Eamonn McCann
Foyle · People Before Profit Alliance · Northern Ireland
“Every single Member so far has mentioned the financial constraints on the Housing Executive. Does the Member agree with me that there are ways out of this problem of a lack of resources to deal with cavity wall insulation, damp and mould, which affects houses in every constituency?”
“We cannot have it on the basis of a Government in Stormont, Westminster or anywhere else saying, 'We think this is a dangerous person and they should be put into prison'." <BR /> <BR />I am struck by the fact that none of those who have spoken in favour of this motion have even admitted that this might be a difficulty.”
“Thank you very much. When there is such a perception, and it is based on material reality, that is a real problem for law and order in any society. <BR /> <BR />Yesterday, we voted for the motion in relation to the attempted killing on the Crumlin Road.”
“Mr Frew has just referred to people campaigning with placards demanding the release of this one and that one. He characterised it as standing side by side with extremists. It is not standing side by side with extremists to call for the release of anybody — certainly not.”
“When asked what these activities were — "I am not telling you."; "Who gave you to believe that he was involved in these activities?"; "The security services"; "Did they give you the information?"; "Yes, they did"; "Will you tell us?"; "No, we will not tell you".”
“I refer, of course, to internment in 1971. Occasionally, here and outside, we refer to the major atrocities that have taken place. I include, just for the sake of the record and in case anybody suggests I would think otherwise, Enniskillen, Teebane and the dreadful, unjustified and unjustifiable atrocity in Birmingham in December 1974, wh…”
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“As the Minister noted, I have raised this question a number of times in my stint here. The question that I am asking here goes to the heart of the matters which I have raised in questions and letters that I have sent to various people involved. When I read the minutes of the meetings of the Strategic Investment Board (SIB), I read discussions about the Housing Executive stock and whether it should be transferred in bundles of 1,000 or 2,000. What I am asking the Minister is very simple: at what point and in what form is there democratic scrutiny of the process by which Housing Executive stock is being transferred?”
“— bail conditions do not associate me with armed struggle or anything else, but with the basic principles of justice.”
“Thank you very much. When there is such a perception, and it is based on material reality, that is a real problem for law and order in any society. <BR /> <BR />Yesterday, we voted for the motion in relation to the attempted killing on the Crumlin Road. We did that because we are against the strategy of "armed struggle", as republicans call it. We are not against it since the Good Friday Agreement; we say that it was always wrong and futile and was never going to deliver anything commensurate with the investment of pain — pain inflicted as well as endured. It was never going to deliver a return commensurate with that. We were against it from day one, and we are still against it. The remarks that I make today in standing up for civil liberties and —”
“That certainly is the perception, and of course —”
“We can argue about what the solution to the problem is, but it simply was not acknowledged. That says something ominous about the attitudes we have towards people —”
“We cannot have it on the basis of a Government in Stormont, Westminster or anywhere else saying, 'We think this is a dangerous person and they should be put into prison'." <BR /> <BR />I am struck by the fact that none of those who have spoken in favour of this motion have even admitted that this might be a difficulty. When you say that those responsible, if they are caught, should not be given bail, how do you know that those are the people responsible if they have not been taken to court and the evidence produced against them? I am sorry that nobody supporting the motion has admitted that there is a grave difficulty involved, not from a left-wing or republican point of view, but simply from that of ordinary, common or garden justice. There is a problem here.”
“<BR /> <BR />The main conclusion that we could draw from the introduction of internment without trial all those years ago is that it did not stop any deaths or terrorism, however you define it. On the contrary, it gave a boost to it. Think of the atrocities that I mentioned before. What I have in mind is Ballymurphy, which happened on 10 and 11 August 1971, in the immediate aftermath of internment. Think of Bloody Sunday. The Bloody Sunday march was a march against internment and for due process. People had placards saying, "We want somebody to be charged and tried before being put in jail.”
“I refer, of course, to internment in 1971. Occasionally, here and outside, we refer to the major atrocities that have taken place. I include, just for the sake of the record and in case anybody suggests I would think otherwise, Enniskillen, Teebane and the dreadful, unjustified and unjustifiable atrocity in Birmingham in December 1974, when innocent people were blown to bits. When we talk about atrocities visited on citizens, I am not being exclusive about it; I am saying that our horror at such things, our empathy with the grief of those left behind, must not spill over into saying that any measure is acceptable to deal with this sort of thing and stop it. Actually, it does not stop this sort of thing.”
