Robinson preparing to climb down on policing and justice
01 July 2008
Statement by Traditional Unionist Leader, Jim Allister MEP
“It is becoming increasingly clear from Peter Robinson’s public statements that he is preparing the ground for a climb down on the devolution of policing and justice. As he continues negotiations with Sinn Fein over the issue, hints and tenor suggest a soft landing for the DUP’s resistance to the attainment of this long-term republican demand.
His latest wheeze is to float the idea that neither DUP nor Sinn Fein might initially hold the post. Of course, what this totally ignores is that the singularly most significant aspect of devolving policing and justice is not the powers it gives the Minister, whoever that might be, but the lavish powers which it bestows on Martin McGuinness, as Joint First Minister, to control key judicial appointments.
It has long been a republican demand to overhaul and transform our British Judiciary. Devolving policing and justice gets their hands on these levers of power, because McGuinness then would have equal say with Peter Robinson in the appointment of our Lord Chief Justice, our Lord Justices of Appeal, our Attorney General and would also acquire powers over the removal of judges. Herein is the obscenity: that one who has boasted of his IRA leadership should get to have power over our judiciary. The IRA brutally murdered several judges, now, courtesy of devolving policing and justice their leaders would get to appoint and remove them!
This is the kernel of why policing and justice should not be devolved. Yet, sadly, some seem ready to play the republican’s game and advance their cherished ambition of removing any semblance of British control from policing and justice. That is really what this is all about – the ending of British policing and British justice anywhere in Ireland, then, as McAleese let slip, they will deign to permit the British monarch to visit an Ireland wholly cleansed of its most potent British symbolism.
I really do wonder sometimes if Peter Robinson grasps the full import of devolving policing and justice and the coup which it delivers to a triumphant republicanism. Where now “not in a political lifetime” or the poster campaign railing against any judicial or policing control for IRA/Sinn Fein? All dumped, I fear, as the price of attaining Sinn Fein’s assent to Mr Robinson’s nomination as First Minister.”
