The Five Demands

Miliband rules out NI elections (News Letter)

SHADOW Northern Ireland Secretary of State Vernon Coaker’s speech to the Labour Party conference on Thursday was overshadowed by leader Ed Miliband’s refusal to fight elections in Northern Ireland.

Mr Miliband told the conference on Wednesday that he was “very wary” of contesting elections in the Province, something which several hundred local Labour members have campaigned for years to achieve.

Mr Miliband said: “Given the situation in Northern Ireland, the most important thing the British Government can be is an honest broker. It is very hard to be an honest broker if you are also an electoral candidate … I know there are very, very strong views the other way, but that’s my view and a view that shadow Northern Ireland secretary Vernon Coaker takes.”

On Thursday, the Northern Ireland Conservatives, who fought a similar battle to be allowed to contest elections here, said that despite their political differences with local Labour members they were disappointed at the move.

NI Conservatives’ chairman Irwin Armstrong said that it was “bitterly ironic” that Mr Miliband was attempting to rebrand Labour as a ‘one nation’ party just before a “decision to exclude Northern Ireland from centre-left, national politics”.

He said that his party would have welcomed a debate about left-right politics with the Labour Party in Northern Ireland “but unfortunately it appears that its leadership doesn’t wish to engage with people in Northern Ireland”.

Mr Coaker told the Labour conference that the party was prepared to help set up reconciliation talks in the Province.

He accused the Westminster Government of stalling the process by refusing to facilitate talks between the parties.

He said many communities in Northern Ireland were still “deeply divided” and “sectarianism is an ingrained and uncomfortable truth across all sections of society”.

Mr Coaker told delegates in Manchester: “A shared future can only happen through building shared spaces and shared experiences with shared prosperity and shared responsibility.

“That includes taking responsibility for what happened in the past. Because we need to deal with the legacy of Northern Ireland’s Troubles, the death of 3,000 people and injuries and trauma for tens of thousands more.

“We can’t truly move forward until we do. I’ve met so many people – families and friends of those who died during the terrible conflict of the past – who simply want justice and to know the truth about what happened to them or their loved ones.”