A big to do – meantime no progress on education, health parades or a shared future

What a manufactured crisis.

The DUP say the need to the UUP to vote yes but the truth is they don’t.

Sinn Fein say they are the party of equality yet every big decision they have taken in the past year has been built on inequality like denying nationalism a seat at the Executive table.

But that is not the point today.

The point is we need to take a decision in principle to bring these powers to Northern Ireland. It is another small step on the road to real politics here. I’ll be joining my SDLP colleagues to vote yes to that but we will return to the detail in the weeks ahead and argue that the government of policing and justice could be much better.

Not to mention the lack of progress on education, health, a shared future or parades.

Alliance Party fail to support Bill of Rights in key Assembly vote

The Alliance Party engaged in some political gymnastics yesterday to avoid having to support a motion calling for a strong Bill of Rights.

Having voted in favour of an SDLP amendment which strengthened the motion, Alliance MLAs with the exception of Stephen Farry made a bee-line for the door to avoid havingto vote on the substantive motion. Mr Farry stayed in the chamber and abstained in person.

Why?

Well I can only surmise that they did not think the amendment would pass and when it did they panicked because it might embarrass their new bosses in the DUP if the the Assembly were seen to support a Bill of Rights.

I thought my colleague Dolores Kelly put it well:

We had generally assumed that Alliance were on the side of the angels on human rights in general and the long, hard struggle for a Northern Ireland Bill of Rights in particular. The motion before the Assembly was critical of the British government’s approach which ignores the work done by local people on the Human Rights Commission and Forum, including Alliance members.

We called on the government to extend the current consultation on a bill of rights and Alliance supported our amendment. But when it came to the substantive motion they suddenly disappeared and it was voted down by the unionists.

The issue of rights strongly protected and enforced in law goes right to the heart what has divided our society, and in our view a Bill of Rights has the ability to take basic human and civil rights completely out of the party-political arena. Today they went back into the arena with a bump due to the increasingly odd behaviour of the Alliance party.  We hope this does not represent some new departure or unionist line-up as part of dropping their claim to be an opposition party. That would be a great blow to our hopes of a shared future.

If you care about education, watch this….

This is the story of homework clubs with a difference and about really tapping into what we now call the social capital of a town. If you are interested in education, in children or in language watch it. By the way Roddy Doyle has recently opened one in Dublin called Fighting Words.

Platform for Change is launched

I have had the pleasure of being a member of the Platform for Change Management Committee for the past year or so. The Platform was launched today in Belfast.

It’s been an exciting time and great to see so many people, members of political parties, business types, community activists and ordinary citizens get involved in a political debate about the issues that matter to them.

The consultation meetings which took place with hundreds of people over the past six months were a real breath of fresh air. They proved to me that there is a huge appetite for real politics here in Northern Ireland and that people want their politicians focussed on the issues that matter.

I am in the Assembly to make the North work. Our ambition must be to build a strong region on Irish soil while respecting its inhabitants diverging national aspirations. The SDLP wants to make the North work because a strong North means a stronger Ireland. This is surely an ambition which we can share with the vast majority of people in this region. Platform for Change can play a big part in making Northern Ireland work.

Fairtrade Fortnight starts today – Executive need to do a lot more

The Executive is not doing enough to promote Fairtrade products within the public sector and its International Development strategy which is now two years overdue.

I’ll be at the launch of Fairtrade Fortnight today in Parliament Buildings. They are calling it the “The Big Swap” this year and consumers are being invited to switch a regular item for a Fairtrade substitute.

The Executive should be leading by example by encouraging the procurement of Fairtrade products in all of its departments to demonstrate the North’s commitment to ethical trading.

Yes there is some commitment to using Fairtrade tea and coffee, but no steps have been taken to ensure that there is the option to purchase Fairtrade cotton uniforms or bed linen in the Health service.

 The Minister for Education has also confirmed that she is not aware of a single school which includes a Fairtrade option in its school meals contracts.

Sales of Fairtrade products now top €2.3billion annually. This puts money directly in the pockets of some 1.5million farmers in the world’s poorest countries, benefiting an estimated 8 million people.

Here in these islands consumers have embraced Fairtrade. Sales are doubling every year. It is time the Executive caught up and showed a real commitment to the developing world by creating sustainable trade opportunities for small nations.

The Executive is totally out of step with thinking in the North, given that Belfast is the only city in the UK and Ireland to be awarded dual accreditation as a fairtrade city, acknowledging the commitment demonstrated by people in the city to Fairtrade products.

