debated at great length, almost to the stage at which some of us do not like to hear the word any more. That is not because we are afraid of the issues, but because some of us have been dealing with them at close hand for so long and so often that we could make each other's speeches with no difficulty. I have listened at length to members of the Unionist parties in the current talks. I have read their documentation at length. I have listened to the hon. and learned Member for North Down (Mr. McCartney) at length. They have similarly listened to us.

The fundamental difference between our approaches to finding a solution will not be dealt with by the new clause. I accept that everyone here wants all arms, ammunition and guns to be things of the past and for them to have no role in the life, political or otherwise, of the north of Ireland. I accept the absolute sincerity of people who put forward views with which I do not agree.

Taking all that as read, however, there is a fundamental divergence, which was best stated by the Secretary of State on Second Reading. It is worth looking at his comments again. He set out the position clearly, saying that it is the role of the security services in any state to ensure that arms, ammunition, bomb-making equipment and all the paraphernalia of terrorism are not held illegally. He went on to make the crucial point, which I also made in that debate, that if it were possible to deal with decommissioning in the normal security ways, we should not be having this debate. If the police, the Army and the legislation framed to deal with terrorism north and south of the border, as well as here, had been successful, this debate would not be taking place. The reason for the

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decommissioning Bill and the on-going debate that there will be about it is that there must be another way of dealing with the inability--I am not using the word "failure"--of the security services to resolve the problem of illegally held arms.

The Secretary of State put his finger on the issue when he said:

"It gets harder when it is recognised that, illegal though it is to hold them, the yielding up of those armaments will be done either voluntarily or not at all."--[Official Report, 9 December 1996; Vol. 287, c. 22.]

I agree with the Secretary of State: it will not be possible to put those arms and that ammunition--the elements of terrorism--out of operation unless it is done voluntarily. That is a difficult statement for the Secretary of State or for me to make, and a difficult fact for any hon. Member to accept, but it is the reality--a reality that we must all face up to if we are to solve the problem. We can fool ourselves that there are other ways of doing it. We can convince ourselves that there are contrivances that will lead to the situation that we want. We can somehow postpone everything and live in the hope that, one fine day, those who organise IRA violence and loyalist paramilitary violence will put through a telephone call to the Northern Ireland Office telling the Secretary of State to expect X number of lorry loads of guns and Semtex, but it will not happen.

The hon. Member for Spelthorne described himself several times as a realist, as did the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. Maginnis). I accept that they are both realists, but we must also be aware of those elements of realism which hurt and which we do not particularly like. The harsh reality--this is where I differ with the hon. Member for Spelthorne--is that a voluntary decision means a decision taken by those who speak on behalf of the IRA, the Ulster Volunteer Force, the Ulster Defence Association, the Ulster Freedom Fighters, the Red Hand commandos or whoever they all may be, to give up, destroy or decommission their weapons. That will not happen in a void--not in a void of 12 months, not in a political void. It will not happen outside negotiations.

That brings us to the second harsh reality: the thesis of the Mitchell report--the report of the international commission--which was accepted by the two Governments, was that voluntary decommissioning means decommissioning as a result of negotiations, which means that inclusivity is inevitable. Mitchell decided--we all accepted this, by the way--that decommissioning would be mutual between republican and loyalist paramilitaries. There is a chain of logic in that proposition which cannot be broken, because if it is, there is no validity in the Secretary of State's belief, which I very firmly share, that decommissioning, if it happens, will happen on a voluntary basis.

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