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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“I think that it was Mr Smith who asked a little while ago how we got here and what brought us to this pass. It is worth going into it, because you cannot understand this scheme and the flaws in it, and the regulations and the flaws in the regulations, other than in the context of the internal politics of our two major parties and, indeed, of the entire system of governance created under the Good Friday Agreement. <BR /> <BR />We have had a very good debate in one sense. A lot of it was fascinating. The most fascinating thing that I discovered — at least one of them — during the day is that — you were not here, Mr Speaker, for this bit, so I wonder, did you know that day-old chicks prefer woodchips? I did not know that until Mr Poots explained it to us. I am taking it seriously. I am sure that you are right.”
“— even from the people of the community that purportedly are being served by these people. <BR /> <BR />We will put a class perspective in front of the people. We will advocate a trade union freedom Bill, which we have already drafted. That is the type of thing that should be put before the people if we are going to give young people some hope for the future. As things are going, it is impossible to say that we will weep any bitter tears at the end of this Assembly. My God, we deserve something better, and we will be in the field offering the people something better.”
“Let's get the truth for those families". I was told to my face, "It would be better if you did not intervene. You will only undermine us. You will associate us with people who are against the army and all the rest of it". There you can see the way in which sectarian mindsets prevent justice from being delivered —”
“<BR /> <BR />We in People Before Profit believe that it is possible to talk in class terms in this society and to talk in class terms about things that are normally considered divisive. What is our approach to the murder by British soldiers of Robert Johnston and Robert McKinney? Can we talk about them in the same breath as Bloody Sunday? Mr Johnston and Mr McKinney from the Shankill Road were murdered — murdered — by the Parachute Regiment. Two entirely innocent, decent men, shot down and killed in September 1972, not just by the same regiment but by the same men. I can name them to you. If I have to, I will in this House. I will name the same people who went into Glenfada Park in the Bogside and murdered people. I have approached unionist representatives on the Shankill Road and have said, "Let's get together and work on this.”
“<BR /> <BR />If you believe that the only measure that you are going to be judged against is how you have served the discrete and specific interest of your particular community, of course there is no dividend in taking up questions to do with a childcare strategy, for example, which we do not have, or a sexual orientation strategy, which we do not have. Those things do not differentially affect one community from the other, and there is no dividend for your tribal chieftains in that sort of thing. Therein lies the connection between the neglect of these issues and all of the suffering that follows from the neglect of these issues, on the one hand, and, on the other, the very structures that have been erected by the Good Friday Agreement.”
“I am told all the time by some quite sharp and acerbic commentators that the only thing that matters in this country is whether you are green or orange. I heard somebody shouting from the DUP Benches yesterday — I think that it was Peter Weir — you are green; not a red at all. I do not go back quite this far, but it reminded me of a by-election at the tail end of the 19th century in North Belfast. A fellow stood as a Labour candidate, and the 'Northern Whig' newspaper carried an editorial that said "McGrath is a nationalist no matter what he says or thinks". There is no answer to that.”
“We can talk about who is right and who is wrong — I do it as well — on RHI and all the rest of the things, but many of the problems that we are talking about are generated from within the system of governance here in Northern Ireland. They are not entirely to do with the character or the perspectives of particular parties. These contradictions have been built from the beginning. The Executive have collapsed under the weight of their own contradictions. You can analyse it any way you like, but the contradictions were there, and the flaws in the system were not in the edifice of the Executive. The flaws are fundamental; the flaws are in the foundations of the system. <BR /> <BR />You are invited to believe about our system that you are going to be judged at the polls. We are told this all the time.”
“It was old-fashioned stuff. Mr Logan appears to be a lively young man, but he has a doddery old man's head on his shoulders. That, sir, is a biological impossibility and a social and political undesirability, but it is what we have been reduced to by the politics of this place, and that is what I would like to deal with in the couple of minutes left to me.”
“Mr Logan. I am terribly sorry, but I forgot his name for a minute. As I came in, there was a ferocious attack coming from Mr Logan on Sinn Féin that took me way back to the 1950s. I can go back that far. There was talk of, "The poisonous nature of these people", and "By God, did you see this tweet that demonstrates that they are out for a united Ireland and nothing less". Now, there is a revelation at the start of 2017.”
“Since I came in this morning, I have found that there has been a very strange atmosphere around this place. You would not know what to make of it. Sinn Féin's name has been mentioned all the time, but its Benches are empty, and there is hardly anybody on the DUP Benches. We are talking in a vacuum. This is the way that the Assembly ends: not with a bang but with a whimpering diminuendo of interest as we slink away having achieved absolutely nothing on the big issues that I confront in the interests of the majority of the people. <BR /> <BR />I came in about an hour ago and discovered —”
“— play to the expectations of their own community, and it does not matter what else they do.”