“Let us look back to the occasion in our recent history, in the last half-century, when the denial of liberty to citizens without charge or trial resulted in a booster shot to violence in Northern Ireland such as we have had from no other particular incident.”
“When asked what these activities were — "I am not telling you."; "Who gave you to believe that he was involved in these activities?"; "The security services"; "Did they give you the information?"; "Yes, they did"; "Will you tell us?"; "No, we will not tell you". <BR /> <BR />What am I to say — what is anybody to say — to Lorraine Taylor, Tony Taylor's wife? She does not know how long he is going to be in as it is open-ended. Will it be a year, two years or three years? His wife and family have not been told why. <BR /> <BR />Mr Speaker, this cannot be right. It cannot be right that citizens are detained by the state without them, or anyone else, being given a reason why. Due process has to mean something.”
“Mr Frew has just referred to people campaigning with placards demanding the release of this one and that one. He characterised it as standing side by side with extremists. It is not standing side by side with extremists to call for the release of anybody — certainly not. <BR /> <BR />I hereby repeat my call for the release of Tony Taylor. Tony Taylor is a republican from Derry who was released under the Good Friday Agreement but was arrested again early last year. He is presently in Maghaberry prison. He was arrested because the then Secretary of State, Theresa Villiers, signed a document saying that she believed that he was involved in activities which made it proper and acceptable to send him back to prison.”
“Given what the Minister just said, does he agree that all the problems in housebuilding and maintenance would be eased and ameliorated if the Housing Executive were given the right power to borrow money on the market to fund the work we all know needs to be done urgently? Does he agree that should be done? If he does not agree, why not?”
“Every single Member so far has mentioned the financial constraints on the Housing Executive. Does the Member agree with me that there are ways out of this problem of a lack of resources to deal with cavity wall insulation, damp and mould, which affects houses in every constituency? One obvious way forward, which is not being explored, is to give the Housing Executive the power to borrow money on the markets — it has never been cheaper to borrow — and also to stop the madness of lowering corporation tax and give the money, probably £300 million, according to some estimates, to the Housing Executive to finance a crash programme of building social housing. Can we also stop the gradual, surreptitious privatisation of the Housing Executive and its stock, which is changing the housing market for the worse?”
“Yes. We should do all the things that are said here. We should also draw certain conclusions about certain institutions.”
“— was too worried about wee Catholics disappearing from the Termonbacca school. They disappeared. These people were in the custody of the state. I could give you other examples, but I do not have the time. We have to —”
“One of the questions that came to me when I was writing about these things was, "What travel documents were involved?". Who gave permission? I finally got it. Jon McCourt, who is in the Gallery, finally came to me with a document that showed what had happened. A priest signed a document certifying that a named nun was in loco parentis and would have the authority to take the child away; the nun countersigned that; the Home Office in London approved it; and off they went. There you had the entire thing. This is a criminal conspiracy. The state colluded in all that. The Catholic Church wanted wee Catholics out in Australia to build them up. The Australian Government wanted English-speaking white kids as part of the "White Australia" policy, and, sadly, sir, nobody in authority in Northern Ireland — in those days, the unionist state —”
“It was reverence for the Catholic Church, combined with the oppressive power of the Catholic Church down upon them. The Catholic Church has an awful lot to answer for, and it is not just little, individual instances. It is because of that role and the way in which it was perceived in society that people were afraid to speak out. You did not speak out against the priest. That is one of the reasons why clerical sex abuse lasted for so long and they got away with it. <BR /> <BR />Peggy Gibson, a woman from Deanery Street in Derry, now living in Queensland, is an example of the result of all of that. She is living in Queensland because she was one of the kids who was exported from this country, North and South, but mainly the North. How did that happen? Why was a five-year-old child taken to Australia?”
“I can remember, when I was growing up on Rossville Street on the Bogside, my mother deciding at one point that we should be one of those family-rosary families and say it every night. So, we did. Every evening, she spoke the phrase — only Catholics will understand this entirely — "The fifth decade of the rosary. We'll say this decade for the home boys. God help them". Other people used it too. That was the phrase: "We'll say this decade for the home boys. God help them". The home boys were the boys from the Termonbacca home, just above the Letterkenny Road on the outskirts of Derry. You used to see them. People talked in whispers about the home boys and the terrible things that were done to the home boys. Everybody knew, and they were decent, kind people. Why did they not speak up? Here is the point I am getting to.”
