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http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/maze-can-mirror-peace-centres-around-world-mcguinness-14276131.html
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
Former sites of conflict like the Maze prison have become centres for peace building around the world, deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness said today.
The Sinn Fein representative detailed the Executive's plans to build a new relationship with the rest of Europe as the generous EU peace funding of the past comes to an end.
As he detailed the new strategy in the Assembly he also said there was huge support among EU officials for a conflict transformation centre in Northern Ireland and he again flagged-up the potential of the Maze/Long Kesh site.
"It is quite clear speaking to people, not just at the European Union, but throughout the world, there is an intense interest in how conflict was resolved in this part of the world," he said.
"As we go forward we will have to go forward on the basis that the Maze/Long Kesh site is a site of regional significance and in order to ensure its potential we intend to develop the site's economic, historical and reconciliation opportunities to the full," he said.
He said a development commission will make proposals for the Maze/Long Kesh area, but said any plans would include the listed buildings at the site which include a prison block and the jail's hospital.
"There is widespread EU Commission support for the development of the international facility which would take forward a key element of EU strategy for promoting peace and transformation within member states, new joining states and internationally," he said.
"This peace building and transformation project would be recognised as a significant legacy to the European Union's peace investment here.
"And it has increasingly been shown around the world that sites which were previously linked with conflict are more and more being recognised as key components of peace building and reconciliation processes.
"And examples of this can be seen in Constitutional Hill in Johannesburg, the World Trade Centre site in New York, the ESMA space for memory and human rights in Buenos Aires."
Mr McGuinness briefed MLAs on the Executive's new strategy for building closer relations with the rest of the European Union.
Two years ago a European Commission task force was established as part of a process to enhance Northern Ireland's relationship with the EU.
Last year the task force presented a report suggesting ways of boosting economic development and helping the Executive to shape EU policy.
Today Mr McGuinness said that in its response to the task force report the Executive has moved to strengthen links between the EU and the work of the local administration and has increased civil service secondments to Brussels.
Junior Ministers Jeffrey Donaldson and Gerry Kelly will lead efforts to compile regular progress reports, while ministers from the Office of First Minister and Deputy First Minister will travel to Brussels for talks each year as part of the plans to expand the Executive's role in Europe.
Mr McGuinness said: "We have committed to play a full part in Europe.
"We will continue to build influence and help shape EU policy formulation and decision-making to ensure that we obtain the best possible outcomes for our citizens and businesses."
http://www.derryjournal.com/journal/Nazis-target-loyalist-estates.5188473.jp
Published Date: 21 April 2009
An extreme right-wing British nationalist party calling for the introduction of a shoot-to-kill policy in the north have been condemned for carrying out a leaflet drop in Derry.
Local loyalist leaders said such views were not welcome in loyalist estates.
The Ulster branch of the British People's Party (BPP), a pro-white power group who claim to "represent the interests of the ultra Nationalists of Great Britain", distributed hundreds of leaflets in loyalist areas of Derry's Waterside on Saturday.
In a statement on their website, on which Hitler's birthday was yesterday openly celebrated, the BPP state the leaflet drop comes as part of a campaign "against the late upsurge in dissident republican activity in Northern Ireland".
Click here to read reaction - Alarm at right wing leaflets
The statement reads: "The activists posted leaflets through the doors of houses on Bond Street, Clooney Estate and Lincoln Court, stating "Bring back the 'shoot-to-kill policy' for suspected IRA terrorists!"
The party claim to have been met with "a very positive response from the locals who seemed disconcerted by the lack of action taken against the late attacks perpetrated by the Real-IRA."
"The Ulster BPP is confident that more positive comments are yet to come, and that there will be some new recruits in the Londonderry area," the statement concludes.
http://www.derryjournal.com/journal/-Man-40s-shot-in.5187487.jp
Second man escapes injury
Published Date: 21 April 2009
By Staff reporter
Local politicians have condemned a paramilitary-style shooting in the Bogside area on Sunday night in which a man was shot in both legs.
The man, who is in his 40s, suffered gunshot wounds to his legs when three masked men broke into his house in Tryconnell Street and shot him.
A shot was also fired towards a second man who was in the room during the attack but he was not injured.
The victim of the shooting was recovering in hospital last night. Dissident republicans have been blamed for the shooting.
