Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80 - 99)

TUESDAY 10 FEBRUARY 2004

MR ALISTAIR SIMPSON, MR DAVID HOEY, MR IAIN MCAFEE AND MR EDDIE KELLEY

  Q80  Mr Luke: This question stems from comments submitted from the Apprentice Boys. You have made it clear that you have found it difficult to develop a close working relationship—I think you refer to it as a relationship of trust—with the Parades Commission. How would you describe your relationship with the Commission? Do you think the suggestions in the Quigley Report would make any improvements?

  Mr Simpson: The last time the Apprentice Boys officially met Tony Holland and the full group of the Parades Commission was on 28 October 2001. Along with the governing body from Londonderry, we had Apprentice Boys from Belfast, Portadown and Castlederg which we felt represented the whole of the province. Half-way through the meeting we made suggestions for a better way forward and immediately Tony Holland turned round and said to us, "I do not take orders from anyone. Meeting closed". The Apprentice Boys have not officially met the Parades Commission since. I feel that Tony Holland has a different outlook on the situation compared to the former chairman of the Commission, Alistair Graham, who met with us on many occasions, he met residents' groups on many occasions from different parts of the country, he had gone and visited the parades and he had come along and discussed the whole thing. We seemed to get on better when Alistair Graham was at the top, but Tony Holland seems to stay in his Ivory Tower in Belfast and dictate to the rest of us what we should do. On many occasions we were told by him that we have to have talks if we were going to get anywhere. Yet when we suggested having talks with him and put forward ideas he was having nothing to do with it. That immediately put us on guard and made us mistrust the Parades Commission.

  Mr Hoey: That is coupled with the "Spygate" issue of last year where a number of our members were approached by the police to look after their security on the basis that information from within the Parades Commission was in the hands of the IRA. We have not had any communication from the Parades Commission with regard to that matter. A fax containing names and addresses of all the participants of the parade was sent to a Sinn Fein member. They said, "Don't worry. Our security is tight. It will never happen again," and then our members had visits from the police. We are not being told of any way in which that information can be secure within the Parades Commission. They talk about confidentiality; that is nonsense. At that level it is just very difficult to go in. Those of us who have been in there expect that our names are out there, but it is obviously very difficult to ask others to go in when there is the chance that those names will be passed to the IRA at some stage. The Commission is being compromised and there is no way out of that. Given that the Parades Commission has made no effort to sympathise or to make any contact with us in this regard trust is a very long way off.

  Mr Kelley: We met with the original Parades Commission with a view to them having an insight into what our mindset was, why we did what we did and how we did what we did. A year after we met with them they were disbanded and the new Commission was brought in and we made the same offer to the second Commission. We wrote to them in February 2000 asking for a meeting. We had our meeting in May 2000 and that meeting lasted 15 to 20 minutes. At the outset of the meeting Mr Holland advised us that there was a conflict and he would have to leave the meeting at eight o'clock but that he would arrange another meeting with us. We waited for the date. We did not get one. We phoned and we were told that only one commissioner was prepared to meet with us. I do not feel that that gives us any sort of reassurance that they are going to be fair and even-handed. We are still waiting to be contacted by the Parades Commission. We are a voluntary organisation. Most of our members work for a living. We are province-wide in our membership. We have bands from Londonderry and we have bands from Keady. All our bands are scattered throughout the province. I think there is one county that is not represented in our membership. We are a voluntary organisation and we all have our livelihoods to seek. When we asked for an evening meeting we were told, "We don't do evening meetings. If you want to meet us you will have to come during the day." That does not foster trust. We warned the first Commission and the second Commission that we were not happy with security matters. We asked for their staff to be covered by the Official Secrets Act. We were told that was not necessary, that their security was adequate and that nothing untoward would happen and we should trust them. What was the net result? As previously stated, details of our membership were sent to Sinn Fein and as a direct result of that my colleague's house is like a fortress. You need to phone this man 10 minutes before you arrive so he can get his door unlocked because his name was on the list. Does that inspire trust, gentlemen? It does not for me.

  Q81  Mr Luke: I think it was Mr Simpson who referred to the fact that he had been asked to make representations on the Quigley Report. Will you be considering making a representation?

