Roosevelt’s New Deal speech

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fdr_new_deal_button_by_kindlepics-d48v5prThe legendary presidential inauguration address heralding the radical reforms that saved US capitalism, Franklin D Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ speech, which he gave during his inauguration as the nation’s 32nd president in 1933 in the midst of the Great Depression, outlined his objective of creating capitalism with a human face. The New Deal shifed the priority of the US economy away from the creation of untrammelled wealth for the few to dignity and decency for the many, inspired by the work of Britain’s John Maynard Keynes.

Keynes himself endorsed FDR’s New Deal in an open letter, which appeared in the New York Times in December 1933.

The underlying principal of the New Deal was government as lender and investor of last resort, using the resources of the state to reduce unemployment, introduce welfare for the poor, and reintroduce aggregate demand into an economy that had collapsed as a consequence of reckless lending and speculation by an unregulated and out of control banking and financial sector.

Wall Street experienced the impact of the New Deal in the form of a regulatory framework designed to constrain its ability to act irresponsibly and recklessly. It came into law under the provisions of the 1933 Banking Act, commonly known as the Glass-Steagall Act, named after its Congressional sponsors – Senator Carter Glass and Representative Henry B Steagall – both Democrats.

Today’s US champions of Keynesianism – Paul Krugman and Joseph Stieglitz – have drawn parallels with today’s economic recession and the crisis of the 1930s. Interestingly, they point out that the weakness of the New Deal was that the federal government was too timid and did not spend enough, hampered by the absorption of much of the government funds made available to meet state budget deficits at the time.

It was the onset of the Second World War which really pulled the US economy out of stagnation and under employment, involving as it did a massive injection of government spending, planning, and full employment. Reading FDR’s speech today, the parallels are striking between then and now.

The speech in full:

‘President Hoover, Mr. Chief Justice, my friends:

This is a day of national consecration. And I am certain that on this day my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impels. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself–nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; and the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.

More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.

And yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They only know the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

Yes, the money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and the moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days, my friends, will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.

Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, and on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.

Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation is asking for action, and action now.

Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our great natural resources.

Hand in hand with that we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land. Yes, the task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, the State, and the local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical, unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities that have a definitely public character. There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped by merely talking about it. We must act. We must act quickly.

And finally, in our progress toward a resumption of work we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order; there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people’s money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.

These, my friends, are the lines of attack. I shall presently urge upon a new Congress in special session detailed measures for their fulfillment, and I shall seek the immediate assistance of the 48 States.

Through this program of action we address ourselves to putting our own national house in order and making income balance outgo. Our international trade relations, though vastly important, are in point of time and necessity secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy. I favor as a practical policy the putting of first things first. I shall spare no effort to restore world trade by international economic readjustment, but the emergency at home cannot wait on that accomplishment.

The basic thought that guides these specific means of national recovery is not narrowly nationalistic. It is the insistence, as a first consideration, upon the interdependence of the various elements in all parts of the United States of America–a recognition of the old and permanently important manifestation of the American spirit of the pioneer. It is the way to recovery. It is the immediate way. It is the strongest assurance that recovery will endure.

In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor–the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others–the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors.

If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we can not merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress can be made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and our property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at the larger good. This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind upon us, bind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in times of armed strife.

With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our common problems.

Action in this image, action to this end is feasible under the form of government which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our Constitution is so simple, so practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has ever seen. It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations.

And it is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.

I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.

But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis–broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.

For the trust reposed in me, I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less.

We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of national unity; with the clear consciousness of seeking old and precious moral values; with the clean satisfaction that comes from the stern performance of duty by old and young alike. We aim at the assurance of a rounded, a permanent national life.

We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.

In this dedication of a Nation we humbly ask the blessing of God. May He protect each and every one of us. May He guide me in the days to come.’

President Franklin D. Roosevelt – March 4, 1933

GMB members protest against anti-union Balfour Beatty

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balfour beatty living places

 

 

GMB members joined Labour and independent councillors today for a protest outside Wiltshire Council calling on Balfour Beatty to respect their employee’s rights to be represented by a trade union.

Balfour Beatty Living Places are refusing to recognise GMB on the £25m Wiltshire Council contract maintain street cleaning and lighting and grass cutting across the county.

300 staff employed on the contract were TUPE transferred in June 2013 to Balfour Beatty Living Places from Wiltshire Council and a previous contractor English Landscapes. There is a base at Churchfields Industrial Estate in Salisbury and in Wilton.

