PPW policy must be reversed - Allister
14 March 2009
Statement by TUV Leader Jim Allister MEP
“Now that IRA murder is again a grim reality, I am greatly concerned that many potential targets have been left defenceless, in particular former members of the security forces.
It is clear that the IRA terrorists, deployed under their current flags of convenience, were active and seasoned Provisionals.. So, they have not only
Yet, shamefully, this is the group which by reason of a deliberate NIO/PSNI policy of refusing to renew their Personal Protection Weapons, have been rendered the most vulnerable. One of the demands of Sinn Fein, under the guise of normalisation, has been reduction in the number of legally held weapons. Just as at their behest our police force was diminished into a police service, Special Branch destroyed, stations closed and military bases reduced to defence by handguns only (as at Antrim), so the NIO and PSNI have been implementing a deliberate policy of non-renewal of PPWs, all as part of the synergy of the “peace process”. In the past year more PPWs have been removed than ever before.
This policy is implemented on the criterion that unless a “specific threat” is known to the police, the weapon will be removed. This is madness. Just as the police didn’t have specific intelligence that soldiers would be murdered in Antrim and a policeman in Craigavon, so, too the absence of “specific intelligence” is an unfit and unsafe basis upon which to remove PPWs.
I am, therefore, calling on the Secretary of State and the Chief Constable to reverse this foolish policy before the IRA starts picking off those they have always and still regard as “legitimate targets”. Does someone, from whom a weapon has been removed, have to be murdered before the Secretary of State and Chief Constable recognise the folly of this policy?”