  Mr Hoey: We do not know what to do. No one has asked us to make one. We do not know what this consultation process is about because nobody has told us. There has been no communication. We have written to both Jane Kennedy on the matter of IRA targeting and we have written to Paul Murphy because we did not see why it had to be extended, we still do not understand why. Everybody had plenty of time to read Quigley and plenty of time to respond. Six months is a pretty long time in anybody's book. We do not know what this consultation process is. We have not been told officially it has been extended. We read about it in the newspapers. We have not been told what the process is for making representations. We have asked for meetings and we have had no response to that. When we asked for a meeting, all the other Loyal Orders had a meeting but not the Apprentice Boys of Derry and yet we are the only people who have engaged with the Parades Commission. We do not understand. In terms of chasing and hassling and harrowing, we are a bit tired. This is the fourth or fifth review. You are doing a review before the other review has concluded. We are just a wee bit sceptical about where things are going given that issues from your last report have not been addressed and indeed have been specifically ignored by the Parades Commission. We are getting a little bit tired.

  Mr McAfee: Our organisation has not received any notice. This is the first time I have heard about an extension. Maybe I have missed something in the newspapers. I have never received any correspondence whatsoever.

  Q82  Mr Bailey: This is a question for the Apprentice Boys. Both you and the Bogside Residents Group have been identified in the Quigley review as "models of genuine engagement". How has that been achieved and what do you think has been the key to that success?

  Mr Simpson: When I hear people coming out with statements like that it angers me, especially when it is the Parades Commission and they have done it on umpteen occasions. Less than a month ago Tony Holland, when I met him at another gathering, told me that we were "a model".

  Q83  Chairman: This is not the Parades Commission, this is Sir George Quigley.

  Mr Simpson: I want to give the answer to the question. The Apprentice Boys have spoken to every conceivable body possible. We saw the Bogside Residents Group as the people who were doing the damage in the City of Londonderry. In August alone they did £5 million-worth of damage. The following December they did £4 million-worth of damage. How do you talk to people with that sort of mentality? We decided that we would talk to the other residents of the Bogside, we would talk to businessmen, to church leaders and priests to tell them what the Apprentice Boys Association is all about and out of that grew the Maiden City Festival which has been very successful in the City of Londonderry. A lot of hard work went on behind the scenes with the Parades Commission, with the head of the police and the Minister for Home Affairs. The Apprentice Boys did not sit back and the whole thing happened; we worked hard at it. The Parades Commission seem to have pulled the rug from under us and we seem to be in limbo now. I would like to see a situation where this body here today could at least do something to rebuild the confidence that we have lost.

  Mr Hoey: Everybody uses Derry as a good example because it is a very large parade that goes through a city that is perceived as Nationalist. There was a comment in the Human Rights Commission's submission about tolerance and respect. I think to a certain extent at many levels that has been shown by both sides in Derry but it is absent in other areas. There is a lack of respect in other areas. Sometimes we draw Derry out and say that it is a wonderful example of genuine engagement, but the work done in the lower Ormeau area by our colleague, Tony Cheavers, and the Belfast Walking Club has been exceptional. They have had 18 meetings and we have 1,100 pages of minutes from the early stages of dialogue which was across the table with a single facilitator. You cannot ignore that amount of dialogue. The previous Parades Commission certainly recognised the value and the sincerity of that process, but it did not end up anywhere and the reason it did not end up anywhere is because of the Parades Commission and their attitudes. Derry is a peculiar city. You cannot simply say it works in Derry so it will work everywhere else because it will not. That does not mean to say there are not other examples of very hard work being done by the Apprentice Boys in terms of engagement with local communities and representatives of those communities, it is simply that nobody bothers looking at those because they have not succeeded and it is an embarrassment to many people that the Apprentice Boys have not succeeded in reaching a conclusion because it reflects on the other communities much more harshly.

  Q84  Mr Bailey: What did the Parades Commission do that undermined the efforts you had made for engagement there? Secondly, assuming that you think your engagement has been successful and there is a body of opinion that certainly does, what do you think you need to do to sustain that success in the future?

  Mr Simpson: If the Parades Commission would come down to earth and meet the grass-roots not only of organisations like ours but of ordinary people they would get a better understanding of what is happening. If Northern Ireland is to go forward the politics of Northern Ireland will have to be seen to be working. I believe it has to come back into the hands of the people of Northern Ireland. No disrespect to those from across the water, but we have got to be in charge of our own future and our own identity. That might be a mouthful to come out with, but time has shown that the English politician has come over here and tried to tell us what to do. We have been living with 30 years of violence, death and destruction. Surely we are the ones that ought to give the answer at the end of the day.

  Q85  Chairman: We are going very wide indeed.

  Mr Hoey: There are very particular circumstances in Londonderry. You would to undertake an exercise where you sit down and look at the particular circumstances of Londonderry and compare them with other areas. It really is not easy to give a simple answer to your question because it is too complicated.

  Q86  Mr Bailey: I believe Mr Simpson said earlier that the Parades Commission had pulled the rug from under your feet. I am still not clear what they did.

  Mr Simpson: That was the last meeting that we had with the Apprentice Boys representing the whole of the province in Northern Ireland. We were trying to come to an agreement for our members in the whole of Northern Ireland and Tony Holland thought that we were dictating to him. We were not dictating to him, we were putting forward suggestions and that is the way forward with any group that is going into consultation. We felt we had been left without an answer because we had gained no more mileage from having consultations with the Parades Commission than what the Orange Order had accepted.

  Mr Hoey: The Parades Commission made a determination in December 2002 with respect to parades in Londonderry. There had been no consultation prior to that. It was in respect to four bands that they believed should not be parading in Londonderry. We had not been consulted about this in the run up to that determination, it just landed on our table. Not only were most of those bands not parading in Londonderry and therefore there was no need for the determination and if they had been asked they would have been told those bands were not parading, it also meant that there was a determination on the table and we were not ready for it. If you make a determination there are those people, no matter what the issue is, who will start focusing on that issue and create problems. If we are not aware of what is going on and we are not being made aware of what is going on then we are not ready for it and we cannot prepare for it and that is half the job and we have to prepare people for it. We still do not know who it was that said about these four bands because the Parades Commission will not talk to us. We believe a growing issue is where the Parades Commission are picking on bands very specifically, without evidence and without due pause and that is going to cause us difficulties at some stage. That is largely outside our control and we do not understand why this is happening.

  Q87  Chairman: Can we please ask to have slightly briefer answers. We are going back to the same point again and again and again and we have heard it all the first time.

  Mr Kelley: The question you asked was what the Parades Commission does for us. We have a member band in Maghera who organised a parade and received a determination. Both Iain and I attended when that parade took place. The conditions laid down in the determination were stringently adhered to, so much so that at the end of the day the Authorised Officer came over to us and said that it had been a very well run parade. The following year the same organiser put in an application for the same parade on the same route and we got a further set of conditions and determinations. Those were adhered to. This year, on top of the determinations that we received the year before last and last year, the Parades Commission came in again with further conditions. The band involved adhered to all the conditions and the two previous parades had been run without incident. There were no complaints from the police or to the police. It is almost as though we are playing on a football field that is like that (indicating) and when you get half way it goes like that and the goalposts are not there any more, they are back here. We do not know where we are or how to police them.

  Q88  Rev Smyth: There was a joint gathering convened by businessmen and there may have been one person from the Residents' Group there along with somebody from the Apprentice Boys of Derry, but there has been no meeting between the Bogside Residents Group and the Apprentice Boys, has there?

  Mr Simpson: I always maintained that I would not meet the Bogside Residents Group face to face but that I would meet residents of the Bogside without any problem. The meetings we had were called by the businessmen.

  Q89  Rev Smyth: I want to deal with the other question since it does affect me as the representative for south Belfast. Am I not right in saying that the reference at an earlier hearing to a decision affecting something 100 miles away was when a decision was made that the Walking Club could not walk down the Ormeau Road because it would have an impact on the gathering in Londonderry.

  Mr Simpson: Yes, of course the reason why that came across was that the residents of the Bogside Residents Group, namely "Donncha" MacNiallais, had gone to south Belfast and had a meeting with the Residents' Group and they had decided that, either at Londonderry or south Belfast, there would be problems and therefore the parade would have to be called off.

