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12.55 am
Mr. Michael Connarty (Falkirk, East): I think that a short television programme of the previous three speeches should be shown to everyone in Britain and in the island of Ireland. I defer to many hon. Members in their knowledge of Northern Ireland, in their commitment to it and in their hard work on its behalf. Labour Members, such as my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire (Mr. Barnes), have tried to untangle the difficulties of the situation, but the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. Maginnis) also demonstrated the extent of his strength of feeling and commitment, which have grown out of his long history of fighting terrorism in his part of the United Kingdom. He is clearly prepared to look forward to a better future and, little by little, to take some matters on trust--although obviously he will take what is said in the course of progress with large doses of salt and suspicion.
However, the House then heard the poisonous comments of the hon. Member for Belfast, East (Mr. Robinson), who said that the former President of Finland and the former ANC general secretary were two friends of the IRA. That was the level to which he fell, as a reading of his speech will show. The hon. Gentleman is so out of touch and full of bile that he has nothing to contribute to the debate any more.
I listened to what the hon. Gentleman said. It was the cheapest--
Mr. Peter Robinson: He spoke at an IRA rally.
Mr. Connarty: I have never spoken at any such rally. Does the hon. Gentleman want to intervene?
Mr. Robinson: I did not say that the hon. Gentleman spoke at an IRA rally. I said that Cyril Ramaphosa spoke at a Sinn Fein-IRA rally.
Mr. Connarty: Given Mr. Ramaphosa's background and the work that he has done in southern Africa--where reconciliation and peace have been the way forward out of the darkest times of apartheid--I am sure that he had much to say to the people who attended that rally. Perhaps what he said led them to make the statements that have been made in the past few days.
The hon. Member for Belfast, East has cheapened the debate by playing for votes. I was watching him as he spoke, and it was clear that he was not talking about the peace process. He was trying to win votes from the Ulster Unionist party, which enjoys the support of the vast majority of Unionists in Ulster. That sums up his view of what this debate has been about. He is interested only in cheap vote-getting. I hope that the people of Northern Ireland eject him from his seat for adopting that approach.
I hope that the order will be accepted without a Division, although I accept that that is unlikely, given the vote that was held on the previous order. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has often been said to work on the dark side of the political process, but I consider that he has been playing with the bright sciences of politics in working to achieve the geometrically possible, and vital, task of squaring the circle of the Northern Ireland dilemma.
I supported the Act that set up the Northern Ireland Assembly, but opposed any attempt to set timetables, on the ground that they were precipitate. When the Assembly came to be suspended, I opposed the Government as I considered that suspension to be a precipitate act. The Government believed that the suspension would have benefits for the internal processes of the Ulster Unionist party, which they considered to be necessary.
I thought that I was being consistent, but my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was being pragmatic. As a result of the suspension, we gained some space. The statement from the IRA is one of the most significant that has been made. People who refer to the Northern Ireland Arms Decommissioning Act 1997 as the position from which there must be no deviation may not feel that the IRA statement is significant enough, but I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire, who said that the significance lay in the fact that it was the IRA speaking.
In a meeting elsewhere in this building on the day when the 1997 Act was being debated, I accused Martin McGuinness of being a schizophrenic politician. I said that the position that he occupied meant that he could say, at one and the same time, "You're not talking about me because you're talking about the IRA", and, "You can't talk to me because you have to talk to the IRA--but the IRA says this, through my mouth." Now the IRA has said something in its own right. It has said that it will put its arms beyond use, completely and verifiably. The IRA has said that, not Sinn Fein. That is a new element in the debate.
Mr. Robert McCartney (North Down): Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the leading positions in Sinn Fein and the IRA are held by the same people? Mr. Adams, Mr. McGuinness and Mr. Pat Doherty, the vice-president of Sinn Fein, are all known and recognised by the security forces to be three of the seven-man IRA army council. So when Mr. McGuinness speaks, he is speaking as P. O'Neill.
