House of Commons Hansard Debates for 9 Dec 1996 (pt 12)

Mr. McNamara: For Upper Bann, not for Foyle.

Mr. Mallon: What a Freudian mistake! The hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) doubted the Irish Government's commitment to decommissioning and to the entire process. Like me, he will be in Castle buildings tomorrow and, like me, if he has doubts, he can put them to the test by moving directly and immediately into the substantive negotiations. If he is right, he will have called their bluff and established whether that commitment exists. If the hon. Gentleman has that type of reservation, the obvious thing to do is to call their bluff and find out. That is the only way in which many things, not least the position of Sinn Fein, will be established in this entire process, whenever it ends--or perhaps I should say whenever it starts.

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Four matters are fundamental to this debate on decommissioning. The first is simple and prosaic. Illegal arms can be removed from any society in only two ways: they can be taken out, or talked out. I wait to hear another alternative. They can be taken out through the efforts of the security forces and of Governments, or they can be talked out in a political context that is geared towards talking them out.

Have the two sovereign Governments on the island of Ireland, despite their enormous panoply of power, security and extra-security measures, and legislative measures--the whole corpus of security that has existed in the past 25 years in Ireland, north and south--been able to decommission through security methods in the past 25 years? I wish that the answer were yes because things would then be much easier for people in the north of Ireland, much easier for everyone politically, and much more realistic in terms of the political process in which we are involved.

Mr. Robert McCartney rose--

Mr. Mallon: If the hon. and learned Member for North Down (Mr. McCartney) intends to say that decommissioning has taken place through the security process, I shall gladly give him the opportunity to confirm it.

Mr. McCartney: I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Gentleman about my powers as a clairvoyant. I can assure him, however, that the view of many people in Northern Ireland is that the two sovereign Governments have not really committed themselves to a process of taking arms out of circulation. Had they done so, we might not now be seeing a futile attempt to talk them out.

Mr. Mallon: I am glad that the hon. and learned Gentleman has clarified the matter. I understand that clairvoyance means looking into the future; I asked for a judgment on the past. The hon. and learned Gentleman has just questioned the motivation and integrity of successive Governments in this House for the past 25 years. Not to take seriously the decommissioning of weapons through security methods is to breach the most fundamental element of integrity that any Government must show. I often criticise this and other Governments but I do not question their integrity in terms of their intention and effort to take out those arms.

I am surprised that such a point should be made, given the evidence that exists throughout the north of Ireland--I say this not in a pejorative sense--of the inability to decommission through the security method. I do not call it a failure because it could not have been done successfully. Rather, it is an inability to decommission weapons through the normal security channels. Indeed, I have never heard anyone argue convincingly that decommissioning is a decisive security measure, however desirable it may be. Many senior security people have made it clear, publicly and privately, that it is essentially a political issue. It was never part of a realistic security strategy.

That is the first basic point. From that premise stems a number of other factors. The second basic point, which is palatable to none of us who live in the north of Ireland or elsewhere, is that if we accept that first premise we must

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view decommissioning and its successful conclusion as a voluntary exercise, which, logically and necessarily, requires the co-operation of those who hold the weapons. If we are serious about decommissioning or creating the context in which decommissioning can take place, we must--hon. Members will excuse the pun--all bite the bullet.

As I said initially, we can either take out or talk out illegal weapons. Taking out did not work; talking out might work but it must be tried, otherwise the criticism of the hon. Member for North Down could be legitimate.

The Governments, with their vast security operations, have been pursuing a decommissioning policy for years, rightly seeking out and confiscating illegal weapons wherever they can be found. They will continue to do that and I hope that they are successful. However, that should not be confused with the other element of the exercise. Some people want to treat decommissioning as a matter that can simply be pre-emptively imposed on the paramilitaries. They seem to think that simply by saying, "You must decommission", decommissioning will take place at some time in the future. That is a fallacy and nonsense, and it will not happen. Nor will it happen through a security operation or series of them, irrespective of their efficiency.

When will people--I mean mainly Members of the House and in the political parties in the north of Ireland, who have come face to face with the problem and who have an emotional and a symbolic difficulty with it, as I have--start to recognise and explain to their followers that what they profess to accept involves a process of negotiations and a commitment to engage and persuade those who hold weapons that the political path is the only way forward? If we accept that there are only two options--to take illegal weapons out or to talk them out--we must accept that talking them out involves a political process. That involves negotiations, and that means negotiations with the people who hold the weapons. That is the difficulty. Biting that bullet will be the most significant factor in solving this part of the process, if the process ever starts.

The third undeniable fact is that, according to the logic of the Mitchell report, which the Government have accepted and on which they have based the Bill, and which the hon. Member for Basingstoke has accepted, decommissioning will never happen unless it is a by-product of the political process. That is another difficult reality for all of us to accept. In terms of the Mitchell report implemented to the full, decommissioning will not happen unless it stems from a political process--in other words, derives from negotiations.

The Mitchell report is clear that political progress and confidence must come first. That is, in any case, common sense to anyone who considers the context in which the paramilitaries on both sides operate. After the events of the past summer, that should be starkly etched on all our minds. Paragraph 16 of the report makes that clear. Paragraph 35 makes it even more abundantly clear that if we cannot take illegal arms out, we must talk them out, and there is only one way in which that can be done.

The fourth factor identified by Mitchell is that decommissioning must take place on a mutual basis as between both sets of paramilitaries. In that case, decommissioning can come about only as a result of a fully inclusive negotiated process. To get IRA weapons

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on a mutual basis as defined by Mitchell and as accepted by the Secretary of State and by the hon. Member for Upper Bann in his speech, it must be mutual between two sets of paramilitaries: the IRA and the loyalist paramilitaries. For that to happen, the harsh reality--like it or not, and some people do not like it--is that the representatives of the IRA will be there to take part in the negotiations.