“— in the outskirts of Granard in the county of Longford, lay down and gave birth. She was 15 years old. This was Christy's point: "Everybody knew, nobody said". She suffered in silence. She gave birth, lying there. The child was born dead. She died within a couple of hours. There is a direct connection between that and what we are talking about. <BR /> <BR />The destruction of truth and honesty in relation to sex in our society is a contributory factor to all this. In some ways, the understanding was absolutely right. Everybody has spoken compassionately about the victims of this — you cannot have an excess of compassion — but, sometimes, it leads you to speak in a way that does not ascribe blame or point the full blame at where it belongs. <BR /> <BR />I talked about Christy and "Everybody knew, nobody said".”
“I think it is right that somebody other than a Sinn Féin Member should stand up and say that, and I am very pleased to say it. <BR /> <BR />The singer Christy Moore wrote a song called 'Middle of the Island' back in the 1980s. It had a refrain that he kept repeating: "Everybody knew, nobody said". It was about child abuse, but child abuse in a slightly different context. It was about a young woman, a girl called Ann Lovett, who, on a January day in 1984, came out of school and went to the grotto of Our Lady:”
“I want to say first that, having sat here and listened to the debate, there were one or two occasions when I felt a wee bit uneasy. Those were occasions when quite spirited attacks were made on the Sinn Féin party for its actions which contributed to the suspension of the Assembly or the crumpling of the institutions. The suggestion seems to be that, somehow, Sinn Féin was — or seemed to be — less than wholehearted in handling this issue, because it had left us with nowhere to go with it now the institutions are gone. The issue was used in relation to a debate that is going on in the Assembly and society that has nothing to do with child abuse or anything like that. It is simply inappropriate that Members from the DUP over there made those points.”
“Give the people working-class politics, as People Before Profit is trying to do, and we may not have to go through this nightmare again.”
“The fact of the matter is that we need a different type of politics in Northern Ireland, and, if we do not get that after 2 March, we are doomed — doomed — to go through this little circle of hell yet again and to make no progress. Surely after all these years and all this time, we can say to the people, as we say to the people — Catholic, Protestant or anything else — "Vote for a change. Voting the way you have always voted is how the problem arose. That is where the problem is rooted in the first place". <BR /> <BR />I believe that we are better than this. I believe that the people of the North are better than this. The working class of the North are 10 times better than the sordid shenanigans going on here.”
“We might have thought a couple of months back that it could not get any deeper or darker — well, it just has because of this. We are undermining trust. I am not too worried about undermining the status of the Assembly because of the regulations and the RHI. Every time you look down, Mr Speaker, I mention the regulations to remind you that I am being relevant with all this. What I am saying is that we believe that we need a different type of politics that does not need the separation of Departments into silos or to be policed by SpAds and spivs. We need a system of government in which the interests of the people come first. To my mind, that requires a socialist approach; others might disagree and will not go the whole hog with me.”
“It seems to People Before Profit that we do not need just a proper investigation into what happened or just the regulations, although they are a little better than nothing. We can deal elsewhere with the question of the 2005 Act under which there will be an inquiry. That is not a perfect document either — far, far from it. <BR /> <BR />Can I just throw this in, with your indulgence, Mr Speaker? No, I will leave it. <BR /> <BR />We need a different type of politics here if we are to avoid debates, scandals and issues like this in another mandate. I know that I have said this before, but the perception that RHI was a racket has added and contributed to a perception that Stormont itself is a racket. That is what is out there. People have a cynicism about this place.”
“The DUP is the star of this production. Sinn Féin may be in line for an award as best supporting actor, but this whole thing is a DUP production. They are responsible for it and for the damage done to environmental campaigning.”
“Absolutely. It is one of the sadder aspects of all this. As anyone who has campaigned on environmental matters will know, one of the big hurdles when you are arguing for the need for something like the renewable heat incentive scheme in terms of energy efficiency, controlling CO2 emissions and all the rest of it is that people think that environmental things are just too expensive, are not practical or do not bring jobs and all the rest of it. The little saga that we have had here will make that much more difficult. The RHI scheme was, on the face of it, intended to make a contribution to protecting the environment and might well have done so. The controversy that has arisen, mainly because of the DUP — I keep saying, "Sinn Féin and the DUP", but let us be clear about it: there is no equality of arms in this.”