Mr. Connarty: That is the hon. and learned Gentleman's view of the information that he has. Whether it is true or not, it is significant that, as long as the Sinn Fein leadership said that it could not speak for the IRA and the IRA would not speak directly, there could be no agreement between the IRA and the political process. The difference is that the rubicon has been crossed. It might turn out to be a risk taken by the IRA and the Sinn Fein leadership to move the process forward, which might lead to fragmentation. My worry about suspending the Assembly was that, if the fragmentation was not small, but if large parts of the IRA, with weapons, broke off and joined other organisations, the resulting internecine warfare would kill people in Northern Ireland. It would not simply be a question of the IRA versus the IRA, but would probably involve lots of innocent people. I hope
that that does not happen, but there is still a question over the political and military situation in Northern Ireland to be resolved.I have no aim for Northern Ireland or southern Ireland in terms of whether they will end up being united or divided. I am a democrat. I spoke with the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone at the launch conference of the Labour group of the Ulster Unionist movement for people interested in getting social reform on to the agenda. The three elements discussed were demilitarisation, democracy and the rule of law. We are moving steadily towards those three objectives. They may not be recognisable by people who see the process in terms that can be defined only by a 1970 perspective, but they are emerging, bit by bit, in Northern Ireland.
I will fight for the right of the people of Northern Ireland always to remain within the Union of the United Kingdom if they so choose. In that way, I am a committed Unionist. I come from a Catholic and a nationalist background, but I am a democrat. That is the fundamental base.
We have to move through this period, and part of doing so is passing the order to extend the Northern Ireland Arms Decommissioning Act 1997 for another year and, I hope, for further years to come. Decommissioning is restated by my right hon. Friend the Minister of State as making weapons permanently unusable. For me, that is what decommissioning is about. I saw the previous Government spike themselves on their interpretation of decommissioning as handing over weapons. When I heard the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, my right hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Marjorie Mowlam), and the Prime Minister use the same terms in the early part of this Parliament, I thought that we would never be able to move beyond that impasse. I believe that we now have a formula that will move us through the impasse to a peaceful future.
I believe that the militarists' theory will rot on the vine, and that the guns will rust in the dumps. Extending the 1997 Act for a further year will give us time to watch that happen.
1.4 am
Rev. Martin Smyth (Belfast, South): I appreciate the opportunity of making a brief contribution to the debate. I understand the points made by the hon. Member for Falkirk, East (Mr. Connarty).
There is one point that I should like to clarify, because it has come up several times. I refer to the comparison between Northern Ireland and South Africa. In South Africa, they were all South Africans. They are still having problems because they did not deal with the issue of weapons, and many folk, black and white, are suffering accordingly. I likewise understand something of the arguments of the hon. Member for Dumbarton (Mr. McFall).
We are happy that there are people living today who might not be living if the bombs had continued to go off. On the other hand, there are others not able to walk around freely in Northern Ireland because of the continued terrorist beatings, whether by loyalists or republicans, in which weapons have been used--not simply crowbars and baseball bats, but even guns. The
cries that I have heard from those within the nationalist community, as well as those within the loyalist or unionist community, are that we have to deal with that situation.One of the things that amaze me, especially with regard to hon. Members from Scotland and others in the House, is that we rushed to take legal weapons away from people after a lunatic shot children in Dunblane, and yet we do not seem to have the same passion for removing weapons from terrorists who are defying the country and two Governments, as well as the American Government.
In that context, I was speaking this morning to one who has laboured consistently with victims and others within Northern Ireland, right across the divide. He reflected the very point that the hon. Member for North-East Derbyshire (Mr. Barnes) made tonight. He told me that people from the nationalist community, including leaders of that community, are saying clearly, without any equivocation, that we have been giving too much to the provos, without putting pressure on them.
I represent Belfast, South, where one of those who previously had been active in republican terrorism is now calling himself the Northern Ireland Human Rights Watch. He has stated--this has not been refuted--that, although republican terrorists and paramilitary groups have said that people will not co-operate with the police, and that that is why the people are turning to the local provos to implement their mob law, the bulk of those who have been accused of social misdeeds have already been dealt with by the Royal Ulster Constabulary. People have been going to the police on those issues, but the argument is still going on in loyalist and republican circles that the gunmen on both sides are seeking to dominate their communities.
When we are extending this amnesty for another year it is salutary to ask ourselves how many weapons have been handed in and destroyed or put out of use in the last two years. To the best of my knowledge, there has been only a handful, from the Loyalist Volunteer Force.
There have been references to cynicism. Cynics in Northern Ireland are saying that the loyalist paramilitaries are not prepared to bring their weapons for destruction because they do not have that many; they have spent most of the money from their rackets to live a high life. It must be recognised that at times what seems to be cynicism is not cynicism, but realism. Maybe sometimes the House needs a dose of realism before starting to go down roads of dreams or fancies.
There are those of us who want peace, but we will never have true peace as long as we continue to allow terrorists, of whatever hue, to run rings round democratic governments and put pressure on democratic Members.
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