Daily Dispatch Wednesday 17th May 2006

MAGINNESS: UUP HAS DOUBLE STANDARD ON VIOLENCE

SDLP North Belfast MLA Alban Maginness said the UUP has lost moral authority, not only among nationalists but within the Protestant community which also suffered from the crimes of the UVF, by its co-option of David Ervine.

He said: “Nationalists have always believed that the UUP has operated a double standard when it comes to loyalist violence. Now, nobody
can deny it.

”The UUP has teamed up with the political representative of a murder gang that is not on ceasefire, that declines to decommission and that waged a campaign of wholesale murder on the streets of Belfast just a year ago. And all for narrow political advantage,

“This was an appallingly shallow tactic, and there is little sign that Reg Empey and his team even recognise the true significance of what they have done. The very leaders who claimed the votes of the decent people, who suspended the Assembly rather than govern with the support of anyone linked to paramilitarism, are now inextricably to active gunmen.

“This is sharp political practice at its worst. The UVF ravaged unionist areas as well as the nationalist community. If the UUP still has any conscience, they will find it hard to look the victims of the UVF, Protestant and Catholic, in the eye.”

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