PROGRESSIVE UNIONIST Party (PUP) leader Dawn Purvis has warned the DUP and Sinn Féin against trying to placate the extreme republican and unionist flanks and to get on with the business of government at Stormont.
It was time for First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness to press ahead with devolving policing and justice powers to the Northern Executive, Ms Purvis told her party’s annual conference in East Belfast on Saturday.
She said that Sinn Féin must not in any way appease republicans such as those in the Éirígí group which opposes the Northern Ireland political institutions.
Equally the DUP must not work to an agenda set by Jim Allister’s Traditional Unionist Voice or by some DUP Assembly members – the so-called 12 apostles – suspected of opposing powersharing with Sinn Féin.
“The impact a war of words at Stormont has on the ground in working class loyalist and republican areas should not be underestimated. Out-greening Éirígí or pandering to the dirty dozen to out-orange Jim Allister only serves to destabilise already vulnerable areas,” she said.
She accused the DUP and Sinn Féin of seeking to “maintain division through fear” in order to serve their own interests.
Ms Purvis said: “You offer no shared future for the people of Northern Ireland; you offer no policies to bring people together in order that we know each other; instead you offer the notion of separate but equal – it didn’t work in the USA and it is certainly not an option for us. Wake up to sectarianism.”
Ms Purvis praised the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Red Hand Commando, which are linked to the PUP, for decommissioning their weapons. She said the dissident republican murders of two British soldiers and a PSNI officer could have “derailed” the decommissioning plans but that the swift actions of the police and the welcome show of solidarity by Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness had a positive affect on the UVF and RHC.
Ms Purvis criticised the DUP for seeking to reduce the current number of 108 Assembly members. She said: “What they fail to recognise is that any reduction in Assembly members below 100 means that the Assembly fails to be representative of the whole community. We lose mostly women, smaller parties and independents – effectively the only opposition that exists in there at the minute. So their proposals are about making politics exclusive. It didn’t work for the 50 years till 1972 and it is not going to work now. ”