There’s a lot of guff at the moment about taking the parliamentary oath at Westminster.
The decision to participate in the swearing in ceremony is a personal or political choice. Therefore, I make no observation on those who abstain from swearing in but receive substantial Westminster allowances and it appears, also receive an undisclosed salary for their public duty. Each to their own.
The bile being piled on SDLP MPs is unreasonable. No doubt they will take it on the chin but their predecessors didn’t come under so much pressure. Nor for that matter do Scottish or Welsh nationalist parliamentarians or die hard socialist republican minded MPs.
It’s a means to an end. Nothing more, nothing less.
Unionists who have enthusiastically taken the oath have spent more energy and time disrupting the sovereign parliament and its will than any anti-monarchist ever has.
Should it be changed to reflect the diversity and plurality of a modern democracy and the regional make up of devolved regions? Absolutely, yes.
Daniel O’Connell, the great Liberator and anti-slave campaigner, said on his death bed: “My body to Ireland, my heart to Rome, my soul to heaven.”
He said nothing about Westminster. Probably because taking an oath was less important to him than securing Catholic Emancipation (1829) and his role in aiding the passage of the Great Reform Act (1832) and the abolition of slavery (1833).
Charles Stewart Parnell was the greatest of Irish parliamentarians to grace the floor of the House of Commons. A little known fact in my own family history was found in the obituary of my father’s grandmother, Margaret Kelly. It said she and her family were well known for their “Parnellite loyalties” before and after the infamous split, when the Catholic hierarchy declared Parnell “morally unfit to lead the Irish people”.
It was Parnell, the parliamentarian, who gave physical body to Irish nationalism and made it real. No-one would have accused him of being less Irish because of taking a meaningless oath. It was a means to an end.
John Hume - probably the greatest constitutional parliamentarian of recent times - gave little thought to affirming an oath. There were bigger fish to fry for the Derry master chef.
The entire architecture of our political settlement and peace process is down to Hume’s vision, stretching back to 1974 and Sunningdale, the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985 and the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.
Charles Stewart Parnell, the parliamentarian, gave physical body to Irish nationalism and made it real. No-one would have accused him of being less Irish because of taking a meaningless oath. It was a means to an end
Seamus Mallon and Eddie McGrady, likewise, gave little thought to affirming an oath in order to serve the people who elected them and in doing so, steered fair employment, judicial reform and policing legislation through a hostile House of Commons. Equality legislation denied at Stormont did not appear like ether in Westminster.
But objections to the oath at parliament aren’t confined to Irish parliamentarians; British MPs have had firm arguments against the oath, too.
Tony Benn, father of the new secretary of state, served 51 years in parliament and didn’t get into a froth over the oath. In fact, he tried to have it repealed several times. Benn was perhaps one of the most radical thinkers ever to walk the hallowed halls of Westminster.
Former minister Tony Banks used to publicly cross his fingers when taking it and the late Dennis Skinner was a little more verbose during the swearing in - suggesting he would take it seriously when the monarch paid full taxes. Mo Mowlam considered having it removed altogether.
As it stands, the oath is a relic which shouldn’t become a shibboleth for any side of the debate.
As my colleague in this paper, Tom Collins, wrote, if there is to be an oath it should be to the people MPs serve.
I would add to this an addendum that there is a pledge to the parliament itself in terms of acting with honesty, integrity and principle.
Too many times over the past 14 years, the standards at Westminster have been flushed from the ceramic toilets in this decaying edifice into the sewers of London.
