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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“How distant seem the days when Arlene Foster and Martin McGuinness were co-authoring documents in the local press, telling us how wonderfully well everything was going and how destructive the people who suggested there were fundamental problems with this place were. And now, just three months since that article was released, we have the spectacle that we had this morning. People talk about the dysfunctionality. What they are referring to is the fact that we have two parties with different ideologies who basically hate one another and what one another stands for lashed together in an Executive. They are locked together in a loveless embrace from which they cannot escape. That is why we have had all this chaos over recent times; it has not just been to do with the particular circumstances in which things broke down over the RHI scheme.”
“Again, that is an argument between the DUP and Sinn Féin. I will let a Member from Sinn Féin respond to that. <BR /> <BR />It is worth commenting that, if there is an intervention from Sinn Féin or the DUP, it is against the other major party. There has been finger-pointing and denunciation by one of the other. Harsh words have been spoken by each. Neither party can deny that that has been the tone of this discussion so far.”
“I have acknowledged that. It is on that basis that we will not oppose the measure. As you said, it provides some mitigation. My point is additional to that: it is about the circumstances. I was not able to take in very easily the provision that I read out, but that is the language in the document. The sorts of people whom it will apply to are, for example, a single mother with three children who, when the relationship breaks up, wants to move house to somewhere nearer her own family — maybe nearer to her mum. She will be vulnerable — to use the word that everybody else has used — to this.”
“I am sorry, but I am not going to get involved in a complex and heated row between Alex's party and others. I was not here when all of that happened —”
“That is a wee bit tangled, as legal documents tend to be. A very small number of people will be affected. The types of people who will be affected by it, and the circumstances in which this will arise, are, for example —”
“Absolutely. That is not a matter of politics; it is matter of arithmetic. He is absolutely correct. <BR /> <BR />I draw attention to a point relating to the fact that these mitigations will apply in the interim, until we have to come back to the issue in 2019 or 2020. <BR /> <BR />At the top of page 2 of the regulations distributed yesterday, it states:”
“I was roundly abused by a member of the DUP over the weekend because I would not give them full credit for having, as they put it, "got rid of the bedroom tax". We have not got rid of the bedroom tax. The bedroom tax is here. The difference to the previous situation is that the Executive — the state — are paying the bedroom tax for the 34,000 people whom we mentioned. However, the bedroom tax is here. The difference will come after the year 2020. How will it be paid then and by whom? So, can we give over with this stuff about who got rid of the bedroom tax? None of you got rid of the bedroom tax. When I say all this —”
“Mr Agnew made a most salient point when he said that, after four years — he put it more strongly than anybody else — the bedroom tax will be alive and well and imposed on the people of the North. By that stage, of course, more than 34,000 people might be affected by it; how do we know? The one part where I disagreed with Mr Agnew was where he said that, after four years, we would have to legislate again. No, we will not, Steven. As things are — if there is no legislation to cover the period after 2020 — the bedroom tax will automatically be imposed. Let us be absolutely clear about that. <BR /> <BR />People say that we got rid of the bedroom tax. I am not terribly interested in the argument, increasingly heated, between the two biggest parties about who is responsible for getting rid, as they claim — wrongly — of the bedroom tax.”
“Procedurally, it seems to me that we are now in la-la land and limbo land. Please can we stop this charade?”
“Thank you, Mr Speaker. Over the past 30 minutes or so, you have repeated a number of times that you are content that we are proceeding on a proper basis. With all respect to you, it is nice to know that you are at ease with your decisions on procedure, but not everybody would agree. <BR /> <BR />It seems to me, Mr Speaker, that, since no statement can be made on behalf of the First Minister and deputy First Minister, which was the basis on which we were called here, we have no proper way to proceed. Is it not the case that what ought to happen now is that we should proceed, as quickly as it can be arranged, procedurally and in relation to precedent, to an election to this House? It is perfectly clear that the House is not operating as intended and it is not operating in a way that serves the interests of the people of the North.”
