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Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

With the greatest respect, I would prefer it if we did not necessarily go down that road. I remember sitting in a meeting of Magherafelt district council many years ago on the night of the Warrenpoint bombing, in which 19 soldiers were murdered, when a member of the hon. Gentleman’s party, who is no longer with us, stated—this is in the minutes of the council, so the hon. Gentleman can check it—that he would shed no tears over them. I think that that person regretted saying that afterwards, so I will not attribute that opinion to the SDLP in general, or try to paint everyone in the SDLP as black, but the words were said. Members of the Ulster Unionist party, the Democratic Unionist party and, indeed, members of the SDLP—namely, Mr. Attwood—have condemned many of the actions of the police in the past and disagreed with them, but that does not mean that they have given credence to terrorism, or that they should be brought into question as if they were somehow to be equated to persons who were actually evil participants in the murder and destruction of members of the police or the security forces. The hon. Member for Ealing, North said that Sinn Fein-IRA said that the war is over. The person who said those words denied that he was a member of the IRA army council. After denying for 30 years that he and Martin McGuinness were members of the army council, he told the community that they had resigned from it. With the greatest respect, one cannot resign from something if one was not a member. We are led to believe by those fanciful words that the war is over. Let me make it clear to the House that the IRA did not change its policy because it had a change of heart—9/11 changed Sinn Fein-IRA policy. It could not go back to what it knew best, because the international community would not allow that to happen, so it had a good dose of reality. To this day, the structures of terrorism are in place, and individuals who could be in office accepted those structures. The structures of the grouping that murdered people for 35 years are still in existence. Someone can demand that they remain in place but, at the same time, they could be the Minister of justice or of policing. No one can ride two horses at once, and the reality is that terrorism, whether by the loyalist community or the Unionist community, is terrorism, and must be condemned unreservedly. I do so in the House without equivocation. Any Minister who takes such a role must not only condemn terrorism but give unreserved support to the forces of law and order who go out to sacrifice themselves in the defence of the freedoms of that community.