UUP urged to 'sell' Good Friday Agreement
The Ulster Unionist Party was tonight urged to positively sell the Good Friday Agreement to its community in a bid to stop the advances made by hardliners.
SDLP MP Eddie McGrady tonight told a constituency meeting in South Down that the positive benefits of the Agreement were there for all to see, especially in the way the Policing Board in Northern Ireland had dealt with the controversial issues of a new emblem for the police and the Omagh bomb investigation.
The Party’s Chief Whip at Westminster told the gathering: ‘‘The strengthening of the political institutions must be a priority for the pro-Agreement parties by adopting a much more positive support for the new arrangement.
‘‘The Ulster Unionist Party for one, has to engage in a positive promotion of the Good Friday Agreement. This positive approach has been singularly lacking since 1998.
‘‘In every step of the Agreement’s implementation, the Ulster Unionist Party has presented largely negative responses, leading to the alleged ’cold house’ (for Protestants) effect, as if every step towards the agreed objectives of fairness and equality was an attack on their Unionist position and on their community instead of being, as it is, the necessary establishment of rights and guarantees for all.’’
Mr McGrady said it was no wonder that extremist Unionists have been able to exploit this failure to sell the Agreement and that moderate unionism was ‘‘confused’’.
He said hardline Unionists would continue to make advances at the expense of more moderate elements if Ulster Unionists continue to pay lip service to the Agreement.
Mr McGrady also criticised the acceptance in society of so-called punishment attacks by republican and loyalist terror groups.
He argued: ‘‘We cannot allow a tolerance of the daily diet of punishment shootings and mutilations.
‘‘We must not allow the adoption of an acceptable level of violence.
‘‘Each of us must know that the republican and loyalist paramilitaries are the godfathers of the violence - either committing the violence or authorising it.
‘‘None of these atrocities must ever be deemed to be a service to the community, for in reality the shootings and the beatings almost always are perpetrated to protect the financial benefits of the Paramilitaries.
‘‘Such acts are always an infringement of an individual’s rights to a fair deal and a fair hearing.’’
