09/06/2011 Hearts and Minds

Hello. Welcome to the programme. The Prime Minister has come and

gone, applauded by MLAs for telling them they will have to get on with

it and there is no use asking for more money. He has gone back to

London clutching Fermanagh eggs. It was an uneventful their ISA boring

the visit. Was there any central message we should take from it?

think you have got it spot on. It was very businesslike. I thought it

was a wonderful example of how Northern Ireland has moved on and

politics is now it's all about the things that matter to people on an

everyday basis. How does he expect to deliver West less and less

money? He made it clear that Northern Ireland actually receives

25 % more per head than elsewhere in England. He made it clear we now

have stable elections. The Executive has been formed. How is

that going to improve people's lives with less money? We have a

stable Executive with a substantial amount of money, considerably more

than England, with only a reduction of 6.9 % compared to reductions in

most UK departments of 19 %. People here will expect the Executive to

get on and deliver. In fairness of the minister's remit agreed. We may

be getting less less than the rest of the country but we are now

getting the Archbishop of Canterbury saying these reforms are

being pushed through willy-nilly when no one voted for them.

fairness to both coalition parties we made it absolutely clear that

reducing this appalling deficit which requires us to spend �120

million per day on debt is there key part of our message. We totally

disagree with the Archbishop of Canterbury. We do not think it is

moral and good to pay for things today and dump the credit card bill

on our children and grandchildren. How much do we expect public

representatives to improve people's lives under those restrictions? You

are not going to deliver real improvements like the Prime

Minister is at skiing -- asking. Things can be delivered more

efficiently. It is up to those in charge, local ministers, to get

more with a little less money. 6.9 % over format for years is only

1.27 % per year. It is a very modest reduction on what is already

a higher rate than England. There are jobs disappearing in the public

sector, we cannot improve those people's lives? If the private

sector were run as efficiently as the private sector you could save

�1 billion per year. They have got a clear run now, a clear mandate,

they have got stable institutions and the totally agreed it is up to

them to deliver. -- the totally agree. It is quite clear that all

Western democracies, we have a dramatic example in the Republic,

have got to live within their means. We cannot go on living on a credit

card and leaving the Bill to our children and grandchildren. One of

the great Saviour's is corporation tax. It was reduced to some level.

We have had more hints about that today. There is to be published a

paper on rebalancing the economy to help create growth in the private

sector because we all know the over-dependence on public spending

cannot last indefinitely. We have published the paper which had

endorsement from all five political parties. There is now a

consultation process going on. I very much hope and I have made it

clear publicly that I am a strong supporter of this, that it will be

again changed and top of the existing advantages. I think it

would be a huge help in reviving the private sector and that

prosperity would lift all boats, a rising tide lifts all boats, it

would wash into those disadvantaged communities and it would all help.

There is an occasional contradiction to what the benefits

might be of that? The House of Commons Select Committee said the

opposite. Yesterday we had one of the most senior executives from an

employer of 2000 people in Northern Ireland, he said they would double

their business in 10 years if it happened. That company is a real

exception, most employee 10 or fewer people. Think of that

prosperity washing into some of those deprived communities. Sadly

some of them are in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Thinker

of the impact of that extra income going into small shops, people

buying things like bread and newspapers, going on holiday, going

to pubs. If we can help improve the private economy here that

prosperity will wash into some of the most deprived area is with

immense benefits. This is not in the back, I have to make that clear,

the Prime Minister said people have got time to write into the Treasury

before 24th June. The Prime Minister talk about looking forward,

not looking to the past. We have said no more costly and open ended

inquiries. I thought he made a very good point that what people want

from the party is the truth. He made a good point in parliament

yesterday that it was not so much the cost and length and the

enormous detail, it was the fact the truth came out. He made it

quite clear that there are possibly other ways of getting to the truth.

That is what people want. Specifically on that won the case,

will there be an inquiry? I saw the wife of the man a few months ago

and I said I would make a decision soon after the elections but I have

not made a final decision yet. Your mind what at the issues that are

still playing around in your head? Is it the potential cost of a full

and open inquiry? If you look can be written statement which I made

in November to Parliament I lay out the theory is criteria. There is

the public interest, there is the cost, the time, the delays since

this terrible murder happened. All of those are factors which I am

looking at. I will make a decision soon. The tribunal has been told it

has to come up with its final report on the murder of two RUC

officers in November, is that the sort of thing you can see

happening? Each is different. I have been asked to provide an

interim report in November. The first case you asked about is a

particularly difficult one on which I will make a decision soon.

wider issues, are you any closer to coming up with some kind of

solution? We have been in discussion with the party leaders.

I have been talking to all the political parties, we have had

numerous groups in. First of all, this is not an issue which is owned

by the UK Government. This has to be brought forward in consultation.

Hopefully, with some agreement and consensus from across the piece,

that is obviously extremely difficult to achieve. Thank you.

