13/10/2011 Hearts and Minds

Hello and welcome to the programme. Coming up this week. No

satisfaction for the Finucanes, so what are the implications for truth

recovery? Why the SDLP leadership race makes the Borgias look like

Little House on the Prairie. And should there be a legal minimum

If the evidence this week is anything to go by, there'll be no

more full-scale inquiries into deaths in the Troubles. Facing down

the outrage of the Finucane family, the Government is defending its

decision to set up a review by a leading QC of the mountains of

papers thrown up by the Stevens and Cory investigations of the murder

of Pat Finucane. Inquiries, says the Secretary of State, are not the

way to discover the truth. Patrick Corrigan of Amnesty International.

One of the main reasons you think there should be inquiries is what

you call the credible evidence of collusion and the fact the murder

may have taken place with collision but we know that, the government

has said that there was collusion. So... They have not much what they

could not dispute. After the Stevens inquiry and the Cory

inquiry and what has leaked into the public domain. We know there

was collusion, but we do not know the extent do that. And only a

proper independent and public inquiry can really expose the full

extent of that to public scrutiny and help restore her in some

measure our confidence in the rule of law and that the Government is

interested in up holding that. Secretary of State says no stone

will be unturned in coming to the nature of this, he says this will

give a full public account? I think if there was genuine intent to

publicly expose the full extent of the collision, what went on behind

closed doors, who was involved in covering it up, then a public

inquiry... Is that not all there in these mountains of paper? No one

has seen them but they will be uncovered? He will have full

access? No matter how eminent their QC, an inquiry or review of the

paperwork is no substitute to a proper public inquiry that can be

properly effective and independent and can win the confidence of the

family. They and their lawyers will not have a chance to look at the

paper work themselves. And to cross-question any witnesses. De

Silva will have no legal powers to compel the production of evidence

and witnesses, this is toothless and it really will probably turn

out to be a waste of taxpayers' money. Mike Nesbitt, one of your

colleagues said that the family should let go? I think that any

family, including the Finucane family, should have an opportunity

to find the truth. It is a journey and the starting point is a loss

and the finish line is the point where you feel that you have got

some understanding of what happened so I support them in having that

opportunity. But what Patrick is saying, the Secretary of State

addressed, accepting collusion isn't sufficient in itself and the

public its to know the nature of that and that is just like what you

said, you need to root out all state agencies? He says a review

will not do that. I do not believe that it will not do that. I have

faith, Mr de Silva is a war crimes prosecutor and he will have access

to absolutely everything. We were told it was going to be at paper

review but the Secretary of State says it has opened to Sir Desmond,

he is free to meet any individual. He cannot compel them? We were told

it was going to be paper but it is more. If Sir Desmond does his job

at the level and extent and nature we expect, it welcome out? It must

be there? It isn't about his abilities, it is the integrity of

the process. International human right slot demands that the victims

of this crime are entitled, because of the strong allegations and the

knowledge and that there was state collusion, that they are entitled

to an effective and impartial investigation that has their

corporation and involvement and their participation is specifically

excluded from this review and exercise. That right to have no

confidence is justified and many people have little confidence in

that and it isn't about privileging the family over other victims. They

all have the right to truth and justice but in this case, there are

very serious concerns about how we uphold the rule of law in this

country. We do not accept it is very uneven? Everybody on this

journey is on a journey and the Finucane family are not over the

finishing line and they don't think this will get them there, but would

you expect there are many thousands of families still on the starting

line, looking enviously at the family because they know who

murdered Pat Finucane, they know there was did collision, they have

had an apology and the air getting another �1.5 million spent on an

inquiry. There have been over 9152 witness statements and if that was

replicated over every Troubles related killing, there would be

more than 32 million witness statements. You're trying to draw

some equivalence but the grief felt by every family in our conflict is

the same but there are more serious issues at stake that are bigger

than the family. They concern the integrity of the rule of law in

this country. That is why it we demand and need a public inquiry to

expose that. It is different when the state is involved? The state

was always involved, Martin McGuinness wants to be the state in

the Irish Republic, he is number two in the government in this

country. Word do you draw that line? We need to ask ourselves a

fundamental question. Why are we doing this? Dealing with the past

for the sake of the individuals most impacted? Or for the sake of a

lulling society to move forward? You don't accept parliamentary

bodies? I am a Unionist. Unlike comfortable during the Prime

Minister say there was collusion in the murder of a Northern Ireland

citizen? Of course that. But we must go on and find out the scope

and nature of that. I am satisfied that Mr de Silva deserves the

opportunity to do this and I am mindful of the hundreds of

thousands of families who say, what about me? We deal in the dead but

