Covenant Day Message from TUV Leader Jim Allister
28 September 2012
There is no more seminal event in our history than the signing of the Ulster Covenant.
Thank God there were no push-over Unionists in 1912, or there would have been no Northern Ireland!
Faced with a hostile British Government, Carson, with no regard to his own advancement, led the people to face down the threat of Home Rule. In terms of his self-sacrifice he famously said, “for my part I would rather for the rest of my life stay in the honest division lobby of Opposition than surrender one particle of my principles to obtain the highest office in the land”.
Refusing to roll over he didn’t wilt, nor be bought by the baubles of office, but he stuck resolutely to defending and doing what was right.
Home Rule was seen as Rome Rule because of those it would bring to power. Today in devolution we have our own form of home rule with joint Sinn Fein rule. Hardly, what Carson had in mind! Among the political elite of today, sadly, expediency has supplanted principle; the lure of office trumps conviction.
At the heart of the Covenant lay unswerving commitment to the essence of the Union, our equal citizenship within the Kingdom. How unequal things are now. We need look no further than the terrorist-inclusive Executive at Stormont. Whereas everywhere else in the United Kingdom citizens have the basic democratic right to change their government, we are denied that right because of the iniquity of mandatory coalition. And we are not even permitted to have an Opposition!
Such departure from basic democratic norms shows how far we have permitted ourselves to be divorced from core values of equal citizenship.
As we celebrate the valour and determination of our Covenant forefathers we would all do well to re-engage with the principles, values and ideals of the Covenant to which we owe our very existence as an entity within the UK. Hold true to the Covenant and its principles.