Mary McArdle is fully entitled to be an advisor to a Sinn Fein

Minister. The party appointed her and the minister needs her. But

some of the arguments made in defence of her appointment are more

likely to impress Sinn Fein supporters, who will have no

problem with her being in the job anyway, than to sway the opinions

of those who would like her to step down. She was part of a gang that

tried to kill a magistrate and shot his daughter in the back and killed

her. She is now political advisor to Caral ni Chuilin, whom she

befriended in prison. All former prisoners should have a chance to

do well in life, to outgrow their criminal inclinations and become

better people. I wouldn't judge anyone by what they did at 19,

unless they continued to stand over and defend and justify what they

did. Sinn Fein thinks of the IRA gangs as political champions who

fought a noble struggle. The rest of society largely indulges that

view, in that they don't argue about it any more, but that does

not mean they accept it. When Martin McGuinness says that those

who participated in a conflict are entitled to work for the

improvement of society, he is right, up to a point. His argument is that

otherwise Nelson Mandela would never have been made president of

South Africa. But then surely he would make an exception for Ratko

Mladic; wouldn't he? And if for Mladic, then where does he draw the

line, because everyobody draws it somewhere? Is Mary McArdle closer

to the Nelson Mandela end of the spectrum or the end that is

occupied by the ruthless assassins of innocent civilians? Sinn Fein

wants the IRA to, at least, have parity in the popular imagination

with the RUC and the British Army as participants in an unfortunate

but necessary war. I don't buy that for a minute. Do you? I want

children here to be reminded that the IRA killed more people than any

other org anisation during the Troubles. Gerry Adams says he wants

a truth commission; well, there's a truth to be getting on with. If

they foist the idea of the legitimate war on us, then I want

to reply by foisting on them the concept of the war crime and ask if

shooting a girl in the back because she was the daughter of a

magistrate was such a crime. They want us to remember their prisoners

as political. But those prisoners were criminals. Political criminals

if you like, but there never was a law that endorsed the shooting of

people for political objectives. Shooting a girl in the back was no

more principled, decent, excusable or forgiveable when done by the IRA

than by the UVF or the British army. But the IRA did a lot more of that

kind of thing than anybody else. And this is why I would like to see

Mary McArdle leave that job; because she is maintained there in

defence of fallacious and propagandistic account of our past.

Of course, let her say not just that murdering a girl was a tragic

mistake but that her big mistake in the first place was to join the IRA,

and I would defend her to the hilt. But, of course, if she did that,

Martin McGuinness would drop her, wouldn't he? The thought of Mullahy

O'Doherty. The figures show that Protestant children are less likely

to go to university than their Catholic neighbours. Does that mean

that Protestant areas will fare worse than others? Who will speak

up for them? Hurling training at a Protestant school in loyalist

working-class east Belfast. Not what you would expect but then this

is not any old boys' school. Disadvantaged Catholics are twice

as likely to go to university than disadvantaged Protestants and of

the 15 electoral wards with the worst educational attainment, 13

were also predominantly Protestant. This high school is bucking that

trend. Extreme is of enterprise and parental involvement. It has a zero

tolerance policy for bad behaviour. All the boys who come in are

considered to have failed the 11 plus. Their self-esteem is low. We

try to build on that. You look at the learning process. The

examinations up to GCSE and A-level have gone through the roof. Now

they are starting to achieve at a very, very high level. These

students finishing off their French exams may be too young to know it

but research suggests a low educational achievement and often

lead to unemployment, poor or mental and physical health, drug

use and criminality. Issues of social inclusion -- exclusion which

are likely to become more topical now with public spending cutbacks

will stop how times have changed. It is not so long ago that Belfast

was the main centre of heavy industry with a unionised workforce.

Some say that the loss of both have vastly affected loyalist self-

confidence. In was every street we had that the union leader, a shop

steward, with the demise of the Engineering Works and manufacturing

in general having gone down, these were highly unionised and it has

stripped a lot of organisation from During the Good Friday talks, it

seemed to somersault the emergence of the French parties like the

Progressive Unionists would give an your voice to the loyalist working-

class, but it was not to be. Falters at the recent elections

returned to know p u p Associated MLAs, raising questions about the

party's future. The political product of the Progressive Unionist

Party was twofold. All want to transform Param militarism to the

point where it came to an end and secondly to work on the progress of

social policy issues that would transform a loyalist working-class

communities. Again, around the issues of housing and a poor health,

of community ownership. Unfortunately, I think that the

continued existence and the continued activities of the UVF has

destroyed that political product. Dawn Purvis resigned as PUP leader

because it fits in the party was unable to emerge from the shadow of

the gunman. These meals in Belfast were started during the recent air

Assembly election campaign. They were seen by some as the UVF

hardliners attempting to undermine political loyalism. But some say

that is nonsense and that the new rules really see the committee

remembering its heritage. Members of the pump -- paramilitary play a

big part in the PUP. They do not, and let me tell you, they do not

order the PUP what to say and do. The party does that themselves.

issues of social inclusion are expected to get worse because of

the cutbacks. The PP that has its roots -- the PUP in the way this

has its roots in a loyalist records as this to say. The biggest problem

in East Belfast is low educational attainment. The number of people in

debt, the number of people who are having problem with mental health

issues, as an example. We are now in government and I think we have

the power and influence to change things for the better in those

communities. Although a way that we will be re-elected back in East

Belfast is that if we work on behalf of all of the people. There

is a good deal amount of -- There is a good deal of scepticism that

the PUP will be able to deliver. They say that while the PUP might

be the party of the working class, it is not for the working class.

there is a need and an opportunity that exists at the present for a

new political entity or a new political discussion or debate

around to who actually does represent the interests of the most

vulnerable in our society. Others on the left of Unionism see no

point in a new party. They are prepared to give do PE p and Sinn

Fein Executive time to see if it can deliver on social issues.