“That tells us that those parties have suffered and are uncertain about whether their ideology has been maintained and is still as strong as it was. They are retreating to particular positions in advance of 2 March. The DUP says, "You're damaging unionism. Vote DUP or the Union is under threat". Sinn Féin says, "Vote Sinn Féin for progress towards a united Ireland", which it claims will be achieved —”
“Of course they are raging mad. That is what has given rise to the chaos in the DUP and the pressure from below on Sinn Féin, which has led to the collapse of the institutions. That is what caused it. <BR /> <BR />This is not an election meeting, but the fact is that, if we have another Assembly with the same relative result for the major parties and so forth, we will have solved nothing whatsoever. You advised me, Mr Speaker — you were absolutely right — to stick to the point. When it comes to dealing with this matter, is it sticking to the point to say that all this is an attempt to weaken unionism or for Sinn Féin to make a similar point in reverse to the DUP? How is that relevant to the debate?”
“When I say "ordinary people", I mean people who come from the area where I come from. Raymond McCartney comes from the same area. Loads of us are from areas where people struggle day to day. They know that, if they ripped off the state for a relatively small amount of money, if they claimed and took more in social security than they are entitled to under the rules and regulations, they might well be up in court being named and shamed in front of their neighbours as reprehensible people for a couple of hundred quid. They then read in the newspaper that relatively vast sums of money are sloshing about at Stormont and are being siphoned into the pockets of particular individuals. They also read that people here, whether politicians or officials, are tipping off their mates to join the scheme. What are they supposed to think?”
“In this jurisdiction, if senior civil servants are having a discussion with a group that has come in to talk to them and a suggestion is made, one senior civil servant will say to another very senior civil servant, "We'll never get that past so-and-so", naming a SpAd. That is a grotesque system. It all comes from the nature of the structures. Tomorrow we are discussing the spirit and values of the Good Friday Agreement. Perhaps we will go into some more detail at that point. All that provides the context in which these problems have arisen. <BR /> <BR />Mr Bell talked about the £85,000 a day and what that could do in the health service and so forth. It is an easy argument to make, but there is a bigger one. I am not objecting to that argument; it is just an obvious one to make.”
“If you set up a system of governance in which every Department is a silo operating independently of all the others, it makes perfect logical sense to have groups of SpAds to make sure that every silo is secure and a particular party's perspectives, policies, desires and interests are vindicated in that Department rather than any general overall interest of the people or the political system. That is what lies behind that, and that is why they need all those SpAds. It is why SpAds feel entitled, as they do in this part of the world — they do not across the water — to tell permanent secretaries and Ministers what to do.”
“Given the nature and the structures of these institutions, which are based on the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, it is quite understandable that that should be so.”
“No sensible person could object to anything that Jenny Palmer has just said. The role of SpAds in our system — why they have this role and influence — is a very interesting one. We keep hearing it, and it is true, that there are so many SpAds in this little place, serving the Executive Office and other Departments, compared to Wales, Scotland and even Westminster. Why is that? Is it just people filling their boots again and saying, "We will create jobs for the boys"? There are hardly any girl SpAds, are there? There is a reason why we have so many SpAds. What their job is really is to police the Departments for their parties. They are not there to help in the administration or to make it more efficient.”
“NAMA and Red Sky and all that. Is it not interesting that, when you look back, some of the same names appear. All those SpAds. Mrs Palmer has not spoken yet, has she?”
“So, power before people I will accept too. <BR /> <BR />Where was I?”
“Power before people. When I was coming in this morning, I was accosted by Mr Allister, who said, "I believe that you are from People Before Pellets".”
“It came after Research Services Ireland and then — all these incidents have something in common — Red Sky, NAMA and all the rest, and on those you cannot say, "One side is as bad as the other". You cannot; it is not the case.”
“Some of the remarks about the media from the DUP Benches reminded me of a Donald Trump press conference, in which he called out people and asked them, "How dare you tell the truth? We have got an alternative truth that we are promoting. How dare you tell the facts!" That was the tone of some of the remarks from the DUP Benches. <BR /> <BR />At the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves what are we going to do about all this? What is "all this"? "All this" is not just RHI. We all know that one of the reasons for the seething anger that Mr Smith referred to is that it is not the first such thing to come before the public. It was the last straw, not the first example.”
“If I am right, that was in November 2014. <BR /> <BR />Incidentally, there were attacks on the media here. If it was not for 'Spotlight' shining its light, we would still be in the dark about many of these things. I pay tribute to Stephen Nolan, Sam McBride, Allison Morris and all the other journalists, who have given great service to this community, far better than that given by some people in parties in here over recent weeks, by bringing these shocking events and situations to the public mind. We would not have been here, as someone remarked, if it had not been for honest, investigative journalism in this part of the world. Everybody would be trundling on in a complacent manner. Far from attacking the media, we should be giving it credit and praise.”
