No Gloss – Just Matt!

My thoughts and those of the vast majority of people across Ireland and Britain are with the family and friends of the two murdered soldiers, Mark Quincey and Patrick Azinkar, who where killed in cold blood on Saturday night and the murdered PSNI officer, Constable Carroll murdered Monday.

I am the SDLP’s youngest political representative at 23 years old, I am the same age as the murdered soldier Mark Quincey and two years older than Patrick Azinkar. That made me and Mark both 11 years old and Patrick only 9 years old when the last British soldier was murdered here, in South Armagh.

Those that carried these attacks out at the weekend have absolutely nothing to offer this society or our people other than misery and pain and they need to be brought to justice. Any true Irish man or woman, Irish nationalist or Irish unionist, Catholic, Protestant or neither, should recognise this and give any information they have that could bring them to justice forward.

In Stormont on Monday (09-03-2009) a sense of unity unseen before was shown, which was again shown On Tuesday and today, and I’m sure will continue – showing the dissents that they will not destabilise the peace process or the institutions – and this is very welcome, for it defeats what the dissidents set out to achieve.

There is no doubt that my generation owes a great debt of gratitude to the past generation of Hume, Mallon and Rodgers, and others from all parties, for helping secure an end to violence and establishing power sharing institutions – although slow to start.

We owe a great sense of thanks to this present generation for getting the institutions back up and running and enshrining democratic politics above all other forms, however rocky.

My generation, the future generation, have no desire to go back to the horrific and pointless destruction and murders of the past. We have no desire to revisit the heartache and pain that others had to endure.

We grew up at the end of the troubles, as did the murdered soldiers, who at the time of ceasefires where most likely very much like me, interested in football or liked climbing trees, and had no interest in politics.

In fact, not only has my generation no intention to go back, we have every intention to go forward, much more forward than ever before in our history and continue un deterred the process of truly uniting our people. We are ‘ceasefire babies’, less tainted by the violence and divisions of the past and we know peace to be normal.

What these murderers carried out is to us abnormal, sickening and deplorable and they will not prevent my generation from sowing the seeds of the unity of our people and peace for our people. The next generation deserves nothing less and we will not let so called ‘Irish republicans’ stop that progress.