The shooting comes just days after a shadowy organisation calling itself Republican Action Against Drugs admitted throwing a pipe bomb type device at a house in the Pennyburn area and weeks after the Real IRA admitting shooting a convicted rapist in the legs in Rosemount.
There was also a similar attack in Creggan which no group has admitted.
Foyle SDLP MLA Pat Ramsey condemned the shooting and claimed it was the work of dissident republicans.
'Community control'
"There is clearly a concerted effort by dissident groups to exercise community control and the whole community, which is being attacked, will reject it. But they must also help put a stop to it.
"The best way to stop it is to demonstrate to anyone who would try to drag us backwards that they will end up before the courts and going to jail for a long time," he said.
Challenging the gunmen to explain their actions to the local community, Sinn Féin Councillor Peter Anderson said those who carried out the attack must inform the community why this attack was carried out and who they represent.
"This latest attack is again done against the wishes of the vast majority of the residents of the area who want to see a proper policing service not vigilantism.
"I am fearing that the latest round of attacks have more to do with personal vendettas than it is to do with community protection," he said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/8009583.stm
A Sinn Fein assembly member is to meet residents from the Holyland district of south Belfast following riots last month.
Several people were arrested after St Patrick's Day celebrations led to disturbances in the area.
But there have been problems linked to the students living in the Holyland area for a number of years.
Alex Maskey said the behaviour of a "minority" of students was part of the problem, but not the sole cause.
"Overcrowding, lack of community infrastructure and investment are also part of a wider problem," he said.
"While these problems are at their most acute in the Holyland area, similar problems are beginning to develop in other communities in south Belfast.
"It is therefore in the interests of all of these communities to work together to tackle the root causes of these problems."
He said the issue would only be resolved through intervention of the the Northern Ireland executive, in conjunction with landlords, residents, community leaders, politicians and the universities.
Mr Maskey has also tabled a private members bill at the assembly to raise the issue.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0422/1224245136914.html
DAN KEENAN, Northern News Editor
Wed, Apr 22, 2009
THE COST of severance payments for officers leaving the Police Service of Northern Ireland is expected to reach £1 billion, new figures reveal.
The packages were offered to serving RUC members in early 2001, before the PSNI was formed that year, as part of an effort to increase significantly the percentage of Catholics in the new police service.
The payments followed the reform of policing as outlined by the Patten Commission which also called for a 50-50 balance in recruits drawn from Catholic and “Other” backgrounds.
The projected costs for the next two years were discussed by the Stormont committee tasked with examination of the devolution of policing and justice which met yesterday.
They show that 350 full-time officers will take up the severance offer in each of the next two years at a total cost of some £88 million. On top of this more than 500 part-time officers will leave over the same timeframe costing another £44 million – bringing the bill for two financial years to £132 million.
DUP member Ian Paisley jnr said the huge costs of the severance scheme were a drain on policing resources at a time of need. He also said some experienced officers were in line for significant pay-outs.
“It is incredible but some people are being paid in excess of £1 million in settlement,” he said last night. “It’s lottery stuff.”
Mr Paisley admitted that the PSNI officers concerned were entitled to the severance package but pointed to what he said was a “considerable downside”.
“Firstly here we are paying off some of our most valued and experienced officers at a time when the police is under immense pressure in terms of its ability to detect crime,” he said.
“Secondly we have gaps in terms of prison service, courts service, youth justice and policing which amounts to over £600 million and yet in the next year and a half [Northern Secretary Shaun Woodward] will have to pay almost half of that in severance payments to get rid of skilled police officers.” People should tell the Northern Secretary this doesn’t add up, he said, adding that the issue was bound to affect the planned devolution of policing and justice powers to Stormont.
The Patten Commission, which drew up the blueprint for policing reform in Northern Ireland, called for a recruitment programme which delivered 30 per cent Catholic recruitment by 2010-11 in a police service of about 7,500 officers. A severance package for established officers was put in place and it is the cost of this which has angered unionists.
West Belfast SDLP member Alex Attwood said the figures should shock no one as it was known for years these costs would be incurred.
“Everyone went into this with their eyes wide open,” he said.
Pointing to a police service which was more accurately reflecting the religious composition of the community it serves he said: “This is a priceless asset.”
