During today’s sitting of the Assembly Jim Allister said:
“As with any death, whether from lowly or high estate, our first thoughts are properly with the immediate family. My condolences and those of my party, first and foremost, go to our Queen, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, to whom, as consort, Prince Philip was such a rock and a support for so many years, and then, of course, to his grieving family: his children and their children and all in that wider family. They will all grieve as we do when we lose one so close. There will be no difference to their grief. They will feel the same emptiness, the same pain and the same suffering. Now, after 73 years of married life, Her Majesty must face her public and private life without her rock. There will be difficult, tough days for the Queen in all of that, particularly for someone who is herself of advanced years. I pray that she finds the strength to carry on in the remarkable era that has been her rule over us.
“Today, however, we also celebrate a remarkable and incredible life of service to country and to people, from Prince Philip’s service in the armed forces to his decades of service as consort and his dedication to that cause and to the people whom it served, filtering down throughout our society through the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme, which reached and empowered so many. Everything else apart, that is a lasting legacy of particular note. Yet he was a man who, although in that elevated position, refused to allow the position that he held to mould him. Despite his exalted position, his willingness to speak his mind brought a stamp of authenticity and sometimes, indeed, a smile to our faces. That is a characteristic that is often lost in public life, but not with the Duke of Edinburgh.
“Prince Philip was not immune, of course, from pain and suffering in his life. Indeed, something that marks an affinity with so many in the Province was the brutal murder of his 79-year-old uncle, blown to bits by the IRA with other relatives and friends: a wicked act of the calibre that left so many in the Province also bereft of friends and relatives at the hands of terrorism. Today would have been a good day for the republican movement to unequivocally say, “Sorry”, but, of course, the deputy First Minister does not do “Sorry”. At most, all that Sinn Féin can muster is what journalist Jenny McCartney aptly described as a:
“carefully calibrated mixture of dogged justification and fuzzy regret”.
“Today, we remember a great — a giant in our lifetimes — whose contribution to our national life has been immense but whose life inevitably, in the mortality that denotes us all, has run its course.
“Our nation and our people are the richer for his living, so today, on behalf of my constituents and my party, I join in mourning his passing, and, in grateful memory of the life of His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, I convey the deepest sympathy to Her Majesty and record thankfulness for the lifetime of service and devotion to our monarch, our nation and our people.”