Northern Ireland (Ministers, Elections and Petitions of Concern) Bill — House of Lords, 2022-01-19
Topic: Civil Rights
William McCrea (Democratic Unionist Party, Right): My Lords, I thought it was interesting that in the previous debate Members from all sides stood up to demand that freedom of speech in this House be paramount. With freedom of speech, even though you may disagree profoundly with a person, you respect their right to be able to say things. I have no doubt that I may say some things with which some in this House do not agree; nevertheless, I trust that no one would deny me the right to say them Thinking about the present debate, I believed that the legislation before the House was based on implementing a matter under the New Decade, New Approach agreement. Members rightly said that there are those who did not agree with that agreement. I certainly did not agree with the Belfast agreement; I did not agree with the destruction of the gallant RUC or the destruction of the UDR, which followed on, or with letting terrorists out to roam across the countryside, in which I reside, where so many people were murdered that it was known as the "killing fields" of the Province. But they were let out under the Belfast agreement. Nothing could be more repugnant to a democracy than to see terrorists roaming around the countryside, snooting their noses and mocking and laughing at families, like my own and many others, whose loved ones were murdered brutally I stood on Sunday at the roadside where eight men were brutally murdered and six others—not soldiers, but ordinary workers returning home from their work at an Army base—were injured. We stood there on the roadside, as we have done for the past 30 years, through rain, hail, snow and blizzard—whatever was thrown at us—to honour the memory of those persons who were done to death I do not take richly lectures from people about the election—"If you don’t vote for us, you will get someone else." I was reared in the west of the Province. No one did that more—they were actually masters of it—than the Ulster Unionists. At every election, the candidate standing for that party did so on the 12 July platform to say, "Vote for me." Of course, they were quite often not seen after that, but nevertheless they did it. It was clearly an orange and green election. To try to lecture this House and some Members of it about that is rather rich. Other Members who know nothing about Northern Ireland—who perhaps have never been there—would think, listening to this, that what the noble Lord, Lord Empey, was saying is right, not knowing the history of what has gone on down the years Of course, the noble Lord is right to talk about messing around with legislation, but let us remember that legislation on abortion was brought before this House. It was tagged on to legislation that had nothing to do with it yet it was forced on the people of Northern Ireland even though the issue was supposed to be a devolved matter. I therefore say to this House that we need to be careful in what we say or when we try to suggest what others are suggesting I listened to the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie. She gave the impression that, under the Belfast agreement and the former arrangement, everything was sweetness and light. Yet the truth of the matter is this: in reality, it was a stop-start situation. You did not know when it was up; you did not know when it was down. You found out in the end that it was usually down whenever Sinn Féin said that it had to come down I also listened to the noble Lord, Lord Hain. Of course, he has gone back to his customary "Beat the DUP" as regards the threats of the DUP, but let me just remind him that, in actual fact, it was not the DUP that brought the Assembly down for three years. It was Sinn Féin and people he knows very well. I did not necessarily hear on those occasions the same ferocity as is now being mentioned with regard to the Democratic Unionist Party. We want devolution. We want to see our Province properly—