“The massive injustice done to veterans by those who sent them to do what they did is a far bigger problem and has to be addressed. I am not minimising anything referred to by Mr Beattie, Mr Allen or anybody else. I am not minimising the experiences that they described but talking about the general, overall mistreatment. The fact that soldiers are abandoned when they have done what the state wanted them to do seems to me to be a much more fundamental problem than anything addressed in the motion. For that reason, my comrade Gerry Carroll and I will abstain.”
“He could not get out of it. That is a typical and common description given by soldiers of the way in which they were treated after being sent out to fight, as they would have understood it, for their country.”
“That is true of armies all over the world. It is certainly true of the British Army, and it is certainly true of the way in which veterans of British Army actions are treated by their Government and the establishment. Some time ago, there was a piece in the 'Daily Mirror' in which, I think, Mr Beattie was quoted, among others. Philip Wesley, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, described how, on leaving the army to look after his daughter when they became a one-parent family, his life:”
“If shooters from Bloody Sunday are charged with unlawful killing, punished in a way the courts think appropriate and put behind bars, I will not be out with a placard complaining about it or saying that it is an injustice. However, let me say this: the people who pulled the triggers on Bloody Sunday are, in my opinion, nowhere near as guilty of the killings as the officers who sent them in there, or the senior politicians who organised and approved, two days in advance of Bloody Sunday, an operation in which it was highly foreseeable — it had to be foreseeable because it was foreseen — that innocent people would die. <BR /> <BR />It is like Kipling said about the army when he referred to the "poor bloody infantry" and:”
“This morning, members of the Bloody Sunday families were informed that the results of the PSNI investigation into the killings were handed to the public prosecution service in England this morning, so we will see what comes of that. I have spoken to the PSNI officers involved, and they have interviewed all the shooters who are still alive and whom they could find — the people who pulled the triggers on Bloody Sunday. Regardless of whether they have spoken to more senior people, the fact is that none of the senior people have been interviewed under caution, and none are on the list of people named in this morning's report.”
“Having listened to the various speeches in the debate, I will abstain on the motion. I am not a natural supporter of the British Army. My experience of it, as mentioned by others here, has been entirely negative. What first comes to mind when I hear the British Army mentioned is lying in the gutter of Rossville Street — literally, in the gutter — the street where I was born and brought up, and then crawling away. I was doing a leopard crawl, as they call it, dragging myself by my elbows to get away from the death storm that had erupted in our area on Bloody Sunday. I find it difficult to adopt the benign attitude to the British Army that so many have taken here. <BR /> <BR />That said, I approved of the demands of the Bloody Sunday campaign, which included the prosecution of those responsible for the massacre in Derry in 1972.”
“— you are saying that it is stigmatising people to suggest that they are in a category where the majority are gay. That is not to stigmatise people. It is you. <BR /> <BR />I will say openly that what the Member said — unconsciously, I will accept, but that tells you how deep the problem is — was an unconsciously homophobic intervention from him, and it shows that homophobia is not a thing of the past but still exists and exists in this Chamber.”
“What a clear confirmation of the point that I was making. The Member does not seem to understand what he is saying. You are saying —”
“For example, every year at Gay Pride, you see thousands upon thousands of gay people and their supporters in colourful array marching through Belfast and Derry and being applauded from the pavements — apparently very popular. Lots of smiles, lots of colour and all that. And yet, there are young people in our society — teenagers — who are committing suicide because they have what they feel to be a stigma attached to them because of the way they know they are being regarded by the rest of society. Is there any more grotesque disparity in the way people are perceived in our society?”
“It has just been confirmed to me that that is a genuine problem. <BR /> <BR />The point is that to make an argument that it somehow harms the case to admit and acknowledge the extent to which this affects gay people is in itself — probably unconscious, but nevertheless — a form of homophobia. Therefore, Gerry Carroll is absolutely right: the way to deal with any stigma that exists is to stand up to homophobia. It is to say that it is an outrage that there is not equal marriage in this society. It is to say that young people in classes who are being bullied and harassed should be safe. There should be strict policies that prevent that happening. <BR /> <BR />Think about this, and I will end on it: when we look at the situation of gay rights and the way our society treats gay people today, an apparent contradiction immediately arises.”
