Loyalist calls on IRA to say war is over
Loyalist communities in Northern Ireland need to be given help to build on ground-breaking moves by the IRA over the next six months, a Northern Ireland Assembly member claimed today.
Progressive unionist leader David Irvine told his party conference that he believed there was going to be “serious movement from the IRA” over the coming months and that devolution would be restored by next February.
However he argued that republicans needed to publicly reassure loyalists that the war was over and Protestant working-class communities also needed to be helped by the British and Irish governments to shake off paramilitarism.
“We are about to see serious movement by the IRA,” the East Belfast Assembly member told party colleagues.
“Of that, I do not have any doubt.
“It will be historic, deeply significant and undoubtedly welcome.
“But how much more it would be welcome if it is accompanied by a statement that the war is over.”
Mr Irvine said loyalism's response to a ground-breaking IRA move would be shaped by how others in the political process attempted to reach out to the Protestant working class.
Loyalists, he argued, had been abandoned and demonised as criminals while republicans had been given the floodlights, maps and methodology to get themselves free from the jungle of paramilitarism.
While he acknowledged that there had been criminality in the loyalist community, the PUP leader said it was unreasonable that the image portrayed of loyalists was that of a pumped-up individual with a bald head, earring and T-shirt walking a dog.
Loyalist communities, he said, needed to be given role models who could give them hope that they would have educational and health opportunities.
The Progressive Unionist Party, he said, also needed to respond to the changed political situation in Northern Ireland by challenging more vigorously the inequalities that existed in society.
He ridiculed claims that the Reverend Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionists were a socialist party and that Sinn Féin was also socialist.
Sinn Féin ministers, the East Belfast MLA recalled, had enthusiastically deployed Public Private Partnerships and Private Finance Initiatives while in power during the last period of devolution.
This meant capital which should have been spent on health and education projects was going in the form of rents to private companies who built projects which should have been financed publicly, he said.
The best way, Mr Irvine argued, the DUP’s and Sinn Féin’s claims that they were socialist could be put to the test was by pressing them to withdraw plans for water charges in Northern Ireland.
The PUP leader, however, predicted that devolved ministers would press ahead with the plan while at the same time insisting their hands were tied by the legacy of under-funding from Westminster.
Mr Irvine said: “The peace process and political process are not one and the same but I believe a convergence is beginning to happen.
“The parallel tracks are less parallel, more arced towards each other and within a very short time they will touch each other.
“They may recoil slightly but they will eventually converge, and in my humble opinion that will happen in 2005.”
Mr Irvine also claimed that while the DUP may be culturally incapable of making a deal with republicans, its thirst for power would nevertheless see it going into a devolved government.
“In six months the IRA will undoubtedly have made serious moves and the focus will undoubtedly be on loyalism,” he said.
“We need a plan. We need a plan from where we have never had it before.
“The British government needs to negotiate with us.
“They need to light the floodlights, to open the gates and have the arrows pointing for us.”