Today, I am calling on the First and Deputy First Ministers to publish their strategy on International Development and to review their procurement policies to ensure that Fairtrade is promoted within the Departments and that consumers are given the opportunity to choose Fairtrade and help promote better prices, decent working conditions, local sustainability, and fair terms of trade for farmers and workers in the developing world.

Putting Irish Unity on the Agenda

I am speaking at a conference on Irish Unity in London today organised by Sinn Fein. I’m on with Gerry Adams, Jarlath Burns, Lord Alfie Dubs, Mick Halpenny, Margaret Ward and Diane Abbot MP. We will be discussing the prospects for Irish unity.

Here is my speech:

The Good Friday Agreement changes the debate about unity in a fundamental way.The question goes from being whether there will be a united Ireland to when and how Ireland will be united.  The referendums on the Agreement were also a full exercise in national self determination by the people of Ireland.

I believe Irish Nationalism, including provisional republicanism, has not even begun to debate the type of Ireland we wish to build.

Will this new country be built on the very thing that has made it possible – the Good Friday Agreement – or will it be cast in the image of the 1937 constitution.

In other words do we want to build a Catholic and Gaelic Ireland or somewhere more representative of the true diversity on our island?

It’s a great pleasure to be in a Labour building; a place where social justice and equality are more than just slogans. Where working men and women are given a voice and where politics is about the interests of the many not the vested interest of the few.

One of the great tragedies of 20th century Ireland is that this politics took a back seat to national struggle. Partition and the emergence of the southern state set the cause of equality and social justice back a hundred years. It did not just divide our island but smothered any debate that sought to move beyond the national question. 

It gave rise to a tokenistic neutrality and protectionist economics; to armed republicanism and ultimately a dirty and futile war.

The question today is surely not whether we wish to simply reintegrate the national territory in the image of the Irish state but whether Irish men and women, Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter wish a New Ireland to emerge.

An Ireland that reflects our diversity, built on good government and that places equality, prosperity and justice at the heart of everything it does.

My generation has been handed the keys to that Ireland. We are the inheritors of peace not the perpetuators of conflict.

We can open the door in front of us and with courage recast all about us or we can look back and repeat the mistakes of the past.

It is a tragedy that some young committed and passionate Irishmen and women are in a danger of throwing their lives away because they still cannot see the futility of armed struggle.  Our generation must prove through results that violence always fails, that another generation must not repeat the mistakes of the last and that it is persuasion not conflict which will bring about change.

The great poet John Hewitt was a proud Protestant, a proud Ulsterman and proud Irishman in a letter to his friend John Montague in 1964, he observed:

“By trying to waken folk to the concept of the Region, it seemed to me the necessary step to prize Ulster loose from the British anchorage: then and only then, when free in ideology, the unity with the other part of our island could be realised and established.

The North cannot be invaded, and taken by force in the Republic: if simply outvoted by a nationalist majority resentment would remain, but, realising themselves for what they are for the first time, not Britain’s pensioners or stranded Englishmen and Scots, being instead a group living long enough in Ireland to have the air in their blood, the landscape in their bones, and the history in their hearts, and so, a special kind of Irish themselves, they could with grace make the transition to federal unity.

I always maintained that our loyalties had an order to Ulster, to Ireland, to the British Archipelago, to Europe; and that anyone who skipped a step or missed a link falsified the total. The Unionists missed out Ireland: the Northern Nationalists (The Green Tories) couldn’t see the Ulster under their feet; the Republicans missed out both Ulster and the Archipelago; and none gave any heed to Europe at all. Now, perhaps, willy nilly bundled in the European rump of the Common Market, clearer ideas of our regional and national allegiances and responsibilities may emerge.”

You may like his words or loathe them but after 3,594 dead, 36,293 shootings, 16,209 bombing and attempted bombings and 70 years of old unionist discrimination they have a ring of logic to them.

They are the philosophy on which the Good Friday Agreement is built. That Ireland and its people have allegiance to region, to nation, to these islands and to this great continent. 

When I talk to young northerners I meet people who embody Hewitt’s dream; proudly Northern and proudly Irish.

Many are proudly British too and most happy to be Europeans.

The truth is the people of our region are not as divided as our politics suggests.

Irish nationalism can take the old road of a one size fits all future or it can walk a new one in which unity is neither a unionist nightmare nor a nationalist pipedream.

But to do that it must change and change radically.

First the very issue of unity needs to be elevated above politics. That’s why the SDLP has recommended the reconvening of the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation to discuss unity. We owe it to ourselves as a nation to debate and agree a model of a united Ireland and to do so before 2016. We cannot be complete as a nation without a shared vision of our future. North needs south but south will need the North if a new Ireland is to emerge and the absolute potential of our island is to be fulfilled.
 
