Put IRA in Government and you get IRA policies - Allister
26 February 2013
Speaking to the Annual Dinner of Ballymoney TUV at the weekend Party Leader and local MLA, Jim Allister, said it should be no surprise to anyone that if Opposition was denied where it ought to be able to be expressed, namely in the Legislative Assembly, then, inevitably it would find expression on the streets."With this Stormont designed to suppress opposition, while all the time keeping the Sinn Fein pump primed with concessions, there is no safety valve within the process and, thus, when exasperation mounted, such as over the shameful removal of the Union flag from City Hall, dismay was driven onto the streets. This is but one of the failures of Stormont.
"Denying basic democratic rights, such as the right to an Opposition and even the right to vote a party out of government, in time, was bound to increase street tensions and demonstrations. Such to be effective must be peaceful, but I for one will not say to disaffected unionists you must stop protesting. We've enough resort to totalitarianism in Stormont without crowning it by denying the right to peaceful protest.
"Make no mistake under the Belfast Agreement we were bound to arrive at this point. Its purpose is to ease us out of the UK, by placing terrorists in government, equating Britishness and Irishness and providing for all-Ireland harmonisation through the executive North/South bodies. This process - and how often does Sinn Fein not remind us it is a process - by its very nature requires step by step reduction of our Britishness. Thus the removal of the Union flag was no random or isolated act, but a concerted part of the delivery of an anti-British agenda.
"Nor, should it be a surprise to anyone that when you put IRA in government, you get delivery of IRA policies. It is the same 'Brits Out' mentality which drove the tearing down of the flag. The IRA's Brits Out agenda used to be delivered down the barrel of the gun, now it's delivered through its cultural war on all things unionist, made easy of course by their elevation to the top and heart of government. Those who put them there, first the UUP and latterly the power hungry DUP, have a lot to answer for!
"Yet, these very parties declare themselves dismayed by the outworking of their own policy of empowering Sinn Fein. You can't, with credibility, be Sinn Fein's little helpers by day in Stormont and empathise at night with those protesting Sinn Fein policies. Such only adds hypocrisy to the craven stupidity of facilitating IRA rule in the first place.
"In identifying this folly from the outset and sticking by its principles is what distinguishes the TUV. It is encouraging that the more the Belfast Agreement agenda unfolds the more unionists, I believe, are seeing the wisdom of our stance."
