Northern Ireland
Debate between Alasdair McDonnell and Stephen Lloyd(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Dr Alasdair McDonnell (Belfast South) (SDLP)
I thank those who tabled the motion for giving us the opportunity to discuss this subject today. I should like to think that the debate will lay some foundations for the work of Dr Haass and Meghan O’Sullivan.
Let me begin by endorsing the honest comments of the Rev. David Clements, who said this morning that neither the past nor victims should be used by anyone to advance a selfish political agenda. Let me also draw Members’ attention, as others have done already, to the fact that today is the 20th anniversary of one of the most horrific events of the troubles. I offer my sympathy, and the unconditional sympathy and support of the SDLP, to all the innocent people who were killed in that horrific Shankill road bombing.
Dr Richard Haass has, in essence, been invited to help us to sort out critically important unfinished business dating back to the time of the Good Friday agreement, more than 15 years ago. We are grateful to him and his team for agreeing to help us. Our failure to grasp the issues of flags, parading and the past has cost us dear, summer in and summer out, year in and year out, during most of those 15 years.
The SDLP’s firm goal in the Haass negotiations is a further comprehensive agreement that would grab the imagination of people in Northern Ireland—and, indeed, further afield—and would inspire hope and create ambition for the future. Not least, such an agreement would send a resounding message to potential investors that Northern Ireland is an even more secure and stable place to which to bring business, thus creating the jobs and prosperity that we dearly need. A piecemeal, temporary, cobbled-together agreement would sell Northern Ireland short and dash the hopes of our people, who look to us, the politicians, to deliver meaningful change.
Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that real progress was made 10 years ago in Derry/Londonderry, when both communities worked together to ensure that parades in that great town did not cause the strife and difficulties they are causing in Belfast?
Dr McDonnell
I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman. All the difficulties have been resolved in Derry. Everything is now a celebration, and the contention surrounding the parades has gone. Derry’s month as UK City of Culture has been an outstanding success story. I congratulate the people of Derry, and, indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), who represents them.
We in the SDLP seek from Dr Haass—in broad terms—a bigger and better agreement. We want an agreement that transcends the narrow issues of parades and flags, and addresses the past in an expansive way; an agreement that celebrates rather than denigrates the expression of culture, allegiance and political identity across the communities in Northern Ireland; an agreement that promotes healing and reconciliation, and enables us to grow up politically and develop mature politics in the atmosphere of growing mutual respect that was promised in the Good Friday agreement, after which—in 1998—the people voted for
“reconciliation, tolerance and mutual trust”
and for
“partnership, equality and mutual respect”.
Only a radical change of attitude all round that embraces the values and ambitions of that agreement will deliver the successful outcome that Northern Ireland needs so much. Surely, given ambition, flexibility and resolve, that much is not beyond our reach. We in the SDLP are up for the challenge posed by Dr Haass and Professor Meghan O’Sullivan.
In recent weeks—I put my hand up at this point, as indeed we all must, because we have all made mistakes and must now join others in making progress—we have sought to make our small contribution to the healing process by addressing an issue that has been raised in the House from time to time. Some months ago, our councillors in Newry voted to retain the name of a local play park that the council had named after an IRA hunger striker 10 years earlier. Our councillors genuinely believed that if the name were allowed to remain, a line would be drawn in the sand and no other public spaces would be similarly named in future. In local terms, perhaps, that was a pragmatic decision—it was, perhaps, understandable in terms of local government. Our representatives acted entirely in good faith. They reassured me, one and all, that it was neither in their thinking nor was it their intention to cause hurt or distress to anyone. I want now to reaffirm the SDLP’s position. Our position is that no public place or public space should be named after any person involved in state or paramilitary violence of any sort.
The issues addressed in the Haass process can be resolved only on the basis of mutual respect, equality and parity of esteem. The SDLP will not be found wanting in generosity or determination to bring about a comprehensive agreement that will be an example to divided communities everywhere. The atmosphere for these talks would be greatly improved, and Belfast traders would breathe a huge sigh of relief, if the loyalist flag protesters called off their planned demonstrations in the city in the run-up to Christmas and if the Orange Order agreed to call a halt to its continuing irresponsible protests at Ardoyne, which are resulting in a policing operation that the PSNI estimates is costing £50,000 a day—which amounts to £5 million over the period. That would have paid for 200 or more young teachers, 200 nurses and perhaps even 200 extra police that we so badly need
Northern Ireland
Debate between Alasdair McDonnell and Stephen Lloyd(11 years ago)
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Dr McDonnell
The hon. Gentleman must have been reading my notes over my shoulder—the rules of the House should be amended to prevent Members from copying others—because my next line is that we should also note that we owe a deep debt of gratitude to the United States and the various Administrations in Washington throughout that period.