© 2009 The Irish Times
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/education/purvis-mainstream-unionism-is-condemning-protestant-men-to-failure-14276122.html
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
Young Protestant men are failing for life because of mainstream unionists' education stance, it was claimed today.
Academic selection in schools institutionalises inequality and caters for the privileged few, Assembly member Dawn Purvis (PUP, east Belfast) added.
Around 44% of male Protestant working-class youths leave school without five good GCSEs, Education Minister Caitriona Ruane confirmed.
Ms Purvis told the Assembly: "All that our young men have to offer this world, and this is where our unionist leadership have left them, leading in failing and failing for life.
"This is not only unkind and hypocritical, it is unsustainable."
The DUP and UUP have promised to thwart the minister's plan to end academic selection amid a backlash from parents.
Many Catholic and Protestant grammar schools aim to set independent entrance tests in a showdown with the Sinn Fein minister which has left some pupils uncertain about the future.
Ms Purvis added: "Some unionists in this chamber have for years been calling for unionist unity and to them I ask where is your sense of unionist unity, where is your sense of responsibility for the whole of the unionist community and not just the privileged few?
"How can any form of unity here be possible when the two largest unionist parties in this chamber, and the ones responsible for this issue in the Executive, insist on maintaining a system of severe division within the unionist community?
"A system which impacts on every level of life for the members of our community and especially the young men."
She added boys and young men were being left behind in shocking and dangerous numbers.
"Inequality isn't only wrong, it is expensive. The way we currently practice academic selection institutionalises inequality," she added.
"The problem has got so severe that it has bled well beyond the boundaries of the education system."
According to Employment Minister Sir Reg Empey, 13 of the 15 worst areas for educational under-achievement in Northern Ireland are in loyalist wards.
And Ms Ruane said almost 12,000 young people leave school without five GCSE passes, including English and Maths, almost half the pupil population.
Youth unemployment is costing the Northern Ireland economy £1.6 million every week in lost productivity, a report from the Prince's Trust revealed in 2007.
Alisdair McDonnell (SDLP, South Belfast) proposed the debate and said educational under-achievement is costing the Northern Ireland economy something in the region of £1 billion a year in lost earnings.
He added it was vital to involve parents in their children's education.
"If the cost-cutting departmental action plan is to succeed it must be brought into the home of every child, otherwise the under-achievement or low-achievement will not be tackled," he said.
Education Committee chairman Mervyn Storey (DUP, North Antrim) said platitudes were more important than real standards on calculation or grammar at the Department.
"It is unfortunate that we have a Department and a minister who doesn't want to standardise the testing across all of our schools," he added.
"Rather we have this patchwork quilt approach that gives us, depending on what particular area you look at and what particular set of standards you use, a different answer at a different time."
Basil McCrea (UUP, Upper Bann) accused Sinn Fein of peddling a Marxist line about equality.
"Equality doesn't work in this context because although all children are valued equally they are not all equal," he added.
Ms Ruane (Sinn Fein, South Down) said in 2008/2009 in the loyalist Sandy Row, south Belfast, 11 out of 79 primary pupils transferred to a grammar, in the Shankill it was 10 out of 104.
This compared to 77 out of 135 in Holywood, Co Down, and 214 out of 235 on the Malone Road.
She said: "I am determined to continue my work to create a system based upon social justice, equality and excellence for all. And that needs the system to change."
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/belfasts-peace-walls-get-artistic-makeover-14276055.html?r=RSS
Wednesday, 22 April 2009
Belfast's infamous peace walls are getting an artistic facelift, it was revealed today.
Images from Northern Ireland's troubled past have been painted on the loyalist Shankill Road side of the division. More than 40 barriers remain in sectarian areas of Northern Ireland despite the peace process.
A half-kilometre stretch through the most polarised parts of west Belfast - at times a virtual war zone during the conflict - has been transformed through the initiative by local artists.
Organiser Roz Small said: "This is about giving the Shankill people the opportunity to tell the history to the world if they want to listen to it.
"It is about taking what has been quite a negative energy and transforming that into a positive expression of the Shankill people and community and history."
The first part of the project, If Walls Could Talk, is being unveiled today.
Images include traditional brick houses and community life, paintings of Lord Carson, who led resistance to Irish Home Rule, and the original Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).