“There is a lot of anger and dismay and a widespread belief that the RHI scheme is a racket, and that is not good for any of us. I am not saying that I endorse that belief, but people are disgusted, and anyone who has talked to people in the community about it will know that the RHI scheme is seen as a racket. That is what people believe it to be. Everything that they hear about it — what they hear is accurate — is about dodgy practices and people being secretly or confidentially alerted to the fact that a scheme existed and were told to fill their boots with public money. When people hear that and consider it against the background of all the things that have led up to it — anyone can rhyme them off. There was Research Services Ireland a few years ago. That was a 'Spotlight' production too, was it not?”
“That is fair enough, Mr Speaker. I will. I have to say to you that in the course of the debate — it has been a lengthy one — we have had passages of debate in which the regulations, or anything associated with them, were not mentioned for five or 10 minutes. I have certainly said nothing so far that was as far removed from the regulations as other Members have been — repeatedly — in the debate. However, I will leave that particular aspect of it there. <BR /> <BR />Mr Speaker, you will be aware, as we all are, of the extent to which — I think that it was Mr Smith who referred to the fact that he had never encountered anger like it. I have to say that I have; I have encountered more anger on the streets over other issues over time. Nevertheless, I take your point.”
“I suppose that it does. I am glad that you made that point.”
“Sorry, Mike. Yes. I mean, not sorry. Come ahead.”
“It is a party that is dedicated to a united Ireland or nothing, yet they were locked into an embrace with the DUP. It is hard to explain that to people who believed that they were supporting or joining the party to make a drive for the full realisation of the ideals of 1916 and all that business. There was a contradiction there and, as I said, the ideological contradiction in the DUP that was brought about by the fact that, by coming together to form a government, they were contradicting the stated reasons for their very existence. In that situation, you are bound to get internal turmoil and, as Sinn Féin found when they went back to their grassroots, people were telling them "No, nay, never".”
“There is a questionable and murky behaviour conducted in that dark territory where SpAds and spivs infest the system of government in Northern Ireland. You cannot understand the way the entire scheme emerged and the regulations — the inadequate regulations — that we are invited to vote for unless you take that into account. <BR /> <BR />Why did the scheme cause the collapse of the Executive and then the Assembly? How did that happen? Just a few weeks ago, everybody will remember the remarkable scenes in which you had Members looking across the Floor from the Sinn Féin Benches to the DUP Benches. They were gazing at one another doe-eyed; now, they are looking daggers at one another. That was just a week later. How did that happen? Again, there are ideological problems for Sinn Féin, as they know — I have talked to their Members about it.”
“I am sure that he is right about that. One of the reasons why I am sure that he is right is that, a couple of days after that, I happened to be watching my television set and there I saw Ian Paisley junior making some remarkable statements about Mr McGuinness. I thought to myself, " There is something up. There is something happening here". Is the dissident DUP claiming the Rev Ian Paisley? And, of course, is there a leadership bid? It also demonstrates the ideological chaos in the DUP. It is the chaos arising from the fact that their traditional ideology does not meet the material realities of Northern Ireland society any more. In that situation, we have the politics of opportunism and the politics of — I hesitate to use the word "corruption", so I will not.”
“I was very struck when, the last time we had a debate on this subject — I am dealing with things that have already come up, Mr Speaker — Mr Bell told us, and he may well be right, that if the Reverend Ian Paisley were here, he would be sitting alongside him and not with the other DUP colleagues further along the Bench.”
“<BR /> <BR />For a start, I would like to demonstrate the way in which the internal politics and the ideology, if you like, of the DUP and Sinn Féin have played a role in generating this present situation with the renewable heat incentive scheme. It may seem a very far distance from political ideologies of parties — do not worry, Mr Speaker, stick around and I will demonstrate it now. The fact of the matter is that, in the course of this debate — it is relevant, I am picking up things that have already been said in this debate. Mr Bell made the second fascinating statement that he has made in the House. At the end of it — I am sorry about the pun — there is no need to ask any more for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for Arlene Foster. We learnt that after Mr Bell's statement.”
“It is something I know nothing about. What I am really wondering is, how did we get here in relation to the major items; how did our debate get to a position where we have to be informed and take on board the preferences of day-old chicks with regard to particular fuels used for heating their sheds? How did that happen? <BR /> <BR />One of the reasons it happened is, of course, because a lot of people in here and a couple of parties in here cannot deal with the matter in a straightforward manner. And because they cannot deal with it in a straightforward manner and face up to all the issues which are raised, we get taken into all sorts of meandering, winding paths and into the netherworld and the fringes of the Assembly.”