“There is no need to take this disease as seriously as other diseases". That lingers. As Clare Bailey and Gerry Carroll said, that lingers. It is not so long ago that we had political leaders in this country mounting platforms in broad daylight, without any sense of shame, bellowing that they would save Ulster from sodomy. Who are they to save us? What is wrong with sodomy anyway? And what is wrong with gayness anyway? We all exist on some sort of spectrum in terms of sexual orientation. Personally speaking, Mr Deputy Speaker, I think I would have kissed more men in my time if it was not for the stubble factor. I do not know how other people —”
“To do that in a speech that says that we must get rid of the stigma makes no sense. It is an illustration of the lengths that we still have to travel before we are in a place where we can discuss these matters rationally. Irrational homophobia is one of the explanations for the fact that HIV and AIDS are still with us in such preponderance. <BR /> <BR />In the early days, if I can put it like that, back in the 1980s, very little research was done into HIV and AIDS. Major companies would not sponsor it, and Governments would not undertake to search for a new drug or put money into it. The main reason for that was simple. Initially, it was said that only the three Hs were affected by AIDS: Haitians, heroin users and homosexuals. The implication was, "Sure, who cares about the lives of people like that?”
“I begin by apologising for the fact that, when the amendment in my name was called this morning, I was not in my place. I could give you an account of how that came about, but it is irrelevant. <BR /> <BR />A lot of the points that I would have made have been made, particularly by Claire Hanna, Gerry Carroll and Clare Bailey, but I want to focus on one thing. There has been a lot of talk about the stigma that attaches to people with HIV. Apparently, in the minds of some in the House, the stigma consists of people who have HIV but are not gay being perceived to be gay. Why should anybody be stigmatised? What is the basis for saying that to suggest that someone who is associated with a group of gay people or a member of the gay community is to stigmatise them? Nonsense.”
“<BR /> <BR />This, too, is a legacy issue. It is part of the legacy of sectarian discrimination against Derry under the old Stormont Parliament. It is a legacy issue that has to be remedied in the same way as all the others. Let us do it, and, as I say, if this pledge does not work out, the game is not over.”
“If those people were to come in, at least 1,000 jobs — good jobs by our standards — would come to Derry as well. They would be very happy in Derry. <BR /> <BR />I am not being cynical, but once bitten, twice shy. I have been bitten over and over again and am deeply cynical. I recall the fact that we have recently closed the law school at Magee, which we had been promised for years, and which opened eight years ago. It has now gone. So I am wee bit cynical. I will believe it when we see it; I want to see it. I encourage everybody to keep working on it. If this does not work out, we will have to look elsewhere for an expanded third education institution in Derry, whether it is transatlantic, cross-border, social enterprise or whatever. If the University of Ulster does not deliver, that does not mean that the campaign is going to go away.”
“Well, actually, quite a number of them are not dead. How dare you bury them before their time, Mr Kennedy. I hope that that is not to do with the fact that they are associated with my home town, as it is easier to try to get rid of them. Gay McIntyre is not dead. Seamus Deane is not dead. John O'Neill is not dead. SOAK — Bridie Monds-Watson — is not dead. Joanna Fagan is not dead. Dave Duggan is not dead. Abby Oliveira is not dead. Willie Doherty, one of the most acknowledged sculptors on these islands, lives around the corner from me. Willie Doherty is certainly not dead; in fact, he was not dead the night before last, I can tell you. There are all those people. <BR /> <BR />What I am saying really is that a university of 10,000 students would be very happy in Derry.”
“Derry is the home of Colmcille, Docwra, Amelia Earhart, Seamus Heaney, Seamus Deane, Jennifer Johnston, Gay McIntyre, Brian Friel, Josef Locke, John O'Neill, SOAK, Joanna Fagan, Dame Cecil Alexander, Dave Duggan, Felicity McCall, Abby Oliveira and the Turner-nominated Willie Doherty. Those are just the ones that came to my mind as I sat here.”
“It was moved out of Derry, the idea being that it would be relocated as a peace centre on the Maze site. When that did not work out, it was shifted to Belfast. It is as simple as this: we want it back. It should be in Magee. Where better for a conflict resolution institution than in Magee? Where better for an expanding centre of culture generally than in Derry at Magee? <BR /> <BR />I jotted down a few of the names that came to mind when we look at the cultural richness of Derry, which should surround any university. A university should not be isolated from the cultural life of the community.”
