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7.34 pm
Mr. Stephen Pound (Ealing, North): In my limited experience in this House, I have heard many right hon. and hon. Members say that great speeches have been made. On many occasions, that has been polite rather than true. However, tonight I have heard speeches from the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) and the right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir B. Mawhinney) that rank high in the parliamentary canon, and I feel privileged to have heard them tonight.
I wish to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. Maginnis), who has recovered from an unfortunate incident in Dungannon last week. He is a gentleman whose integrity and courage have earned him many friends and admirers within this building--many from among those who one would not usually associate with those categories. I am proud to be one of them and I hope that the House will welcome the hon. Gentleman back following that unfortunate injury.
There has been talk that the implementation of the Patten report and the Bill is somehow a peripheral matter in the broad sweep of modern history and in comparison with the Good Friday agreement. If I say nothing else tonight that is remembered, I wish to say that this Bill is vital not just to the development of peace in Northern Ireland, but to the furtherance of the Good Friday agreement.
Last night, I heard Pat Doherty MLA state that, in his opinion, the Bill was more important than the Good Friday agreement. I disagree. It is not more important, but the successful implementation of Patten is central to the Good Friday agreement. That is why it is vital that we do not lose track of what the Secretary of State is trying to do. As has been said, this is not Patten pure or Patten pale. It may be Patten pragmatic, but it is Patten with potential for peace and progress.
Mr. Martin Salter (Reading, West): Is my hon. Friend suggesting that it is incumbent upon the Secretary of State and the Government to implement every jot, comma and semi-colon of Patten? The Government were obliged--and committed--to deliver an independent commission and then debate its recommendations. Surely we are not bound by every single dot, comma and syllable of Patten.
Mr. Pound: The fact that Secretary of State is assailed by the Scylla and Charybdis of Unionism and nationalism
on either side indicates to me that he is doing a fairly good job. If the House were unanimous in either condemnation or support, I would be worried. My hon. Friend is correct that that is not our remit tonight.We must be aware also of the position of the Government of the Republic of Ireland, who are our supportive partners in the implementation of the Good Friday agreement. Any casual glance at the press and media in the Republic of Ireland will confirm that we cannot underestimate the significance of the implementation of Patten in the other 28 counties. [Hon. Members: "Twenty-six."] I apologise. It has been many years since my family sprang from the fertile soil of county Cork.
I have been pleased to hear that some of the concerns expressed today have been addressed by the Secretary of State, or that he has indicated that he is responding to them. My hon. Friend the Member for Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) asked about the restriction of the ombudsman's powers, and we had an indication that that was under review. The question of the restriction of district policing partnerships to sub-groups for the Belfast area has been raised. I see from the Bill that it is now suggested that there will be sub-groups within the Belfast area, and I am delighted to see that.
The question of the oath has been raised by many people. We have been told that for the oath to be attested by serving men and women of the RUC would be illegal; that it would somehow create a new RUC; that it would be impossible; and that it would be subject to legal challenge. I implore my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to look again at this subject. If there is one thing that would draw a line in the sand and say that we were starting the new policing of Northern Ireland from this day and in this way, it is the symbolic significance of the oath. Oaths and symbols, as we know, are important.
The hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) referred to the question of political appointments and was concerned about a political ratcheting. In many ways, it is the hardest possible thing for someone who lives in the safety of west London--distant from the issue, albeit close to Hammersmith--to ask men and women who have lived their political lives, in many cases their whole adult lives, in the shadow of the gunman and the bomber, to accept that there is such a thing as redemption. Is that so presumptuous of me? I ask whether it is not better, in some ways, for people such as Cathal Crumley, who was elected mayor of Londonderry last night, to be inside the political process than to be outside on the streets with the guns.
I may be being presumptuous, and it may be intensely difficult or even impossible for hon. Members, but I implore them at least to consider the prospect that some people who have engaged in gangsterism--or terrorism or freedom fighting, call it what one will--have a future in a democracy. That future will not exist if they are excluded. They must be brought in and included if the process is to mean anything at all.
Birth is a painful process, and rebirth can be equally painful. However, the glittering prize is almost in sight. The innate genius and extraordinary talent of the six counties of Northern Ireland--that great powerhouse with one of the best educational systems in Europe, which produces engineers, architects, poets, musicians, painters
and playwrights in profusion--depend on the process. The brakes can be taken off that extraordinary culture and it can achieve its full potential. Please let us look to the future, not the past. We can fight 1690 over and over again, but I am more concerned about 2090. There is talent in the Chamber tonight, and there is so much talent in Northern Ireland. Let us see that flower. Let us discuss the minutiae in Committee, but let us keep our eyes on the far horizon--on the future--and not over our shoulders to the blood-stained past.7.42 pm
Mr. Robert McCartney (North Down): The hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Pound) has asked us to raise our eyes to the future and to leave the detailed dissection of the Bill to Committee. Perhaps he is correct. Perhaps this debate on the future of the Royal Ulster Constabulary should be viewed in its overall political context.