Secondly we need to make the North work. Ignoring the opportunity of regional government is to ignore the common ground on which a new Ireland will be built.

That means maximum devolution but also imaginative regional solutions to local problems. Its means real power sharing that is capable of building the best education system in Ireland, defending the NHS – a British institution made Irish in Northern Ireland.

It also means getting serious about the economy because we will never build a strong all Ireland economy if we have a weak northern one.

We need to make the North a place where sectarianism is the real enemy and government leads the fight against it. 

A strong North means a strong Ireland. A weak, underperforming and politically dysfunctional one means a weaker Ireland.

Our home is a region of Ireland. Our dream is for it to flourish under the flag of our nation. Others hope it will remain a region of the UK. But we all surely agree that it is our region and needs governed for the benefit of all our people.

That is the as yet unfulfilled opportunity of the Good Friday Agreement. To build a great region on Irish soil, united in a common desire to see their neighbours flourish.

Where culture is shared; where the GAA is honoured and celebrated, never politicised and denigrated. Where the weave of diversity is strong and common ground is worked.

Where endeavour and enterprise are promoted and where prejudice is rejected.

The old Ireland aspired to a separate but equal relationship with others. It adopted an old fashioned conservative and British view of equality.

It cast progressive and labour politics aside in favour of a great nationalism that could bind a nation in a common struggle but was incapable of accommodating those who did not fit with its sense of identity.

The New Ireland must honour those who believed in their cause whether we agree with it or not, but it must not repeat the mistakes of their past.

James Connolly’s assertion that “The cause of labour is the cause of Ireland, the cause of Ireland is the cause of labour” can become the words on which a new Ireland is borne and when we remember the centenary of his death in 2016 we do so having agreed as Irishmen and women what a new united and free Ireland will look like.

We will honour his dream by ensuring that in the twenty first century labour need not wait. That progressive national politics is a possibility.

That two centuries and ten years after Tone professed the unity of the people of this island, his dream can finally become a reality.

Radical economic plan launched

 A group of economists have launched a radical set of economic proposlas for the North today. I dont agree with every word but definitely think they are worthy of consideration.  I have reproduced their statement below.

Today the Northern Ireland Economic Reform Group of senior economists, accountants and business interests launches a major report on reduced corporation tax for Northern Ireland. The report argues that a low rate of corporation tax is the only change which will quickly turn the Northern Ireland economy around and that without this reform the Northern Ireland economy faces a difficult future with continued dependence on a huge subvention from GB, low levels of employment and low wages.

Twelve years after the Good Friday Agreement Northern Ireland remains the UK’s poorest region. It has the lowest average wages and among the lowest productivity. Despite having proportionately the smallest private sector, it has suffered the largest percentage loss of jobs of any region during the current recession. Its unemployment rate has risen to the third highest of any region, and a higher percentage of is working age population are inactive than in any other region. Around half of all government expenditure in NI is financed by tax-payers in GB, and in reality tax-payers in South East England. The subsidy to NI is worth in the order of £9 billion every year. This
means £5,000 for every person living in NI, or £20,000 a year for a couple with two children.

The authors point out that all of this has happened despite the highest levels of government support for business in any UK region. Most large businesses in manufacturing and agriculture, and many service businesses with export potential, receive generous grants or subsidies. It is clear that this regime of economic development policy will not turn around the Northern Ireland economy, alter the balance between the public and private sectors or significantly narrow the prosperity gap with the rest of the UK. As if this were not bad enough, the situation may well get worse. The EU plans to begin reducing from next year the ceilings for the maximum amount of grant that Invest NI is allowed to give private firms. If these plans are realised, it is possible that no, investment grants may be permitted at all after 2013 The evidence presented in this report shows that the fast track solution to increasing economic prosperity and rapid job growth it to attract high value added Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and that one of the key ways of doing this is to offer a low rate of corporation tax.

The experience of the Irish Republic shows the ability of a highly competitive corporation tax regime to attract Foreign Direct Investment. It would greatly enhance Northern Ireland’s promotional message at any future Investment Conference if it were able to look forward to having one of the lowest corporation tax rates in the world. A low tax regime would also of course act as a spur to investment by indigenous companiesThe Report argues that reduced corporation tax is the only change which will quickly turn the Northern Ireland economy around. Other changes are also needed, such as those described in the recent Independent Review of Economic Policy, but this is the only reform that can induce the major structural change which is needed if Northern Ireland is to get out of the present economic rut. A reduction in corporation tax to a level comparable to that in the Republic of Ireland would raise overall tax revenues in NI.

The benefits would be widely spread:

• NI would benefit from a much larger private sector, including at least 90,000 extra jobs over 20 years. Many of these jobs would have salary levels well above the average for NI. Unemployment should fall back much further than would otherwise be the case.

• The UK Treasury would gain from additional tax revenues from income taxes, national insurance, VAT etc. The subvention from London needed to support public expenditure levels in N.I. would be reduced accordingly, by over £1 billion within 20 years.

EU rules insist that any region gaining control over its own tax must bear the costs of any reduction in tax rates. In this report we have calculated that the reduction in revenue from reduced corporation tax is around 2% of Executive spending, but this could be smaller if the tax base expands as fast as it has in some other countries following a tax reduction.

The Report is a comprehensive response to the Treasury’s Varney Review in December 2007 whic rejected the request from all of the main Assembly Parties for reduced corporation tax in Northern Ireland. The Report builds on the Varney Report’s admission that reduced tax would be legal under the Azore’s and Gibraltar Judgements of the European Court. Northern Ireland would, of course, in line with that judgement, have to shoulder the cost to the Treasury of any reduction in the yield from corporation tax resulting from the cut in the tax rate. This would be a small price to pay in exchange for the ability to deploy such a powerful new policy weapon Other issues previously raised concerning a reduced rate of corporation tax include the concern that brass plating will occur in that shell companies will set up in Northern Ireland without any real activity or will shift excessive profits into Northern Ireland operations, with the sole purpose of claiming the benefit of the low corporation tax rate. This report addresses these concerns and indicates that HMRC
already have most of the tools necessary to police inappropriate behaviour. The report does however suggest that a ‘headcount’ test could be introduced as a means of ensuring that companies availing of the low tax rate are genuinely located in Northern Ireland.

The Northern Ireland Economic Reform Group consists of senior economist and accountants together with Sir George Quigley, Chairman of Bombardier-Shorts. The group shares a common view that Northern Ireland has a pressing need for economic reform and that reduced corporation tax is the only effective means of meeting that need quickly. All members of the group have long experience in arguing for this reform including advising the Assembly in their previous attempt to persuade the Chancellor of the Exchequer to make this change.

Education Minister Caitriona Ruane must go

I called for the Minister for Education’s resignation last night at the SDLP Conference. Full text of my speech below:

The history of this island is littered with occasions when the poor, the weak or the young have been used as political pawns.

For centuries our young men were sent to fight other people’s wars.

Throughout the troubles selfish ideologues sacrificed an entire generation’s hopes on the bomb fire of their political vanity. We know this.

The SDLP was there supporting teachers, youth workers and councillors in communities across the north who offered young people an alternative to the false promise of IRA or UDA martyrdom.

This party of teachers gave hope and educated the generation who are now building the new North. Working people with dreams passed down from the classroom and parents who held the line when the streets were calling.

Despite the current economic gloom, we have never had more opportunity then we do today. Yet for the past thousand days a minister has ignored the opportunity for a better future for our children opting instead to use them as canon fodder in a failed ideological battle which she is incapable of winning.

The proclamation of independence demanded that we cherish all of the children equally. That we put them first and let politics serve them not rule them.

It is an indictment of this Minister delegates that tens of thousands of children will receive the results of a private test tomorrow.

Over 100,000 parents and countless teachers are living under a cloud of uncertainty, unable to answers their sons and daughters questions and unable to take the important decisions which will play such an important role in shaping their future.

There is no debate about the fact that the 11 plus is not working. There is no credible voice on any side saying the solution is to keep it.

Four years ago a British Labour Minister, filling in while the DUP and Sinn Fein took their time getting their act together got the parties, all the parties, to agree to a set of principles. The 11plus would go, there would be a structured discussion about how and if children were selected and when.

Within a week of arriving in office Caitriona Ruane dismissed the Angela Smyth initiative and set us all back to square one.

Her performance since then has led many to do their own thing. The issue has also become a sectarian football, feeding the worst prejudices of both the DUP and Sinn Fein.

Delegates, you know things are bad when the Belfast Telegraph has to step in to do the minister’s jobs. I know you will join my in saluting the leadership, Dominic Bradley has shown on this issue. Unlike the Minister he is building new relationships and standing shoulder to shoulder for a better future even if our minister cannot.

We should support him and use the floor of the assembly and the committee room in Stormont to promote a child centred debate which leaves tired old ideology at the door and brings only a shared desire to build a system we can all be proud of, and which cherishes and grows the abilities of all our children.

