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“I BELIEVE we need to send a clear message from Parliament to confront and reject extremism in all its forms.”
Those were the words of former Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Arlene Foster as she used a speech in the Lords on Monday to attack John Swinney over his remarks about Sinn Fein.
The First Minister had found himself under fire from the Unionist camp after making clear his intention to work with pro-independence parties in Wales and Northern Ireland in a “Celtic Alliance”.
That fire only grew heavier after he suggested people should “move on” from Sinn Fein’s links to the IRA, telling The Herald: “I know that my dialogue with Sinn Féin caused a media consternation in Scotland, but I really do think people have got to move on.”
The remarks saw a small protest outside the Scottish Parliament on Thursday. It was attended by veterans and families impacted by IRA terrorism who interpreted the First Minister’s remarks as “being told to forget” about their lost loved ones.
There is little doubt that Swinney’s remarks were clumsy, and the words “move on” in isolation can be read as dismissive. But it is equally clear that he was stating a truth.
As he reiterated on Thursday: “There has to be some moving on. Inevitably, there has to be, because if we don't move on, we remain in conflict.”
But away from the protesters, there are the politicians who have cynically and hypocritically sought to use the incident for political ends.
The Scottish Tories are a case in point, with the party’s MSPs lining up to hit out at the SNP leader.
Stephen Kerr, for example, said that people “have every right to feel disgusted and betrayed by the SNP’s long-standing willingness to excuse, downplay or sanitise the actions of Sinn Féin and the IRA”.
And then take Foster, who finished her aforementioned speech to the Lords by saying: “For the First Minister of Scotland to cosy up to Sinn Fein and tell us to move on, I say this: it is difficult to move on from Sinn Fein’s dark past when it refuses to move on from its dark past and continues to glorify the violence of the IRA.”
Coming from a former leader of the DUP, those comments may have rung hollow.
It was the DUP, after all, which set up the Ulster Resistance. In 1987, that group united with two terrorist organisations, the UVF and the UDA, to illegally smuggle the weaponry into Northern Ireland, which would be used in murders and attempted murders throughout the 1990s and beyond.
When the Good Friday Agreement was struck, the DUP were alone among the major Northern Irish political parties in refusing to back it. Since then, their engagement with power‑sharing at Stormont has been at best reluctant and at worst openly contemptuous.
But it is not just the DUP as an institution. Foster herself is far from blameless.
In February 2021, while she was DUP leader and first minister of Northern Ireland, Foster met with the Loyalist Communities Council (LCC) – an organisation which represents three proscribed terrorist groups, the Ulster Defence Association, the Ulster Volunteer Force, and the Red Hand Commando – to hear their concerns about the Brexit deal.
Under fire herself, Foster not only insisted the meeting was “absolutely” appropriate, but added: “I will do so again.”
The following year, the Conservatives gave Foster a life peerage.
Gone were any concerns about fraternising with terrorist groups (which Foster’s party continued to do).
The Tories didn’t blink about the DUP’s “long-standing willingness to excuse, downplay or sanitise the actions” of loyalist paramilitaries.
Forgotten, too, are the victims of atrocities such as Bloody Sunday, of which the Conservatives shamefully used footage to promote the British Army just this month.
And that’s without even mentioning actual competence. Foster, remember, almost single-handedly wasted more than £400 million in UK taxpayer money with her “cash for ash” scandal.
However, dare to say that you will work with the elected Sinn Fein First Minister of Northern Ireland (which the DUP literally do every single day in the Stormont power-sharing arrangement), and you will be hung out to dry.
It seems, as long as you are on the Unionist side of the debate, anything is excusable.
