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Dr. Palmer: In his introduction, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State offered an honest and intelligent analysis of the problem and stated clearly what we all regard as the central issue on the question of badges. It is not clear to me that every police force requires a badge, especially if it is likely to be a divisive symbol. There was a time when the Labour party had a badge. Giving it up was one of the reforms introduced by the Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Mandelson), as part of the new Labour approach. We all seem to have survived its loss. On the issue of the crown and the harp, in principle a balance of symbols is unlikely to be objectionable, but it seems to me--I stand to be corrected if I am wrong--that the harp has rarely in the history of Ireland been perceived as a divisive political symbol, whereas the crown has been the subject of controversy, for reasons with which we are all familiar.
The hon. Member for West Tyrone (Mr. Thompson) says that the two communities in Northern Ireland are not equal--at least in power. One community is a majority community. He says that we should not try to please everybody, and I do not think that I am over-interpreting his words when I say that he thinks that, if we have to choose, we should choose to please the majority rather than the minority. Such an approach might be appropriate when deciding where to put a motorway, but as a guiding principle for a police force it is profoundly misguided.
A police force needs to represent and be seen to represent the common interests of both communities. A supremacist view, placing the interests of one
community over those of another, has as little place in the conduct of the police as it would in the conduct of the Army, the judiciary or any other organisation or body that aspires to represent the community as a whole. In common with the overwhelming majority of people, I believe that we have to move beyond that sort of sectarianism.The hon. Member for West Tyrone should bear in mind that militant Unionism constitutes an extremely small minority among the people of the United Kingdom. The interests of the people of the United Kingdom are certainly not served by a policy that promotes division within Northern Ireland.
Mr. Robert McCartney: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman realises that an extremist minority of the nationalist minority has consistently used violence, including against the majority on the mainland. That has never been a feature of the Unionist people.
Dr. Palmer: I am not entirely sure that no Unionist has ever been guilty of violence, and even if that were true, it would not necessarily follow that every peaceful view of the nationalist community should be overridden in the interests of the majority. We should seek a solution that is acceptable to both sides, because that is the only plausible basis on which to build a police force.
It has been suggested that some officers in the existing RUC would feel uncomfortable in a police force whose badge did not include the crown. It seems to me that an officer to whom the constitutional debate is so crucial that he feels unable to serve because of a badge that does not reflect the traditional sectarian divide, is probably best advised to consider whether he will be well placed in the new police force. We need a police force that is acceptable to both communities, we need officers on that force who are ready to serve both communities, and we need a symbol that reflects that resolve.
Mr. Trimble: It will come as no surprise to hon. Members if I say that I do not believe that the report of the Patten commission should be treated as holy writ. The members of that commission were ordinary human beings--that is a compliment to some of them--and like all human beings, they are fallible. That applies, of course, to the chairman, Mr. Chris Patten. He is equally fallible. One of the mistakes that Patten made was in the treatment of certain symbolic matters, as they are called. From the comments that he made at the time that the report was published, it is clear that he was profoundly confused about political and constitutional issues.
The Secretary of State made an important point when he said that he did not want the symbolic issues to be used as a means of reigniting or reopening the constitutional issue. Symbols are important at many levels, one of which is that they are indicators of constitutional issues. The most important point about the Belfast agreement, from the point of view of Unionists, is that if the agreement is accepted and applied, it settles the constitutional issue. If the agreement does not do that, it is of little value.
The most important thing, for Unionists, is that the agreement settles constitutional issues, if it is applied. On the constitutional issues, the agreement is clear. It goes beyond an acceptance of a consent principle--it accepts
the legitimacy of Northern Ireland's position as part of the United Kingdom. That is spelled out explicitly in the very first paragraph of the agreement, and the term "legitimacy" is used repeatedly.All those who say that they accept and are committed to the Belfast agreement must, if they are being sincere, also say that they accept that Northern Ireland is a legitimate part of the United Kingdom. I am sorry to have to say that in dealing with the symbolic issues and with the flag and the crown, nationalists are demonstrating that, deep down, they do not accept the agreement. That is what it boils down to. Nationalists have raised the issue of the Union flag and the crown, and in so doing are saying to us, "We do not really accept that Northern Ireland is a legitimate part of the United Kingdom. We do not really accept one of the fundamental building blocks of the Belfast agreement."