Independent Councillor Jeff Osborn tabled a motion to full council which says;

“In the tendering of any future contracts provided by the council a clear condition should be made that the council will only enter into a contract with organisations that make a clear and public commitment that they fully recognise Trade Union rights for their employees and will continue to do so.”

This is not the only dispute between the union and Balfour Beatty. Last week GMB wrote to National Grid asking questions on a major investigation into allegations of bullying, mis-reporting, fraud and corruption in a Gas Distribution Strategic Partnership (GDSP) covering gas mains replacement work in the West Midlands. Balfour Beatty runs the GDSP in the West Midlands and North West in a contract worth about £4 billion over duration of the contract.

Balfour Beatty were also implicated in the blacklisting scandal which came to light when in 2009 the ICO seized a Consulting Association database of 3,213 construction workers and environmental activists used by 44 companies to vet new recruits and keep out of employment trade union and health and safety activists.

GMB is currently involved in talks with Balfour Beatty and seven other blacklisting companies on a Construction Workers Compensation Scheme to compensate the victims they blacklisted.

Carole Vallelley, GMB Regional Organiser, said “GMB handed out leaflets to councillors today explaining the disgraceful anti trade union behaviour by Balfour Beatty and asking them to support this motion tabled by Councillor Jeff Osborn.

“Balfour Beatty has form when it comes to being anti- union. They were one of the biggest blacklisters. The defence on blacklisting filed in the High Court last autumn by Sir Robert McAlpine shows that Balfour Beatty placed 302 workers names on the construction blacklist – 27.3% of the total identified- and refused work to 187 workers – which was 31.4% of those refused work.

“Balfour Beatty went back on assurances given in pre-contract talks that collective bargaining rights would continue. Balfour Beatty is a “middleman” working for the council and they must be told to by the council that this action is simply not acceptable”.

Right wing group ‘Britain First’ issues online threat to George Galloway after attacking mosques in Bradford over the weekend

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Press Release | Monday, May 12

Britain First threatens Bradford West MP

An online threat by the ultra-right wing Britain First organisation against George Galloway has been passed on to the West Yorkshire police force which is investigating the series of incursions by uniformed thugs into several Bradford mosques on Saturday.

“I tweeted about this desecration of Muslim holy places by jackbooted thugs and received an explicit threat from them,” the MP said. “I have handed over a screen grab of it to the police force who will investigate it thoroughly I am sure.”

Following a meeting with senior police commanders Galloway said, “The police are taking this extremely seriously and have set up a detective task force under a very distinguished officer. They are stressing that they need to talk to anyone who saw these Britain First stormtroopers, however briefly. I am urging those that did to talk to the police, dial 101 and tell what you know, or call in to any local station to give your evidence. This is crucial because these idiots are promising to return to cause more trouble. The sooner we clear them off the street by legal means the better.”

George Galloway is now touring the mosques which were raided.

The resistable rise of UKIP

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revolt UKIPRegular readers may recall that I raised the alarm when anti-Islam activist, Anne Marie Waters, was seeking the selection to be Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Brighton Pavilion. Sadly this led to Nick Cohen writing a rather ill judged article for the Spectator, where he stood up for Anne Marie:

[Andy Newman] has campaigned against Anne Marie Waters of One Law for All , which opposes the imposition of Sharia law in the UK. In other words, he has put himself on the wrong side of the struggle between religion and women’s rights.

I often disagree with Nick Cohen, but generally I think he is a writer with integrity, and I would certainly recommend the article he recently wrote about UKIP for the Guardian, where he observed that the rise of UKIP is a threat for the left, as well as the right. The recent news that Anne-Marie Waters has been selected as prospective UKIP parliamentary candidate for Basildon and Billericay, suggests that he made an error of judgement in defending her.

Anne Marie Waters, while seemingly having an unhealthy obsession against immigration and multi-culturalism, in other areas is broadly aligned with more traditionally centre-left politics, so her selection for UKIP is interesting, and challenges some of the perceptions of UKIP as being just wayward Tories.

The recent work by Robert Ford and Matthew Goodwin about UKIP, “Revolt on the Right” is essential reading. Based upon meticulous research, it details the history of the UKIP insurgency, and also provides convincing analysis of who votes for the party, what issues motivate them, and why.

There is no doubt that UKIP have enjoyed good fortune, for example the expenses scandal rescued them from a slough of inertia, and the entry of the Lib Dems into coalition government has meant that UKIP are able to position themselves as the anti-politics third party in by-elections.

