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Mr. David Trimble (Upper Bann): I thank my hon. Friend for explaining why the image that the media projected about those five fingers was entirely inaccurate. The presentation of that event contrasts with the media's total failure to report an incident that occurred during the funeral of the Shankill road bomber, who was responsible for the death of nine innocent civilians in Frizzell's fish shop. People in the funeral cortege passed the bottom of the Shankill road waving nine fingers in the air. One of them shouted up at the Shankill road people, "We can't kill enough of yous." That was not reported in the same way.
Rev. Martin Smyth: I confirm what my hon. Friend says, and it is one of the reasons why I prefer to do live interviews. I can be held responsible for any gaffes I make, instead of facing editorial misrepresentation that is done to distort or to get headlines.
I recognise the causes of public disturbances, but I indict successive Governments, from 1968 onwards, who have failed to grapple with the problem of organised terrorism. They have allowed it to grow and menace a whole society. It still menaces us. People talk about the peace process, but there has been no peace process. Thankfully, there has been a political process that has tried to develop democratic structures in Northern Ireland, but the so-called peace process has been a charade. From the beginning, Sinn Fein-IRA have not gone down the road of peace. I prophesy that, in six or nine weeks' time, depending how long it takes to make the decision about a ceasefire, the present Prime Minister--like the previous Prime Minister, who was put under pressure by the great and the good throughout the world--will be pressurised to accept that the ceasefire is real, without any weapons being handed over and with no evidence of sincerity.
I cannot accept the concept of chastising law-abiding people because others have broken the law. When the House, in its wisdom, passed the Public Order (Northern Ireland) Order 1987, some 11 of us took a peaceful walk from city hall to the nearest police station to protest the order's denial of civil liberties. The law book was thrown at us. On another occasion, I was indicted for organising and taking part in what was called an illegal procession--I did not realise that walking down the road was necessarily illegal--but we won the case. On the occasion when we were convicted, we did our time. Admittedly, we received short sentences, but we have a criminal record because we stood by our convictions, as is only right when dealing with the liberties of our people.
Residents groups continue to plan counter- demonstrations across Northern Ireland that are contrary to the order, but few folk have been brought before the courts. Last year, we had a tragic but laughable situation when Brendan McKenna was brought before the courts in June for a breach of the law the previous July. As I understand it, the Director of Public Prosecutions has to decide whether someone has a prima facie case to answer. The DPP can get information only from the RUC--at least, I do not think that the Garda Siochana has a say. The court case was held and one of the witnesses on McKenna's behalf was a senior RUC officer. McKenna was acquitted. How could the RUC give enough evidence to persuade the DPP to prosecute at the same time as a senior RUC officer appeared as a witness for the defence?
About a week later, in Londonderry, the drummer of one of the Portadown bands was up before the courts for provocative drumming. I have drums--one is plastic--in both ears, and I wonder how, in this age of heavy metal and other sorts of music, one should define provocative drumming. I can go no further with that case, because I am not sure whether there has been an appeal yet. I know that there was talk of one. Such judgments in the courts cause people to question whether the public order legislation is used properly and effectively. Already this year, a number of lawful parades have been re-routed.
Last year in Castlewellan, on the last Saturday in August, the local preceptory was walking through the village to join the district to go to the Comber rally of the County Down Black. One police officer was there for traffic control. The preceptory was stopped by a cousin of Gerard Rice--it is interesting how these folk turn around--a local man from Downpatrick and six others, and told, "You cannot go any further."
If the Black preceptory had wanted to, it could simply have gone further, but its members accepted the guidance of the police officer. No one has been brought before the court for obstructing a lawful parade. That is the point that I want to make.
I am told that discussions are going on, that approaches have been made and that people spend hours trying to get some understanding. It is to be hoped that that will be possible. None the less, there are several questions that I shall ask the Government.
Why are so few illegal demonstrators prosecuted, when they are clearly in contravention of public order? Why have Government not clearly recognised that parades were trouble-free before Sinn Fein-IRA-fronted groups sprang up across the country? Why have Government not pressed Sinn Fein-IRA to explain more fully Adams's Athlone comments?
Why do Government expect the loyal orders to negotiate with groups that clearly do not wish to reach accommodation, as is demonstrated by their choice of convicted terrorists as spokesmen? In 1995 the then County master of Belfast, Robert Saulters, met Gerard Rice with Quakers and police, and came to an agreement. Saulters stayed by it, but Rice could not stand by his agreement. Why continue to talk to folk who cannot be up front and deliver?
