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Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland
  Orange Standard

Perverse Policies Must Be Challenged

Article 1 ~ June 2003

Democracy in Northern Ireland received a body blow with the postponement, yet again, of the Assembly elections by a Government which is intent on totally ignoring the wishes of its citizens here.

The May 29 elections to the Stormont Assembly should have been allowed to proceed so as to provide an opportunity for the various political parties to get a fresh electoral mandate.

Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Government, however, were not prepared to risk a result at the ballot box which would have sounded the death knell for the Belfast Agreement, a process that has been absolutely disastrous for Unionism and has produced major concessions for republicans.

The majority of Unionists are now convinced that the Agreement signed in 1998 has worked against their interests and considerably weakened the position of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom.

The Westminster Government is clearly not prepared to allow the return of a devolved administration without the participation of Sinn Fein-IRA and, with the SDLP unwilling to go into government with unionists without republicans, the chances of getting a workable administration from the constitutional unionist and nationalist parties are not good.

Realistically, after the revelations of the Stormont IRA spy ring, the Castlereagh Special Branch Office break-in and the Columbian affair, there is no chance that a majority of unionists will give their consent to a power-sharing administration that involves republicans, unless the IRA totally disbands and decommissions all of its illegal weaponry.

Even then, the evil legacy of past IRA atrocities would still be around to haunt the process!

Unionist confidence in the political process that emanated from the Belfast Agreement has been shattered by the long train of concessions made to IRA-Sinn Fein and now there are a further rake of gains to be made by republicans from the Joint Declaration, resulting from the recent negotiations.

Lagan Valley Ulster Unionist MP Jeffrey Donaldson accurately described the Joint Declaration as "a Sinn Fein charter", with the plans to remove adequate security from border areas, reduce the level of troop deployment in the Province, further weaken policing, inflict perverse human rights legislation and, most appallingly, give an amnesty to republican "on-the-run" terrorists who have carried out the most heinous crimes against innocent victims.

There is even legislative provision in the Joint Declaration for a devolved Ministry of Justice, which could in all probability be filled by a Sinn Fein-IRA activist.

This so-called Government initiative must be opposed by unionists on all fronts, if the disastrous consequences of the Belfast Agreement are to be reversed and proper forms of democracy restored.

Unionists of all shades must unite at once to torpedo the Government's agenda, which is conducted under the guise of attempting to restore a devolved Assembly in Northern Ireland, but is very carefully shaped towards the gradual development of a united Ireland.

Labour Government policy, of course, is in favour of cutting Northern Ireland off from the Union and all the honeyed words and pretences from Tony Blair and his NIO ministers about their acknowledgment of the status quo are a complete sham. Unionist power in Northern Ireland is in their strength in numbers, and they must exercise this in no uncertain manner when they are eventually given the opportunity to do so at an election.

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