A Unique Platform

Here:

Jeffrey Dudgeon – who once worked for UK Unionist MP Robert McCartney – will this week submit his nomination papers to Trinity College Dublin to compete for one of the university’s three seats in the Republic’s upper house. Mr Dudgeon, who took the European court case which led to homosexuality being decriminalised in Northern Ireland in 1982, said that he felt the voice of a Northern Ireland unionist is conspicuously missing from the Seanad.

“The senate has provided, over the decades, a unique platform and protection zone for the state’s minorities, its non-conformists, dissenters if not its dissidents, as well as differing voices from Northern Ireland,” he said. “But all the previous senators from Northern Ireland have been nominated and were not fully representative of the people of Northern Ireland and in particular of those who define themselves as Ulster Unionists.”

Mr Dudgeon said he felt the Queen’s first official visit to the Republic this year is a sign of growing political maturity between Ireland and the UK. “In a real sense, we are heading back to a time before partition when the differences between the two parts and the two peoples of Ireland, particularly southern Catholics and northern Protestants, are not as extreme as they became. I am asking the voters to make history by electing an Ulster Protestant who is a liberal unionist thus allowing that voice to be heard for the first time for decades. I want to represent Northern Ireland to the Senate and in the Senate.”

Mr Dudgeon continued: “The next decade is also a time of danger with a decade of commemorations of events a century ago. They are a potential occasion for renewed bitterness and conflict. I would challenge historical inaccuracy and exaggeration to face down that danger. The absence of Shane Ross, who served some 30 years in the Seanad before his recent Dail victory in South Dublin, leaves a gap which I hope to fill. I believe I am well-qualified in experience and original and innovative ideas, not to mention independence, to replace a man who has given so much to the Oireachtas and Ireland, north and south.”

He added: “I believe it is the rage induced by Sinn Fein’s historical interpretations that presents the greatest threat to peace on these islands. They are an open encouragement to dissidents. It is my primary purpose to address that question, if elected to Seanad Eireann, hoping in the process to draw our peoples together. Meeting one another and working together is the key to a better future.” Among his election pledges, seen by the News Letter, Mr Dudgeon is promising to act as a counterweight to newly-elected Louth TD Gerry Adams.

Elections to the Republic’s upper house the Senate will take place in May. The Senate is made up of 11 Irish taoiseach appointees, three elected by the graduates of Trinity, three elected by the graduates of the National University of Ireland and a further 43 elected by a complicated system of five panels of nominees which are made up of a combination of TDs, senators and local councillors.

When has the Seanad not been full of people who were basically Unionists? That is an exaggeration. But not very much of one.