DUP “victims” motion thrown out at Belfast City Hall as committee Chair calls it “disgraceful”

Green Party Chair states DUP proposer “should be ashamed”

A DUP motion on the definition of victims of the Troubles has been thrown out of the chamber at Belfast City Hall.

The notice of motion, proposed by Alderman Dean A. McCullough at the Belfast Council Standards and Business Committee, follows a spate of proposals across Northern Ireland council by the DUP focusing on the use of the word “innocent” in relation to a debate in the Northern Ireland Assembly in September.

At the Belfast committee meeting, Green Councillor Anthony Flynn heavily criticised the motion, calling it “disgraceful,” before it was rejected by the committee in a vote. On a proposal by Alliance to reject the motion, 13 from Sinn Féin, Alliance, the SDLP and the Green Party were in support, while six councillors from the DUP voted against the amendment, wanting the motion instead to be debated at the full council meeting next month.

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The Alliance proposal was carried and the DUP motion was dropped by the committee. The decision has to be ratified at the next meeting of the full council.

The DUP motion stated: “Belfast City Council expresses deep concern that the definition of victim within the Victims and Survivors (Northern Ireland) Order 2006 fails to distinguish between those who perpetrated wrongdoing during the Troubles and the innocent victims whom they harmed, injured, killed, or bereaved.

“This council further notes that many of those innocent victims and their families live within Belfast, rely on Belfast-based victim support services, and remain directly affected by how such definitions are applied in practice.”

It adds: “The council believes that innocent victims should not be required to engage with terrorists or their supporters when accessing victim-support services; asserts that there is no moral equivalence between victim-makers and innocent victims; and welcomes the fact that the Victims’ Pension legislation makes a clear and necessary distinction between perpetrator and victim.

“This council condemns the SDLP and, in particular, the Alliance Party for supporting the Sinn Fein amendment in a recent Assembly motion on the legacy of the past, an amendment which deliberately removed the word “innocent” from the description of a victim and intentionally blurred the line between perpetrator and victim.”

The motion urged the council to write to the Justice Minister expressing “serious concern regarding her publicly stated view that some terrorist perpetrators may also be considered victims, and to request that she clarify those comments and offer an apology to innocent victims who have been distressed by them, including those here in Belfast.”

The motion refers to a debate in the Northern Ireland Assembly in September where a DUP motion which referred to “innocent victims” in relation to the Troubles and the Irish Government was opposed by Alliance, Sinn Féin and others. Alliance, Sinn Féin and others supported an amendment which included the removal of the word “innocent,” which led to criticism from unionists that this was equating perpetrators with their victims.

During the Assembly debate the DUP forwarded the motion calling on the Irish government to be held accountable for its role in the Troubles and referred to the families of those who were murdered as “innocent victims.”

The motion called for the Irish government to be held to account for its “abject failure” in helping families who “suspected Irish state involvement in the murder of their loved ones.” The motion also objected to Dublin having an oversight role in the new legacy structures agreed between the UK and Irish governments last week.

The motion was ultimately amended to just “victims” and was supported by Sinn Féin, Alliance, and the SDLP, while unionist members did not support it.

Two weeks ago a DUP council motion, roughly similar to the Belfast motion, in Ards and North Down Borough Council, which has a majority unionist chamber, passed after a fractious debate.

The DUP failed to get a similar motion passed asking for an apology from the Justice Minister at Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council, after the Alliance Mayor there tipped a vote. In Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council, a similar DUP motion was passed arguing that the official definition of a victim “blurred the moral line.”

At the Belfast meeting of the Standards and Business Committee, the Chair, Councillor Anthony Flynn, said: “I think it is absolutely galling that the (DUP) would bring a motion around victims, and include a party political statement in the second last paragraph. For me, it is very clear what this motion is intended to do.

“It is intended as a slight against the SDLP, Alliance and Sinn Féin. The fact that you would come to this committee, and say you want to bring a motion on behalf of victims and survivors, and turn it into a party political stunt, that to me is galling, and I think you should be ashamed of yourself.”

DUP Alderman James Lawlor said the Chair was “giving his own party political statement.”

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