TUV leader rejects International Fund for Ireland 'propaganda' around Belfast Agreement
As a major peace funding group prepares to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Belfast Agreement, Jim Allister has dismissed some of the build-up statements as “propaganda” for an accord which has “failed to deliver”.
The TUV leader was commenting after Paddy Harte, chairman of the International Fund for Ireland (IFI), said Northern Ireland is "unrecognisable now from what it was".
Mr Harte said: "There are major gains. The Assembly is not the only measure of the success of the agreement – you can see it walking through Belfast or walking through Derry, much less political violence and progress around peace walls.
"We measure it on the basis of how much better life is. It's not perfect, but the inevitable level of violence is gone, and that's the major gain.”
However, Mr Allister said: “Over the past quarter of a century we have had ample evidence the Belfast Agreement has failed to deliver. While terrorists were released from prison we were told that they were let out on licence. The reality proved to be that terrorists who never served a day for their crimes received letters assuring them that they would not be prosecuted.
"The RUC, which had stood so bravely against the terrorist onslaught and was instrumental in brining the IRA to the point where it had to abandon its campaign, was sacrificed to appease the demands of Republicans.
"Its replacement, the PSNI, has now suggested hiding memorials to those brave officers from public view.”
Mr Allister said that “victims of terrorists have been treated with contempt again and again,” and added: “Most tellingly of all, the key point on which the Belfast Agreement was sold to unionists, the guarantee that there would be no constitutional change without consent, has been shown to the worthless.
"We are now at a point where the government is openly saying that the Act of Union has been ‘disapplied’ in key respects. The scale of this betrayal was noted by Nobel Peace Prize winner David Trimble. Tellingly, the concerns he so clearly and ability articulated find no place in this [IFI] propaganda piece.”
Events are being planned in 2023 to mark 25 years since the agreement saw the setting up of the Stormont Assembly.