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Mr. David Winnick (Walsall, North): Does not the intervention by the hon. and learned Member for North Down (Mr. McCartney) do a disservice to the people on the mainland, who stood up to terror, as did the people in Northern Ireland, and never gave in to all the terror that the IRA inflicted on innocent people? Therefore, it is most inappropriate to say that the agreement comes about simply because the British Government are frightened of the IRA. We stood up to terror for so long and we would do so time and again.
Mrs. Fyfe: I thoroughly agree.
None of the events is happening in a vacuum. Everything that is going on in Northern Ireland is under the inspection of the world's media and of people who care about peace and freedom everywhere. Do any of the hon. Members on the Opposition Benches really think that, if anyone who had been appointed to senior office continued to support violence, that would not be noted and commented on adversely, with the person likely to be thrown out of office?
I come from a nationalist family background. It is not easy for me to think well of people on the Unionist side, but I have met many of them over the years, especially since being involved in parliamentary politics. I know some people who have served prison sentences for acts of extreme violence and murder, yet, if those people have changed--I believe that they have--I would support their standing for election and their holding senior office in the Assembly. The point is not a person's past, but their willingness to change and to be part of the future, not the past.
Life does not bring total guarantees. We are not talking about buying a fridge. In any step in life, nothing is guaranteed, but we take such steps because we are human beings and we wish to live and to get on with our lives. We want to live in peace with our fellow human beings.
The debate has concentrated entirely on the history of nationalist violence. Listening to it, one would hardly believe that there had been any from the other side, but we all know that it has a long record of violence, too, so why not be honest about it?
I did not read The Sunday Telegraph article that has been referred to, but I recently saw in another newspaper a photograph of a tiny toddler, who was far too young to understand the words on the bib around his neck: "Born to walk the Garvaghy Road".
When I saw that picture, I thought, "For every toddler who is wearing such a bib, there is a toddler in a nationalist household somewhere being taught: do not trust these people. Do not hand the guns in. Hide them instead because you do not know what will happen."
It was pointed out earlier that it is not so much about counting guns as changing minds. I thoroughly believe that. It is about changing minds and getting people to change their attitudes because that is what really counts.
If Opposition Members do not support the Bill because of their ludicrous idea that it has been introduced because of fear of nationalist violence, I will not believe that that is an honest position. They are doing great discredit to good people on their own side. It was marvellous when the right hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) and the hon. Member for Foyle (Mr. Hume) won the praise of the world for coming together to fight for peace. We should support their efforts and get behind them.
Opposition Members will not get behind us, but what are they saying? Are they prepared to let things unravel again? We have still to hear positive proposals that are workable and bring together Northern Ireland in the way in which we want.
Mr. Jonathan Sayeed (Mid-Bedfordshire):
I hope that the hon. Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mrs. Fyfe) will forgive me if I do not follow her. We are limited in time and other hon. Members wish to speak.
I disagree with much of the Prime Minister's policy, but I commend him for his persistence, perseverance and efforts in trying to bring a solution to Northern Ireland. We all recognise that he has built on the considerable and sustained work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major). We may be coming to a point where peace is possible in Northern Ireland and it behoves us all to help that process. That is not to say that the Prime Minister has not made mistakes along the way. Some of the wording of the Good Friday agreement was so poor and lacking in precision that it allowed all sides to interpret it differently.
Some people will suggest that it is better to have any agreement, however faulty, than none. I am not one of those. In a Province where there has been some 300 years of distrust, any dispute as to the meaning of the words in an agreement gives rise to the suspicion of bad faith. I fear that the Belfast agreement and its consequence--the Northern Ireland Bill--may repeat that mistake.
I held a position of profound juniority in the Northern Ireland Office, but I recognise that those who do not live in Northern Ireland cannot understand what it must be like for those who do, or what it must be like for Northern Ireland Members who have seen their family, friends, neighbours and constituents bombed, beaten, shot and terrorised. The only time when terrorism can be understood, if not condoned, is when there is no alternative, no democracy, no hope. That is not the case with the IRA in Northern Ireland. It has no such excuse.
As a Conservative and a Unionist, I believe that Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, but, as a democrat, I believe that, if the people of Northern Ireland
want it otherwise, they should have it otherwise. Consequently, the IRA has no right to use weapons and no excuse to hold them. It should get rid of them if it wishes to be part of the democratic process.
There are risks with the Bill. We all know from bitter experience that the IRA takes, takes and takes and gives nothing back, but is worth taking risks for the prize of peace. There are dangers, but those dangers are rather less real than some would suppose. Using the cold calculation of the balance sheet, I ask: what is the downside for Northern Ireland? What is the downside for the Ulster Unionists if the IRA refuses to disarm? Some gestures of symbolic significance will have been made, but nothing in practice will have changed, and the blame for the lack of disarmament will be fairly put on the IRA. The upside is different. If the IRA does surrender its weapons, the long-suffering democrats in Northern Ireland will have won a famous victory.
There is no doubt that releasing murderers sticks in everyone's craw. Releasing murderers with no reciprocal action by the IRA has been a profound mistake. I regret the equivocation of the SDLP, which makes the Ulster Unionists' agreement to the Bill all the more difficult. I would prefer it if the Bill made it clear that terrorists had to disarm and that, if they did not, their apologists or spokesmen and only their apologists or spokesmen, would be ejected from the Assembly and Executive.
Mr. George Galloway (Glasgow, Kelvin):
On the subject of balance, it is a great pity that, on the Conservative side of the debate, so few of the colleagues of the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Sayeed) have taken the same thoughtful line as he has. However, others have lived up to their reputations.
The right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) lived up to his reputation of not being able to see a belt without hitting below it. His imputation of dishonourable behaviour by the Prime Minister will be widely resented on both sides of the House and across the country. I do not think that I am anyone's idea of a slavish Government loyalist or any type of toady, but I do believe that the efforts of the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State and her Ministers have been widely admired, not only across the country but around the world. To do as the right hon. and learned Gentleman did in accusing the Prime Minister of having dishonoured his promises was unworthy of a man who held the high office that he held for so long in the previous Government.
The right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major)--always less clear, more circumlocutory than the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe--leftme unsure about whether he was supporting the Government's peace process--the words "like the rope supports the hanging man" came to mind--or whether he would be in the Government Lobby today, as the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire will be.
Nevertheless, I was sure that the support--if it was there--offered by the right hon. Member for Huntingdon was far less unequivocal than the support that was given
to him earlier in the process, in very dark and difficult times, by the previous Opposition Front-Bench team. At that time, the right hon. Gentleman, who was then the Prime Minister, was telling us that it would be gut-wrenching and turn his stomach to talk to terrorists. Later, of course, it emerged that that is precisely what he had been doing for quite a considerable time in secret, without informing the House or the country.
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