Ford and Goodwin demolish the myth that UKIP voters are well heeled Conservatives, with a bee in their bonnet about Europe. That constituency of support does exist, and especially comes over to UKIP during European elections, as within the half of the population hostile or ill-disposed towards the EU, UKIP is a significant force. However, the more typical profile of a UKIP supporter is an older white man, poorly educated, working class, and disadvantaged both in the modern knowledge economy, and possibly disadvantaged compared to younger, cheaper migrant labour in manual jobs. While the evidence is non-conclusive, it points to UKIP taking votes equally from Conservatives and Labour, as well as some votes from the Lib Dems and BNP.

The pattern of UKIP voting is “Brussels Plus”. Among the roughly 50% of voters who have a positive view of the EU, then UKIP barely registers. However, among those with a negative view of the EU, UKIP only persuades people to vote for them if they further connect positively with the party over another campaigning issue, for example immigration.

Opposition to immigration is of course central to UKIP’s appeal, particularly expressed as a willingness to talk about a subject that they say others are ignoring, or that nowadays people are not allowed to talk about. Paradoxically this claim is often made by people who seem to have no inhibition about talking about immigration at every opportunity, a preoccupation shared with newspapers such as the Daily Mail and Daily Express.

Nevertheless, as both the Conservative and Labour Parties are broad electoral coalitions pitching for the centre ground, and BME votes themselves, hostility to immigration is perhaps underrepresented by mainstream politicians compared to the currency of such views in the general population. In the case of the Labour Party not only high levels of BME electoral support, but also principled opposition to racism from individual members and the affiliates also inhibits Labour from occupying anti-immigrant terrain.

History shows that two party political systems are vulnerable to breakdown when a major social issue is not expressed through them. The obvious examples being the breakdown of the Liberal/Tory grip of British politics as neither party was able to express support for organized labour, or the breakdown of the Whig/Democrat rivalry in America in the 1850s as both parties split over the issues of slavery, and Catholic immigration.

The prominence of immigration in British politics is a curious one. As the recent pamphlet by Class explains, migrants make up 11.3% of the UK population, compared to 13% of the US population, and 25% of the Australian. The majority of migration to London and the South East of England is also from UK citizens moving from other parts of the country. Moreover, much of the concern expressed about immigration is from people who regard themselves as being non-racist.

Once the element of explicitly racist anti-immigration sentiment is set to one side, then it is tempting to regard the other concerns as instrumental, where wider societal failures to provide housing, decent pay, employment rights and job prospects for the young are ascribed to immigration. It is true that in certain employment sectors, competition with migrant labour has forced wages down. The solution however is to prevent employers from exploiting people, partly through legislative requirement for a living wage, and partly through effective trade unionism. The challenge for the left and centre-left is to persuade hard to reach and cynical parts of the electorate that a Labour government can deliver for them.

The authors make an interesting comparison between UKIP and the SDP, the last party to seek to break the two party structure of Britain’s political system (for simplicity, let us put aside the question of Wales and Scotland). In 1983 the SDP gained 25.4% of the vote, compared to 27.6% for Labour, and 42.4% for the Conservatives; right up until election day the SDP had been at around 30% in the polls. Nevertheless, the SDP, and their Liberal party allies, won only 23 seats.

The problem for the SDP/Liberal alliance was their vote was more evenly distributed than Labour support, and thus they failed to win seats in a first past the post election. However, the 1983 election was also fought in a context where both the Conservatives and Labour were pitching their message towards their traditional core voters, and the lasting effect of the SDP’s influence was to strengthen the argument for all parties to pitch for the centre ground, which has reduced the distinctive position of the successor party, the Lib Dems. Furthermore, the electoral system has itself changed the nature of the Lib Dems, who have sought to build their support, chameleon like, by adapting their message depending whether they are challenging Conservative or Labour incumbents, and thus weakening any distinctive political position for the Lib Dems as a party.

The impact of both the Conservatives and Labour seeking to sway swing voters in marginal constituencies by the dark arts of spin and triangulation itself reflects the changing nature of Britain,, and indeed of European society more generally. Labour, as a political party, has always to a degree sought to appeal as a national political force transcending the sectionalism of any particular class, but nevertheless, at the high point of labourism through the 1940s to 1960s, the traditional working class was a large electoral constituency in its own right. However, since then the class structure of Britain has changed, so that in order to create an election winning coalition, Labour did need to realign itself to the changed electorate.

