| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Ingram: The hon. Gentleman is presenting a vigorous argument. Why did he not table any amendments?
Rev. Ian Paisley: Because I was not allowed on the Committee: I was kept off it. I have been in the House longer than the Minister and I know that if I had tabled amendments they would not have been called. Almost all the amendments that have been called by Madam Speaker are Government amendments. Who does the Minister think he is talking to? Does he think that I came here yesterday? I know a little about the workings of the House.
The Government would not have liked 100 amendments from me on the amendment paper. They would have laughed at that, and yet the Minister asks why I did not table amendments. I did not need to table any because good ones have already been tabled and I shall address them when we come to them. If that is all that the Minister can say in a serious debate, it shows what will happen in Northern Ireland in future when his hand is on the tiller and difficulties arise.
A proper period must be set for a protest notice; we must leave the loophole of "if practicable". If the legislation does not contain a specified period of time for submitting the notice, people will get out of the requirement by leaving the submission of the notice to the last minute. A protest will be held only when it has the best effect. The hon. Member for South Down raised another important issue when he asked whether the new clause would cut out a spontaneous protest. If an event is taking place outside someone's door, he may protest, but if he has not given notice of it he will be in serious trouble. No Government could enforce that law, because there are protests every day about something or other.
Let me deal with the issue of responsibility. We attended a big meeting on Friday at the city hall, and I am sure that the trade unionists who organised it wanted it to be peaceful. It was far from peaceful, though, because elements came with banners that were insulting to one part of the community. A woman came down and said that she represented the politics of West Belfast. She was told by the trade unionists that she was not going to be allowed to speak and they had a whole row among themselves.
Were the meeting organisers responsible for the trouble that ensued at the city hall on Friday? Not at all. They called the meeting in good faith. They were not protesting about anything, but there were elements--Gerry Adams was there--to ensure that the republican view would be brought to the fore and that the banners would be carried. The whole thing was supposed to be about peace, but ended in a charade.
We need to handle these matters with great care and to reflect on them closely, because there are great difficulties with regard to these protests. I do not understand why the House is setting up a commission to examine parades because those parades are largely Orange, Apprentice Boys and Royal Black Institution parades. We know that the Bill is largely aimed at the parades, yet the people who protest about those parades are going to be treated differently. Why is that? Instead of balancing it out, the Bill balances things in their favour.
With all due respect to them, the police do not operate in the same way in every district in Northern Ireland. We have a clamping law that says that, if people do not pay for their car tax disc, the car will be clamped, but that law does not work in the republican areas, because people who are employed to put on clamps dare not go into those areas. If they sat down outside a republican's or a leading IRA man's home and put a clamp on his wheel, they would probably be knee-capped before they got up from the bending position. So who is going to carry out this legislation? Will it be carried out freely?
I challenge the Minister: in the past year, how many illegal parades have been held in Northern Ireland of which he had no notice and where nothing was done? Why was nothing done? Because they were in republican areas. Those people gave no notice to the police. They had their parades, and nothing was done.
We are back to the same situation with the new clause. Therefore, it is not a solution. We will not have one until we are prepared to consider the Public Order (Northern Ireland) Order, which the Government have set their mind on not examining, because I think they want the power to be invested in the Secretary of State and in the police. However, we are not going to find a solution until we have legislation that can be lived with by the majority population and by the minority population.
This Bill has been rejected by the people who are going to walk on these parades. They have already said that they will not talk to the commission. If they are not going to talk to it, how will it do its work? The Government need to think long and hard about what they are doing and about the new clause in particular.
Mr. Robert McCartney:
I shall develop some of the points that the hon. Member for South Down (Mr. McGrady) made on new clause 3. There is a curious dichotomy in the proposal that the commission should decide whether a parade should be permitted, but some other body--the Secretary of State or the police--should decide on the protest meeting.
As the hon. Member for South Down said, that will give rise to much difficulty. The problem arises from the Public Order (Northern Ireland) Order 1987, which in effect became a protester's charter. If protesters opposed a parade that was to be conducted perfectly lawfully--and it was accepted that it would be so conducted, with proper notice given--so forcefully that the likely outcome would be a breach of the peace, the parade would be stopped. In effect, if people wanted to stop a lawful parade, and they mounted such violent and unlawful opposition that public disorder could be guaranteed, whereupon the parade would be banned.
I understand that the purpose of the Bill--and, indeed, of the commission--is to assess the overall situation in relation to any parade, balancing various considerations on both sides and considering the likelihood of whether, in the circumstances, it would cause such local protest that it merited being banned, or whether it should proceed.
The people who will organise a parade--it is accepted that most of the parades will be of a pro-Unionist, Orange, Royal Black Institution or Apprentice Boys variety--are known and recognised. In most cases, they have paraded on traditional routes on many occasions. They can be identified, they are responsible citizens and they can all be made amenable to the law. They are the sort of people who will put in a notice within the prescribed time, fulfilling all the requirements of the legislation, so that the commission, from the day that that notice is filed, will be aware of who is organising the parade, where it is to start and finish, and what its composition will be.
The commission will be charged with the task of assessing the entire situation, but the new clause says that people who intend to organise some form of protest or opposition demonstration should give 14 days' notice. Does that mean that the commission will be unable fully to assess the situation until it receives notice of a counter-demonstration?
For example, if no notice is given until the required 14 days before a public procession is to be held, what will the commission do during those 14 days--the first 14 days of the 28-day notice? Will it assess the position on the following basis: this parade is being organised by
recognised, reasonable and lawful people on a traditional route that, in the past, has not had any objection? It could make a decision possibly within two or three days, but, under the new clause, it could not conceivably make a decision for at least 14 days--because 14 of the 28 days can elapse before counter-demonstrators must give their notice.
That situation is bad enough, but then we come to the provision that was mentioned by the hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Moss), which deals with a late notice. Someone may offer the defence that it has not been reasonably practicable to give an earlier notice of a protest demonstration. Will the commission have to wait until the eleventh hour before it gets the final, vital information that is necessary for it to make an overall decision on whether the counter-demonstration is likely to give rise to such a breach of public order that the procession should not go ahead?
That is but one of the anomalies that will arise unless the commission is seized of the overall situation and is in a position to decide that the procession can go ahead, taking into account all the information that is available to it from anyone who may possibly be organising a counter-demonstration.
If the 28 days' notice--the notice to be given by those organising the parade or procession--is to be kept, the appropriate time for notice to be given by those who are organising the counter-demonstration is 21 days in advance. That would enable the commission to remove itself from the uncomfortable position of being between a rock and a hard place. It would know 28 days before the proposed date what the paraders were going to do, the nature of their procession and where it was coming from and going to, and it would also know within 21 days the sort of opposition that the procession was likely to engender. It would have three weeks in which to consider the whole matter and, we hope, make a decision.
If we proceed as suggested, the commission could consider the circumstances of the procession and decide that nothing appeared to be wrong with it but have to withhold its decision to allow it to go ahead until it found out whether there was to be a counter-parade--and it would not know that for at least another 14 days. Indeed, it might not know until two or three days before the actual date of the procession should the House accept the notion of giving notice only
"as soon as it is reasonably practicable"
to do so.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |