Sense of drift

The following comments were made by Sinn Fein EU candidate Pearse Doherty at the twelfth annual Joe McManus/Kevin Coen lecture.

There is a dangerous and deeply worrying sense of drift in the political situation since the British and Irish governments walked away from an agreement with Irish republicans rather than stand up to unionism and honour their commitments.

The result is that instead of stable political institutions leading the delivery of change, advancing the equality agenda and championing a human rights based society; we have continuing impasse and an ever deepening political crisis.

This situation is made all the worse by those in the British establishment who sympathises with and panders to negative unionism and by the destructive and negative role of the securocrats within the British system who have succeeded time and time again in undermining progress These people have been well and truly exposed in recent times in their very public efforts to conceal the truth of their role in Ireland over three decades of conflict.

The British government's refusal to co-operate with a range of inquiries into state and state-sponsored violence, even inquiries they themselves set up, is symptomatic of a culture of concealment that infects the entire British system. They have obstructed the Saville Inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday, the Barron Inquiry into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings and have refused to initiate full and independent inquiries in a number of controversial killings. The British government has refused to publish the Cory Report or to act on its recommendations. 15 years after the death of Pat Finucane his family is still waiting for the truth about his death and who sanctioned it. The British government continue to withhold vital inquest evidence in respect of numerous state and state-linked killings in the north.

And in the last week British Secretary of State Paul Murphy refused to make himself available to the Dail's Justice Committee to answer questions in relation to the Dublin Monaghan bombing. While not surprising this is a gross insult to those seeking justice for the people killed, injured and bereaved in the bombings. Unfortunately the attitude of Paul Murphy like so many more in the British establishment is assisted by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern who has been only too willing to accept as fact British claims that they have fully co-operated with the Barron inquiry. It is time that the Irish government stood up to the British government and demanded that Tony Blair and his agencies co-operate and tell the truth.

The British politicians who sanctioned the policy of collusion have never been held accountable. And just as culpulable are those in this state who have consistently put their own narrow self-interest above the national interest, the rights of Irish citizens living in the north and the peace process. These are the same people who colluded in the cover-up of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, who censored republicans, who unleashed the heavy gang on defenceless prisoners, who supported British repression and encouraged unionist intransigence. These are the people who abandoned the nationalist of the north to decades of repression and colluded in Britain's war against Irish citizens. Now they lecture us on the morality of resistance from the comfort and security of their mansions paid for from brown bag corruption. The Ireland these people have created, the inequality, bigotry and selfishness is not what was envisaged in the 1916 proclamation.

Collusion has not ended. The British apparatus, which operates the policy of collusion, continues in existence.

If the peace process is to be successful, that policy and its structures must be disowned and dismantled and there must be full disclosure of the truth about Britain's war in Ireland.

Urgent Appeal