Richard Boyd Barrett Calls for Garvaghy Road March to Be Stopped

00:00 Taoiseach, yesterday you said you were not going to intervene in the Garibaldi Road drum 00:09 creed standoff, which is set to escalate potentially again this weekend, and you dismissed suggestions 00:17 that you should call on the British government, on the British Secretary of State for Northern 00:29 March going down the Garibaldi Road. Now I want to ask you to reconsider on that non-interventionist 00:38 position, and I want you to ask yourself what kind of mentality or ideology would lead Orange 00:47 men to want to march through a mostly Catholic area where they are not wanted and where that 00:55 march is going to evoke the trauma and memories of more than 21 people being killed, including 01:01 the Quinn children, Robert Hamill, Rosemary Nelson, and many more. And the answer is, 01:09 it's an ideology and a mentality of supremacism and the dehumanisation of one section of the 01:24 mentality and ideology very similar to the one on display being led by Joseph Haddad, 01:31 the mouthpiece for the Israeli regime, in the football stadium in Hungary, where he 01:37 was encouraging chants for the IDF, the people who are carrying out a genocide against the 01:44 Palestinians and taunting Irish players with racist abuse. A similar supremacist dehumanising 01:54 ideology that leads to death and destruction. And it is no coincidence that when I went 02:02 up to Drumcree before all this started about 8-9 days ago, the Drumcree community centre 02:08 was covered in banners in solidarity with Palestine. Because the people of the Garibaldi 02:14 Road understand the connection between the dehumanisation they suffer and about how colonialism 02:20 was based on dividing people on religious grounds, setting Catholic against Protestant, 02:26 just like the Zionist movement set Muslim against Christian and Jew, with all the horrific 02:32 violence that has flowed from it. Now it seems to me, as the leader of a country that has 02:39 suffered colonialism and oppression and all of that divide and rule tactics that led to 02:45 terrible things in this country, the penal laws, the so-called famine, actual masturbation 02:50 of the population, all of that, you have a responsibility to stand up against supremacism. 02:58 To stand up against the dehumanisation of a section of the population and call for that 03:03 march to be stopped because it is a sectarian supremacist march. And you might also intervene 03:09 and say stop the match as well because we shouldn't be playing against a regime guilty 03:14 of genocide. 03:16 First of all, your presentation of what I articulated here yesterday is wrong. I never 03:23 said I was not going to intervene in anything. And the non-interventionist approach as you 03:28 have described is wrong, it's false. But of course you have to present your argument in 03:33 a way then to justify your subsequent comments. And what I would say to you is this, all of 03:37 us have an obligation, all of us, all political leaders, in terms of this issue, to be careful 03:47 what we say, how we say it, if we want a resolution of it. And I don't accept your comparison 03:52 of what's happening in Gaza with the Northern Ireland of today. Incomparable. The deprivation, 04:01 the attack, the killing of 75,000 people in Gaza, the continued stemming of aid going 04:07 into Gaza, how can you compare that with what's happening in Northern Ireland today? 04:11 There is no comparison. It's just ridiculous to make that comparison. And what I would 04:17 say to you is this, Northern Ireland has come a long way since the Good Friday Agreement, 04:21 of which my party and others were centrally involved. Parity of esteem, respect for different 04:28 traditions was the hallmark of that agreement. Many parades are held across Northern Ireland 04:34 without any issues, through local agreements and through mediation and people have worked 04:38 together and lived to live together and so on like that. The Shared Ireland Initiative 04:42 is breaking new ground in terms of connectivity between North and South, joint projects, programmes 04:48 between different communities in music, biodiversity, climate, violence against women, a whole range 04:54 of programmes that we're now funding with buy-in from all communities and all traditions. 