Ultimately, it will be the voters who delivered their verdict and the

young who will inherit the policies of all the generations.

The row over Mary McArdle's appointment as a Sinn Fein special

advisor has focused attention on the wider question of where former

paramilitaries should fit into post- conflict Northern Ireland.

And this week a two-day conference has been addressing those very

issues. Among the delegates, the UDA leader Jackie McDonald and the

former IRA man Seanna Walsh. Is there an issue that has come out

of this controversy that nobody objects to paramilitaries being

reintegrated and having a life, but go about it quite like, is the

message, do not for what in the faces of everybody else. Is that

the message? That may be the message that the BBC or of the

media or the great and the good are putting out there, but... Or the

victims? It may well be. For the likes of myself, I was released

under the Good Friday Agreement as an acknowledgement that I was in

jail as a result of the political conflict here. I did feel that I

have to hide anywhere. -- I'd do not feel. I acknowledge people

suffering and heart, but I also feel that there is nothing that

people like myself for people like me can say that is going to in any

way to take away from the heart. is not a matter of what you say, it

is a matter of what you do. The not pick yourself right in people's

faces. The media picked Navy McArdle in people's faces. -- made

a McArdle. Nobody knows the answers to those questions, because it was

not an issue. I believe our political opponents have decided to

make it an issue. They are attempting to put stuff out there

to trap people up, to cause problems. You supported Sinn Fein's

appointment and you think there is nothing wrong with it yourself?

did not say that. All I said was that as an ex political prisoner

myself, with many friends that serve the life sentences, it would

be hypocritical of me to criticise. I would like to think that if any

of them had the opportunity, unlikely as it may seem, to become

an adviser, I like to think that they would take that opportunity.

It is the symbolism of it. Ex- prisoners say they want to be

treated equally, and yet, some people say that they get more

support than the victims did. very frustrating, let me tell you,

to be annexed combat and, an ex- prisoner. It is frustrating to be a

victim. When I first heard of the appointment and I saw the reaction,

I thought they were rubbing salt in the wins a little bit. And then I

thought about all the friends that I had who were genuinely fearless

people and were drawn into -- sincere people, who were drawn into

conflict. You had this conference and you have been looking at a lot

of issues. For us, it is about the quality of citizenship. For

prisoners, or even political ex- prisoners, there are issues around

travel, employment, insurance, to do with mortgages and stuff like

that. We are endeavouring to have some of those problems resolved.

And, as I say, it is a quality of citizenship. We're talking with the

police about policing in the community and where X

paramilitaries fit into society. At one time, paramilitaries had a

complete disregard for the community and the police. But we

are on a journey now. We have to accept that not everybody thinks

that ex-prisoners R -- or her ex, battens are flavour of the month. -

- combat since. A look on the Internet for responses. Here are

some wind I have put it. Terrorists are not victims. Get stuffed.

problem, but on 5th May, the anniversary of Bobby Sands, out of

20 MLAs elected, 19 of them are former prisoners. Three executives

are former prisoners. There is a feeling in the committee where I

come from, that former political prisoners have a major role to play

in creating a better future for all the people. There is not the same

acceptance in the loyalist community. I was talking to some

people this morning and some of them said that they thought it was

an insult. Others said to me, would it be the same interest if it had

been a bricklayers Dr? That is a question that some people have to

answer for themselves. A I believe that we have to move on. The

prisoner and the X combatants cannot claim all the credit for the

peace process. It cannot be like oil and water. Everybody has to

work together. A sort of Pearce's here, but we have to still work on

it, it is not guaranteed. In terms of the work that prisoners are

doing, there is this schools project now. What do you think that

will do, to influence the future? Hopefully, the likes of of Charter

and all the different express -- prisoners groups can attempt to

convey to those young people what the struggle in the past was about,

what the peace process has done and how things have now changed and how

kids today have the prospect of a future without guns. Can you talk

about the conflict from your point of view without glamorising it?

was a conflict. War is about people getting killed and telling and

there is absolutely nothing glamourous about a war or a

conflict. I do not think that we have ever attempted to glamorise it.

By us going into schools and talking to 14 or 15 Urals, we do de

glamorise the whole situation. We explain the down sides. Prison

destroys people, families. It is not the glamour or that you see in

the films or in the TV. Thank you very much for your thoughts.

And that's where we leave it this time round. We'll be back next week

at the usual times. Until then, goodbye.

Our politicians are getting on all right. David Fortis still standing

up to the legal-aid lawyers. Our life as a kid, but trying to

persuade us that they are underpaid his track -- like trying to

persuade the Olympic athletes to train here. Thanks to Jim Allister,