Mr. David Trimble (Upper Bann):
I confess that the temptation to take advantage of the extra time available for the Adjournment debate is great, but I shall not stretch it to the last possible moment. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Martin Smyth) on securing the debate. It is especially timely now, and the issues are important. I hope that the Government will examine them carefully and that we shall see significant changes.
There is no doubt that the public order legislation has failed. It was introduced as a result of the Anglo-Irish Agreement and, like that agreement, it has not brought
peace, reconciliation or stability. Instead, it has added instability and set people at each other's throats. It has not produced any peace at all.
Like the Anglo-Irish Agreement, that legislation will have to be reconsidered. The Minister might find it instructive to peruse the debates in another place when the Anglo-Irish Agreement was being made. In particular, he should read the contribution of Lord Mason, who was probably the most distinguished and effective Secretary of State for Northern Ireland there has ever been.
If the Minister does that, he will see that Lord Mason accurately anticipated the problems that would flow from the Anglo-Irish Agreement in terms of interference with the traditions of Northern Ireland and with the traditional celebration of the culture and identity of its people, especially those who identify with the British tradition. It would be instructive for anyone to read that contribution and to see how prophetic Lord Mason's words were. Changes need to be made.
The problem is not new: it has arisen many times before. People who examine its history through the statute book will see that there is legislation on the subject going right back to the 19th century. At one point there was even an attempt to solve the problem by banning all parades--the party processions Acts.
Party processions legislation remained on the statute book for many decades of the 19th century. There is an interesting parallel with what my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, South has argued, because not only was that legislation wholly ineffective; it was applied unequally. There was discrimination right at the roots of the operation of the legislation in the middle of the 19th century.
The legislation was enforced against the Orange Order but not against the nationalists. That is what one finds again and again. For many years throughout the middle of the 19th century, nationalist parades in breach of the legislation were ignored, whereas any attempt by Orangemen to parade in breach of the legislation was subject to penalties.
The same is true of the public order legislation. Illegal activity by nationalists is ignored and charges are not brought. Indeed, in a perverse way, assistance is given by the authorities to nationalists acting illegally in contravention of the Act. Conversely, the legislation is used against people who by their nature, habits and background are peaceful law-abiding citizens who are not causing trouble, people who represent the backbone of their community.
That important point should be more widely appreciated in this part of the United Kingdom. When one is dealing with the loyal orders, one is dealing not with a mere small section of society and a possible hooligan element--there are hooligan elements in society in all places, and they are present in Northern Ireland too--but when one is dealing with the parades of the loyal institutions, one is dealing not with the hooligan element but with people who are the backbone of their communities; people who uphold the traditions and values of society. It is their commitment to the values and traditions of society that, uniquely, leads them into such institutions. That point should be more widely appreciated.
Of course, I have a particular interest in such matters. Fate has it that an incident in my constituency is the focus of attention, but that is not entirely a matter of fate.
As my hon. Friend said, it results from the calculation of Sinn Fein-IRA. He described how Mr. Gerry Adams boasted last year how he and his activists had put in the work over time to create that situation.
As we watched events last year, it was interesting to see how the republican movement teed up several parades with a view to causing trouble--the Whiterock parade in Belfast, the north Belfast parade known as "the tour of the north", and a parade in Newry. For those, and a few others, Sinn Fein-IRA made preparations. They could have selected any one of them to put their effort into. It was their choice to try to cause trouble in my constituency rather than elsewhere.
We know some of the reasons Sinn Fein-IRA did that. They believed that the loyalist ceasefire was weaker in that area, and they had good reason to believe there were people in loyalist paramilitary groups there who were not committed to it. They thought that they could provoke those people into action.
We are thankful that, leaving aside one highly regrettable incident--the murder of Mr. McGoldrick--the attempt to provoke the loyalist paramilitaries into violence was not successful, but now I see that Sinn Fein-IRA are coming back with renewed efforts to try to provoke them again, with the murder of two policemen in Lurgan the other Monday. That too, no doubt, was intended to provoke paramilitary reaction.
Now I shall focus upon what has happened in my constituency in connection with the Drumcree church service. There is not enough appreciation here of the considerable efforts that the local leaders of the Orange Order have made over the past year to explain their position to as wide a range of persons as possible and to ensure that they do everything possible to defuse any confrontation and probable trouble. Their efforts include, of course, coming here to meet a wide range of hon. Members. Their efforts are not widely appreciated.
