United Ireland ‘inevitable’ Martin McGuinness tells packed conference

DERRY UNITING IRELAND RALLY | MILLENNIUM FORUM PACKED TO RAFTERS

BY PEADAR WHELAN

A massive crowd packs into Derry’s Millennium Forum for the Uniting Ireland conference

“WELCOME to Londonderry, Basil”, replied Martin McGuinness to Ulster Unionist MLA Basil McCrea’s challenge as the latest in Sinn Féin’s series of Uniting Ireland conferences got underway in Derry on Saturday 28 January.

The joint First Minister and Sinn Féin MP was responding to the unionist speaker who asked nationalists and republicans to use the name ‘Londonderry’ occasionally in a spirit of co-operation with unionists.

This exchange took place after McCrea addressed the conference, having asked the organisers to break with normal procedure and allow him to make an opening speech.

McCrea’s address, however (according to the opinion of people this reporter spoke to) was not directed at the hundreds who packed into Derry’s Millennium Forum but at McCrea’s own Lagan Valley constituents and those unionists who inhabit the ‘No-Land’ of the Traditional Unionist Voice, DUP and indeed his own party leadership.

As he put it, “arguing the case of the Union should be a very important part of being a unionist”.

McCrea’s need to restate his unionist credentials may stem from the negative reaction of so-called ‘unionist backwoodsmen’ to the Reverend David Latimer who addressed the Sinn Féin Ard Fhéis in Belfast’s Waterfront Hall last September. He may also have had in mind the cold response his own deputy leader, John McCallister MLA, received when he attended the previous Uniting Ireland conference in Newry, County Down, in December. This may have prompted McCrea to come out fighting and get his retaliation in first.

Indeed, in Monday’s pro-Union News Letter, columnist Alex Kane derided McCrea for uttering “not one word [that] undermined, let alone challenged Sinn Féin’s philosophy and mythology”.

It may also be worth noting that the Ulster Unionist Party isn’t the most stable political environment to be in at present with the controversy surrounding David McNarry, who resigned from the party’s Stormont Assembly group on Friday, just 24 hours before the Derry conference.

Whatever about this predicable negativity, Basil McCrea attended the conference and put his case.

Much of his focus was on the “scale of Great Britain’s economic support for Northern Ireland . . . that despite United Kingdom debt [hitting] £1trillion the [British] Government continues to spend more per head of population in Northern Ireland than in any other part of the UK”.

Concluding his speech, McCrea asserted that “unionists will not wake up one morning and discover they have made a mistake. Sinn Féin must show they are serious about reconciliation. Nor can they ignore economic reality. A New Republic without a viable economic model is a pipe dream.”

Interestingly, Derry Journal columnist and former RUC officer Norman Hamill, who was in the audience, pointed out to McCrea that living in the North was no bed of roses for the Protestant working class and he suggested that living in a united Ireland might be more beneficial to them.

He cited a current BBC series on life in Coleraine’s loyalist Ballysally estate as an indictment of life for Protestants in the North since partition and under unionist rule.

In his remarks, Martin McGuinness stated that a united Ireland is inevitable.

“I am an Irish republican. As my central political objective I want to bring about the reunification of Ireland by purely peaceful and democratic means. I believe the process we are involved in will inevitably lead to that.”

Bringing the conference to a close, Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams TD welcomed those members of the unionist community who attended the conference.

“Unionists should realise that Sinn Féin is serious about engaging with them in the debate about creating a new society.”

This, the sixth, Uniting Ireland conference was chaired by Inez McCormack, the trade unionist and equality activist.

The panel included Donegal-based Michael McLoone, currently serving on the Board of Enterprise Ireland and is chair of Donegal Airport. Karen Mullan is involved in community development and is currently programme manager of the Bogside and Brandywell Health Forum. George Quigley worked for over 30 years as a civil servant in the North. Between 1989 and 2001, he was chair of the Ulster Bank. He has also been president of the Economic and Social Research Institute.

Basil McCrea is a member of the Ulster Unionist Party and represents the Lagan Valley constituency. He unsuccessfully challenged present leader Tom Elliot after the party’s disastrous showing in the 2010 Westminster general election after then leader Reg Empey resigned.

Maureen Hetherington has an MA in Humanities and worked for two decades in community relations. As co-ordinator of The Junction, a community relations resource and peace-building centre, Maureen delivers training on ‘Good Relations and Conflict Resolution’.

Pearse Doherty, the Sinn Féin TD for Donegal South-West, completed the line-up.