“Meanwhile, major crime goes on. <BR /> <BR />We have learned a few other things in all this. We have certainly learned about Mrs Foster, Sinn Féin and the rest of the DUP. Let us remember, when we look back at all this, that when the scandal first emerged both the DUP and Sinn Féin were adamantly against a public inquiry. Sinn Féin was against it. Then it put out a statement saying that it was in favour of it. Then it withdrew that statement and said, "Oh, that was a typographical error". Do Sinn Féin and the DUP take us all for fools? They do in a sense because they believe that all they have to do is —”
“<BR /> <BR />People Before Profit invites any ordinary Protestant person who has voted DUP in the past to look at the representation that they have been given. Look at who has been represented by the DUP. Is it them? We are talking about who is responsible for these hundreds of thousands and millions of pounds and so forth. Meanwhile, back in the real world, people are named and shamed in front of their neighbours because, allegedly, they have conned a thousand quid from the public purse by doing the double or something like that. We have government websites asking people to phone and tell them and the police who is defrauding them and asking people to tout on their neighbours in relation to social security and the rest of it.”
“<BR /> <BR />We will go away, stand in an election and come back. We are told over and over again by commentators — sharp, acerbic commentators — that there is no real point in having the election because everybody will come back in the same numbers — at least, the DUP and Sinn Féin will come back in the same numbers, so nothing will have been solved. The DUP seems to think that. The DUP takes its voters for fools and treats its electorate like fools. It uses them as voting fodder and operates on the assumption that, no matter what it does, come election day, it will be able to rally people to the flag. Well, we shall see. It is possible to reach a tipping point on these things, you know.”
“Apparently, we cannot accuse people of criminality, fraud and all the rest of it. I do not accuse any individual of being a criminal or a fraudster; what I say is this: it is a flat fact that there was criminality and fraud. The task is to get to the bottom of that and to hold those responsible to account. <BR /> <BR />The scandal that has emerged does not have to do with just the RHI scheme. We will not go into all of the other things, which are relevant, going back to Red Sky and the rest of it. We will hear a bit more about all of those things. Remember this: when NAMA comes down the road in a few months and the scandalous facts of that come out into the open, we will have another crisis. Had we got over this crisis, the NAMA crisis would have come along before the end of this year and put us in the same position.”
“Mr Speaker, I take that as a warning to everybody else not to ask me to give way; in light of what the Speaker has said, I will not. <BR /> <BR />There were "mistakes" and "flaws"; we have heard those words here over and over again. Nobody spotted the flaw in the scheme. The regulator did not spot it and departmental officials did not spot it, the implication being, "How could you expect a poor, simple politician to spot it when all those other people missed it?". There might be an explanation for that. When we think of a flaw, we usually think of something that has deteriorated, something that was missed and so on. The reason why nobody spotted the flaw is that there was no flaw in the system. There was no flaw at all. This was deliberate, and it was conscious.”
“— that is being talked about in every home, pub and street, North and South?”
“What is the point of being here if we cannot discuss a matter —”
“Disgraceful. It makes a mockery of the House. What is the point of our being here?”
“I will resume my seat in a minute, but I will tell you what: you are wrong, Maurice was wrong and what we ought to do is get on with the business of discussing the renewable heat initiative.”
“— somebody can sit in that Chair and simply say —”
“Hundreds of millions of quid are going up in smoke, and we are saying that —”
“— but a matter of the credibility of people who have got —”
“The situation that we are now in is the result of a petition of concern from the DUP and the fact that there was a walkout by Sinn Féin. Put the two together and what that means is that the minimal powers of scrutiny of the matter that we might have had are taken away from us. This is not just a matter of procedure —”
“On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. You have said just now that whatever the Speaker's, Deputy Speaker's or acting Speaker's decision is, it is final. Reason cries out against that idea. It cannot be true. It cannot be the situation, because the implication of that is that, no matter what the Speaker, Deputy Speaker or acting Speaker does, we simply must accept it. The reason that, sir, you did not answer the question on the Standing Order under which you are making this determination is simple: there is no such Standing Order. What we have had here is someone simply pulling the plug on the debate. Whether that was because it suited him personally or his party, I do not know, but it was absolutely improper.”
“What the Minister needs to do is to develop some sort of perspective, maybe through a form of 3D glasses or an adaptation of them, to see the world and Northern Ireland in terms other than orange and green.”
“I want to ask the Minister whether he is familiar with the song by Harry Chapin junior? It is about a little boy who goes to the art class in school. The teacher says to him:”
“We will be active, Assembly or no Assembly, in preaching the divine gospel of discontent in Northern Ireland. We believe that we will make advances and achieve more through the mobilisation of ordinary people to pursue their own interests, whether there is an Assembly at the end of the week or not.”