The danger however is that as the main parties seek to converge upon the centre ground, then this encourages a professionalisation of politics, with candidates, who seem to some voters, to merely be personality free, cardboard cut outs, only distinguishable by the colour of their rosettes. The disillusionment with the political class, brought to boiling point in 2009 by the MPs expenses scandal, is most keenly felt by those who feel left behind by the changes in British society over the last 30 years.

UKIP are a regressive force, tellingly much more popular with the old and poorly educated, and much less popular with the young and among graduates; UKIP also poll very poorly in BME communities. As was once quipped about the SDP, they are a party campaigning for a better yesterday.

However, they still pose a considerable threat, not just to the Conservatives but also to Labour, both in pulling public opinion in a less tolerant direction over immigration, but also in pushing the issue of withdrawal from the EU up the agenda, which paradoxically for an anti-politics party is an issue of much more interest to policy-wonks, than real voters, and just encourages the idea that politics is divorced from real life.

The best strategy for Labour is to stick to its guns in highlighting the cost of living crisis, and in offering policies in the interests of ordinary people. Paradoxically, the social profile of UKIP voters suggest that they are people who would mainly benefit from a Labour government, but they have lost faith in the ability of politicians to deliver. That is the challenge for us to address.

Russia celebrates Victory Day

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Regardless of criticisms anybody might have of the current Russian government, it can never be denied that without the monumental sacrifice of the peoples of the former Soviet Union the scourge of fascism in Europe would not have been defeated.

The Soviet Union lost in the region of 25 million people fighting the Nazis, around 10 million of those military casualties. Compare that number to the losses sustained by Britain and the United States in the Second World War – circa 450,000 and 418,00 respectively – and we understand why Victory Day in Russia remains such an important event 70 years after the Second World War ended.

The epic nature of this struggle is embedded in the Russian psyche. It is a nation justifiably proud of the role it played in liberating the world from an ideology which threatened the very existence of human civilization at a time when it tottered on the precipice of the abyss.

The current crisis in Ukraine, and Russia’s response to it, cannot be separated from this history. Fascism in western Ukraine has deep historical and cultural roots, and despite a concerted attempt by the West to minimise the role and participation of fascists in the February coup in Kiev which toppled Ukraine’s democratically elected government, the re-emergence of this poisonous ideology in Eastern Europe cannot be taken anything less than seriously.

The world owes a debt of gratitude to Russia and the former Soviet Union for the role it played in defeating the Nazis. It is a fact that no amount of anti Russian propaganda will ever be able to deny. In the words of US Secretary of War Henry L Stimson:

History knows no greater display of courage than that shown by the people of the Soviet Union.

History knows no greater display of courage than that shown by the people of the Soviet Union. – Henry L. Secretary of War

 

 

 

Gerry Adams writing in the Guardian on his recent arrest and interrogation by the PSNI

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By Gerry Adams

The Guardian

My recent detention and interrogation was a serious attempt to bring charges against me. It was conducted by the retrospective major investigation team (Remit) of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, which is based at Carrickfergus, County Antrim.

I had contacted the PSNI in March to tell them I was available to meet them. This followed another intense round of the media speculation that has tried to link me to the killing in 1972 of Jean McConville. It is part of a sustained malicious, untruthful and sinister campaign going back many years.

Last Monday the PSNI said it wanted to speak to me. I was concerned about the timing. Sinn Féin is currently involved in very important EU and local government elections. Notwithstanding this, I travelled to the Antrim serious crime suite where I arrived at 8.05pm.

En route I talked to the senior investigating officer. He was insisting that I meet him in the car park opposite the PSNI barracks. He told me that I must get into a squad car and that he would then arrest me and drive me into the barracks. He said he couldn’t arrest me inside the barracks under the legislation.

I told him I was going directly to the station of my own accord, voluntarily. As it turned out there is no legislative bar on me being arrested within the station. And subsequently that’s exactly what happened.

My solicitor was present. I was escorted by two detectives from Remit to the serious crime suite. A custody sergeant took me through all of the processes and protocols. My belt, tie, comb, watch, Fáinne and Easter Lily pins were removed. My solicitor made representations that I be allowed to keep my pen and notebook given that the offence that I was accused of occurred 42 years ago. After some toing and froing, I was eventually granted this request by the custody superintendent.

Shortly before the first of 33 taped interviews, I was served with a pre-interview brief. This accused me of IRA membership and conspiracy in the murder of Jean McConville. It also claimed that the PSNI had new evidential material to put to me. The interview commenced at 10.55pm. Two interrogators – a man and a woman – conducted all the interrogations. All of this was recorded and videotaped. My private consultations with my solicitor may also have been covertly recorded.