Yes, much of the violence has been taken out of the equation in Northern Ireland. Relative peace and increased stability have been welcomed for some years, but we have not yet reached the promised land. Before the current financial crisis there were some green shoots of economic recovery, but they have been difficult to sustain. We have not come so far that we can afford any complacency. It is not just a matter of being eternally vigilant against the residual threat presented by those who are, though small in numbers, still dangerous and still wedded to the ways of violence, terrorism and intimidation.
Although the Good Friday agreement won overwhelming support across the island of Ireland, it was, for many, perhaps, a conditional support that should not be taken lightly or for granted. Although people voted for peace in overwhelming numbers in 1998, they wanted more: they also voted for hope and the right to hope for a much better future. They voted—this is better put in the words of Seamus Heaney—that “hope and history” would “rhyme”. They voted for economic opportunity for their children. They voted for a new dispensation that would tackle the root causes of division and ensure that violence would never again gain a significant foothold in their world or in the politics of Northern Ireland.
However much our people may differ on politics or on our views of the past, present or future, there is a shared conviction in Northern Ireland that our future must be different from what went before, in that it must be much better. They know that, however difficult it may be, that future has to be a shared future.
We have had 15 years of congratulating each other that the killing has stopped, but that is not enough any more. We need to move on and get some sense of greater progress. As long as we fail to tackle the underlying causes of the division in Northern Ireland, people will not feel safe and we will not be safe. We need a credible, practical, workable and productive cohesion-sharing and integration strategy, and we need it now.
The return of devolution was such an important goal that many people got impatient with me and colleagues in the SDLP for sharing our anxieties and our concerns and preaching that anxiety at times over the past few years, but now at last that important truth is beginning to be recognised. We note that in the past few weeks the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has found it necessary to state publicly in the strongest terms that the support of the UK Government for our Executive is conditional on progress being made in tackling community division. A couple of days before that the Irish Foreign Minister, Eamon Gilmore, said clearly that our First Minister and Deputy First Minister are mandated by the Good Friday agreement, which put them in office in the first place, to work for reconciliation. The time has come for us to produce some meaningful results.
We warmly welcome these new tones, this new realism, because it had been missing from the communications between Governments and from the two Governments for some years. We must recognise that the two Governments are the ultimate guarantors of the Belfast agreement—the Good Friday agreement.
In my mind there is another side to reconciliation, the one that gets too little recognition, and it is this: tackling division is honourable and a good thing in itself, but there is a little more to it. Tackling division is an absolute necessity if we are to have any hope of achieving the prosperity mentioned in the motion. Division carries a direct cost or an absolute cost, but worse still for me, it also carries an opportunity cost. Beyond the challenge of tackling division, there is so much unfinished business in the major challenge of building prosperity. We will have difficulty finding the road to prosperity if we do not first find the road to maturity in dealing with flags and parades and the unhealed wounds and scars of the past.
Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that a key way of making that work is to get the right understanding and the programmes for many of the young men and women in both communities who are stuck and cannot find an opportunity and a way out?
Dr McDonnell
I agree fully with the hon. Gentleman’s comments, but unfortunately we do not have or have not had until now Government Ministers queuing up to estimate the foreign investment opportunities lost as a result of the disorder in the past few months, but let us in the House not deceive ourselves. There is an economic cost to disruption, violence and disturbance in the streets, and I believe, unfortunately, that the same young men who wrapped themselves in flags are the very ones most likely to pay that cost. They are the ones who will suffer and remain on the margins.
We have had our peace process and it was good. We now need a prosperity process vigorously backed by the two Governments. It is with regret that I say that although the current Government have done many good things for the economy, too little progress has been made in helping to improve our economy, with unemployment currently at record levels. As others have pointed out, we needed that reduction in corporation tax to give us the rocket boost—for want of a better description—to get us moving economically. The level of youth unemployment in particular is a desperate cause for concern and cannot be isolated from the ongoing social unrest.
I do not doubt the Government’s stated commitment to rebalancing the economy, but the current economic path laid out for us will not take Northern Ireland to economic stability. We need investment in our economy and we need to create the economic confidence to build growth and develop the private sector. This Government’s attachment to austerity is unlikely to do that for us. On an island of fewer than 6 million people—we have fewer than 2 million in Northern Ireland and fewer than 4 million in the Irish Republic—economic and cross-border partnership is essential. In that context, we need an enduring commitment to serious north-south partnerships and projects such as the Narrow Water bridge and the A5, both of which will open up significant economic opportunities for Northern Ireland. The SDLP will continue to make a positive case for that kind of north-south partnership.
That is not to sidestep our responsibilities and commitments within the devolved Executive in Northern Ireland. I believe that our highest priority is to tackle division and to do so now.