  Q90  Mark Tami: This is a question for the Ulster Bands Association. You are very critical of the role of Authorised Officers and talk about them being hostile to the mediation process. Could you perhaps elaborate a bit on that?

  Mr McAfee: We can only use our own experiences. We have met some Authorised Officers who have been very open and good, but some are almost impossible to deal with. Face to face they are not too bad but two days later you may find that the goalposts seem to have moved. It is as though there is a persona put forward when you meet them and when they meet with opposition or whatever you want to call them their attitude changes or maybe the drive up the road is enough to change their attitude. Another incident this year was where there was a parade in Carshalton which had been deemed to be contentious in the eyes of the residents of the community. The Authorised Officer met the band and there were conditions imposed and then met. The only problem was the PSNI asked for it to be held back for ten minutes because a group of local people wanted to get out before the parade, which was agreed and the leader of the band held them back. The parade met the timescale, it met the conditions and the leader in charge of that parade shook the organiser's hand at the end of the parade. We had SDLP members standing watching it and I have spoken to them recently and they have no problem with it. Eddie touched upon the fact that you can seem to do no right.

  Q91  Mark Tami: You are more positive about community forums. Why would they be different?

  Mr McAfee: I am a member of the local one in Ballymoney where we sit down and there is a range of views taken from the SDLP, the Republicans and people come from a camogie club. It might not solve all the problems, but we were able to talk about issues in very structured surroundings.

  Q92  Mark Tami: This is a question for the Apprentice Boys of Derry. You talk of informal and trusted persons playing a more positive role. Are you talking about Authorised Officers? If not, who are you talking about and what is your view of the role of Authorised Officers?

  Mr Hoey: When you go into dialogue the people involved have to trust each other. I do not know who those people are. In Londonderry it was the businessmen who were entrusted to take the process forward. We had an agreed facilitator, Avila Kilmurray, who was head of the Northern Ireland Voluntary Trust at the time, who chaired the meetings in Belfast for us and that was an agreed trusted person. Her job was not to take part in them and he let the two sides talk together. Our experience of Authorised Officers is that they are a very mixed bunch. At a meeting with the Parades Commission back in the early days we unveiled that the Authorised Officer was holding back information that was crucial to the decision because he did not think it was very important. We have Authorised Officers who are trying to engage and to facilitate engagement and they are the ones that we never hear of. I think a problem in the past year has been that I believe the Parades Commission has now taken on directly the employment of their Authorised Officers. We have noticed a change in Authorised Officers because now they work for the Parades Commission directly. The two are playing off against each other; they do not seem to be working in tandem. Those with experience of the issues seem to be in some sort of conflict with the Parades Commission and the Parades Commission are putting Authorised Officers as a barrier to the Parades Commission which is creating tensions in terms of trying to find a peaceful settlement.

  Q93  Mark Tami: So it is more of a mixed bag.

  Mr Hoey: It is a very mixed bag.

  Mr McAfee: The word trust was brought up earlier. We had an incident three years ago at an Orange parade where the Authorised Officer was watching the parade and we had an interest because the band was taking part the following month. The Authorised Officer was seen getting into a local Sinn Fein MLA car to drive off. Does that instil trust? That may not seem significant, but what that symbolises is very significant.

  Mr Kelley: In all my time of dealing with the Parades Commission I have yet to see an Authorised Officer's report on either a discussion or a parade that has passed. If these people have a problem we do not hear about it and we cannot address it. The first time we discover it is when the Parades Commission hand out a determination on the following year's parade. When we go to meet them to ask them what the problem is they tell us, "It's confidential. We cannot tell you."

  Q94  Mr Pound: I think that is a very interesting point. It is one that we were not possibly going to pursue today. Every Saturday I mark the referee who officiates at the game that I am at and the referee marks the club and we see each other's reports. I appreciate we are talking about transparency. Sir George Quigley is not a great distance away from us and he is hearing what is said. One of the core proposals of Sir George's review is the abolition of the Parades Commission and its replacement with two separate bodies. I want to ask the Apprentice Boys a question. In your memorandum you said how dissatisfied you are about the proposal for a Facilitation Agency. What would be your alternative?

