Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240
- 259)
WEDNESDAY 31 MARCH 2004
MR ROBERT
S SAULTERS, MR
WILLIAM ROSS,
AND MR
DENIS J WATSON
Q240 Chairman: Can you give a specific
occasion when that has happened?
Mr Watson: I have not got it here
with me present, but I can certainly make that available to the
Committee, if you wish.
Q241 Chairman: The letter which I
have just referred to was about suggestions for improving the
transparency, perhaps trying to understand why a parade had gone
well or badly, and proposing to establish a post mortem procedure
to look at it after the event and perhaps improve understanding.
Is that something which would attract you as a thought?
Mr Watson: Can I say, Mr Chairman,
both as Grand Secretary of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland and
in my capacity as the County Grand Master of County Armagh, which
has Drumcree within my jurisdiction, can I say I am not aware
of feedback coming from the Parades Commission. I have learnt
something this afternoon, that they respond to parade organisers.
Can I also say that the Chairman did say in his comments that
they did make a certain number of recommendations in one of the
determinations. That is quite correct. I would have to say that
Portadown District, LOL-1, have complied with every one of those
recommendations in the determinations, but still they find their
parade blocked along the road. I have difficulty in understanding
why the Parades Commission have to take some of our Orangemen
from Northern Ireland to South Africa to talk about the parades
issue when the other major stakeholder in the situation of the
Drumcree problem did not go. I also find it quite remarkable because
my information coming back to me would indicate that the Parades
Commission could overturn the decision this year and allow a parade
down the road simply because Mr McKenna of the Garvaghy Road residents
has been into the Commission offices and they have not been happy
with the response they have got there and now they are turning
around and looking at the Orange position, which I find incredible
because the Parades Commission have said that the last 300 determinations
they could hold up in the courts. Now, suddenly we may see a change
in that in the coming year, and I hope we do see a change and
the return of the parade granted to the Portadown brethren.
Q242 Chairman: How do you think we
might get the dialogue between those who parade and organise parades
and the Commission to be—I was going to say "more constructive",
but perhaps I should just say "constructive"? What do
you think is required to get the two sides to talk constructively
together?
Mr Ross: I do not think it is
a question, Mr Chairman, of getting the two sides, as they are
presently constituted, talking. I think what we really need is
a completely new system. The North Report is basically saying
that the political sides have parade decisions. It seems to me
that this has made it worse. We believe that the Quigley Review
will make the thing worse still because it tends to offer a far
more complex procedure.
Q243 Chairman: So what is your solution?
Mr Ross: We do have a paper which
we will be happy to give to the Committee at the end of this session
and we would be very happy indeed to come back again if, having
studied it, the Committee decided to let us do that. The reality
is that all of the attempts that have been made now over many
years have been based on the assumption that goodwill existed
among terrorist organisations. I think that recent events would
prove that terrorist organisations are not in the business of
goodwill, whether they are in America, Iraq or anywhere else,
or Madrid, for that matter; they intend to get their own way.
We see many of the organisations that purport to speak for people
in a particular area as simply fronts for those organisations.
Q244 Mr Clarke: I think I would be
on safe ground by saying that the Grand Orange Lodge are not great
supporters of the Commission and never have been, and I also see
that you are not necessarily in favour of Quigley's recommendations.
The Committee does find itself in a strange position in trying
to arrive at a viewpoint from the lodges as to what a possible
solution may be. Lord Maginnis, when he was in the Commons, as
you know, said that he saw the Parades Commission as part of the
problem rather than part of the solution, and that comment was
placed within your memorandum. The rest of the memorandum, if
I may say, is very one-sided and you suggest that you are astounded
that the Parades Commission has singularly failed to recognise
the fact that opposition to Orange parades is orchestrated for
political purposes by Sinn Fein, and you talk about it being well
documented that the campaign has been established by convicted
terrorists. Now, these are strong sentiments and you will forgive
me if I say that there would seem to be a level of acidity in
some of the comments which are placed before us. Could I put the
words of Ken Maginnis back to you and ask you if it would be fair
for some in Northern Ireland equally to say that the Grand Orange
Lodge is part of the problem, not part of the solution?