The House may be unaware that the Orange Order took the extraordinary step of writing a letter to every resident adjoining the Garvaghy road--nationalist and Unionist--to explain its position. The letter was widely praised and is fairly well known in Northern Ireland because it was reprinted in the press, but its terms may not be familiar to the House. I want to put some extracts of the letter on the record. Representatives of the County Armagh Orange Order wrote:
Brendan McKenna, to whom reference has been made, is the spokesman for what is called the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition and was largely responsible for a reply, which was publicised. It was of a very different tone and character. Instead of engaging with the conciliatory nature of the Orange Order, his letter was more querulous and demanding. In particular, it referred to the unfortunate murder of Mr. McGoldrick in 1996 and the alleged triumphalism of the Orange Order and others.
I find the reference to murder interesting, in that Mr. McKenna did not take account in his missive of the murders which have occurred closer to Garvaghy road. It is not widely appreciated that, during the troubles, there have been a number of murders in Garvaghy road of Unionists and Protestants by nationalists. The road that is now the cause of dispute originally moved through an entirely Unionist area. The population living adjacent to the road was overwhelmingly Unionist in its political persuasion.
In the early 1970s, a number of public authority housing estates, such as Churchill Park, were constructed. They originally had a mixed population but, as the troubles developed, that ceased to be the case and they are now almost overwhelmingly nationalist. One of the factors that led to the Unionist exodus from the area was the violence directed against Unionists, and the murders, for example, the murder of Mr. Paul Beattie, shot dead near his home in Churchill Park in 1972; or Mr. Roy Rutherford, killed by a booby-trap bomb at the Moy road end of Garvaghy road in May 1973; or Mr. Eddie Clayton, killed by a booby-trap bomb attached to his car on 6 March 1975; or Mr. Robert McNally, killed by a booby-trap bomb which exploded in West street after he had left his home in Woodside Green in the Garvaghy road in 1979; or Mr. John Truckle, killed by a bomb in Woodside Hill in 1983; or Mr. James Wright, killed by a booby-trap bomb in Corcrain--close to Corcrain Orange hall, which has been repeatedly vandalised and regularly burnt--in 1989.
Another part of the background is the continuing abuse and intimidation of Unionists who want to reside in the area. This was brought home vividly to me while I was canvassing in the area prior to the recent general election. I visited a street, the inhabitants of which were--only a few years ago--almost entirely Unionist voters. As a result of republican pressure, most have left. Only about 25 per cent. of the street's inhabitants are Unionists, and those residing there are not having a happy time. One of them said to me, simply, "Our lives here are hell." That hell has been created by the associates of Brendan McKenna.
That is part of the reason why there are strong feelings in the area. The brethren in Portadown perceive the attack on the parade as part of a campaign to drive all Unionists from the area to create a sectarian ghetto that will be 100 per cent. nationalist, so that the republican movement can operate at liberty within the community and use it as a base from which to attack and intimidate the rest of the town. That is a significant factor.
The letter from the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition referred also to the alleged triumphalism of the Orange Order. I will not go into the incidents which it alleged to be triumphalist, but I wish to contrast them with the behaviour of Mr. McKenna himself. He was elected as--allegedly--an Independent Nationalist councillor to Craigavon council in the local elections towards the end of May. After his election, he and his associates formed a cortege and drove down one of the main roads in the centre of Portadown with Irish tricolours flying.
The cortege drove up Garvaghy road and around local streets several times in the small hours of the morning. That involved driving through the part of Garvaghy road and Park road that is Unionist. They drove through that area with their tricolours waving and their car horns sounding at 2 o'clock in the morning. Some local residents came out to protest--vigorously, I must add--and were met with cries from the McKenna cortege of, "You will be burnt out before July." The threat was followed by attacks on subsequent nights on the homes of local people to intimidate them.
Not content with that, the cortege drove past Drumcree parish church and along the Dungannon road to the M1 motorway--a distance of some five miles--through an area that is wholly Unionist. When they reached the roundabout, they contented themselves with breaking the windows of the local Methodist church. This behaviour could not of course be triumphalist and would not attract the attention of the media--nor has it.
I go into the details because it is important that people know the details of the background before they make judgments. If they feel like making judgments, let them bear in mind the conciliatory approach that the Orange Order has taken and the way in which it is trying to reach out to people to increase understanding and to ensure that no valid complaint can be made about its behaviour and to find out if we can move forward positively. There is that desire, not merely within the Orange Order but more widely throughout the Portadown community--I am sure that that includes the greater number of the people in Ballyoran and Churchill Park along the Garvaghy road. We are dealing with a small group of people who are deliberately manipulating the problems and the emotions to which those problems give rise to try to destabilise society and plunge it into disorder. It is claimed that those people are not, as alleged, Sinn Fein. We say that there is Sinn Fein orchestration behind the operation.
My hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, South referred to some of the personalities concerned. There are three principal, so-called residents groups--one for the Lower Ormeau road in Belfast, one for the Bogside in Londonderry and one for the Garvaghy road in Portadown. The people who front those organisations have clear associations. Mr. Gerard Rice, who is the spokesman for the Lower Ormeau residents group, served
a four-year prison term for IRA membership and possession of weapons, which clearly demonstrates his background and allegiance. The spokesman for the Bogside residents group, Mr. Donncha MacNeilis, has been convicted of IRA membership and arms possession and is the son of a Sinn Fein councillor on Derry city council. As for Mr. McKenna himself, he was gaoled for six years in 1982 for his part in a bombing in Portadown and received sentences for firearms offences, false imprisonment and hijacking, being one of two masked terrorists who held a Churchill Park family hostage for three hours while their car was stolen and used in a bombing--the bombing of the Royal British Legion hall in Portadown. It was clearly an attack on the British identity, but it is interesting to note his selection as spokesman for the Garvaghy road coalition. I am sure that when that selection was made it was thought that his record in bombing the Royal British Legion was appropriate because, by tradition, the Portadown Orange district processions are always led by the ex-service men's lodge. It was felt appropriate, no doubt, to have someone whose record was bombing a Royal British Legion hall to cause the maximum offence to an organisation that gives former service men pride of place in its activities.
I hope that problems of that nature will be resolved. I hope that the desire for peace of the greater number of people in Northern Ireland will be respected. I hope that we will see better quality decision making from the police and others on this problem.
Over and above all of that, we also need changes in the legislation. We put those points firmly to the North committee. Unfortunately, its report did not reflect the points that we made. The structure of the public order legislation exacerbates the situation. By appearing to cast on the police an obligation to stop a parade if violence is threatened if it should go ahead, the legislation ensures that any group that threatens to block a parade--using violence to do so--has its desire carried into effect. The structure of the legislation assists groups that want to destabilise the situation by attacking traditional parades. That aspect must be studied. We must move away from these competitions--as it were--to see who can muster the larger crowd to determine the police decision. In some cases, it appears that the decision depends on which group has the larger number of protesters assembled. That is not a satisfactory way to deal with the matter.
The right to assemble and to freedom of movement ought to be respected, particularly in regard to traditional activities of a largely religious and cultural nature. Distinctions could be drawn between religious and cultural activities on the one hand and party political activities on the other. They could also be drawn between what is part of the accepted custom and practice of the community and what is introduced as a new event to provoke trouble or to depart from that established custom and practice. Those are the factors that ought to be embodied in the legislation.
"This is a sincere and genuine attempt to deal with the many misconceptions concerning the walk and there are a number of points we would like to make for your information:
26 Jun 1997 : Column 1042
1. The service on the first Sunday in July is partly to remember those who died at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. We pay tribute to all those of both communities who died for the cause of peace and justice.
2. The Orange Order is traditionally a parading organisation. We see our parade as an outward witness to our sincere belief in the Reformed Faith. For that reason, we see attacks on our parades as both a denial of civil liberties and an attack on our religion . . .
3. In the interests of harmony, mutual respect and reconciliation the Orange Order has acknowledged objections raised by the Nationalist community and has already implemented the following principles for the Drumcree Church parade:
a. The number of parades in the area has been reduced from ten to one in the past ten years.
b. Only members of Portadown District parade.
c. No bands take part which could be perceived as antagonistic to our Nationalist neighbours. Accordion bands lead the parade playing hymn music that is common to both traditions.
That letter was well received by residents of the Garvaghy road, the general community in Northern Ireland and by many commentators.
d. The Orangemen walk four abreast so that the walk will pass any one given point in less than five minutes.
e. The Order marshals and disciplines its own members to ensure there will be no confrontation on our part. If this was reciprocated, then there would only be a need for a minimal police presence.
f. The right to walk peacefully and in a dignified manner and the right to protest in a peaceful and dignified manner should not be denied to anyone.
It is the sincere hope of the Orange Order that the vast majority of the people of Portadown will work together in a new spirit of tolerance to defeat extremists who want confrontation this Summer."
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