Speech by party press officer Sammy Morrison.
Conference,
TUV occupies a unique position in Northern Irish politics. Over the last nine years – it will be nine years Wednesday week that the party was founded – TUV has dared to say the things which others wouldn’t.
George Orwell once said that in a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act. By that definition I think we can sit easy with the title of revolutionaries.
In many instances we alone have dared to say the blindingly obvious.
Of course on some issues it is now appreciated by many outside our ranks that we were right.
When it comes to Brexit this party has always been 100% crystal clear on the issue. Since our formation we have consistently argued that the UK would be better off outside the EU. I remember many hustings events – particularly in the run up to the 2009 election – when we were the only party on the panel making that argument.
Likewise, we welcome the fact that others have recognised the value of opposition. For much of the time since 2007 we were branded wreakers for even suggesting such a thing.
But TUV are still the people who dare to say the politically unsayable.
We are at the end of the party conference season yet where else would you have heard speeches which clearly spelt out the relationship between the Northern Ireland Executive and paramilitaries?
Where else would delegates have been reminded that just a year ago a government report told the people of Ulster that a party in our government is at the beck and call of a terrorist organisation?
Isn’t it remarkable that in 2016 Northern Ireland would be subjected to a pseudo-democratic system which sees representatives of a still armed terrorist group at the heart of its government as of right?
Isn’t it more remarkable still that other parties simply don’t seem that bothered?
Friends, we owe it to ourselves and to future generations to be able to say we did something about this.
A few weeks ago the DUP held its conference in the La Mon Hotel. You may have seen that there was a degree of controversy afterwards because some of the younger members of the party started a chant of “Arleen’s on fire”. In the aftermath one of the relatives of those burned to death in the IRA firebombing of the hotel said how hurt he was. It is important to add that Mrs Foster phoned him and he accepted her apology.
But what I found interesting was the explanation for those actions which was offered in the press. Let me quote from one commentator:
“One party member told me that some of the DUP dancers weren’t even aware of the atrocity at the hotel because it happened before they were born.
“Which really is no excuse for anyone living here, especially someone espousing politics.”
Friends, I wasn’t born in 1978 either but not only do I know what happened at La Mon but if you meet Grace or Hannah Morrison 20 years from now ask them what happened there and they will know too.
Once you push things like that to the back of our mind you come to regard politics here as normal. Without doing that I don’t think you could work the system in Stormont. If you didn’t airbrush things like that operating the Stormont system would, as a former representative of this constituency once put it, turn your stomach.
On Monday of this week I had the misfortune to be followed into a lift by the Hyde Park bomber.
I don’t particularly enjoy working in Stormont because meetings like that are something of an occupational hazard. But when I got out of the lift I couldn’t help but think what became of Unionists that their stomach no longer churns as mine did when they are in close proximity to a killer?
And then I remembered how the DUP spokesman explained what happened at La Mon. They forget about it.
Having dealt with some of the political context in which we operate I hope members will indulge me for a moment if I mention a good friend who isn’t with us this year, George Davis.
George never held elected office but epitomised what much of what I felt are the best features of this party – a passionate love for his country, a conviction that what is morally wrong can never be politically right and a sacrificial attitude which always put the needs of others before his own.
There are many in this room from all across Northern Ireland who knew that they could rely on George’s assistance.
He was a friend. He was a loyalist. But above all else he was a Protestant.
And today he is missed. Because his place is empty.