Chairman, Party Officers, Delegates, Guests

It is hard to believe that another year has passed since we last gathered for our annual conference.  Last year when we met, the Executive hadn’t met in weeks and weeks; we had stalemate over selection; the maze site; Irish language and the devolution of policing and justice.  You could ask what has changed?  Things have changed in a year.  What a year it has been both for the political process and the peace process.  We are still not quite there – the processes have not converged, they have not come together.  So where are we at?

Let me start with the peace process and loyalism in particular.  The complete decommissioning of all weapons by the UVF and RHC and the start made by the UDA was hugely positive for the peace process and I want to pay tribute to a founder member of our party Jim McDonald who passed away earlier this year and who was a key influence in the conflict transformation process.  Jim is sadly missed.

Five years ago, the UVF and RHC were involved in a process of conflict transformation that started with a question – how do you want to be remembered?  That process was about transforming military mindsets into civilian mindsets.  Decommissioning weapons was not part of that process; it was not on their radar.  But as the peace process has evolved so has the challenges for loyalism.  The UVF and RHC engaged the issue of decommissioning and dealt with it.  As with their statement of intent in May 2007, they did so because it was the right thing to do and the right time to do it.   It was not easy.  As with all processes, there are outside influences that can have negative impact.  The criminal murders of Sappers Quinsey and Azimkar and of Constable Carroll could have derailed the process.  But the swift actions of the police service on the criminals and the welcome show of unity and solidarity by our First and Deputy First Ministers had a very positive effect that was felt throughout our society.  We must continue to support the police in their efforts to pursue and prosecute these criminals.  They will not be allowed to destabilise the democratic institutions agreed by the overwhelming majority of people in Northern Ireland and the Republic.  This is the settled will of the people – not your warped cause.

And so to the next challenge - dealing with the past.  And it isn’t going away you know.  As with the question that started the transformation process – how do you want to be remembered?  Our future is inextricably linked with our past.  In order to build a peaceful and stable future we must deal with the issue of our conflicted past and so loyalism must move to the next stage in the evolution of the peace process.  Loyalism needs to engage on this issue and has engaged on this issue and there is now an opportunity for them to get their story out there, to write the agenda, to listen to, and answer those who ask questions in order to meet the needs of a society crying out to move on.  The tendency at the minute is to hang all the ills of this society on the people who had the masks and the guns.  It’s this notion that ‘Northern Ireland would have been a lovely place if only all the bad people had gone away’.  People are not born bad, nor did paramilitaries parachute in or land in a rocket from another planet but if you listen to some in the media and some political parties you get no sense of the social, political or economic context in which the conflict took place.  You get no sense of the poverty, the slums that passed for houses, the sectarian rants and rabble-rousing politicians threatening to fight to the last drop of everyone else’s blood.  We cannot allow a one-sided narrative to explain the causes of the conflict in Northern Ireland and we need to get to the point where we recognise and acknowledge the diversity of experiences from the last thirty or more years.  

The Consultative Group on the Past did a pretty good job of providing us with their honest assessment of what was possible.  The ensuing debate over the recommendation for a recognition payment was unfortunate.  

And whilst I understand the thinking behind the recommendation and I agree with the sentiment I think recognition or acknowledgment comes at the end of a process when you have been presented with evidence or knowledge that there are different experiences of the conflict, but that all hurt is the same.  I think at the start of a process people are poles apart.  No one can be compensated for the loss of their loved one but compensation as well as the needs of those injured in the conflict are important matters that remain to be addressed.  There is much to consider in the report and we must all focus on the recommendations and consider how we move to the next stage.  That includes consideration of what has the ability to get the maximum amount of co-operation from combatant groups and in my opinion, public show trials will not deliver that co-operation.  The calls from Sinn Fein for an international independent truth commission are a call for something that is not achievable and therefore their way of avoiding any attempt to deal with the past.  The words of poet and philosopher George Santayana ring true, “those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it” (Life of Reason, 1905: 284).

