Extracts from Jim Allister’s speech at TUV Conference, Cookstown 19th November 2011

Stormont – that cocoon of DUP/Sinn Fein misrule - may be a cold house for principle, conviction and truth, but it will take more than that to silence this Traditional Unionist Voice. TUV men and women are made of stern stuff and we need to be. Salute courage of all our councillors who fight lonely but stoic battles. 

Whatever our numbers, as a party we’ve made our mark. No one needs explanation as to where TUV stands and will continue to stand. In every generation there have been those determined to hold to and do what is right and no matter how much others may forsake the ground and principles of traditional unionism, this party will stand, because we can do no other.

Others may put the baubles of office above principle, but that is not the TUV way. When you get up close to them at Stormont it still amazes me how those once pledged to smash SF are today their buddies, that the battle a day is a chuckle a day. How hand in glove they work and when that requires another roll-over to keep SF happy they’ve perfected the backward flip to Olympian standards.

I can think of many escapades, but I reflect today on only one, the shameful collusion to elevate Provo godfather Francie Molloy to become Principal Deputy Speaker and de facto Speaker in waiting.

 I recall Wm McCrea once demand Molloy be pursued for war crimes, but I watched his son, Ian, meekly walk through the lobbies to elect the Provo Deputy Speaker. I heard David Simpson indict him for the murder of his cousin, but I watched David Simpson’s colleagues walk through the lobby, laughing, as they elected him to high office.

 Whatever it takes to keep SF happy and the DUP in office, is the creed by which the DUP lives today. The lion is supposed to be the symbol of the DUP, but how IRA/Sinn Fein has tamed it and turned it into a roll-over pussy cat – only towards Sinn Fein, of course. Dare to be a Traditional Unionist and it will still be a battle a day.

 
Even on the crucial issue of security there is a deliberate dumbing down of comment, lest the all important ‘process’ might be disturbed. You only have to follow the Massareene trial to see how big a con decommissioning was. Here we have Provo weaponry and Provo bullets, supposedly decommissioned, but very much on active service in the murder of two soldiers. Yet, not a squeak from those who once demanded not just decommissioning, but photographic evidence. Well, here – not for the first time - we have indisputable forensic evidence that it was a con and, suddenly, it doesn’t matter. Why, because preserving Provos, and thus themselves, in government is more important than the truth.

Likewise, though its good spectator sport for some unionist politicians to watch the Republic’s media grill McGuinness, but don’t expect them to ever take to that field of conflict, because in Stormont terms to hurt Sinn Fein is to hurt themselves - those that sustain the Shinners in government.

Well, this party will not wilt from pursuing Sinn Fein, nor asking the difficult questions.

I’d rather be a lone voice any day and have my principles in tact than be part of such despicable duplicity. If all I can do is bring discomfort to those who have so abandoned their principles, then, it’s a job worth doing, but I believe I have and can do much more.

Many commentators have been kind enough to note the effectiveness of TUV in Stormont. We’ve brought a wind of change to its polluted portals. A voice of challenge to its cosy consensus. You can judge your success by the degree of discomfort brought to those caught out and exposed. This week was a case in point: the mighty DUP armed to the hilt with clever and secret devices consented at Hillsborough to reform of the prison service, but asleep at the wheel, never thought to query if name change and emblem change would form any part of that reform. It was only when this supposedly irrelevant MLA, to whom they say no one listens, unearthed the machinations that were afoot, that the DUP woke up and Peter Robinson was suddenly going to resign over something he should have known all about if he hadn’t taken his eye of the ball. TUV set the agenda this week, exposing the secret plans of the Justice Minister and the slumber of the DUP. 

Some are asking how I knew to raise these issues. Had I inside information?  I have ‘special advisers’ in surprising places. But, whether I was acting on information or reading between the lines of the report is for me to know and others to find out.

But I will say this, any Unionist … alert after humiliation over RUC…Never again!

We are only 1 voice, but through that voice we’ve demonstrated that Opposition can be effective, something other parties who flirt with opposition should note.