Testimonials to those who died at the Somme during the First World War and pictures of Orangemen are shown.
It also features scenes from Baghdad's conflict-blighted Sadr City and Haifa in Israel.
Despite the peace process and power-sharing at Stormont, there has been renewed violence with dissident republicans shooting dead two soldiers and a policeman.
In 2007 it was announced that a 25ft-high fence would be built at Hazelwood Integrated (Catholics and Protestants) Primary School in north Belfast.
It was erected to protect residents from attack.
The Shankill Road is one of the most deprived parts of Northern Ireland, with diminished education and job prospects, and its boundary with the nationalist Falls Road was the scene of regular violence during the 30-year conflict.
Ms Small, co-ordinator of arts and tourism at the Greater Shankill Partnership, added: "The future vision of this would be to chronicle incidents and event through the period of the Shankill history.
"Within that are more of these artworks."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/8011307.stm
A potential exemption for NI MPs from proposed changes to expenses has been branded a "sop to Sinn Fein".
Gordon Brown said the second homes allowance should be replaced with flat-rate daily expenses based on Commons attendance.
But he is to ask an ethics committee to look at the circumstances in NI before applying the change.
That could mean Sinn Fein's MPs get an allowance despite refusing to take their Commons seats.
Ulster Unionist MEP Jim Nicholson said this was nothing less than a "blatant and hugely expensive sop to Sinn Fein's absentee MPs".
He continued: "Whereas MPs in the rest of the United Kingdom will receive an attendance allowance linked to actually turning up in Parliament to do their work as MPs, Gordon Brown has excluded Northern Ireland MPs from this.
“ I hope that the Committee on Standards in Public Life will agree with the then Speaker Boothroyd who said that the House of Commons should not permit 'associate membership' ”
Owen Paterson
"Whether they turn up or not, Northern Ireland MPs will be able to continue to claim tax-payers' money for keeping a home in London.
"In other words, the tax-payer will continue to fund London homes for Sinn Fein MPs who refuse to do their work in Parliament."
Shadow Northern Ireland secretary Owen Paterson added: "I hope that the Committee on Standards in Public Life will agree with the then Speaker Boothroyd who said that the House of Commons should not permit 'associate membership'.
"All elected MPs should attend under the same conditions."
'Democratic'
Sinn Fein MP Conor Murphy said his party would abide by whatever new rules were introduced.
However, the Newry & Armagh representative and Stormont minister added: "We are determined that none of the democratic entitlements of our electorate are in any way diminished.
"It seems to me the people who will be worried by these measures are not those of us who have abided by the rules but rather those MPs and politicians who are grossing hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers money in salaries, allowances and, equally importantly, through the direct employment of relatives or the payment of mortgages on second homes."
DUP MP Gregory Campbell said the party welcomed the government's plans to reform the living allowance.
"However, we would oppose any plans by the government to treat Northern Ireland MPs differently from other MPs in the UK and have tabled a motion drawing attention to this," he said.
"The 18 Northern Ireland representatives should be subject to the same rules and regulations as other MPs who live outside of London.
"It would be outrageous to have a situation where MPs who don't attend Westminster were receiving the same payments for not attending as those representatives who do."
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/prisoners-at-the-polls-a-longstanding-tradition-14276504.html?r=RSS
Wednesday, 22 April 2009
If speculation that Colin Duffy may stand in the European elections turns out to be true, it will not be the first time a republican prisoner has run for political office.
When many republicans were imprisoned for their role in the Easter Rising, ‘put them in to get them out’ was a well-used Sinn Fein election slogan as they campaigned in the general election of 1918.
The strategy appeared to pay off, with the party winning 73 out of 105 seats in Ireland.
In 1981, hunger striker Bobby Sands was weeks from death when he was selected as an Anti H-Block/Armagh Political Prisoner candidate in a by-election in Fermanagh/South Tyrone.
He won the seat and the republican movement benefited hugely from the publicity surrounding his election.
Also in 1981, west Belfast IRA man Kieran Doherty was 20 days into his fast when he was elected as a member of the Dail for Cavan and Monaghan in the republic’s elections.
Sands’ election agent Owen Carron won the by-election which followed Sands’ death, before losing his seat to Ulster Unionist Ken Maginnnis in 1983.
