| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
3 pm
The original alteration under the 1998 Act was made specifically to facilitate an improvement of relations and to rectify a glaring wrong. My hon. Friend the Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) was appointed to the Irish Senate to give the people of the north a voice in the Oireachtas, but he then lost his seat in the then Assembly after a challenge by the Unionists. That bit of petty-mindedness was rectified by the 1998 Act. Had eminent people such as Senator Wilson of Enniskillen and John Robb, the distinguished surgeon, stood for election, such petty-mindedness would have prevented them from operating positively. John Robb was a great worker for reconciliation among the communities, as was Senator Wilson, who overcame a tremendous blight on his life as a result of the dreadful bombing in Enniskillen.
Mr. Robert McCartney: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. McNamara: With respect, no. I gave an undertaking to try to be brief because I know that the
hon. and learned Gentleman, the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) and the Government and Opposition Front-Bench spokesmen want to speak.The Bill is proper and right, and the Opposition appear to be standing on their heads in respect of previous legislation that they agreed to and passed and their approach to the Bill.
Every speaker across the way on the Conservative Benches, in particular the right hon. Member for Bracknell, argued that the measure is somehow or other a concession to Sinn Fein. The largest nationalist party in Northern Ireland, which collects the most votes and has the most seats, is the Social Democratic and Labour party. It supports the provision up to the hilt. We often find that those Conservative Members disguise their reluctance to support a policy with which they once agreed--the implementation of the Good Friday agreement--by saying that the Bill is another sop to terrorists and Sinn Fein. The largest political party in the nationalist community agrees with the measure and at no time and in no circumstances has it in any way advocated violence. Indeed, it has suffered for that, having been attacked by both sides over its strong, persistent refusal to espouse or to have anything to do with violence. On the role of the SDLP, we should welcome the fact that the Government introduced the Bill.
Mr. Gerald Howarth: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. McNamara: No, I will not, for reasons that I gave to the hon. and learned Member for North Down (Mr. McCartney).
Mr. McNamara: No. I extend those reasons to the hon. Member for West Tyrone (Mr. Thompson). I resisted the temptation to intervene in his speech, so I can say with honesty that I did not make any interventions.
It has been suggested that the Bill is a plot to make Sinn Fein an all-Ireland party. I hold no brief for Sinn Fein, but it is already an all-Ireland party. It already has representation in the Oireachtas and on the British-Irish Inter-Parliamentary Body. It will remain in those institutions, whether we pass the Bill or not. That will not affect its status or willingness to stand as a party in both parts of Ireland, which we know is its determination. Indeed, we know that the present coalition Government currently depend greatly for support on the four independent Members in Dail Eireann. Nothing new is being said.
The proposal involves not a great extension or a sub-revolutionary issue, but a recognition of the unique relationship between the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. It also denotes the Government's willingness to recognise the particular situation in which nationalists in the north find themselves and recognises that they have an aspiration and that they would cease to be able to express that aspiration if the Lords amendments were added to the Bill.
When we have thrown out the Lords amendments, I hope that the other place will think very carefully about whether it is using its position down the Corridor to savage and undermine the Good Friday agreement and the peace process for its own petty political ambitions.
Mr. Robert McCartney : Listening to the contributions of the hon. Members for Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) and for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) made me wonder whether I live on a different planet.
I have lived in Northern Ireland my entire life. I have worked intimately with both communities, and I have a reputation, which may seem strange to some, for being an entirely non-sectarian politician. That position has been endorsed publicly by at least two Taoisigh of the Irish Government.
What is the purpose of the Bill and this particular timing? A fundamental of attacking the democratic process has been to use the institutions of democracy to destroy it. Friedrich Engels, the political associate of Marx, was a particular advocate of that approach--he said that people who wanted to bring down and subvert an institution or a Government should make use of the very provisions that endorse the democratic process. Sinn Fein has been a master of that art. It has been inextricably linked with one of the most deadly, brutal and callous terrorist organisations in Europe. That position has been endorsed by the Prime Minister and successive Secretaries of State. Those two groups are inextricably linked, which means that they can never be separated.
When I consider the direction of, and progress in, the peace process, what do I see? I see the threat of physical violence, particularly to the mainland and the complex civilisation that great metropolitan areas offer. I see the targets that those areas offer. I see successive British Governments faced with the question of what to do in the face of a terrorist threat, which can be made good against our major cities.
There are two approaches to that problem. The first is to follow the advice of Lord Palmerston and say that England--he thought of the United Kingdom as England--has no long-term friends and no long-term enemies, merely interests. At present, the interests of the British Government are best served by appeasing the IRA. Such a policy does not work in the face of terror. It did not work between 1936 and 1940, when exactly the same methodology and surrender to terrorism were employed.
Another view--another tradition in British politics--was expressed by Lord Salisbury when he described surrender to the barbarians as a fatal vice that destroyed society and, indeed, turned an organised society into a mob of competing interests. That is exactly what that policy has done to Northern Ireland. It has turned what was an organised society into a mob of competing interests. The whole policy has encapsulated Salisbury's fatal vice.