05:01 The resolution of this is what I said yesterday was, it can't be just one single intervention 05:07 is going to resolve this. We have to now resolve this to a broader lens. If we're serious about 05:15 a future where different traditions can live together on this island and share the island 05:20 in a reconciled way. And I, unlike you, because I know you've never condemned Hamas, never 05:27 publicly, for what happened on October the 7th. That's your view of life. But equally 05:32 you've referenced the PSI, I think, in a negative way there and I want to pay tribute to PSNI 05:36 and to the Chief Constable, John Boucher, for the manner in which he's managing this 05:41 and trying to navigate this, which is a very, very difficult position that the PSNI are 05:46 placed in. Now part of the reform of the Good Friday Agreement was greater cross-community 05:51 participation in the PSNI. There's a growing sense of, let's attack the PSNI and undermine 05:56 the patent reforms. We have to work to enhance the patent reforms and to ensure that the 06:02 PSNI continues on its journey of being truly cross-community in membership and so on. And 06:08 progress has been made. But what I've witnessed and listened to in the last four or five days 06:12 by quite a number of interlocutors is an attempt to undermine that process too. And we need 06:17 to be very, very careful about that because that ends up in a very negative spiral into 06:22 the future. Now the Minister for Foreign Affairs met with the Secretary of State last evening. 06:29 There was a series of exploratory talks between various groups and so on. Those talks will 06:34 continue today. And our view is, we've made it very clear in terms of our view on the 06:38 position of the parades, which we don't agree with, incomprehensible. But now we must focus 06:43 on a resolution of it and the talks are ongoing in that respect. 06:47 The scale of horror visited on the Palestinians is certainly of a different order. And I don't 06:52 have time to go into the history, but to say there's no connection, you need to look back 06:56 at the history. The leaders of the Black and Tans and the auxiliaries were sent to Palestine 07:00 after subjugating people in Ireland, went straight to Palestine. In 1936, the Governor-General 07:06 of Jerusalem asked why he was backing Zionism, said because, and I quote, I want to create 07:10 a loyal little Jewish Ulster in the Middle East. That's what he said. So they exported 07:16 the model that they'd used to subjugate and divide Catholic and Protestant to Palestine 07:21 to do the same with horrific consequences. And by the way, it's no coincidence that DUP 07:26 MP Carla Lockhart was standing out with masked men protesting against a Gaza peace march. 07:33 And as for John Boucher and the PSNI, how come last Monday or Tuesday week, he had already 07:40 recruited 200 Scottish police officers to come to the Garravarie Road, when at the same 07:46 time he was telling the Parades Commission there wasn't going to be a public order consequence 07:51 if the Orange March went down through the Garravarie Road? That suggests that John Boucher 07:57 misled the Parades Commission with the consequences we're now facing of a standoff. You need to 08:03 stand up against supremacism and an ideology that is about trying to drag the North back 08:10 to violent conflict, and you should speak up against the genocidal horror of the Israeli 08:16 regime as well. 08:18 Just to say, Pastor, and I agree with you, we can't go into history, but the Black in 08:21 Town model didn't work in Ireland. And coming from the county of Cork, I know that too well 08:25 from my history. Now, could I just say to you, in respect of John Boucher and the PSNI, 08:33 again, his primary objective, articulated with great clarity, was that no person would be 08:41 injured as a result of what transpired over the last number of days, from the decisions 08:45 that were made at the Commission onwards. That should be acknowledged. And if you speak to 08:50 victims of 30 years of violence, and you talk about supremacy, what happened in 30 years on 08:55 this island was horrific. The activities of the Provisional IRA, the activities of the 09:02 Ulster Volunteer Force and paramilitaries from the Loyalist side were horrific. Now, he led an 09:08 inquiry called Kenova, and the victims of all of that violence spoke about his integrity, 09:17 about his inclusiveness, and the degree to which he responded to the victims of the families 09:23 of the victims. You can try and demonise the individual if you like. I'm not going to do that. 09:29 I'm not going to do that. And we need a bit of honesty here, if we're going to make any way 09:33 forward, and stop retreating always, on all sides, including your contribution there. 09:40 That won't achieve anything into the future. It fits an ideological frame, but it doesn't deal 09:45 with the realities of the here and now and how we move forward. If we want a united Ireland in 09:49 the future, we've got to begin to articulate what that looks like, and how we include people.