Mr Ross: I would not accept that
for a moment and I have to say that not only did Ken Maginnis
express those sentiments whenever I was on the Committee whenever
this legislation was passed, but I do recall saying that on one
occasion the net effect of this legislation was to place the control
of the streets in the hands of the IRA who, in my view, could
create 100 Drumcrees any time they wanted to. Could I also say
that whenever I listen to what the Parades Commission say, whenever
I hear what the Northern Ireland Office says, I remember that
those are two bodies of people who have the best interests in
the present legislation: the Northern Ireland Office because of
course they created it and they will defend it to the death, as
the Poll Tax was defended literally to the political death of
a Prime Minister; and the Parades Commission of course are there
to uphold the law as it presently exists. We believe it is a bad
law and, therefore, it should be changed. I have no apologies
to make for the views that I have had on these matters and indeed
I think that the various efforts that have been made in the past
have simply not worked because there are people of ill-will out
there who are always going to foment trouble and use any excuse
they can to create a friction point and then exploit it, knowing
that there are many young men in these parades who are sometimes
too easily provoked. May I say also that I think it was evident
from what the previous witnesses said that their main problem
was with the band parades rather than the Orange institution,
but we are not responsible for the band parades and indeed we
are not responsible for most of the bands; only a relatively small
number of them are actually attached to, or under the control
of, the lodges and many of them are hired by lodges on an annual
basis. Indeed I understand that the Northern Ireland Office makes
the point that the problem has diminished and that there are less
problems now than there were in the past. You need to be very
careful how you interpret those crude figures because some, indeed
many of the processions are in exactly the same locations every
year with the same people taking part. Others of them operate
on a rota over a period of years and, therefore, you are not necessarily
comparing like with like from year to year. Only those who know
how the system works can appreciate the vast differences that
there can be from year to year and it can be quite considerable.
Does that clarify the matter for you?
Q245 Mr Clarke: I would just add
that I am still at a loss to understand. Now, you have said you
are going to present us with a paper later on which gives the
Order's view of solutions, but the Committee is at a loss at the
moment in terms of understanding where the Order is coming from
in that it does not support the Commission and it does not support
Quigley's recommendations. We do hear a lot from the Order as
to what it is against and I am asking you to put forward some
positives in terms of how we may move forward in the view of the
Order from the Commission if it is not backed by its members?
Mr Saulters: Well, as we see it
in the Quigley Report, it will be in four stages. In the first
stage, which is mediation, it means that we would have to sit
down and talk with Sinn Fein resident groups to get a little bit
of paper of good faith to let us go forward to the next proceedings,
which would come in as a rights panel for parades and protests,
and they would be organising hearings, determinations and so on.
If that fails, then we go on to stage three and that is where
the bodies in charge come in as the police services for Northern
Ireland, and they would assess the situation and make a decision
in the interests of the national security. Then the fourth stage
comes in and the bodies in charge of that would be the compliance
branch of the rights panel for parades and protests. If you go
through all of those stages, and it was mentioned earlier about
coming in on 1 October to notify of parades, that would be a ridiculous
situation to notify of parades on 1 October through to June and
July and that would be out of our reach altogether. As far as
it all coming through to the courts is concerned, that is going
to cost a lot of money. We are a voluntary organisation. We do
not charge the protesters anything because they can always get
legal aid, so it would cost us a lot of money to bring that through
to the courts, and at the end of the day it is in the police's
hands anyway, so we cannot see the Quigley Report helping in any
way.
Q246 Reverend Smyth: To put it into
context, would it not be true to say that historically when this
issue began of protests, the Orange did actually meet the residents
and residents would attend a local parade (a) at the weekend,
or (b) when they did meet, they could not actually deliver at
a public meeting?
Mr Saulters: Yes, it all began
in 1992 in the Maze Prison whenever the IRA were arranging these
stoppages. In 1995 the first stoppage came and I myself, as a
County Grand Master at that time, and my county treasurer met
with Sinn Fein and we met for two years going between Sinn Fein,
mediation and the police. On the second day we had an agreement.
This was about 9/10 July of that particular year, 1995. By seven
o'clock that night, everything was thrown out because the Sinn
Fein representatives had gone back to their local community centre
and the heavy squad came in with baseball bats and it was all
off. That was in 1995, and we did talk to them and had the agreement,
but, as I say, it was at seven o'clock that night.
Q247 Reverend Smyth: Then I come
up to date because I understand in your response that your characterisation
places a strong emphasis on traditionality and distinguishes traditional
parades from political ones. Do you accept that for some individuals
a traditional parade may be perceived as having a political dimension
even if its origins are not historical and were not designed to
provoke any dissent or resentment?
Mr Saulters: Our parades are not
designed for any resentment at all. Politically it can become
a political stepping stone, but we would consider ourselves as
a religious organisation and we try to keep it that way.