It may be that people have not thought the matter through correctly. They may not have fully internalised what the agreement means. The chief value of the agreement, from the point of view of the Unionist community, is that it settles the constitutional issue. If we find that the constitutional issue is reopened by constant challenges to the expressions of that legitimacy, support for the agreement will rapidly unwind. Because I do not want that, I am anxious that we get the issues right and that we stick to the agreement. Where there is a conflict between the agreement and Patten, the agreement overrides. Let us be clear about that. That is relevant, too, to a later group of amendments, in which, to the Government's eternal shame, they are legalising discrimination. The agreement should override that also, but we shall deal with that argument shortly.
7.15 pm
When the Secretary of State comes to deal, as he must, with the difficult issues that relate to the flag and the badge, he must bear in mind that the Union flag and the crown are symbols of the constitutional position. The next time that the Secretary of State goes to visit the Chief Constable at RUC headquarters, which I trust he does from time to time, I recommend that he pauses to look at the display cases there, containing memorabilia of police history. Included among that, he will see one panel displaying the badges of the other 66 constabularies in the United Kingdom--all the badges of every police constabulary in Wales, Scotland and England. He will see that on all 66 badges there is a crown. I am sorry to have to tell him that the crown is right at the top on all 66 police badges.
If Northern Ireland ends up with the only constabulary in the United Kingdom without a crown at the top of its badge, we clearly have an anomaly, which points out something of considerable significance. It will be so interpreted and so read by many people--not just by those who vote Unionist, but by a much wider range of people.
We are dealing with a political ramp, which misunderstands and misinterprets the agreement. There is an absolute imperative on the Secretary of State to sustain the agreement. He should not take the view that whatever is said from the Unionist Benches, Unionist compliance with the provisions can be assumed. We regard the
Unionist community as being generally law-abiding and wishing to uphold the law and support the police service, but that was not always the case.That has not always been the case in some localities in Northern Ireland over the past 30 years, and historically it has not always been the case. In the 1880s and 1890s, there was a very low level of acceptance of the police force by the populace of Belfast because of the way in which the force had behaved in disturbances in Belfast at that time. Unionist compliance with the measure should not be taken for granted.
The present RUC badge is, in fact, the badge of the Royal Irish Constabulary. It was developed in the 19th century, which is why it includes the shamrock and the harp. The harp has always been a symbol of Irish nationalism, which is why, as my hon. Friends have pointed out, it is found on the Irish passport and on Irish Government documents. It has always been a specifically nationalist symbol. Although Unionists have tolerated it in the police service and on Army badges, that has been on the basis that it is accompanied by a crown to balance it.
That badge was originally developed in the 19th century as the badge of the Royal Irish Constabulary. Interestingly, in 1922, when the Royal Ulster Constabulary was being formed, the then Unionist Government proposed that there be a new badge, which would have been, one might even say, unambiguously Unionist, as it would have embodied what we call the Northern Ireland flag surmounted with the crown. However, members of the RUC at the time, most of whom had come from the Royal Irish Constabulary, refused to accept the badge. Five thousand new badges had been made and were about to be issued, and the men refused to take them. The Government climbed down, scrapped the new badge, and allowed the old badge to be retained. History sometimes repeats itself. Again, compliance should not be assumed in the present situation. I make the point as a warning. What happened in the past is well known to the people concerned, even if it comes as a surprise to some on the Government Front Bench. Compliance should not be assumed on these matters, and the Government would be well advised to move carefully.
Finally, something that the Secretary of State said gravely concerned me and my colleagues. He asked what was the point of coming all this distance and suffering all this pain if we end up losing the prize as a result of symbolic issues. That line of argument will lead him into endless appeasement and will result in him facing endless demands as part of the purely political ramp that does not have a significant resonance within the community at large. The existence of the badge and the name of the Union flag did not deter people after the first ceasefire, when there was a remarkable increase in the number of those from nationalist and Catholic backgrounds applying to join the RUC. A number of people who are not in party politics but who come from that community believe that there will be an increase in recruitment, and the Secretary of State must not be put off by people who are advancing a purely political ramp.
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