Armstrong welcomes belated DUP vindication of UUP Strategy
Billy Armstrong, the Ulster Unionist MLA for Mid-Ulster said that it was clear from recent words and deeds that senior DUP figures had finally accepted that the Ulster Unionist Party was right to go down the road of the Belfast Agreement to bring stability to Northern Ireland.
What was all the Rev Willie McCrea’s Huffing and Puffing about when the DUP has now accepted the principles set out by the Ulster Unionist Party in 1998?
Mr Armstrong said,
“Back in 1998 when the Ulster Unionist Party negotiated the Belfast Agreement, the Party strategy was to bring an end to violence and to lock both Nationalism in general and Sinn Fein in particular, into an internal settlement.
It was not an easy decision. The right ones rarely are. The Ulster Unionist Party was heavily criticised by many within the Unionist political class for even talking to Sinn Fein, and after the signing of the Belfast Agreement and the restoration of Devolved Government to Northern Ireland, we came under constant criticism from certain unionist quarters on a number of fronts.
The Ulster Unionist Party and their supporters would be the first to admit that the Belfast Agreement wasn’t perfect. But it was a genuine attempt to break the deadlock and end the decades of violence which brought such misery and suffering to this Province. Simply standing outside the gates and hiding behind slogans such as “No” or “Never, never, never” were never going to achieve anything of consequence for the Unionist community.
Having removed themselves from the Forum talks in 1996/97, the DUP sought to prey on the fears of the Unionist community and promote deeper mistrust of the nationalist community - and then pledged to smash both Sinn Féin and the Belfast Agreement, demonising the Ulster Unionist party in the process, and further dividing the Unionist people- giving Sinn Fein the opportunity to rise further electorally.
I believe that actions really do speak louder than words, and whatever spin the DUP may try to put on their current position, there is no doubt whatsoever that they have accepted the Belfast Agreement.
I also believe that Unionist electorate will see for themselves what the DUP have supposedly delivered in their ‘Fair Deal’, and to ask themselves if all the poison and bitterness that was created within Unionist politics were justified.
There is one crucial difference between the 1998 Belfast Agreement and the DUP’s recent deal. The Ulster Unionists’ Deal was with the SDLP, who were then the leading party of Northern Nationalism.
The DUP indulged in a great deal of chest-beating and posturing vowing to smash Sinn Fein and the Agreement, and decrying the Ulster Unionists as traitors and pushovers. Having condemned us as traitors for doing a deal with the SDLP, as a result of the DUP’s ‘Getting it Right’ negotiations, Sinn Fein themselves were installed at the very heart of Government in Northern Ireland, in the Office of the First and Deputy First Minister. And let us not forget, this was done less than a year after a public pledge that Sinn Fein would enter Government “over our dead bodies”.
They have quietly dropped all manner of the supposed “pre-conditions” which they set before they would enter Government with Sinn Fein. They never got photographic evidence of decommissioning, they entered Government with Sinn Fein while the IRA Army Council were still in existence, and they accepted the d’Hondt mechanism for selecting the Executive even though a previous manifesto had said this was “out of the question.”
Now leading elected DUP figures happily pose beside Sinn Fein Ministers at Stormont and further a field. When the DUP Ministers went to Armagh to participate in the recent North South Ministerial Council meeting, they were participating in the very same NSMC which was set up under the Belfast Agreement, and which they so publicly castigated. The unavoidable fact is that the architecture of the Belfast Agreement is intact, and is being operated by the DUP, who rode to power on the back of promises to smash it.
Whilst it is heartening to see the DUP accepting the Belfast Agreement, even though ten years on, I cannot help but reflect on the nine wasted years. What was all Willie McCrea’s Huffing and Puffing about?
Now that DUP have accepted the Ulster Unionist analysis in 1998 instead of nine years later, we could have acted as a united Unionist voice in the talks and in the first Assembly and Executive.
The Unionist community can face the future in Northern Ireland with confidence. Northern Ireland’s peoples’ destiny is now in their own hands within a devolved Northern Ireland Assembly - Sinn Fein are tied into an internal settlement and violence has ended. Those who stayed outside the talks in 1997 did not achieve this. It was brought about by the foresight of those Ulster Unionists who created the Belfast Agreement that the DUP condemned, but are now implementing as if it were their own.