Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 13 Rhagfyr 1973.
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has been in that office only 10 days and it strikes me that that was a perfect Irish answer! I note what the communiqué says about selective release. It would be foolish to question the Secretary of State further on that subject. However, I wish to express the hope that the political situation will develop in such a way that detention without trial can be swept off the statute book. We appreciate the problems in Northern Ireland involving people having to defend themselves from shootings, and, fortunately, this is a problem which we do not face in this country. Therefore, I hope that my hope will be realised and that selective releases will play their part.
We have come a long way in the last two years. The political map of Ireland has changed. It is important that we in this House, happy as we are about the general situation as a result of meetings and conferences, should not ignore the problem of law and order, for if the breakdown of law and order continues it can vitiate the political developments that have followed. The people of Northern Ireland in the last 50 years have had experience of running Stormont, but they have had no experience of running an Opposition. There was not an Opposition in the true sense of the word in Northern Ireland. If traditions matter—and they do matter, as I have learned from my relatively short time in the House—then the rôle of an Opposition is not at all like textbooks suggest. It is a far deeper matter and is more "in the bones" than can be revealed in the barren pages of a book. There is not this tradition in Northern Ireland as to the rôle of an Opposition.
I should like to say this to the hon. Member for Antrim, North. We believe that a place must be found in the running of Northern Ireland for those people, mainly in the Protestant working classes, who feel sold and bewildered about the party to which they have belonged for so long. It has been a party more in the sense of a laager in South Africa, in the sense of battening things down and protecting oneself from the enemy. It is important that the Protestants should be enabled to play their part in the government of Northern Ireland, and anything we have been able to do to assist in this respect in the last two years we have done, and we shall continue to do so. My hon. Friend the Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme) and I on various visits to the Republic—and I myself was there earlier in the week—expressed this view to all concerned.
The situation at present does not augur well for the future. Oppositions which behave in the way the Opposition seemingly are behaving in the Assembly at present do no good to the cause of the democracy in general; they do no good to the cause they espouse. We hope that those who feel strongly on these matters will be able to be brought into the government of Northern Ireland in the sense of being an Opposition. I repeat that we have come a long way, but we have not reached the end of the road. In trying to get to that point we support the Bill, and at a later stage we shall indicate our support for the orders.