not in the living injured. There could have been an inquiry under

the 2005 Act and that then it can family turned it down because they

felt there was a loophole which let the Government conceal information

but that was an offer that they turned down. Now they have ended up

with much less than that. Was that a mistake? I think the government

of the time had no choice but to offer a public inquiry. Just as

Cory's said that nothing less would suffice. The Government then

instructed the Inquiries Act to give them ministerial discretion

and to interfere in the evidence provided. The family were

absolutely right to object to that. And we support them in that. But

what we understand is that over the last year, in discussions between

the Secretary of State and his officials and the lawyers, as a

mission was being formulated and it was an inquiry, in the shape of the

inquiry, but along the lines of the Baha Mousa inquiry, were the

Government made a commitment not to exercise his powers to interfere

and withhold evidence. That could have been the makings of a deal and

that is what the family were expected to be offered at Downing

Street. To have that rejected an this paper exercise offered is an

insult. The family accused David Cameron of deliberate cruelty and

arrogance. This calling them over and they clearly expected something

more than they got. Do you accept that? I was not on the inside of

that but I would say that having watched the out workings of the

Saville Report, hearing the Prime Minister being applauded in the

Guildhall Square in Londonderry by families of the Bloody Sunday

victims, that was quite something. Incredible. I would be more

comfortable with that reaction than what I saw... That was after a

full-scale inquiry. I am talking about the out working spot public

inquiries, do they work? The first was Widgery. If that word, there

would have been no Saville Inquiry. And there is a real danger that the

silver will become the Widgery of the 21st century. I am saying that

that is something he should be concerned about and we should all

be. And the out workings of the Saville Inquiry, the apology and

the acknowledgement of the grief, that was after a proper public

inquiry. Most people say it did not tell us much more than what we

knew! The Secretary of State said they could not even find out who

bought guns into the jail in the Billy Wright Inquiry. But every

criminal investigation by the police or every public inquiry is

constructed under the Inquiries Act or other legislation and that will

not necessarily find all the truth and deliver all that just as that

everybody wants. But they are the best means possible and we have

systems in place for criminal investigations and when the state

itself is involved potentially in the carrying out of these crimes,

we need a special measure and that is why we have public inquiries.

have a few public inquiries into some high-profile killings and you

would accept that most victims do not fall into that category and

they do look enviously. That week - - we have the Police Ombudsman, we

did have that doing retrospective work and that as up to a very

incomplete set of processes which are imperfect. What is happening is

that we are sleepwalking into rewriting history to the point

where it was all was the state and the agents of the state under

investigation and they come out of the wash less than white. We cannot

agree what happened, we cannot agree why it happened or even the

language we use to describe it. Why are we doing all this? Rewriting

history? Was it the Troubles, conflict, was it a war? Putting a

bomb on a school bus in Lisnaskea was a war crime. Why not send his

people to the Hague? We would be very supportive of a comprehensive

process to try to address all of the legacies of our past rather

than this unsatisfactory piecemeal approach. We agree with you. We see

no public or political appetite for that from the government or from

local parties and the protagonists in the Troubles. That is what we

ultimately will need as a society to settle our view of the past but

meanwhile, we also have outstanding questions about the role of the

state in that conflict and sadly, we still need those inquiries to

expose that. Gentlemen, thank you both very much. The news that

Einstein's theory of time travel may be wrong is a big blow, for it

means that we may never reach that point at which we could hurtle

forward and find out if we ever get what passes for normal politics

here. So, in our present Groundhog Day timezone, we will have to make

do with the flat-pack IKEA model. A sort of self-assembly Assembly. OK,

we have most of the thickest planks and an awful lot of nuts to spare,

but nobody seems to have included the instructions, or Programme for

Government to give it its proper name. 160 days after the election

and we still don't have the programme. Robinson and McGuinness

handed out something a couple of weeks ago but didn't discuss it

with any of the other parties. It will be farmed out for consultation

for a few months, returned to sender, jiggered about with and

shelved because someone will have spotted an election riding over the

hill. Which means that ministers will just get on with their own

thing. Each of them babbling on about building a new future for all

of us, albeit not bothering to talk to us, let alone each other. The

French have a name for this self- serving delusion - deja moo, which,

loosely translated, means the weird feeling that you have heard all of

this bull before. The Health Minister, operating in his own

little silo, has decided that free prescriptions will no longer be

available at Poots the chemist. Which is pretty depressing news for

those of us really sick of the type of government we have. And I'm not

a hypochondriac, either. Indeed, hypochondria is the one thing I

don't have. The one piece of good news is the appointment of a

Commissioner for Older People who wants to make sure that their

voices and views are heard at the very heart of government. Hurrah!