“Where was I? What is wrong with our politics on this matter and others is this: the agreement and the whole structure of the Assembly and Executive require people to think in terms of orange and green. The whole nature of the agreement and the arrangements are designed to compartmentalise all of Northern Ireland society into green and orange camps and to privilege that. The whole basis of our politics is to try to get those two tribes and their representatives to work together. What we need is an increase in the non-tribal MLA element in the Assembly and elsewhere. That requires prioritising different issues and different matters. That is what People Before Profit will be doing. We base our politics on what is happening below — on the street, in factories, offices, schools and colleges. We will still prioritise that.”
“I do not think that I have strayed as far from the subject as some. Some did not touch on the subject at all. At least I mentioned it before going on to extrapolate from it.”
“We, the Green Party and the Alliance Party do not count in crucial votes; people registered as "other" are just dismissed. We literally do not count — we are not taken into account — when dealing with this issue and a whole range of others. If we want to make a real difference — if we think that there is any possibility of another Assembly mandate becoming a reality — people who define themselves as "other" should be given the same privileges as the orange and green sides. In other words, let us imagine that the Alliance Party, the Green Party and People Before Profit returned with 50% of the seats. How would the Assembly operate? How would petitions of concern operate?”
“It is a bit redundant now to say that this should be revisited and so forth, but I will say that the levels of social injustice indicated in this two-tier system of mitigation reflect the reality of our society over a whole range of policies and a whole range of ways of winning a living in our society. <BR /> <BR />The collapse of the Assembly because of RHI reflects something more fundamental. People keep talking about the dysfunctional nature of the Sinn Féin-DUP Government. It is more than that and deeper: it is the dysfunctional nature of a system that is based entirely on trying to reconcile orange and green politics. It is necessary under our political system that people identify themselves as either orange or green to have any real impact.”
“Anybody passing control of this area of public policy to the Tories was very naive if they did not regard it as inevitable coming from the Tories. Of course that is the case. This did not happen by accident. It did not happen without the cooperation or connivance of parties in the House. It does disadvantage new claimants here, and we should stop saying that these mitigations apply and that nobody will be impacted by the benefit cap. Not true. That has not been achieved, and the reason why it has not been achieved is that the issue did not have a sufficiently high political priority in the Assembly.”
“Anybody who has been involved in that sort of representation or who has talked to people seeking representation, whether through the trade union movement or elsewhere — I have done loads of representations, more through the trade union movement than through my capacity as an MLA — will know that proper representation makes an absolutely enormous difference to people. In case after case after case, it makes the difference between winning an appeal and getting some sort of justice and not winning it at all and having to live with the outcome. Do you want to come in, Mark?”
“I do not know how many Members — probably lots of them — have been involved in this type of representation, whether it is industrial tribunals in relation to problems at work or appeals against assessments by private companies like Atos of whether you are fit to go to work. If you are alive at all and can breathe, Atos will sometimes tell you that you are fit to go to work as a coal miner or something else. There are a lot of appeals there and a lot of appeals in relation to matters that are more directly relevant to the issue that we are discussing at the moment.”
“I draw attention to the phrase "existing claimants". That very clearly makes this mitigation available to existing claimants. The fact that it does not simply say "claimants" leads me to believe that what we are entering here and the logic of the wording of this provision is that we will have a two-tier system that depends on whether you are claiming now before it comes in or whether you start claiming afterwards. That is socially divisive and illogical, and it should be removed. If we have time to do that in this mandate, we would set out to do it. <BR /> <BR />I want to underline a point that was made by Nichola Mallon and others to do with representation at tribunals and appeals.”
“<BR /> <BR />Paragraph 7 or article 7 — whatever it is — of this document, under "Financial Implications", states:”
“It says here that no one here will be impacted by the benefit cap. This is not true. Fewer people will be impacted than otherwise would have been the case. Nevertheless, we should not make absolute statements when the facts do not justify them. One of the key facts about all this is that, as child benefit and child tax credit regulations are lifted from across the water, it will mean that people who have more than two children will be penalised. This is what 'The Guardian' has called the two-child policy. It will operate here. Remember, Northern Ireland is the area on these islands that has the highest proportion of families with three or more children. That particular cut and that particular provision will impact more on Northern Ireland than anywhere else.”
“I find it interesting that, when I ask the Minister of Finance about the shock deterioration in his relationship over the last week, he does not answer me at all. He answered the Minister for Communities, who is not even present. What am I to deduce from that? Even after they break up, they still cannot help thinking about one another.”
“That is the fact of the matter, and we could have a more sensible and objective debate if everybody accepted that and moved on the basis of that. Let us try to do that, Mr Speaker. As I said, I direct my remarks mainly at people outside here. I direct my remarks to the people directly affected by these matters. As we move forward in the debate and in the circumstances that we all find ourselves, I am sure, Mr Speaker, that you will be happy to chair and inform. I hope that I have not attacked anybody personally or unfairly in political terms. We need to proceed like that on an understanding and an acceptance that the bedroom tax is already here.”