The Representation of the People Act of 1981 banned serving prisoners from running in elections.
But as a remand prisoner who has not been put on trial, Duffy’s case does not fall within the confines of the act.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/duffy-candidacy-lsquocould-be-a-mandate-for-terrorrsquo-14276505.html
By Noel McAdam
Wednesday, 22 April 2009
Unionists have lambasted the potential candidacy of prominent dissident republican Colin Duffy in the European election.
In statements likely to act as a spur to Duffy’s supporters, unionist runners warned it would be a mandate for a return to violence.
Ulster Unionist Jim Nicholson said: “Change is coming and it's that change which people like Colin Duffy are so opposed to.
“(They are) offering nothing more than an agenda which would build higher walls and shed fresh blood.
“It's not just a matter of the electorate rejecting Duffy and all that he stands for.
“It's a matter of all the political parties taking a firm stand against any candidate using this election as a personal and perverted referendum on a return to terror.”
And independent MEP Jim Allister also attacked Mr Duffy as a “justifier of murder, past and present”.
The 41-year-old Lurgan man, who is on remand charged with the murders of two soldiers at Massereene barracks in Antrim, is to make a final decision with his family later this week as the Electoral Office confirmed he would be eligible to run.
While there is little expectation he could win one of the three seats, the campaign would highlight the introduction of 28-day detention under the Terrorism Act and could diminish Sinn Fein’s Bairbre de Brun’s prospects of topping the poll ahead of the DUP’s Diane Dodds.
http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Unionist-attack-on-Senator-Kennedy-43338692.html
By CONN CORRIGAN , IrishCentral.Com StaffWriter
Published Tuesday, April 21, 2009, 1:43 PM
Updated Tuesday, April 21, 2009, 2:10 PM
Senator Edward Kennedy - his knighthood from the British Queen has caused controversy
A unionist politician from Northern Ireland has launched an extraordinary attack on Senator Ted Kennedy, telling the British parliament that awarding the Senator an honorary knighthood was in “extremely poor taste.”
Sammy Wilson, a member of the Democratic Unionist Party, and Northern Ireland’s Minister for the Environment, accused Kennedy of being an IRA sympathizer.
He said that “a cloud still hangs over” Kennedy, for having been expelled from Harvard and for having fled the scene of a crash at Chappaquiddick, in which a 29-year-old woman died.
Wilson said that Kennedy opposed the sale of U.S. arms to the old Northern Ireland police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, and that he had called on Protestants to “go back to Britain.”
“Senator Kennedy has consistently supported the political wing of the IRA which for many decades killed a great number of innocent civilians,” Wilson said in a motion calling on the British Government to drop the knighthood plans.
“Senator Kennedy is being awarded a knighthood for services to the U.K-U.S. relationship and services to Northern Ireland despite the fact that he has for many years supported the break-up of the United Kingdom and has explicitly sought to deny the wishes of the majority of people in Northern Ireland by supporting calls for Northern Ireland to cease to exist and become part of the Republic of Ireland.”
Wilson’s motion was supported by his party colleagues.
A number of politicians from the Conservative Party have also questioned the decision to award Kennedy the knighthood. Members of Parliament, Ann and Nicholas Winterton, supported Wilson’s motion.
Lord Tebbit, a former minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government, whose wife was confined to a wheelchair after the IRA bombed a party conference in 1984, told the Daily Mail that the knighthood was “wholly inappropriate.”
'Edward Kennedy may never have said outwardly he supported the IRA but he certainly leaned towards extreme Republicanism,” Lord Tebbit said. “He was certainly no friend of the U.K.
Conservative Member of Parliament Ann Widdecombe, said: 'It seems to me a bit of an odd choice, but diplomacy has no bounds.'
The British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, announced last month in a speech to Congress that the Queen had awarded Kennedy a knighthood.
Kennedy was one of the most “distinguished Senators” who had helped bring peace to Northern Ireland, improved health care for Americans, and education for children around the world, Brown said.
Senator Kennedy’s involvement in Northern Ireland goes back many years. He set up the Congressional Friends of Ireland dedicated to pursuing peace. He was instrumental in bringing about the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, meeting the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bertie Ahern, the then Irish Prime Minister, and Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams.