And so to the political process.  I welcome the efforts made by the First and Deputy First Minister to secure an acceptable financial package for the devolution of policing and justice.  Now get on with it!  Let’s see it happen – its now time for you to move to the next stage.  We have heard today from a range of organisations involved with criminal justice.  In particular we have listened to some very innovative programmes aimed at reducing offending.  Many seek to address the underlying causes of offending; educational underachievement, drug and alcohol misuse, mental ill-health, learning and behavioural challenges.  We have heard how in addressing these issues with individuals, not only does it transform their lives, but the lives of those around them, their families, their communities leading to safer and stronger communities.  Think about how much more would be possible with a locally elected Minister for Justice.

The need to make progress is abundantly clear.  

And whilst I understand there are other outstanding issues to be resolved including the Bill of Rights and the Strategic Review of Parading amongst others, the impact a war of words at Stormont has on the ground in working class loyalist and republican areas should not be underestimated.  Out-greening Eirigi or pandering to the dirty dozen to out-orange Jim Allister only serves to destabilise already vulnerable areas.  And with an election around the corner are we to expect more of the same?  I have a message for the DUP and Sinn Fein – if you engage in out-oranging or out-greening your opponents as part of your election campaign then you make their message relevant and heighten tensions in the community.  You need to move away from the politics of fear.  Instead you seek to maintain division through fear in order to serve your own interests.  You offer no shared future for the people of Northern Ireland; you offer no policies to bring people together in order that we know each other; instead you offer the notion of separate but equal – it didn’t work in the USA and it is certainly not an option for us.  Wake up to sectarianism!

These parties have made a mess of education reform, pandering to sectoral interests and offering no clear vision for the future.  These parties are presiding over cuts in our public services, crippling our health service and playing hokey cokey with water charges.  Parties who say they represent working class people – aye right.  How do you represent working class people when you insult trade union representatives at the Health Committee?  How do you represent working class people when you hold two or three elected offices?  When you claim multiple salaries and expenses from the public purse?  When you won’t give up your council seat while waiting on a golden handshake? The other parties don’t fair much better.  With the prospect of a Tory Government looming after the next General Election, the interests of working class people are seriously under threat.  We have glimpsed Tory policies this past week at their conference and apart from restoring the link between the state pension and earnings, which by the way the severed in the first place, there is no good news for the worst off in our society.  Their getting Britain back to Work plan means cuts in already below the poverty line benefits.  

Already one in every four child lives in poverty here – there is every possibility that that figure will increase under the Tories.  

Is our Executive performing any better?  According to our First Minister there is a need to reform a number of things.  One is the voting mechanism; he suggests a move away from mutual veto to weighted majority of 65%.  A suggestion I think that has some merit and should be explored further given the Progressive Unionist Party proposed a weighted majority of 66% during the GFA talks.  Another is the number of departments.  I too believe this issue should be explored further given that the SDLP and UUP made a bit of a hash of the carve-up first time round.  To have ‘education’ split into two departments with trade and investment in another doesn’t exactly whiff of joined-up government.  To have planning spread over three departments doesn’t seem like a good use of resources.  To have five departments responsible for some aspect of our economy really explains the state that it is in, not to mention the fact that we still do not have a Regional Economic Strategy two and a half years after the restoration of devolution.  Another proposal is a reduction in the number of Assembly members.  Let’s look at the rationale behind this proposal.  The DUP are arguing we have too many MLAs at an unnecessary cost to the public.  Yet they are the party holding most multiple mandates.  The DUP want to reduce the number of MLAs in order to reduce the number of parties in the Executive because they are finding it difficult to compromise.  What they fail to recognise is that any reduction in Assembly members below 100 means that it fails to be representative of the whole community.  We loose mostly women, smaller parties and independents -  effectively the only opposition that exists in there at the minute.  So their proposals are about making politics exclusive.  It didn’t work for the fifty years til 1972 and it is not going to work now.  Just like their Private Members Bill on the definition of a victim they know they will not get agreement so they need to move on.  The public are disillusioned with their politicians and the parties need to stop the squabbling and offer a positive future for all the people of Northern Ireland.

That’s what this party offers.  This party offers a vision for Northern Ireland.  A society at peace with itself and its neighbours, where people can live together, go to school together, work together and socialise together.  A society that celebrates diversity, promotes human rights and equality and looks after its most vulnerable citizens.  We are not idealists but we do have imagination and we do know what can happen when people work together for every section of our divided society.  Our policies are based on sound principles and we know that through courage, compromise and vision, we can achieve the type of society that we all want to live in.

Moving Forward Conference.