Ms Ruane is loosing in office. She is trampling all over the very principles of republicanism. Her face is synonymous with failure, in government and in the class room.

It is time for her to go in the interests of children and in the interests of the Executive.

Let a republican who believes in and is willing to be guided by the cherished principles of equality and justice to the job.

Hillsborough Agreement – Will it lead to a new era of government?

I am just back from Hillsborough.

Everyone will welcome news that we finally have got a date for the devolution of policing and justice. It’s taken way too long but at least these powers are now being returned to Irish hands.

At the heart of the deal however is an act of political discrimination. That a nationalist will never be able to hold the justice ministry because Sinn Fein negotiated away their right to do so is a total contradiction of the commitment made in today’s agreement to promote ‘greater inclusiveness’ in the executive.

The provisions on parading are also worrying. Sinn Fein have singed up to a process which can only have one outcome and that is the abolishment of the Parades Commission. This is a major u-turn for the party and a victory for the DUP. It raises many questions about the party’s real commitment to equality and will cause huge concern in the nationalist community.

Perhaps the most worrying thing about the paper published today in Hillsborough is the total absence of any reference to the big issues which the Executive has failed on despite both parties talking at length over the past three weeks about the need to also resolve big issues on bread and butter issues at the heart of the current coalition.

There is not a line about education, the economy, a shared future or health. Not a word about an Irish Language Act or many of the other outstanding matters from St Andrews. Instead three working groups have been proposed.

 Will they succeed?

Maybe but given the exclusionary record of  Sinn Fein and the DUP to date it is likely they will push the tricky issues further down the line rather then resolve them to everyone’s satisfaction.

There is nothing in today’s agreement which will make parents feel optimistic that a resolution to the 11plus is near. Not a thing for working families facing redundancy to take hope from. Not a line about the need to tackle the sectarianism or racism.

The SDLP will be testing the DUP and Sinn Fein to deliver on the promise of this agreement; to live up to their duty in government and demonstrate that this is more then just a touch of the band-aids to it.

Irish Times says it all about the DUP & SF today

Today’s Irish Times editorial really does say it all:

THE DESTRUCTIVE and dirty side of party, and inter-party, politics is being played out in Northern Ireland while the people want progress. People on the ground are being short-changed and the peace process they endorsed is under threat. DUP and Sinn Féin politicians have been diverted by disagreements over dates for the transfer of justice and policing powers and changes to the Parades Commission, as the economic situation worsens. For the first time, the confidence of the electorate, North and South, in the political dispensation endorsed in the historic Belfast Agreement, is waning. We are on the cusp of a moment of development or betrayal.

Some DUP politicians are prisoners of the past and deeply resent the realities of powersharing. The fact that Sinn Féin is involved makes it particularly problematic. It was with great reluctance they allowed Ian Paisley make the original deal, involving the two Governments and Sinn Féin, more than three years ago. Now that the issue of justice and policing has been reopened, they are seeking to mollify extremist supporters by demanding changes to the Parades Commission that fall outside of the St Andrews Agreement. It is a recipe for disaster.

Negotiations between the DUP and Sinn Féin have dragged on for weeks, first with the assistance of Brian Cowen and Gordon Brown, then with the involvement of Micheál Martin and Shaun Woodward. Progress has been painfully slow.

But the public was told at regular intervals that important advances were being made. Agreement in principle was apparently finally reached last Saturday between the parties. The Taoiseach and prime minister made arrangements to travel to Belfast.

Then 14 DUP politicians voted “No” in a secret ballot. Should such an important matter be decided in this way? Rejection had the capacity to bring down the Executive and cause Assembly elections.

Surely voters have a right to know where their elected representatives stand on such crucial matters? Rejection also amounted to a vote of “no confidence” in the leadership of Peter Robinson, even though prominent dissidents insisted otherwise. Sinn Féin has studiously avoided commenting on Mr Robinson’s mounting difficulties. It may hope that relations within the Executive will improve once the devolutionary process has been completed.

If that is to happen, both Sinn Féin and the DUP will have to make space for other political parties, so that a powersharing Executive comes to mean exactly what it says.

In recent days, the public mood has alternated between anger, disillusionment and apathy as a minority of politicians refurbished tribal trenches and concentrated on matters that divided them.

Public confidence in the political process has been damaged. It may reawaken destructive tendencies.

Mr Robinson has resumed the role of First Minister. What the silent majority in Northern Ireland want to hear is that there is a Northern Executive, governing the affairs of Northern Ireland, in the peoples’ interest.