Government by spite - Allister
20 September 2006
Extract from a speech from Euro MP Jim Allister to South Belfast DUP
“Government by spite. That has been our lot in recent times. Instead of Good Government, we’ve had Vindictive Government – all designed to coerce us into premature devolution. Hence super rates – hurting particularly in parts of this constituency – grammar school destruction and constant threats of “joint stewardship”, which, if it happened, would negate the consent ethos supposedly ensconced in the Belfast Agreement.
This, of course, is the same Government which three times persuaded Trimble that the conditions were right for devolution, that Sinn Fein was ready and deserving of government, and three times got it utterly wrong. It is our bounden duty and election pledge not to repeat these mistakes.
Sinn Fein was not ready for government then, and is not ready now. Sinn Fein is inextricably linked to the IRA. The IRA is an illegal organisation, whose structures and command remain in tact. That nexus is enough, in my book, to make them unfit for government. That nexus must be broken – which can be most persuasively done by disbandment of the IRA, which is not too much to ask if its war is truly over. Why would any Party in government need an illegal “Army” at its beck and call. It cannot and must not be allowed. Sinn Fein knows what needs to done. No one else can do it for them. Its not enough to dump arms, they must dump “the army”!
Yes, devolution would be nice, but to be worth having it must be both durable and democratic. Failure to adequately address structural deficiencies, criminality and the IRA elephant in the room would just as assuredly cause it to collapse again, as it did in the past. Nor is the artificial contrivance of de hond’t a means to durable and democratic devolution.
November 24th will come and November 24th will go, but until the IRA and its criminality are gone, I see no basis for optimism.
Nor, should we feel under any real pressure. This is a dying Government, fading into oblivion. Blair is not the future, soon he will b the past. So too Ahern may be on his way out. As for Hain, his greater ambition is playing croquet at Dorney Wood.
The next election could well produce the rich opportunities of a hung parliament. So why rush our fences? We can afford to wait more than most.”