“We are all brothers and sisters. I sometimes got the impression that we all want to storm the citadels of capitalism even though there is some disagreement about who has the right to lead the charge. I say that the people who should lead the charge are the people most affected by it, and I call on people outside the House in this situation that we are moving into, however it is. <BR /> <BR />I will deal with one other thing before I finish. The regulations last for four years, and I think that it was Alex who said that that is all that we can do because that is the end of the mandate and so forth. That is my point exactly. I want everybody to understand this. Can we please have nobody else talking about us having got rid of the bedroom tax? We have not got rid of the bedroom tax. The bedroom tax is here.”
“I am nearly finished. I do think, Mr Speaker, that, on this issue and some of the other matters before us, it is impossible to understand the issues that arise in relation to these things without seeing them in the overall context of economic policy generally and the funds made available, whether from Westminster or from Stormont. <BR /> <BR />I will say this to end. There is an awful lot of agreement here as well as bickering and finger-pointing. Everybody agrees that we must support the most vulnerable, while there are arguments about how we reached the present situation with regard to the bedroom tax. Everybody seems agreed. I do not think that there is anybody who has failed to say that they want to look after the most vulnerable and even that they entered politics precisely for the reason of defending the least well off and so forth.”
“Mainly what we mean when we say "vulnerable people" is people who are being oppressed by poverty. We are talking about people who do not have an adequate means of living. That is what it is. It is poverty that is the problem. It is lack of resources in individual families. That is what is going wrong when we consider that problem. I say to people in that position: yes, listen to the debates here; yes, read all the documents and so on. It is good to understand the detail on these things, but, if you want real change, organise yourselves to demand real change. The only time that we have had progressive change of any substantial nature in this country — in this part of the world — is when people got together and fought together and campaigned together for it.”
“It is difficult to object to the language, except in this sense. These people are referred to all the time as if they are helpless, as if they are people to whom we have to go and bail them out, take them by the hand and lead them towards the promised land. They are regarded as spectators at politics. "We have to help the most vulnerable and not hit them." I do not see them as the most vulnerable. I see the people who you are referring to as the basis for challenging the divided nature of our politics and the divided nature of this House that has given rise to the present hiatus. I hope to be able to say more about this, before this day is out, in relation to two of the other items that are coming before us.”
“I am certainly not supporting the scale it was when it was introduced, but I am not from there. You know an awful lot more about it than I do, and I suspect that Gerry Carroll knows as much as you, as do local people, so I will leave it to them in the interests of democracy. The positions that we take up in relation to the Casement refurbishment are not directly relevant to what we are saying today. People are not disqualified from taking one attitude or the other to the matter before us today, depending on where they stood in relation to Casement Park. <BR /> <BR />This will be my final point. I was struck by the number of Members who have spoken about their concerns for the most vulnerable. We use the phrase, "this will affect the most vulnerable", all the time. Of course, there is a certain kindness in that.”
“You know that the issue had to do with the acceptability of the proportions of the stadium and the way that it was proposed.”
“Come on, Carál, that is a different issue, as you know, coming from the area.”
“You need land and bricks and so on, but you also need a lot of workers to put the houses together. You need bricklayers, you need carpenters, you need plumbers, you need painters, you need electricians, you need roofers, you need glaziers; you need a range of people with those old and traditional skills that we are losing. Putting them to work, bringing apprentices in and so forth would have a significant effect on the economic well-being of this area and of many citizens here.”
“I hesitate to mention the 490 million quid that has gone up in smoke, but that would have helped too, as would other moneys that are used for purposes the social relevance of which is far from clear to me. <BR /> <BR />If the state built houses like that, there would be a number of effects. It would reduce the housing benefit bill substantially, at a saving to the public purse. It would also have another effect. If you had that sort of programme of house building — I have made this point in the House before, but I will make it again because it is absolutely key to what we are talking about, including the cost of housing for ordinary people and how they can be helped to afford it — think about it for a minute, fellow Members. What do you need to build houses?”
“<BR /> <BR />One of the solutions, which was mentioned before, although I forget by whom, that would provide proper mitigation and a real solution would be if we had a sufficient number of social houses in Northern Ireland. If we had a crash programme of building social housing, through direct state intervention in the economy and the housing market, we could solve the problem or at least move very quickly towards the solution to the problem. Where would we get the money for that? Why not get rid of the stupid idea of abolishing corporation tax, which will cost hundred of millions of pounds with no guarantee whatsoever — no guarantee — that one job — one job — will be created as a result? Could we put that money into a crash programme for building social housing?”