Most of the pensioners I know make Margaret Thatcher sound like Mother

Theresa. They don't take nonsense and they don't like delays. They

couldn't be any worse than what we have now. Actually, it might be a

good idea if the 61 year-old Martin McGuinness had a quick chat with

the new commissioner, for he seems to be having an awful lot of senior

moments since he decided to enter the race for the Irish Presidency.

It's fair enough to forget where you put your car keys or glasses,

for that happens to most of us as we get older. But it's quite a

different matter when you can't even remember if you were a

terrorist between 1970 and 1998. Meanwhile, the SDLP leadership race

has all of the excitement of porridge sliding down a wall.

Alasdair wants revenge for losing last time. Patsy wants revenge

because he thought he should have been in the Executive. Alex wants

to keep the job he has, but knows that he has to win and then appoint

himself back to it. Conall carries the can for securing Margaret's

victory and wants to protect himself from the wrath of any new

leader. Dear Lord, this makes the Borgia family look like the Little

House on the Prairie. Let's be honest. Even if Dr Frankenstein was

in the contest and won, it still wouldn't be possible to pump the

SDLP with enough electricity to stay alive. So, 13 years from the

election of the first Assembly and six months into the fourth, it

looks pretty much like business as usual up on the hill. Einstein may

yet be wrong about time travel. But the boffins in the Assembly clearly

seem to have discovered the formula The thoughts of Alex Kane. Now we

return to our occasional series introducing some of the new

generation of MLAs. Julia Paul meets an Alliance member who

considers herself a political outsider.

I have lived in east Belfast all my life not far from where I am now. I

did go to Scotland to university for four years in Aberdeen and have

worked in London for two years but then I came home in 2000. I am

married to Jonathan and I have two children, Emma who is six and

Jessica who is three. Will the Minister confirm he will make sure

that changes brought about... I never imagined I would be involved

in politics. I was involved with Naomi Long and she came to ask me

if I would consider getting involved and running for council. I

decided that I would get involved and was elected to Castlereagh

council into a 1005. The six years I spent in Castlereagh made me

realise that I could make a difference. There are a lot of

people around who are career politicians and I think it is the

frustration of that that has caused me to stay on and get involved

further. I think we need a balance in Stormont of people who have

studied the political game and those who bring skills and

experience from outside. When I went to secondary school I went

across town to Methody. It was not an integrated school but it was an

integrated society within that school. There were people there

from all different cultures. And throughout school I could say aye

was never especially into politics. But my friends tell me now that I

was the person who stood up and was elected to chair a committee or

captain at team, someone who was a friend to people from all different

backgrounds. When I was approached by Naomi Long the alliance was the

only the natural home for me. It is the party that is happy to be

involved with the government in Dublin and in London but it is an

Northern Irish party, a party that is there to serve the people of

Northern Ireland. One of the big things I have been working on has

been nursery school provision. East Belfast was hit especially hard.

And having two young children going through the system, I am very close

to it. People come to me at the school gate and tell me the things

that are important. Women find it difficult to get involved in

politics, it is a bit of a man's world. And you have to try to crack

that which would need an influx of people. It is difficult as a mother,

I will admit. There are not fixed hours and it is difficult to work

around childcare. I'm fortunate that my husband works from home. In

the next four years what I would like to do is push the Shared

Future agenda further. A lot of politicians are paying lip-service

to the Shared Future but what they really mean is a shared out future.

I would like to bring forward ideas that people will respect and take

up so that we really deliver things for the right reasons and not with

any orange or green agenda at around them.

The Unison strike this month that led to thousands of hospital

appointments being cancelled was brought about by a ballot to which

only 18 percent of the union's members responded. Although some 80

percent of that number supported the strike. Is this just democracy

in action, or the manipulation of the many by the few? Let's hear the

views of two commentators, Eamonn McCann and Newton Emerson.