Mr Ross: There are of course other
parades, some memorial parades, and quite a number of them take
part throughout the country. Of course, by and large, the church
parades are all religious. May I say in passing, Mr Chairman,
that I have noticed recently that complaints are arising locally
about church services being disrupted by parades going past in
the street. There are not all that many services at the time parades
take place anyway. In my own church I have often had nationalist
parades going past on a Sunday up to 17 March or 15 August, and
I have to say that the walls of the church are pretty thick and
you barely hear them even when the church is silent and the minister
is praying, so if we are singing a hymn with the organ playing,
you hear nothing, so I think that is just a red herring. Of course
then we have the celebrations on 12 July and basically that is
it. We do have a few where they are unfurling banners and things
like that which we always normally celebrate and there is a strong
religious element in them and many church services of course are
attended by bands and Orangemen throughout the year, the vast
majority in fact are.
Q248 Reverend Smyth: I was happy
enough that you did not say that when the preacher was preaching
you heard nothing!
Mr Ross: Well, sometimes; it depends
on the preacher!
Mr Pound: Present company excepted!
Chairman: I just want to interject here
because I have been remiss in that I should have put on the record
publicly what everybody in this room knows, and that is that the
Reverend Martin Smyth did declare an interest at the beginning
of this inquiry as a former Grand Master of the Grand Orange Lodge,
so it is on the record.
Reverend Smyth: And I did not want to
press the Parades Commission as to one of the reasons about the
subtlety of the North Report because the interesting thing is
that the three gentlemen on that all came from very strong religious
positions within churches, all had sectarian positions, and they
actually acknowledged they were a sectarian body, which is one
of the reasons why there was such dissent from the very beginning.
Q249 Chairman: That has been said
and it is on the record.
Mr Ross: Perhaps I may make one
further comment with regard to church services. There is quite
a large element of good manners still left in Northern Ireland
and when Orange parades are aware of a death in a house, regardless
of the religious denomination or none, the bands would be asked
to stop playing on passing that house if there was a parade. We
have in the past held back to allow funerals to go past, and I
think we ran into a wedding one day and, as I recall, it was not
a Protestant wedding. Again good manners take over and people
quite simply behave properly in such a situation to allow folk
to get on with either their celebration or their misery, as the
case may be.
Q250 Chairman: What—at a wedding!
Is that one side of the family or the other!
Mr Ross: I meant depending on
whether it was a wedding or a funeral.
Chairman: I think we knew what you meant.
Q251 Mr Bailey: Can we just explore
the issue of mediation. Quigley suggests that there should be
a much stronger focus on mediation. Do you support this view?
Mr Saulters: Well, our experience
of mediation in 1996/97 was that we did meet week in and week
out from May to July, two years running, and the mediation team
at that time were telling us that they were down here (indicating)
and we had to get the others up level. It never did happen and
we never could get the mediation working between the two.
Q252 Mr Bailey: Notwithstanding your
past difficulties, do you support the view that they should be?
Mr Saulters: Well, certainly I
would give it a try. Whether it would work nowadays or not, I
would not know. We are making a campaign at the moment of meeting
people where they have their ideas that we should not be having
a parade to a church service, for instance. We have invited them
all out to a cultural evening, that is happening this week, and
we will see how that goes. It may be the best way forward, to
invite them in to join with us.
Q253 Mr Bailey: You have partly anticipated
my follow-up question which was how far you have sought a dialogue
with the community groups and others to tackle misconceptions
about parades, so have you anything to add to what you have just
said?
Mr Saulters: Well, just that in
one village alone, which is 100% a different denomination from
us, every household has received an invitation to this cultural
evening and, from what I gather, it should be quite acceptable
to a number of them and we are hoping to go down that road and
come together.
Q254 Mr Tynan: In your written submission
one of the many complaints of the Commission is that its decisions
are taken in secret, whereas common with the concept of open and
transparent government, parades and Commission meetings should
be held open to the press and the public. Now, you have heard
the concerns expressed by the Commission today that that would
open up an avenue where individuals could be subject to enormous
pressure and would refuse to give any information or testimony.
Where you want transparency and openness, how would you avoid
intimidation of someone who wished to make a submission to the
Commission?
Mr Saulters: I think it was transparency
between the Commission and themselves. I would not go so far as
to bring in the general public.