“An extra 500 places is absolutely to be welcomed, but it is a long way short of the university of 10,000 students that we were repeatedly promised, both by this place and the university itself. If that is gone and the target has been abandoned — it is not hardly mentioned here as a target at all — let people stand up and tell us, "We can't deliver what we promised". At the moment, those pledges are still on the table for a 10,000-strong student body; we are far from that. <BR /> <BR />In the last five years, Magee has lost courses in arts, computers and engineering, and life and health sciences have been closed entirely. Most ominous of all, the International Conflict and Research Institute (Incore), which is acknowledged everywhere as a world leader in conflict resolution, has been unceremoniously shifted to Belfast by way of the Maze.”
“I was 20 when the University for Derry campaign was founded. I was outside this Building, along with a wide range of people from Derry and the wider north-west at that time, looking for a university. Here we are once again; here we go again. I am not saying that we are back at the beginning. I unequivocally welcome the idea which has been pledged of a medical school or a postgraduate medical school at Magee. I want to put that on record, lest anybody say that I am being begrudging and not welcoming of it. I accept the good intentions of everybody. <BR /> <BR />On the university's own figures and on the figures that we are talking about here, there would be 500 extra places at Magee if this promised project goes forward.”
“There is no shortage of candidates to have been the first person ever to come up with this idea. It was not I who was the first person, for a starter, nor any party associated with me. The first time I ever heard the idea of a medical school at Magee mentioned was by somebody who is not a political associate or friend of mine, but it was by John Hume at least 25 years ago. There may have been somebody before 25 years ago that I am not aware of or others might have followed on, but John Hume of the SDLP was the first person who ever brought it up in my presence, and that was a long time ago, but not as long as I have been on the road about the University issue.”
“— and all the rest of it. Stop this scheme. Do not just suspend it; abolish it.”
“If you build social housing on a sufficient scale, not only are you solving the housing crisis but you are creating work for chippies, electricians, plumbers, plasterers, painters, glaziers —”
“We are flogging off social housing, and, at the same time, we are strangling the Housing Executive, which was created by mass pressure as a result of the crisis that I just mentioned from about 40 years ago. <BR /> <BR />We need a lot more social housing; if we had sufficient social housing for everybody who needs it, this question would not need debated at all. Here, very briefly, in half a minute, is my plan for doing that. The Housing Executive should be brought back fully into the public sector and allowed to borrow money on the market. At the moment, you can borrow for next to nothing at minimal, effectively zero, interest rates. The money borrowed should be used for a crash programme of building social housing.”
“I can tell you that, where I come from, it is not unusual for individuals to own three, four, five and six houses that they rent out and they make a fortune, and they buy them from the people who bought them. If you buy your own house, you buy it at less than market value, and then there is an opportunity in one or two years' time to sell it and make a profit. That is happening over and over again, and it is depleting not increasing the stock of social housing. <BR /> <BR />As we all know, housing is terrifically important in this society. More than 40 years ago, the shortage of housing, more than any other factor, caused a general crisis in this society, yet what are we doing after all that time?”
“I have no idea why that stipulation excited some amusement among Members of the Alliance Party. It has been said by Mr Stalford, who, I see, is not present any more, and that is fair enough, that people who supported the suspension of the scheme were denying other working-class people the right to buy their own homes and, moreover, that the people who buy their own homes then live in their own homes. Therefore, there is no question of it having an effect on the stock of social housing. <BR /> <BR />If you look across the water and at experience anywhere, including here, you will discover that a considerable percentage of houses sold under right to buy schemes end up not in the hands of the people who were living in the house in the first place but in the hands of buy to rent landlords. That is increasingly the situation.”
“Is the Minister aware that the University and College Union will be making a presentation, including on these matters exactly, at 2.00 pm today in the Senate, just across the Hall? All Members are cordially invited to come along to that meeting.”
“— and join me in saying that they are giving good example? I say this: let us back the local teachers and defend the future of our children.”
