Terrorism (Northern Ireland) Bill

Of course it does. I have said to the Government, as I am sure the Secretary of State will remember, ““You gave the IRA over five years to do what they were supposed to do and now you want to give me five minutes and next you want to give me five weeks.”” Why is that? When I talk about the majority population, I am talking about the majority of both Protestants and Roman Catholics. Remember that the IRA shot some of what it would call its own people, it buried them and its own people do not even know to this day where it buried them. Let us look at this as it is. This is a hideous thing that we must face up to. All of us who represent Northern Ireland have a serious responsibility to put forward in the House what the ordinary man in the street is thinking and feeling. I trust that we will get a feel of that in our own hearts and consciences. At a time when the Government are making arrangements to disband the home battalions of the Royal Irish Regiment and to dismantle the security installations in Northern Ireland, and all done according to a political timetable rather than a security timetable, it is obvious that we need to point out the true level of the threat that is upon our Province at the present time. The very fact that there is a need to introduce the Bill is the clearest possible evidence that Northern Ireland still needs special anti-terrorist measures. I have voted against some of the things in the Bill in bygone days in this House because I felt that if the Government had used the forces of the Crown in every possible way, they could have nipped the rebellion that was coming in the bud. However, they did not. I voted in this House against the Diplock courts. The hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) has gone now, but it was her party who advocated and plead for them. Mr. Faulkner and others said that we must have them, but if the forces of law and order had been used properly, we could have stopped the rebellion. But it was not stopped; it was encouraged. Blind eyes were turned by Ministers to what was happening. I remember being called out by the Army night after night to go to vast crowds of people all over our city to plead with them to go home and not engage in any act of violence, for that would bring them nowhere. I did that night after night until my heart was broken to see people so frustrated, people who had dead bodies at home as a result of IRA and other activity. I knew that my country, my country that I love, was going into darkness. We have been in darkness. Are we going to bring it out of darkness? We will not except that we are strong; the Government and all of us must be strong and face up to the situation. We are not asking for tough, partisan measures. We are asking that everyone be equal, and be treated equally, under the law. There is no other way to run a country in peace but that. There needs to be an end to all paramilitary organisations. Their activities must all cease; none can be justified, whether the groups call themselves loyalists or republicans. The law-abiding people of Ulster, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, are determined no longer to tolerate terrorists. We can no longer have peace with terrorism. It will have to be dealt with. Over the coming months, we will be paying attention to the activities of the IRA. But even in circumstances where the IRA is effectively out of the picture, there remains a significant threat from other groups. The police tell me that dissident republicans are trouble and that loyalist paramilitaries have had their troubles; some of those groups seem intent to carry on. The Bill extends the provisions of part VII to 31 July 2007 and makes provision to extend those powers by order by another year. However, the Government tell me that things are moving well and that I and my people ought to move, too. But why are the Government saying that they will wait until 2008 before finalise things? They are giving themselves plenty of time and they gave the IRA plenty of time. They are not giving the ordinary man in the street who wants peace time to consider what is happening. That is who I am pleading for. If everyone else needs time, we need time also to consider what is happening. No one wants special powers. We want our country to be free, but if we have to sacrifice some of our liberties in order that all might share liberty, we will have to make that sacrifice whether we like it or not. The anti-terrorist powers that are available to the police and the courts cannot merely fade away to a point where they are not needed or not used before they can be removed from the statute book. It is better that provisions be allowed to wither on the vine rather than being removed prematurely. As early as 2002, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission argued for the repeal of part VII of the 2000 Act. That tells us how the Human Rights Commission was constructed—not one representative put forward the view of the majority of people in Northern Ireland. Of course it was a rigged body and it brought in a rigged resolution. If the types of offences covered by that legislation are not committed, the relevant provisions are not triggered, so there is no harm done by keeping them on the books. If, in a number of years from now, it is generally accepted that Ulster is at peace, there will be no voices louder than ours calling for all these laws be scrapped and buried for ever. We want to live in the freedom that we deserve. All that has happened in the past few days points to the fact that, as one of my colleagues said, if ever we needed caution, we need it today. It is because of that that I will be voting to support the Bill and to keep these laws on the statute book, for they promise freedom to all of our people and not just to some.