Has DUP changed tune on Maze?
DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson says the proposed conflict resolution centre at the old Maze prison site will not become a “shrine to terrorism” due to it being “a new purpose-built building”.
A new Maze building is not the issue. It is the preservation of the old buildings that is the issue – the H-Block that housed IRA terrorists and the prison hospital where ‘IRA folklore hero’ Bobby Sands and other hunger strikers died. These will be the ‘shrine to terrorism’.
Sinn Fein MLA Raymond McCartney mentions the Maze’s tourist potential. And these tourists will be coming to see what? – a ‘conflict centre’ most will probably never have heard of and there be told the story of the hunger strikers’ part in the IRA’s ‘heroic struggle against the Brits’. Quoted in this paper on June 22, 2007, DUP MP Nigel Dodds said, with reference to the then idea of a Maze stadium, “it is quite clear now the price for Sinn Fein support for the Maze project, including the stadium, is a shrine to IRA terrorism. However it is dressed up, whatever spin is deployed, the preservation of a section of the H-Blocks – including the hospital wing – would become a shrine to the terrorists who committed suicide in the Maze in the 1980s. That is something unionist people cannot accept.”
The same report quotes Sammy Wilson thus, “It would be an absolute scandal if any unionist supports an IRA shrine at this [Maze] site.”
Whilst the stadium idea has disappeared, the current DUP-endorsed proposals for the Maze still include the H-Block and hospital wing – the buildings Mr Dodds said would “become a shrine to the terrorists”.
Could it be Mr Dodds was spot on when, in 2007, he said in relation to development at the Maze site that the “price for Sinn Fein support . . . is a shrine to IRA terrorism” – with the DUP now prepared to pay this price because it is the only way the DUP, totally at the mercy of Sinn Fein’s veto, can get any Maze development proposals through the Executive?
Interestingly, unlike in 2007, recent DUP pronouncements regarding the Maze seemingly avoid reference to these ‘shrine’ buildings and the drawing of unionist attention to the fact they are to remain.
Cllr Tom Hamilton (UUP)
Strangford
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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ardens
Saturday, February 11, 2012 at 10:51 PMJD has always opposed a terrorist shrine at the Maze until now as he has to do what Peter tells him. The hospital and H block will become the focus of republlican commemorations in Donaldson's own contituency but it doesn't phase him as it seems his priority is to keep Martin happy. £20 million for irish language and £60 million for Casement Park where the two corporals were murdered. Has the DUP no shame?
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