We do not know what the 80% of people who did not vote got about

the strike. Is it accepted, something that we should be proud

of, that strikes can be held on such a low level of support? Well a

huge proportion of those 80% did come out and join the strike. And

that is what it is about - how many people turn out to support it. The

trade unions are based upon collective action, not about

sitting at home marking ballots. And Unison for example held more

than 150 meetings before that strike across the North. Some of

those were the biggest they had ever known and there were more

people at those meetings than actually turned out to vote. You

see this phenomenon over and over again. That strike was massively

supported by the members of the Union walking out of work. And that

is an indication of the support than a ballot paper. So the figures

are not important? I have to disagree that the strike was

massively supported. In many ways a strike ballot is a red herring

because if there's not much support for the ballot there will not be

much support for the strike either. If you have been in a union which

you will know that you have a big envelope full of election material

and most people just throw it in the bin. That is how we have a

small number of people with an agenda that is not well understood,

taking control of these largely public-sector unions which means

they have a control over 40% of the workforce,. These are people with

potentially very important powers and almost no one knows what their

platform is or even that they exist. That invites the comment, where is

the democratic mandate for the people who are opposing these

things? Opposing the pension scheme that means that people will work

longer and receive less. More than 60% of the population voted in the

general election. Not any of them voted for this pensions package.

That was not in the election manifesto of either of the

coalition parties. There's no mandate whatsoever for what has

been Pat -- been opposed on the public sector workers. You have to

see this in the bigger context of the public sector strike on 30th

November. You will see then what level of support there is and it is

going to be huge. People take part in his strikes not necessarily

because they support it, but because they support their union.

We could argue about how many people actually came out, but it

does not actually show full support for action. It would be better

perhaps it the union were be -- would be able to say to the face of

for example the Health Minister, that this was not supported? Whelp

half of the constituents of Edwin Poots voted against him. But the

test of whether a strike is supported will be made on the day

of the strike. I have no doubt that on 30th November, we will see the

biggest industrial action since 1926 in Britain. And the outcome of

this battle will shape the political terrain across Britain

for the next foreseeable future. It is tremendously important and what

matters is what is going to happen on the day. I urge all union

members to vote for stock but they do not. If you would majority

support for your politicians then presumably the same applies to the

unions. There are very real political issues and battles ahead

and I would like to seek more attention paid to the people

reading this kind of action. For example the leadership of NIPSA a

few years ago switch from a more moderate union and management co-

operative to a group managed by the Socialist Party of Northern Ireland.

A perfectly legitimate party, but almost no one knows that that party

is now in charge of our main civil service union. These people are now

negotiating with our largest block of public sector employees. On

difficult decisions that have to be made. I do not realise -- I do not

think that even their own members realised how intransigent they are.

Well that is implying that they are stupid and ignorant and do not

realise what is going on. The idea of the Socialist party controlling

the union is laughable. It is true across unions and other

organisations that the more committed people are to a

particular organisation... perhaps the majority of union

members might like more thought put into things. Could you fix this by

having some kind of Lord saying that they had to be 50%

participation in whatever ballot it was. Would that be of any use?

Absolutely not. This idea of ballots of individual members,

meaning that people vote in their homes. There is an ideological

reason for the introduction of that by the Thatcherites in the 19

eighties. And these laws now reside in the Executive. The idea was to

get away from the idea of the collective. Trade unions are

collective organisations. It makes sense then, if we had workplace

ballots rather than individual ballots and people would come along

to vote freely, and discuss the issues, then you would get a much

higher turnout and a better reflection. Then I believe you

would get a more militant result if you did that. What do you think

about compulsory minimum? I'm not generally in favour of it. I think

people should do these things of their own volition. We have seen

Executive ministers in the past few weeks simply ignore union members.

They decide that these people are unreasonable and cannot be dealt

with and can also be safely ignored. If the union executives had a

bigger support base behind them, perhaps their unions would be taken

more seriously. Wait until November 30th when there is a United strike

right across the public service. Then you will see there is

something significant happening. One thing that is not in doubt is

people are raging mad at being asked to shoulder the burden for

this economic crisis. And that's where we must leave it

this time round. We'll do it again next week at the usual times, I

hope you'll join me. Goodbye. What kept you? Don't ask. Someone

in Tipperary still a part of the One True Cross. I think it was Liam

Fox asking for help to save his political career. Most married men

would prefer to go on holiday with a friend instead of their wife!