18/19 April 1998
Ard Comhairle member, Anne Speed
speaking on Justice & Equality Section
18 April, 1998
We commend this section of the report for full debate. The range of motions cover the fundamental issues of the democratic deficit in the Six Counties and the denial oh human and political rights to nationalist people living in a British/unionist state. Our peace strategy is underpined by a central demand that nationalists no longer be denied civil and political rights. We are not talking only or merely about some form of ``citizen's equality'' in a partitioned unionist state.
We are insisting that the section of the Irish nation living without their consent, in particular the nationalists who now form a majority in four of that statelet's six counties, be fully afforded their civil, human, political and cultural rights.
Equality is such a simple word, indeed for many it is a simple issue. But for a unionist statelet, equality for nationalists has profound implications. It means, for example, not treating nationalists as non-people whose views do not count. Mr Trimble has said that for any vote in the Six to have force it must have the backing of the majority of unionists. When the unionists talk about ``the majority'', it is the votes of everyone, excluding nationalists. The Irish unionists decided to abandon democracy and equality and became the Six County unionists in 1921. Every form f even minimal democratic advance in the Six has been in the teeth of unionist opposition.
I commend to the Ard Fheis the analysis produced under the supervision of Councillor Tom Hartley which shows in 1998 how unionism discriminates against the largest party in Belfast City Council, Sinn Fein. Many studies of this sort were done in the 1960s and formed the basis of the democratic assault on Partition. he Hartley study shows how unionism is unreformed, when left to its own devices unionism will reinvent the one-party dictatorship which put the Six Counties in the same league as apartheid South Africa. The Hartley study shows discrimination against nationalists, but also against women and other minorities.
I commend also the work done by Cearta, the Charter for Change, which calls for disbandment of the RUC, Which Tony Blair says he is not talking about - not yet Mr Blair!, equality for the Irish language and an independent inquiry into the killing of Robert Hamill in Portadown.
In relation to the motions on asylum seekers and refugees, we are campaigning for an inclusive, pluralist and secular Ireland, one where there is complete equality, not only between Catholic and Protestant, Unionist and Nationalist, but also between black and white, Christian, Moslem and Jew, religious believer and atheist.
With our particular history we should always have a generous and compassionate attitude toward those who need help and who have to start life anew in a strange culture with a different culture. The first thing such people need is to be welcomed with open arms, to be given back their belief that there is such a thing as common humanity. If we are for an Ireland without borders then I suggest we are also for a wold where people are free to seek work or adventure or simply a new life or simply the freedom to seek freedom. We must tear down the racist partitions in people's heads.
As Republicans we oppose and must continue to oppose the narrow, negative and knee-jerk response of those who would expel economic and political refugees. We must oppose the small minded and narrow view of Ms ni Chonaill and her cronies. We must oppose the measures introduced by the last Fine Gael/Labour/DL coalition (continued by the current FF/PD coalition) that allows the Gardai to pull people from buses, cars and trains as they come over the Border. In doing this the Gardai not only reinforce Partition, they also, by the way they implement the measure, reveal the basic racism at the heart of the action. Only people with dark skins are pulled. Black people from Britain visiting friends or relative in the South have been pulled.
Equality for one or merely within one group is a violation of the very notion of the term equality. Real equality is equality for all.