Immediately after the signing of the Downing street declaration, which stated that Britain no longer had any selfish economic or strategic interest in remaining in Northern Ireland, the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), the then Prime Minister, made a national broadcast. He declared that the only people who could give peace were the men of violence, but everyone knows that peace from such men could come only from their suppression or their appeasement. I say with some regret and sadness that both the right hon. Gentleman and his successor chose appeasement. This Bill forms part of that appeasement.
The IRA finally gave its answer to the plea for peace in its recent statement. It said that there would be no lasting peace until the British abandoned their claim to Northern Ireland and ended partition. All else in the statement was conditional on that. It also made it clear that the guns and the bombs would remain silent only for as long as the full implementation of the Belfast agreement facilitated the success of its objectives. The threat to the British mainland remains, as the recent bomb on Hammersmith bridge demonstrates. The retention of the IRA arsenal and the destruction and demoralisation of the RUC are the twin pillars of IRA strategy for attaining its political aims of the abandonment of the British claim to any part of Ireland and the end of partition.
Ulster Unionists were lured into voting for re-entry into the Executive with Sinn Fein, partly on the promises of the published contents of this Bill. We should bear in mind the fact that the police board could include members of Sinn Fein, aka IRA, as could some of the local boards, but the Secretary of State had prudently withheld to himself and the Chief Constable certain powers. Now what has happened? There has been an immediate outcry from the SDLP which, acting as proxies for Sinn Fein--whose members do not grace this Chamber--has put forward amendments to which the Secretary of State has indicated he may agree. That will all be done to prevent the IRA from returning to violence. However, to adopt a policy of reducing security defences against terrorism and demoralising the RUC in the face of terrorists determined to remain armed is worse than a mistake. It is a crime. It is a crime that will be perpetrated on the law-abiding people of Northern Ireland, who have for 30 years suffered death and destruction at the hands of terrorists.
Those members of the armed forces and the RUC who have died in their hundreds--I see that this is a humorous subject for some on the other side of the Chamber--and
been maimed in their thousands in defence of democracy and the rule of law will all have suffered in vain, because terror and the threat of terror will have succeeded in achieving their objectives. No disciplined force, regardless of the quality of its administration or technology, will succeed if its morale is destroyed. The members of the RUC who risked all to remove terrorists from the community upon which they preyed have seen all those terrorists--murderers and violent psychopaths--returned to that community. The members of the RUC see serving members of the IRA army council installed as Government Ministers in charge of the education of their children. Those RUC members witness provisions in the Bill that will place members of Sinn Fein, whom the Prime Minister himself tells us are inextricably linked with the IRA, placed on the police board to which the Chief Constable will be accountable.RUC members know, as do the Chief Constable and the present police authority, that the removal of the RUC name will scarcely alter the idea of balanced recruitment. However, the imbalance is almost entirely due to the violence, social exclusion and intimidation offered to Catholic recruits, and that will continue until any police force is completely neutered of any anti-terrorist capacity, and it is that capacity that is the central issue.
I shall draw a comparison from history. In 1918, the Royal Irish Constabulary--the predecessor of the RUC--which performed similar paramilitary duties against terrorism had a Catholic Chief Constable. Some 40 per cent. of its officers were Catholic and more than 70 per cent. of its constables on the ground were Catholic. That did not prevent Sinn Fein-IRA slaughtering more than 400 members of the RIC between 1918 and 1921. So the idea that a manufactured balance of Catholic recruits will make a difference is false.
I come now to the use of the word "Royal" in the RUC's title, and in doing so I shall make some personal observations. My family has served the flag and the Crown of the United Kingdom for generations. As a common seaman, my father fought in the Royal Navy at the battle of Jutland. My maternal uncles fought in France: one of them died there, and the survivor served for a further 25 years in the Royal Marines. All my sisters and brothers served in the armed forces when they were of age. My brother served in the Royal Ulster Rifles and was wounded in Italy. My two sisters served in the Women's Royal Air Force.
As a child of five, I saw the dead piled high after German raids hit within 100 yd of where I lived. In the morning, and at the going down of the sun, will we remember them? Or will we barter away their flag, identity and sense of belonging to appease those who hate everything for which they fought and died? This month, we celebrate the miracle of Dunkirk. A policy of appeasement almost destroyed the British Army and threatened the existence of this country and of democracy itself. Have we learned nothing from that?
In 1938, to keep bombs out of London, the British Government abandoned the Czechs as they would now abandon the pro-Union people of Northern Ireland. Our national reputation reached its lowest ebb then. Its finest hour was to come, when the British Government stopped appeasing terror and confronted it. This country, which saved democracy for the world, cannot have declined so far that it cannot preserve democracy in a part of its own kingdom.
Lord Palmerston stated the infamous doctrine of realpolitik when he said that England had no long-term friends or enemies, only interests. For the sake of Northern Ireland and the continuance of the United Kingdom, I hope that he was wrong.
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