Stormont as a meaningful, effective place of government is an unmitigated disaster. In 6 months we’ve done no government business, debated no bills, till Thursday hadn’t even a draft Programme for Govt, though now we have a daft Programme for Govt, and fill our half week by debating such weighty matters as weed control. How right, for once, just once, Ian Paisley Junior was when he belittled it as a county council.

 It is a catastrophic waste of money, whose MLA coterie now seek a pay increase. Pay them by results, I say, and they’d owe you all a fortune.

Stand back and look at Stormont: terrorists in government; joint first ministers idle enough for one to seek foreign service who, though more accustomed to being on the run in the Republic, returned on the run from the Republic, still not knowing when he left the IRA. I could tell him – never. Still fully signed up, that’s his status; but what’s a lie when murder doesn’t bother you?

Then look at the record of Stormont – that won’t take long. Spiralling unemployment but an Invest NI rewarded with a whopping bonus for its Chief Executive. A pay freeze for Civil Servants but surreptitious increases on the secret salaries of a legion of Special Advisers. Waste beyond belief on useless north/south bodies while hospitals and schools face closure. Education in continuing crisis because Sinn Fein’s dogma matters more than the schooling of our children. Health now facing swinging cuts from a party who last year told us McGimpsey was awash with money. Expediency, not principle drives every move.

Then on Thursday we finally, finally got what passes as a PFG. Like every such document – like the Executive itself – the glue which holds it together is a DUP climbdown – this time on ESA and endorsement of an Irish language strategy. Here is what the DUP used to say about ESA: Mervyn Storey previously told the Assembly it was “bureaucratic legislation” to satisfy “the control freakery” of the Sinn Fein Department and it “wasn’t coming back”. Now Climbdown Mervyn is chief salesman for the Sinn Fein legislation. As we’ve said, whatever it takes to keep SF happy.

Let me return to UUP & SDLP. They are in the Executive but intend not to be of it. The result is they are but fodder for DUP/SF, who when it suits uses them and when it suits abuses them. How long can they put up with the humiliation to which they are subjected.

Take the DOE Minister: he, rightly, believes in 15 councils, but like a small boy has been told by his SF/DUP masters to make it 11. Danny Kennedy has £400m capital spare after the entirely predictable breach of promise by the Republic over the A5, but he will not be allowed to spend it, his DUP/SF masters will decide. They may have a semblance of power, but no substance. The sooner they find the strength to do what SF/DUP dread them doing, the better.

TUV is the catalyst for change in Stormont. Never has there been more talk about opposition and the need for change than now. This one man band has shown the stir just one can sustain, think what a whole orchestra of opposition could do.

So I say to the Ulster Unionists and the SDLP step out and take the first step essential to make Stormont work. You’ve nothing to lose but the shackles that bind you to the failures of the present arrangements. So long as you offer and practice the same failed system as the others you’ll never displace your larger counterparts.

As for TUV, whether a lone voice, or otherwise, we will continue as that ever sharper thorn in the side of DUP/Sinn Fein rule. Exposing the hidden things, opposing every concession and doing the things others shy away from, like taking definitive action to deal with the Special Adviser problem of Mary McArdle, the murderer.

As we move into the year of the centenary of the Ulster Covenant, let us all remind ourselves of, and draw strength from, the stoic determination of our forefathers and of their vision. As the Covenant says their stand was to defend EQUAL CITIZENSHIP within the United Kingdom. They weren’t Ulster nationalists interested only in power for their own gratification. They were Unionists who knew their enemy. What a contrast with today’s generation of self-servers who will pay any price to cling to office, any office, even that with those who butchered our kith and kin.

This little country would never even have existed if Carson had been a unionist in the image of Peter Robinson, or the Ulster Unionist Party at its creation had lived by the power before principle philosophy of the DUP. 

Thank God our forefathers were men of principle, stability and determination. If, 100 years on, this generation prefers the potage of Provos in government, then it won’t be citizenship, equal or otherwise, in the UK which they’ll be bequeathing to the next generations.

 
TUV has no identity crisis about our unionism. We know what we believe and why. We go forward more determined than ever that we shall be heard; and the more we do the more people are taking notice and see the added value that we bring to unionism.

Being in Stormont, being in politics, for me is about doing the right thing. It’s not about power, nor popularity, but about principle. And may it never be otherwise, for me or this party