Q255 Mr Tynan: But you say for the
opinions of the members of the public, it would be beneficial
for the public to be aware of its working, so you indicated that
it should be open to the press and the public, in your submission.
Mr Watson: It would be no different
from a witness going into court to provide evidence in a court
case and this has been part of the problem with the Parades Commission
over the last three or four years. I was quite surprised to hear
the Chairman say that there is feedback given to parade organisers
because if there is feedback given, it certainly has not been
given back within my jurisdiction in County Armagh that I am aware
of. Part of the problem is that the deliberations are entirely
within their own four walls and there is no one privy to that.
We do not know who is going in and making submissions. We know
that we, as the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, are not making
submissions, though individual Orangemen may be going in in some
other capacity. If the Parades Commission have nothing to hide,
there should be no reason why their hearings could not be held
in public.
Q256 Mr Tynan: Surely it is not a
question of the Parades Commission having something to hide, but
individuals giving evidence to the Parades Commission who may
be vulnerable to pressure from other organisations. Surely that
would be the problem if they were open and not held in secret?
Mr Ross: Well, the problem of
course is that when we do not know what the evidence is, there
is no way of questioning or correcting it. That evidence might
be allegations and malicious allegations at that. It would also
depend on who that individual is. As I have indicated earlier,
terrorist organisations are not in the business of being nice
to those whom they oppose and some of the allegations could be
simply malicious. Unless we know who is making the allegations,
unless we know the nature of those allegations and unless we are
able to ask questions about them and correct misconceptions, there
is no way in which this problem can ever be resolved because I
feel that very often the allegations which are made are simply
ill-founded. I live in a very nationalist area and there are Orange
parades in that area, and some of them are in Protestant parts
of the country, some of them are in areas which are nearly totally
Roman Catholic and for a considerable number of years there has
been no trouble at all, but I see no reason why the IRA should
not switch it on tomorrow, if they wished.
Q257 Mr Tynan: I understand you wish
to have them held in an open and transparent way, but the question
of how you protect individuals who may wish to give evidence to
the Commission is really the issue as regards the safety of those
individuals. How would you go about that?
Mr Ross: Well, let's be clear,
Mr Chairman: if there is someone out to do damage to an individual
in that terrorist organisation, as over the last 35/36 years,
they will find a way of doing it. I think you, sir, more than
anybody else will be well aware of the dangers under which I have
lived and the precautions which had to be taken with my safety
throughout those years and of the nature of terrorism. At the
end of the day terrorism and violence and subversion in the community
can only be overcome by citizens being prepared to stand up. I
am sorry, but that is the bottom line. I stood up and I am not
the only one; many other people have and some of them paid with
their lives. The reality is that there will be people probably
frightened to do that, but, at the very least, if they are not
prepared to come out openly and be questioned, then they could
be questioned in camera and the information which they provide
could also be made clear to those who are organising the procession.
Of course we also believe that there are many people who are involved
in this affair from one end of the country to the other, as I
said earlier, who are acting out of malice, trying to stir up
hatred and trouble rather than trying to resolve it and they can
switch it on and off. I think everyone in this Committee is not
so innocent as not to believe what I say.
Mr Saulters: We are still main
targets now even though we are not going into the Parades Commission,
so it would not make any difference. I had a visit from the police
two months ago because my name came up on a computer on another
subject from one of the computers which was hijacked around west
Belfast, so we are being targeted at any rate, so I do not think
we would worry about that too much in Northern Ireland.
Mr Ross: Mention has already been
made of the two police forms, the 11/9 and the 11/3. Parade organisers
do not see them. I do not think that the honourable Member would
be suggesting that the police would be afraid to make available
the information which is in their possession. They, after all,
do take risks, that is what they are paid to do, and we could
see what they have to say.
Q258 Mr Tynan: So you would have
no concerns for the safety of individuals if the process was opened
up to transparency, the press, the media and anyone who wanted
to attend?
Mr Ross: Freedom, sir, is never
cheap.
Q259 Mr Tynan: That is not the question
I am asking. I am asking you whether you would have any concerns?
Mr Ross: Of course I do have a
concern about the safety of individuals and I have indicated that,
at the very least, the gist of what they have to say could be
made available to us, but I have lived with similar dangers to
those which you are indicating for very many years. Perhaps I
am more careless of my own welfare than some might be, perhaps
I live in an area, you might think, where dangers do not exist,
but they do exist and I am aware that there are people who could
come into danger and pressure, but I do not think it is as great
a danger as some people are trying to make it out to be.
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