When Did the IRA Become Legal?
NI Politics Terrorism Victims

When Did the IRA Become Legal?

Speaking at a TUV fundraising dinner in Larne on Friday night Jim Allister said:

“Events of recent days have totally vindicated the stand of TUV – the only party which has consistently argued that Sinn Fein/IRA is unfit for government.

“While I welcome the fact that the UUP will join me on the opposition benches when Stormont returns on Monday we are entitled to ask – if you left on a point of principle following news that the IRA still exist and irrefutable proof that they have neither decommissioned all their weapons nor renounced violence why didn’t you do so after the murder of Paul Quinn?

“That is something the UUP have yet to explain.

“But this week we had an even more remarkable position adopted by the Chief Constable. On Thursday he told the Policing Board that it was not the job of the police to monitor the activity of paramilitary groups!

“Surely membership of a paramilitary group like the IRA or for that matter the UVF is a criminal offence! They remain proscribed organisations. It is therefore the job of the police not just to monitor the activity of paramilitary groups but arrest anyone who is a member of one!

“Or does our Chief Constable believe that the IRA is now a legal organisation? If so, when did he adopt that position?

“I suppose if he was to arrest members of the IRA there might be a few less Sinn Fein members attending the talks which have been announced for next week!

“What Northern Ireland needs isn’t another round of talks to save the process and save the blushes of the DUP, as they continue to turn a blind eye to murder. There needs to be a recognition – and this has been conspicuous by its absence from UUP and DUP statements on this matter – that a process which has been based on the appeasement of armed Republicanism and the subverting of basic democratic norms always was and always will be wrong.

“That is the positive basis upon which TUV will go forward to fight the next Assembly election and I believe it is a position which is shared by a growing number of ordinary Unionists. Enough is enough. No more fudge, pretence, deception or distortion of democracy by propping up the perversion that is mandatory coalition.

“If and when an election comes – and the sooner the better – let every unionist ask themselves who was conned, and tried to con them into believing, that the IRA had gone away; that decommissioning was complete, and that putting IRA/SF into government would bring good government to Northern Ireland? It was TUV told the truth, while others embraced the lie for the sake of office.”

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