in the name of Assembly Members Norman Boyd, Roger Hutchinson, Paddy Roche and Cedric Wilson
Contact No.: Mobile 0410-493475
 

The efforts of Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Dr Mo Mowlam, to silence those Westminster M Ps who have stated their intention to name the Omagh bomber and other leading paramilitary enforcers presently engaged in an escalating campaign of punishment beatings are driven by the need to conceal from public opinion in the United Kingdom, the depths to which democracy has sunk and the heights which corruption has reached in Northern Ireland.

It is transparently obvious that if all the facts were known, the Secretary of State would come under intense pressure from public opinion to censure or remove from their seats in the new Northern Ireland Assembly the representatives and front men of terror and gangsterism. It would be self-evident that the political face of the scourge of paramilitarism has not turned away from violence or embraced democratic practices. The general public would understand that those who have advanced their cause by the use of political violence and the threat of lawlessness, far from rejecting their revolutionary campaign, have in reality extended that campaign into the very heart of this devolved institution.

The Government of the United Kingdom is in the hands of elected leaders who have no moral anchor and are guided by no fixed principle. Their commitment to democracy itself is so tenuous that ordinary people lack faith in their determination to ensure that the future government of Northern Ireland does not fall into the hands of unreconstructed terrorists.

The RUC Chief Constable s support for the Secretary of State may well be predicated on the view that Dr Mowlam will keep her promises in regard to the future of the RUC. All the evidence is that the statement of the leader of Sinn Fein/IRA, Martin Maginness, that there will be "big trouble" if the RUC is not scrapped, will weigh more heavily with the present Labour Government than any assessment of the future requirements for policing Northern Ireland made by the RUC Chief Constable.

It will be interesting to observe whether the back-benchers at Westminster who have declared their determination to name names are swayed more by Dr Mowlam s vigorous effort to put a gag over their mouths or by their duty to the highest principles of British democracy.

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