DUP-Sinn Fein talks took place long before 2007 deal, despite years of denials
The DUP have been accused of lying to the electorate about secret talks with Sinn Fein in the mid-2000s, before the two parties signed a deal to enter government together.
A new book by the Reverend Harold Good reveals that DUP figures were secretly meeting Sinn Fein in 2004, while the party – then led by the late Dr Paisley – was telling the public they were not.
The DUP have for the first time acknowledged that meetings took place as part of a “wider process” in which “some individual members of the party did accept invites to meetings, facilitated by third parties, to see whether there was sufficient common ground to reach an agreement”.
However, former Methodist president Rev Good – who oversaw IRA decommissioning – has been criticised for revealing details about unionist figures but not about the decommissioning process.
Pushed by the BBC presenter William Crawley about why he had revealed details about secret meetings between Jeffrey Donaldson and Martin McGuinness in 2004, but would not reveal how IRA weapons were decommissioned, the clergyman said trust was at the centre of the process and he doesn’t want to “betray” that trust.
He also said that what he heard from IRA “officials” – such as their claims of “genuine sorrow for the grief that everybody had suffered” – was in fact more important than what he saw.
Rev Good reveals in his book that in 2004 he offered his home as a meeting place between Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuiness and the DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson – and both accepted the invitation and attended.
Jim Allister, who was a member of the DUP at the time the secret talks were ongoing, criticised those in the party who knew about the talks and “lied to the electorate”.
The North Antrim MP told the BBC’s ‘Talkback’ programme: “I think when the truth finally comes out, there should be red faces for those who lied to the electorate and to their own party base in denying that there were contacts, which patently now there was.”
Former UUP leader Lord Reg Empey said: “People were misled, deliberately, and it could not possibly have been rogue behaviour by a few individuals.
“The DUP is a highly centralised party, and there is no way such senior figures were meeting with Sinn Fein multiple times without the knowledge of the leadership.”
Journalist Barney Rowan, who worked at the BBC at the time of the talks, had written to the DUP to ask about the clandestine meetings with Sinn Fein.
On ‘Talkback’ Mr Rowan read out a response he received from the DUP in November 2005 – about questions he’d asked about meetings between the DUP and Sinn Fein in 2004.
He recounted the DUP email, which said: “I have already told you that no such meetings took place. The position of the Democratic Unionist Party in relation to dealing with SF has always been clear and unambiguous. The party was not – and is not – involved in negotiations/meetings with Sinn Fein.”
It continued: “The party or any members named would not hesitate to take action through the courts, and/or press media regulatory bodies as appropriate in order to correct any inaccuracies which may appear, and will use this and other previously sent correspondence as an indication of prior warning having been given.”