Reverend Dr Ian Paisley (North Antrim)

Mr. Speaker, when I came into this House on Monday last and heard you elected to your high office, you said: At the heart of all the tensions that exist, rightly, between free citizens and which rightly divide them, we meet to resolve those tensions by free and fair debate, respecting not only one's own right to hold an opinion but equally the right of the other man to hold diametrically opposed opinions and to express them equally freely …. And at the heart of that heart sits a neutral chairman, favouring neither side, except for his sworn duty to protect minorities".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 29th June, 1970; Vol. 803, c. 7–8.] The views which I shall be putting to this honourable House from time to time will be the views of a minority, and probably views which have never been expressed in this House before, concerning the situation in my homeland of Northern Ireland. I take your words, Mr. Speaker, as a charter for my individual right and freedom to express those sentiments.

There is another great principle which I believe lies at the very heart of democracy. It can be set forth in a question: Does our law judge a man before it heareth him? I am extremely happy that I am able to answer both for the people I represent and for myself in this House today.

I should like to make it perfectly clear that, although I sit on the Government back benches, I came to this House having smashed the 23,000 majority of a sitting Unionist Member of this House. Therefore, I am expressing the viewpoint of those Protestants who are against the present policies of the Ulster Unionist Party, and I shall from time to time take the opportunity of putting as forthrightly as I can the views of the people who have sent me here to speak for them.

I have just come from Northern Ireland and from those very areas which suffered through the disturbances of last weekend. I have also come from another place where there has been a long and protracted debate on these matters and where contributions were made by every politician in that place concerning these very serious and tragic happenings. What is more, the main substance of the facts of the situation as I know them and as I would put them in this speech can be confirmed by the Army authorities in Northern Ireland. I use the phrase "main substance of the facts" deliberately, for it is a tragedy that when gunfire was being heard in the streets of the City of Belfast, and when people were being mown down by that gunfire, no personnel of the British Army were available to give the people who were being slaughtered any protection whatsoever. The police authorities who were there can confirm the facts of which the Army was not cognisant.

I noticed that yesterday the Leader of the Opposition mentioned that a solemn promise was given to people in every section of the community in Northern Ireland, irrespective of their political views and religious beliefs, that they were entitled to the same equality of treatment. It is a tragedy that the Protestant people of East Belfast should have to suffer gunfire in the early hours of last Lord's Day morning and that for two hours they were given no protection whatsoever. When I describe the scene which took place it will be clear to hon. Members—and if they want to confirm it they can do so with the Government of Northern Ireland—that no troops were available to give the necessary defence to these people who were being attacked.

What is meant by freedom under the law? It needs to be made perfectly clear to all citizens of Northern Ireland what that really means. Does it mean that there is freedom to throw stones, to use petrol bombs and to use guns, and to know that the more stones you throw, the more petrol bombs you use, the more people are slaughtered, the more you will be heeded and hearkened to and the more the concessions which you want will be given to you? It is this pernicious principle which has bedevilled the scene in Northern Ireland. There are people who think that the more they agitate and the more they march and cause confusion, riot and anarchy, the more they will get from the Government of Northern Ireland and from the Government here in Westminster.

I will tell hon. Members of the type of speech which sets out the point which I am making. I refer to a speech made by the hon. Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt) reported on 22nd July two years ago. It sets the pattern for the Northern Ireland theme.

It was reported that the hon. Member for Belfast, West said that nothing could be gained from speeches at Stormont and Westminster. The time for action had arrived. By changing the situation in Derry, change would follow not only in the North but in the rest of Ireland as well." Mr. Fitt declared that it was not possible to get reform by constitutional methods. "People in Derry and all over Northern Ireland who are victims of this system will have to end these wrongs by any means at their disposal. I may not have a great deal of time to stay on the political scene in Northern Ireland," Mr. Fitt continued. "If constitutional methods do not bring social justice, if they do not bring democracy to Northern Ireland, then I am quite prepared to go outside constitutional methods". It is in going outside constitutional methods that the scene at the weekend has been enacted.

Three points have been made concerning the reasons for the outrages at the weekend. One is the imprisonment of the hon. Lady the Member for Mid-Ulster (Miss Devlin). The second is the Orange processions—should they go on and should they be continued? The third is the particular procession which took place on Saturday of last week. I will first apply myself to the first of those reasons.

If any Members, no matter what their privileges may be in the community, set themselves out on a career of attack on the forces of the Crown, then, when they are apprehended, brought before the courts, tried and found guilty, no matter who they are, they must bear the full rigour of the law.

Here I take issue with the members of the official Unionist Party: for too long the citizens of Northern Ireland have been brought to the courts not as citizens of Northern Ireland but in regard to their particular political affiliations and their relationships to the controlling Unionist Party. It is not only Roman Catholics who have felt aggrieved concerning injustice in Northern Ireland but also many Protestant people who refused to go by the dictates of the Unionist Party and who set themselves up in opposition, constitutionally, against the Unionist Party. These people, too, have suffered from the same thing. I need not remind this House, for this House very well knows, that twice I have been behind prison bars. When I listened to what was said by the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland at the Dispatch Box the other evening I felt that it would not be very long before I, too, would be back behind prison bars.

The time has clearly come when every citizen in Northern Ireland, whether he be an Orangeman or a Hibernian, a Jew or a Hindu, or anyone else, should know that before the law he stands not as a person with certain religious affiliations or political affiliations but as a citizen of the country. No matter what his faith may be or his pedigree may be, no matter what the blood that flows in his veins may be, he should be treated equally in the eyes of the law. I have been in court cases in Northern Ireland in which certain citizens were summoned to appear as witnesses and in which the magistrates refused to allow them to come because those people who had been summoned had special privileges in the Unionist Party. Those things ought not to be.

I should like to make it clear to the House that, no matter what the Press may say and no matter what image may be painted of me, in my constituency both Roman Catholics and Protestants receive equal treatment from me as a Member of Parliament. It is because of this that the Unionist Party fear the Protestant Unionists more than they fear anyone else at the present time in the Province.

It is the duty—I need not tell hon. Members—of every Member of Parliament to treat all his constituents equally. That is something which the Unionist Party dread, for they would dread it if the Roman Catholics of the Province in a marginal constituency found out that a representative such as myself would give them the equal treatment which they ought to receive. I make this clear not only here today but also in the constituency.

I want to talk about the imprisonment of the hon. Lady the Member for Mid-Ulster. If the law had been kept in the way in which it has been kept at other times, the hon. Lady would never have left the court. Her bail was up and it was a wrong move to give her the privilege even to leave the court where she had been sentenced. Other persons who have been sentenced in a court of law have been held there, some of them for six hours.

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