However, he refused to meet Adams on his U.S. trip in St. Patrick's Day in 2005, because of the IRA murder of Robert McCartney in a Belfast pub.
http://u.tv/News/Sinn-Fein-to-veto-victims-definition-bill/efba771a-8e86-46a9-b250-6f44c296c359
Sinn Fein has warned that it will try to veto any attempt to prevent dead IRA men from being defined as victims.
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
The party accused the DUP of abandoning inclusivity and championing a hierarchy of victims after it announced plans to change the legal definition.
The DUP wants to ensure people like Shankill fish shop bomber Thomas Begley, who died in the blast, can't be placed on the same level as the innocent.
Sinn Fein victims' spokesman Francie Molloy said:
"The DUP need to get real about the victims issue. For too long they have sought to play politics with it and attempt to elevate one victim over another.
That approach has failed and Sinn Fein will robustly block any attempt to go back down that road."
A proposal from the Eames/Bradley Consultative Group on the Past for a £12,000 payment for relatives of all killed in the conflict met a furious reaction from unionists because it could include former paramilitaries.
The DUP's objections to victims of state violence benefiting from victims legislation apply to scenarios like in Loughgall where IRA men attacking a police station were killed by the SAS.
The ministerial Executive has created a Victims' Commission to help those bereaved in three decades of violence.
Mr Molloy said: "The current definition came about after years of campaigning by victims' organisations with the support of Sinn Fein.
Given the universal view on this issue amongst those groups representing victims of British state violence I would fully expect the SDLP to join with us in this blocking these offensive and unnecessary DUP moves and I will be meeting with them to discuss this issue."
DUP European candidate Diane Dodds earlier said the DUP was drafting a changed bill.
"I hope that our legislation will attract cross-party support at Stormont," she said.
"Murderers like Thomas Begley, the Shankill bomber, cannot be put on the same level as the innocent people he cut down in cold blood."
© Press Association
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/viewpoint/uda-must-now-decommission-14276205.html
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
A meeting between the political wing of the UDA and the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland would have been |unthinkable a relatively short time ago.
The UDA is the largest paramilitary |organisation, loyalist or republican, and was characterised throughout its inglorious history by its nakedly sectarian campaign of violence directed against Catholics, often with fatal results.
There was also evidence that it was aided in that campaign by collusion from within the security forces and manipulation by intelligence agencies.
While the UDA was feared by Catholics, it was rejected by Protestants as a political force, seldom gathering any more than a few hundred votes in elections. That left the UDA as a body with nowhere to go once it had decided to stop its sectarian campaign and once bloody internal feuds were settled.
Little wonder that it became an organisation steeped in criminality, including drug running, racketeering and selling contraband goods.
However, its political wing, the Ulster Political |Research Group, has continued to give it limited entry into the world of politics and it is through that organisation that the meeting with Cardinal Sean Brady in Armagh has been arranged.
It is another step in bringing the UDA in from the cold with the twin aim of trying to ensure that it has forsaken violence for good and that it will put its arms out of commission.
While the Secretary of State has issued a deadline for decommissioning, no-one seriously expects the UDA to adhere to it.
Deadlines often postpone the inevitable, as was seen with the IRA and its decommissioning.
For its part, the UDA will want to reassure Catholics, through the Cardinal, that dissident |republican violence will not make the UDA return to violence, particularly sectarian killings.
The organisation showed commendable restraint following the murders of two soldiers and a police officer last month, not just through its lack of retaliation but also by its lack of threats.
The political wing of the UDA has also met First Minister Peter Robinson recently and was no doubt
told the self-evident truth that the war is over |despite the activities of dissident republicans.
The next step for the UDA is to put its guns out of commission. Just as the IRA had to decommission before Sinn Fein could be regarded as a credible partner in government, so the UDA will have to give up its arms if it is to have any credible political or community role.
As the political and public reaction to the deaths of the soldiers and police officer demonstrated, all shades of opinion in the community reject any |attempts to return to the dark days of the Troubles. The UDA has nowhere to go but out of existence as an armed body or paramilitary force. It is through its political wing that it has a future.
The areas where the UDA flourished were, and |remain, among the most disadvantaged in the province. There is a role for the voice of loyalism in seeking to improve the lot of its communities but only if that voice belongs to a peaceful organisation, not a terror gang.
Updated: 10/4/2009
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