I was told that the interrogations were an evidence-gathering process, and that the police would be making the case that I was a member of the IRA; that I had a senior IRA managerial role in Belfast at the time of Jean McConville’s abduction; and that I was therefore bound to know about her killing. I challenged my interrogators to produce the new evidential material. They said that this would happen at a later interview but they wanted to take me through my childhood, family history and so on. Over the following four days it became clear that the objective of the interviews was to get to the point where they could charge me with IRA membership and thereby link me to the McConville case. The membership charge was clearly their principal goal. The interrogators made no secret of this. At one point the male detective described their plan as “a stage-managed approach”. It later transpired that it was a phased strategy, with nine different phases.

The first phases dealt with my family history of republican activism. My own early involvement in Sinn Féin as a teenager – when it was a banned organisation. My time in the 1960s in the civil rights movement and various housing action groups in west Belfast, the pogroms of 1969 and the start of the Troubles.

It was asserted that I was guilty of IRA membership through association because of my family background – my friends. They referred to countless pieces of “open source” material that, they said, linked me to the IRA. These were anonymous newspaper articles from 1971 and 1972, photographs of Martin McGuinness and me at republican funerals, and books about the period.

If any of these claimed I was in the IRA, then that was, according to my interrogators, evidence. They consistently cast up my habit of referring to friends as “comrades”. This, they said, was evidence of IRA membership. They claimed I was turned by special branch during interrogations in Belfast’s Palace Barracks in 1972 and that I became an MI5 agent! They also spoke about the peace talks in 1972, and my periods of internment and imprisonment in Long Kesh. This was presented as “bad-character evidence”.

Much of the interrogations concerned Boston College’s so-called Belfast Project conceived by Paul Bew – a university lecturer and a former adviser to the former unionist leader David Trimble – and run by Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre.

Both Moloney and McIntyre are opponents of the Sinn Féin leadership and our strategy, and have interviewed former republicans who are also hostile. These former republicans have accused us of betrayal and have said we should be shot because of our support for the Good Friday agreement and policing.

The allegation of conspiracy in the killing of Mrs McConville is based almost exclusively on hearsay from unnamed alleged Boston College interviewees but mainly from the late Dolours Price and Brendan Hughes. Other alleged interviewees were identified only by a letter of the alphabet, eg interviewee R or Y. It has been claimed by prosecutors in court that one of these is Ivor Bell, although the interrogators told me he has denied the allegations.

I rejected all allegations made about me in the Boston tapes, which have now been totally discredited. Historians from the college have made it clear that this “never was a Boston College History Department project”. A spokesman for the college has confirmed that it would be prepared to hand back interviews to those involved.

I am innocent of any involvement in the abduction, killing or burial of Mrs McConville, or of IRA membership. I have never disassociated myself from the IRA and I never will, but I am not uncritical of IRA actions and particularly the terrible injustice inflicted on Mrs McConville and her family. I very much regret what happened to them and their mother and understand the antipathy they feel towards republicans.

This case raises in a stark way the need for the legacy issues of the past to be addressed in a victim-centred way. Sinn Féin is committed to dealing with the past, including the issue of victims and their families. We have put forward our own proposals for an independent international truth recovery process, which both governments have rejected. We have also signed up for the compromise proposals presented by US envoys Richard Haass and Meghan O’Sullivan. The two unionist parties and the British government have not.

Sinn Féin is for policing. There is no doubt about this. Civic, accountable, public service policing. It has not been achieved yet.

During my interrogation, no new evidential material, indeed no evidence of any kind, was produced. When I was being released I made a formal complaint about aspects of my interrogation. My arrest and the very serious attempt to charge me with IRA membership is damaging to the peace process and the political institutions.

There is only one way for our society to go, and that is forward. I am a united Irelander. I want to live in a citizen-centred, rights-based society. There is now a peaceful and democratic way to achieve this. The two governments are guarantors of the Good Friday agreement. They have failed in this responsibility. The future belongs to everyone. So, as well as the British and Irish governments, civic society, church leaders, trade unions, the media, academia and private citizens must find a way to provide positive leadership.

The Good Friday agreement is the people’s agreement. It does not belong to the elites. It must be defended, implemented and promoted.

Yes, deal with the past. Yes, deal with victims. But the focus needs to be on the future. There will be bumps on that road. There will be diversions. There are powerful vested interests who have not bought into the peace process. Obstacles will be erected, but we must build the peace and see off sinister forces against equality and justice for everyone.

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