Reflection by TUV Leader Jim Allister QC on the 25th anniversary of the ‘Ulster Says No’ rally at Belfast City Hall
23 November 2010
“Like most who attended the mammoth ‘Ulster Says No’ rally after the Anglo Irish Agreement, my primary emotion was one of deep betrayal. Over the heads of a Unionist majority, which was withstanding a savage IRA campaign to bring us under Dublin control, the Republic’s government was gifted a say in Ulster’s affairs.
“Ian Paisley captured the public mood within unionism when at that rally he coined his ‘Never, Never, Never, Never’ response. Yet, incredibly, the next time I was to again feel such a sense of betrayal in politics was when, in 2007, the same Ian Paisley ushered IRA Commander into government as his Joint First Minister!
“Part of the folly of the Anglo Irish Agreement was a futile effort to buy off the murderous IRA, but as many of us warned at the time, it was guaranteed to produce more terror, as the insatiable Provos saw that violence paid. And, so it did, as recurrent carnage followed, including the infamous Poppy Day massacre. Likewise, today’s Replica Provos draw succour from how handsomely violence worked for Adams and McGuinness.
“Politically, the Anglo Irish Agreement began the process of loosening the constitutional ties that bind us to the UK and empowering the meddling of Dublin in our affairs. This same process produced the Belfast, St Andrews and Hillsborough Agreements, each of which have edged us further in the direction born out of the Anglo Irish Agreement. Now, we’ve reached the point where even our internal affairs can be negotiated, as happened this year at Hillsborough with Dublin jointly hosting the policing and justice talks, the same venue where those Unionists who protested outside in 1985 were inside in 2010, without so much as a whimper of protest about Dublin’s role.
“What was spawned in 1985 was as wrong and dangerous then as its off-spring arrangements are today. That is why I and my party continue to stand foursquare against Dublin interference and the denial of equal citizenship which lies at the heart of both the 1985 and 1998 Agreements.”