  Mr Hoey: We have been quite specific in terms of how we would envisage the development from Quigley. I think Sir George raised the Scottish system which has a different legal process. We do not need more bodies set up. We need things to be simple, clear, transparent and fair. If you have two bodies there is going to be competition, conflict, all sorts of problems. We want a simple process. If there was a register of parades everybody would know when these parades were. There are only a few parades that suddenly get thrown into the pot at the last minute. There could be a register of parades, a period of time in which you could raise objections and that would be heard by the registrar; the registrar would make a ruling after considering all the facts in an open hearing and everybody could come in and say what their objections were to that parade, if there were any objections. The police, the local residents or whoever wants to come in could simply put their objections down and then we would have the ruling by the registrar. If a conflict remained then it would go straight to a tribunal and it would decide.

  Q95  Mr Pound: You say that you fear the tactical use of some of the formal processes. Can you imagine a situation in which a public meeting would take place to comment or inform about a particular parade?

  Mr Hoey: It would be a public hearing rather than a public meeting. If people were disorderly they would be removed from the room. I think that is a fair situation and that happens in any courtroom. If the crowd is unruly they are in contempt of the hearing and they get removed. That might not be something the police might anticipate. We are looking at how many. I think this will also raise the issue of confidentiality and I know that is one of the issues you want to look at. When we are in dialogue we know everybody we are talking to. Judicial review is taken with regard to a decision or a determination by the Parades Commission and as a party to that judicial review we get the names and addresses of everybody who actually has made that complaint within the process. Let us face it, everybody knows everybody in Northern Ireland. Confidentiality is a bit of a red herring here at times. We have never asked for total confidentiality. If there is an affidavit and substantial views are put forward, we would be happy with that as long as they are put forward by a solicitor and as long as the registrar is satisfied that that is a genuine purpose. There are details to be sorted out. We do not believe that it is over-complicated and we do not think it should be either.

  Q96  Mr Pound: I appreciate everybody knows everybody here. You have, quite rightly, made an issue over the release of some people's names which ended up with Sinn Fein. There are still barriers that need to exist.

  Mr Hoey: There is a distinct difference there in terms of names and addresses being faxed. In the lower Ormeau there were 10 or 15 people from that community who took part in the discussions. Everybody who was going to make an objection had some opportunity to come into that meeting and make an objection. The LOCC in their own mind were representing that community. So if they are taking on the leadership and representing that community, what is the issue over all these other people because surely that can be channelled through the public representatives, which again is not a secret matter. Many other people make objections and we do not know who they are. We talk to the LOCC and then Uncle Tom Cobbley and all turns up at the Parades Commission, but we are never told who they are or what they are saying. A public hearing would take that away. It is a much more fair and simple process.

  Q97  Mr Pound: The Bands Association say in their memorandum that the Parades Commission has lost all credibility and should be wound up and replaced. Could you elaborate on that loss of credibility? To be honest, you have addressed the credibility issue in many of your earlier answers. What would you like to see as a replacement?

  Mr Kelley: Anything that is fair, even-handed and open.

  Q98  Rev Smyth: As I understand it, you have expressed concern about recommendations to give notice of proposed parades for the following season no later than 1st October and for a parade falling before 1st April at least six months should be given. What problems would this create for associations such as yours?

  Mr McAfee: We would not be totally against notification of intent. Our problem would be notification of exact dates and details of the parade, but that is very difficult to organise and any parade organiser would find that near impossible. It is the same with protests, you could not organise it that far down the line. A notification of intent has already been mentioned. Most parades are annual and so it is not a problem for the organiser to notify that they will be holding a parade the following year.

  Q99  Chairman: Why is there this difficulty about specific dates since these things are repeated year after year after year?

  Mr McAfee: It has been more relevant for us than the Apprentice Boys who hold their big days on certain dates. The bands will hold a parade usually some time during the year, but it is a bit of a juggled area and there are less localised clashes of parades in the same area. The police do not like to be policing two parades in the one area on the same evening. You could have one or two parades in the same area but there will have to be changes.


 
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