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8.18 pm
Mr. William Ross: Mr. Deputy Speaker, you will recall that I used clear, sharp language on Monday night when I spoke on this Bill. I have heard nothing from that moment to this to cause me to alter my opinion.
We are told about family grief. We have all had that as a result of deaths, some tragic, some natural. Those of us who represent Northern Ireland--none more than the last speaker, who represents the town of Omagh--have seen the consequences of the butchery of bombs, thugs and murderers at close quarters. I will not rehearse the tragedies that I have attended, but there were many. Many good men, decent women and children were killed, and no one ever brought to book for it. Because of the area in which I live and my close relations with the Roman Catholic community, I well understand the importance that they attach to the last rites and the necessity to bury the deceased in sanctified ground. I am also aware that the Bill is a consequence of a deal done with the IRA, which played on the grief of the victims' families.
The right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir B. Mawhinney) said earlier that, when members of the IRA behaved in such and such a way, they had no humanity. People could not get inside their minds. However, the truth is that members of terrorist organisations do not exist in the normal democratic world; they exist in a world and in a mental state that they create and that is a consequence of the actions that they undertake. They believe themselves to be a legitimate army and that they are acting for a righteous cause. They believe that the end justifies the means. They do not adhere to those normal thought processes that most people in this House and in this country would apply to political
situations. As far as members of those organisations are concerned, the majority has no right to be wrong and has no right to disagree with them.
The hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (Dr. Godman) takes a keen interest in these matters. He knows Northern Ireland well. I point out to him and to the hon. Member for Wigan (Mr. Stott) that the Bill may be built on good intentions, but we know what they say about the road to hell--it is paved with them. The Bill falls firmly and squarely into that category, because the Government have allowed emotion to overrule logic. Hard cases make bad law, and that is so in this case. We are undermining the rule of law. We are giving in to the demands of murderous thugs who have used the common decency of citizens as a weapon, and who have used the normal democratic procedures of this House as a weapon against the House itself.
This type of legislation is abhorrent to me, because we are allowing the IRA to call the tune, so that its members can exact for themselves the maximum benefit from this whole affair. We are allowing the IRA to call the tune with no danger to its members past or present. Avoiding injury or damage to, or capture of, its members is, of course, always the first priority for a terrorist organisation. The measure will also allow members of the IRA to believe that they can use ruthlessness on every occasion to obtain their way.
If the IRA really wanted to tell people where those graves were, all that it need do is to go out at night and put a little stake on the graves, if they are in a field. It knows where the graves are. It would be easy to do that if the bodies were recoverable. My hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Martin Smyth) drew attention to the fact that bodies could be under a house, or in the foundations of a house. How could one recover a body if that were the case? What would happen if the Government knocked the house down and there was no body?
The whole matter is open to endless ramifications and to endless exhibitions of evil. Do not worry--those guys will dream it up and they will use it. If we pass this Bill, we shall do no good to justice. Indeed, we shall do great damage to the whole concept of justice and punishment for evils committed. We shall do no good to the democratic principles that we claim to uphold. Responsibility in this matter rests solely with the terrorist organisations; it rests solely with the IRA--not with us and not with the House. As my hon. Friend the Member for West Tyrone (Mr. Thompson) said, pressure would have worked in this instance.
This case is not the same as the weapons issue. The IRA cannot give up its weapons; it is committed to holding them. Without weapons, the IRA is only another political party. Its members have no desire to be members of only another political party; they see themselves as part of something far greater, something that is beyond the concept of a political party. They see themselves as an army, controlling a political front organisation. They are part of a terrorist organisation controlling what is supposed to be a political organisation, but which is, in practice, only an arm of the terrorism that they have carried out and inflicted on us for three decades.
To apply the thinking about the IRA giving up its weapons and to say that it will do so on exactly the same footing as the bodies is wrong. Its members cannot give
up the weapons because they need them to impose their will; they do not need the bodies. The fact that the bodies are out there and the fact that the IRA is under pressure from its own community is damaging to the IRA. My hon. Friend the Member for West Tyrone lives in an area that is similar to my own in some ways. He is aware that there are many folk around us with that turn of mind. We can speak with greater authority on their thinking processes than most Members of the House.
I agree with my hon. Friend that, eventually, pressure from their own community, their own relations, church members and their nationalist political establishment will force members of the IRA to reveal, at some time, where the available bodies are buried. We have not put pressure on them; we have let them off the hook and we shall allow them, through the Bill, to claim that they are reacting to public pressure and that they are acting out of the goodness of their heart. However, they will have forced the British to let them off the hook and they will be believed within their own community. It is for that reason, among the other more gut reactions that I articulated during Second Reading, that I must vote against the Bill.
Question put, That the Bill be now read the Third time:--
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