McDonnell warns of threat posed by IRA
“Nobody underestimates the seriousness of their threat,” Dr McDonnell, one of several guest speakers at the conference, said.
The South Belfast MP stressed that the SDLP’s goal was Irish unity too, but he said that had to be achieved through peaceful and democratic means.
“We want peace, we want Irish unity, and we want that to be by persuasion and accommodation, and we see the clear need to accommodate northern unionists within that equation.”
As for Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams’s appeal to the IRA to lay down its weapons, and the internal debate this has supposedly started in the provisional movement, Dr McDonnell remarked: “Gerry, dare I say it, is having conversations with himself in the bathroom mirror.”
People in the North, he added, did not wish to be dominated by the “fascism of Sinn Féin on the one hand and the DUP on the other.” Democratic Ireland “needs to stand up strong, not just to the IRA, but to the DUP as well.”
Meanwhile, the five sisters of the late Robert McCartney, who was murdered in January by members of the IRA, received a standing ovation when presented to delegates at the conference.
Paula McCartney said: “Robert was murdered by IRA men, who believed that membership of that organisation gave them the right to violate Robert’s fundamental right to life and evade justice.
“Our campaign to bring his killers to account has been based on the simple truth that no one has the right to kill with impunity.
“Justice cannot be distorted to suit an organisation’s need to protect its members. Justice should mean justice for everyone.”
Other guest speakers were Frank McBrearty Jnr, who is suing the State over his wrongful arrest for murder, and former Danish prime minister Poul Rasmussen.