“Would the Minister and Members not agree with me that teachers do not take lightly to industrial action but they recognise the inextricable link between teachers' pay and conditions on the one hand and the provision of first-class education to our children on the other? Is it not the case that they are defending the public service against the job losses etc involved in the Fresh Start Agreement? They are, therefore, giving good example to children and to people generally across society. In light of that, would the Minister and other Members care to join me and my comrade Gerry Carroll on the picket line with the teachers next week —”
“I fully accept that there has not been a wing of money lost, not a wing of that 1·7 million quid. This debate and controversy has been sparked by the case of Mr Dee Stitt and the question of whether he was an appropriate person to be employed at public expense by Charter Northern Ireland, despite his alleged paramilitary role. Is it not the case that he was employed in that position at public expense not despite his paramilitary role but because of it, and that this reflects British Government policy, effectively endorsed by the Executive, which amounts to paying public money to buy off paramilitaries?”
“— too automatically, when we should look more objectively at these things?”
“Is it not arguable that prison officers in Northern Ireland have received a bit too much support —”
“I put it to the Minister that there has been a broad welcome around the House for her statement. Does she understand that, out in the community, as we say, many people will take it with a pinch of salt? They will get the feeling that we have been here before. There have been tragedies and scandals, promises of investigations and statements that lessons have been learned, yet, as we have seen in recent days, the same thing happens again. <BR /> <BR />Given that we have had all the praise for our prison officers, will the Minister explain what consideration of staffing can explain the fact that prison officers watched while one prisoner used his thumbs to gouge his eyes out and others killed themselves? Why can they not be held to account like any other public servant?”
“Can the Minister confirm that the construction of the York Street scheme, whenever it begins, will not be delayed by being divided into three phases, like, for example, the A6 motorway or the railway from Coleraine to Derry?”
“In light of that, Minister, I will send you the Hansard report of the exchanges between Ms Venning and me. I will underline, if you allow me to, the point at which she agrees with me that without significantly increasing funding she cannot guarantee the quality of drinking water, the continuation of the supply or the management of waste water. Are you not being a wee bit complacent here, Minister?”
“Victims should join together, and they will find a big enthusiastic welcome from people who would conventionally be regarded as being on the other side, so to speak. Let us do it together.”
“Victims should stand together; it is not just a question of us standing together. The only way we ever get anything in this country is by going out, organising and fighting for it.”
“They have said to me, "We could not do that, Eamonn, as we would have been seen to have been supporting the likes of you" — as he put it — "in Derry in relation to Bloody Sunday". That political conundrum and political contradiction should be kept in mind when you are examining some of these cases. <BR /> <BR />My advice to relatives is to push it all the way, and I will be with you. There was also McGurk's bar and Kingsmills. Danny, tell the relatives — you are in touch with them and know them personally — that, if they want to come out and march with the rest of us on Bloody Sunday weekend in Derry, they will be made extremely welcome. I say the same to the Birmingham victims, people from McGurk's bar, Ballymurphy and all the rest.”
“The last thing he shouted was, "I walked these streets in my bare feet in the 30s". He was a well-known character who came out of his wee house in Manor Street and out of the pub. The other man, Mr McKinney, was back after 30 years in Canada. On his first day back in Belfast, he went out around the area where earlier there had been rioting, and he was shot dead. The two people who fired those shots had also been involved in Glenfada Park in the Bogside and Bloody Sunday. I know their names and know exactly what they did. <BR /> <BR />Why are those men forgotten? I will tell you one of the reasons why they are forgotten: the people who should have represented them and stood up for the interests and lives of working-class Protestant people in Belfast did not want to go against the state.”
“A couple of weeks ago, I sat down, in connection with something that I was writing, and reread the inquest papers into the deaths of Mr Robert Johnston and Mr Robert McKinney in 1972. If you look at those deaths, you will see something interesting emerging. <BR /> <BR />There may be people here who do not know who Robert Johnston and Robert McKinney are. Think about it if you do not, as I am about to tell you who they are. They were murdered by the First Battalion, Parachute Regiment in the first week of September 1972 on the Shankill Road. Robert Johnston was a well-known character around the Shankill. Just before he died, before the bullet hit him, fired by — I could name the para but, do not worry, I will not — and blew his brains out, he was a man walking around.”