Fellow delegates it is my pleasant duty, and privilege, to welcome you all to our Annual Conference. I am delighted to see you all again and even better to see new faces among you.
Last year we were looking forward to the Council Elections and I am so glad that we confounded those who tried to write us out of the picture.
We are still here, and we are stronger than we were last year. We are not going away, we will increase in numbers and influence in coming years. So a warm welcome and a warm thank you all for your hard work and electoral success. Special congratulations to all our new Councilors. I wish you all the best in the years ahead for you will be under attack. Don’t worry about it, you are in the right Party and on the right path.
Stay with it, our day is coming!
It’s coming because people now, more than ever, know that our analysis of why Stormont is a dysfunctional mess is correct. Who in their right minds would have ever believed that IRA/SF would work to make Northern Ireland prosperous within the United Kingdom? Yet that is the foundation upon which the present Assembly is constructed!
I have noted that recently some members of the DUP have said that they didn’t like the Belfast agreement, indeed many of their converts used to make their opposition very clear and combine it with accurate criticisms.
Why then do they still operate the worse system set up by the St. Andrew’s agreement? Perhaps salaries and expenses help them to defend what their conscience must surely condemn.
The people here today and the 76,000 who voted for TUV this year do understand the consequence of this obnoxious system. We all know that when a devolved institution is run by unionists then the Union is safe – when it has in positions of power those who wish to destroy the UK they will use their position for their purpose. Co-operation for the good of the citizen can be broken apart at any instant by the separatists. The separatists are quite content to play the system and then destroy the whole structure when it suits their purposes.
Unionists should be grateful to Mr. Adams for making his opinion of Unionists clear and the reasons for the fair face he presents to the World. Why do so many refuse to believe the truth about SF/IRA?
In the wider U.K. context the referendum in Scotland exposes the dangers of a structure giving power to separatists. All I can say to those who live there; welcome to the politics of Unionism and narrow dogmatic nationalism.
In addition, we have the rise of UKIP in England where the division between those who believe in the Nation State and a United States of Europe is the emerging line of division in politics there.
There is much more I could say about the present political turmoil but our task as a Unionist people and the only truly Unionist Party is to concentrate on defeating the ongoing efforts to turn us into Irish Republicans, We are committed citizens of the U.K. and we have seen enough of what has been done in the Republic over the last ninety four years to repudiate the whole concept of being part of that nation. In this Party we are committed to the Union; we are British; we will stay British.
Friends, I have been in Politics a long time; I have been subjected to blandishments; I have heard the promises; I have been told the lies; pressure has been tried; I have seen the basic tenets of Unionism tossed contemptuously aside, decent people sneered at and perfidy rewarded. I have often been deeply disappointed in how people have behaved. Yet I say to every loyal man and woman, despite what I have seen I would do it all over again. Why would I do it? Because to represent your people and defend their true interests is a great honour.
That is why I say to every elected member of this party, its not an easy road, but make sure that when you come out at the end you can look in the mirror and say “I have kept Faith with those who put me there!”