Have no doubt: by any criteria, members of the IRA, with which Sinn Fein is inextricably linked, are barbarians. One of their barbarous acts was referred to by the hon. Member for Hull, North when he talked about Enniskillen. He tried to invert the argument by saying that Gordon Wilson, whose daughter was killed in that atrocity, nevertheless accepted an Irish Taoiseach's offer to become a member of the Irish Senate. That is true, but who committed the barbarity of Enniskillen? The IRA, which the Prime Minister tells us is inextricably linked with the one political party likely to benefit most from these provisions.
It could be logically argued--the hon. Member for Islington, North developed such an argument--that MEPs from Finland, Members of the Dail Eireann and Members
of the Scottish Parliament could bifurcate, do many things and be in different places at once. Logically, that is possible, but in practice it is impossible. That is shown by the fact that membership of this House is available to people in Commonwealth countries, but no one has taken advantage of that process, which is perhaps nothing more than an historical anomaly.The situation in Northern Ireland is very different because of what I described as the accident of proximity. Ireland is proximate to the United Kingdom mainland, and has a physically contiguous border with part of the United Kingdom--Northern Ireland. The influx of citizens of the Republic is such that their numbers must be recognised. Indeed, that is one of the factors that people do not understand. Since the Republic of Ireland became an independent sovereign country outside the Commonwealth, more than 1 million of its citizens have thought it advisable to live, work and enjoy the benefits of the land of the Anglo-Saxon oppressor--the United Kingdom.
3.15 pm
The truth is that both the content and the timing of the Bill are entirely dictated by a process of appeasement and of encouraging Sinn Fein to live up to promises that it never fulfils. It shows the vacillating and cowardly nature of successive British Governments, who have decided to succumb to the fatal vice and appease the barbarians.
We started off in 1993 with the Downing street declaration--the joint Government declaration--paragraph 10 of which was absolutely specific that any party that wished to participate in the democratic process of negotiations towards a settlement would first have to eschew violence permanently, and would have to demonstrate its total commitment to solely democratic means. Most democrats would say, "Fair do's. That's a basic principle of democracy," especially as there is no evidence from the democratic world of an Executive who claim to be democratic but who contain Ministers who are inextricably linked to an armed terrorist organisation. The reason why there is no example of that elsewhere in the world is that it goes to the very heart of the democratic process--it is the antithesis of the democratic process.
What have British Governments done? They have moved from the position in paragraph 10 to a midway position. Under the so-called Washington 3 principle, they permitted Sinn Fein-IRA to take part in the negotiations if they showed an earnest of their good faith by handing over a tranche of their weaponry and bombs. In August 1995, the Northern Ireland Office issued a statement to the effect that to do otherwise would be undemocratic and unconstitutional. That was the first of a number of positions from which successive British Governments resiled, and they gave in to the fatal vice of appeasing the barbarians.
The next step was to get Sinn Fein-IRA into the negotiations. Under the Government, they were allowed into the negotiations in July 1997 on the basis of a six-week ceasefire and the resumption of a ceasefire that had proved to be tactical, short-lived, totally cynical and broken at will with the Canary Wharf bomb.
That was not the end of it, because after Sinn Fein-IRA were admitted into the negotiations, successive Secretaries of State told the people of Northern Ireland that the negotiations were on a twin track: one track would
deliver a political settlement, and the other would deliver decommissioning. We were told that, in the end, we would have a political settlement on a democratic basis, with the fundamental and overriding requirement of democracy that all the parties to that democratic political settlement would be dedicated entirely to peaceful means, having abandoned their weaponry.Well, 10 April 1998 arrived and the parties signed the agreement, but the decommissioning train never even left the station. Not a single ounce of Semtex or a single bullet has yet been handed over. There again, democracy was to make a final contribution to appeasing the terrorists and exhibit the fatal vice.
The agreement was a total fudge. People talk about the Belfast agreement or the Good Friday agreement as if it was some miracle of peace. In fact, it encapsulated the basic fiction of trading Sinn Fein and the IRA as two distinct and separate entities, which was always what Sinn Fein wanted. Why? Because it wanted to carry on Friedrich Engels's principle of using the institutions of democracy to destroy it, and it could do that only by giving Sinn Fein the image of a totally independent party that has nothing to do with the IRA, who were armed.
The Bill is a further instalment of the fatal vice. In both its content and its timing, its purpose is to placate Sinn Fein-IRA, because they can deliver one thing that no one else can: destruction and death to the major cities of the United Kingdom, just as Hitler was able to do. In those days, Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Halifax followed the line of appeasement and gave in to the fatal vice. Only when a man appeared and adopted a policy that said, "We will pay no more ransom and we will stand up for what is right, democratic and honourable" were the United Kingdom and Europe saved from fascism.
The IRA will not go away. It will continue to extract further and further ransoms.
The House should consider this. In 1939, bombs were kept out of London because the Czechs were sacrificed. In this House the then Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, asked "What do we know of this faraway country?" He spoke of "this middle European country of which we know little." When it comes to the sacrifice of a foreign interest such as the Czechs, or the sacrifice of the loyal British subjects--the pro-Union subjects--of Northern Ireland, we perhaps find that both are expendable.
One does not like to make it too evident. One does not do it in one fell swoop. One employs the gradualist principle. We are talking about slices of salami, and this is another slice: another derogation from the principle of democracy which states that terrorists and their political frontmen should never be placated. We should never, ever surrender to the fatal vice of appeasing the barbarians.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |