Senior Orangeman joins calls for unionist unity as DUP leader says division ‘has cost us dearly'
It came as Gavin Robinson said division had cost unionism dearly.
Although neither specifically mentioned electoral pacts, both want greater party co-operation in future elections.
Northern Ireland is next due to go to the polls in the 2027 Assembly election.
In some seats, such as Lagan Valley at the last Westminster poll, a split vote has seen a non-unionist candidate elected.
Mr Henning, speaking at the Twelfth in Maghera, Co Londonderry, made a clear plea for unionist co-operation.
'I recognise that the Orange family is a broad church in terms of its political views - however, one thing all our members can agree on is that our interests are best served as citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,' he said.
'The leadership of this Institution remains consistent in its desire to see closer collaboration between the leadership of our pro-Union political parties so as to maximise unionist representation at all levels of government.
'Cooperation between our political representatives must be encouraged - more than that, it should be demanded, and country should always come before party or individual self-interest.
'Let's get that message out to our politicians – as a people, we want to see more unity of purpose across political unionism.'
Twelfth celebrations get underway in Belfast
Meanwhile, in a pre-Twelfth email to DUP members, Gavin Robinson said politicians must take note of the Orange Institution's "unifying power'.
'Across towns and villages, it brings together people from every walk of life, reminding us of the strength that comes when we stand side by side,' he said.
'That is a message unionism must learn from. We achieve more together than we do apart.
'Divided unionism has already cost us dearly.
'As we look ahead to Assembly and council elections in two years' time, we must explore how to maximise the pro-Union vote and return more unionist representatives, not fewer.
'The need for common purpose and cooperation has never been more obvious or more essential.'
Meanwhile, South Antrim MP Robin Swann attacked the Windsor Framework during a speech at the Twelfth in Carnlough.
In a direct message to Secretary of State Hilary Benn, Mr Swann said the Union is a commitment, not a convenience.
'The Windsor Framework does not restore our place fully in the UK internal market,' he said.
'It leaves Northern Ireland subject to foreign laws we cannot change.
'It carves a regulatory border between Larne and Stranraer, between Belfast and Ayrshire.
'It sends a message: That our place in the United Kingdom is conditional; that our rights as British citizens are somehow less equal than those across the water.'
He added: 'The Framework may offer tweaks — but it does not solve the fundamental problem. Our economic, constitutional, and democratic rights remain compromised.
'So, we say to the Secretary of State, Hilary Benn - the Union is not a convenience - It is a commitment.
'And Northern Ireland must be fully, equally and permanently part of it, and you need to step up to the job you have been given.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The National
3 hours ago
- The National
UK politicians are in the pockets of the rich. Is that democracy?
At Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday, Keir Starmer responded to a question from Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay about growing calls to introduce a tax on wealth for the super-rich – those with assets above £10 million – by saying he wouldn't 'take advice' from the Greens, and insisting that 'we can't just tax our way to growth'. We can, it seems, cut our way to growth though, as long as it's those already at the greatest risk of poverty who'll bear the brunt. On Wednesday evening, 333 Labour MPs voted to cut disability benefits by £2 billion per year, halving the health element of universal credit for new claimants, and cutting it altogether for new claimants aged under 22. At a certain point, when the faces and the colour of the rosettes change but the glaring injustices remain the same, we have to ask ourselves why. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer (Image: Yui Mok) A common refrain among politicians is that right-wing policies that make life harder for social security claimants – or immigrants, or any other marginalised group – are popular. So popular that they have no choice but to implement them with gusto, because that's the will of the people, I guess. Meanwhile, I suppose we are to imagine that the average British voter is kept up at night worrying about the prospect of millionaires and billionaires being asked to pay more into our public services. As Tory leader Kemi Badenoch put it at PMQs, a wealth tax would be 'a tax on all of our constituents' savings, their houses, their pensions'. Who among us doesn't know and love someone with more than £10m in assets lying around? And surely we can all agree that they're the real victims? Back in the real world, a YouGov poll last week found that 75% of people in the UK would support introducing a wealth tax of 2% on wealth above £10m. Earlier this year, YouGov conducted another poll on behalf of Oxfam which found that 79% of over 16s in Scotland would rather the government tax the richest than make cuts to public spending. (Image: YouGov) And while it's true that some voters do believe that the welfare system is too generous, and the immigrants are draining the country of resources, it's important to remember that large sections of the British media, with their own vested interests, have spent not years but decades pushing precisely this narrative. It's disingenuous at best to persuade someone of something and then behave as though it was their idea all along. Alongside campaign groups Tax Justice UK and Patriotic Millionaires UK, Oxfam identified that the government could raise up to £24bn per year through a wealth tax which would apply to only 0.04% of the population. At the same time, charities and experts from across the UK and beyond – extending to the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – have highlighted the damage that cuts to social security could cause to people's ability to make ends meet or simply live with dignity. So, if it's not the electorate telling politicians which policies to pursue, and it's not the data or the impassioned pleas of experts that persuade them, then what is it that drives them to make these decisions? READ MORE: Mark Brown: Why I plan to join Scotland's new radical left party Surely the answer is obvious by now. Time and again, right-wing and supposedly centrist politicians prove that nothing matters to them than the feelings of their rich donors and supporters – and nothing matters more to those wealthy individuals and large corporations than money. Successive governments' inaction on a range of urgent issues – from climate change, to energy prices, to raising taxes to fund crumbling public services – becomes far easier to understand once you realise that standing up to behemoth corporations and their numerous beneficiaries could cost these politicians dearly. If power for power's sake is the goal, if fuelling the party machine with big donations is a worthwhile end in and of itself, and if securing oneself a cushy position after – or perhaps during – your time in office is the ultimate prize, then making an enemy out of the 1% is a senseless endeavour. The dramatic decline in political party membership numbers over the past several decades mean that parties have become more and more reliant on a small pool of wealthy donors. Analysis by the Electoral Reform Society found that, during the 2024 election campaign, Labour received £6.7m from 'mega-donors', which made up 68.5% of their total donations up to polling day. This equates to 42 times the amount they took from the same type of donors during the 2019 election campaign. David Lammy secured a personal donor a job at the Foreign Office (Image: PA) When we ask ourselves how it is that the Labour Party have sold out on so many principles in such a short period of time, the answer is in the question. What chance does the average person – or community – stand to have their voice heard and acted upon by those in power while principles and policies are being sold to the highest bidder? Just last week, it was revealed by the Democracy for Sale substack that Foreign Secretary David Lammy gave a taxpayer-funded job in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to the former UK president of multinational PR company WPP after she donated £5000 to his office ahead of the election. This is only the latest in a series of jobs for donors that Labour have been scrutinised over. Under the ideal of democracy which we are encouraged to believe the UK represents, every eligible voter should have an equal say in elections and, by extension, an equal opportunity to have a say in the decisions the elected parliament makes. How far must our political leaders stray from this principle before we recognise that we are no longer ruled by democracy but plutocracy: a society controlled by people with great wealth or income? Consider that the UK's 50 richest families hold more wealth than 50% of the population, according to analysis from the Equality Trust. And while the top 20% hold 63% of the UK's wealth, the bottom fifth have only 0.5% of the wealth. READ MORE: The best way to defeat Reform UK? Expose the gaping holes in their politics Polls might show that the vast majority of the British public want to see the wealthy taxed more, but to imagine that this information would seize the Prime Minister with an urgency to act would be to believe that all views, experiences, voices or lives are equal. You only need to look at how this government – the progressive alternative to the old government – treats the most vulnerable to know that isn't true, not under this system. As long as money talks and those without are silenced, most of us will be out here screaming into the void. In case that seems too bleak a note to end on, a reminder: it doesn't have to be this way. Just look at the growing fervency with which the Tories and now Labour have sought to quash dissent through the criminalisation of peaceful protest, and the proscription of activist groups they don't like as terrorists. Even the frantic efforts of the Government to censor a rap group, Kneecap, over political statements is revealing. These are the actions of power under threat. They are terrified of ordinary people speaking their minds and telling them in no uncertain terms that enough is enough. That, alone, should act as motivation to keep doing just that.
The National
3 hours ago
- The National
Post Office Horizon scandal broke more than just the legal system
Going out on circuit around the country, inquiry chair Sir Wyn Williams heard sad stories from Ilfracombe to Inverness – each individual, but each with much in common. Postmasters' stories normally started well – in hope and new beginnings. I've had my eye on the shop for a while now. We'd like to operate our own branch. I think it's time to lay down roots in the community. We've been saving. This looks like a sound investment. Many of these men and women spoke of their plans to settle down with their families, settling what modest assets they had on the hope of securing a stable living in the heart of communities across the country – only for this very ordinary promise of living a very ordinary life to sour, and sour quickly. Security was the last thing these people got in return for their investment in the Post Office. READ MORE: Pat Kane: Scotland is heading back into a cycle of 'extraction without consent' The kit failed. Helplines gave them no help. Callers were told they were the only postmaster in the country whose Horizon terminals showed signs of bugging out. Phantom shortfalls in branch accounts accumulated, and inevitably, Post Office security goons came knocking. They came with audits, print-outs, sceptical faces, threats of dismissal, a change of locks and demands for full repayment under threat of prosecution. It seems fitting, therefore, for the first volume of the Post Office inquiry's findings to focus on the human impact of what went wrong, and the faltering and partial attempts by the British state to properly recognise and put right the terrible wrong this state company dealt to postmasters, their staff and their families over decades. In this volume, the judge focused on two key issues: the human impact and compensation. The human stories are now much better understood than they used to be, just a few years ago. It is still surprisingly difficult to pin down precisely how many people were affected by the Horizon scandal. Some were prosecuted, convicted and jailed for crimes they did not commit based on the failings in Fujitsu's system. Others found themselves in the dock but were acquitted – something like 50 to 60 people, by Sir Wyn's reckoning last week. Many others escaped the attentions of Post Office prosecutors, but instead, faced the sack. Postmasters whose contracts were terminated on the basis of their alleged dishonesty lost their shops, lost their business, and often as not, the mortgaged homes they relied on their livelihoods to service, becoming homeless. Many found themselves subject to other kinds of legal threats, facing civil court action demanding repayment of phantom debts they did not owe. Alan Bates tenaciously campaigned against the Post OfficeThis scandal was deadly. Sir Wyn concluded that at least 13 suicides were directly connected to Horizon shortfall allegations. Many postmasters disclosed suicidal ideation in the aftermath, which often involved huge financial and psychological stress as people sifted through the flotsam and jetsam of their lives, trying to keep themselves and their families afloat in the wake of the Post Office's allegations and sanctions. In some of the most powerful sections of last week's report, Sir Wyn reflects on the many 'genuinely moving accounts of the impact this had upon their immediate family'. Alan Bates, Jo Hamilton, Seema Misra – some of the most prominent postmasters are 'now well-known public figures'. But, he said, it is important to 'shine a light' on the significant number of other people who are 'far less well known but whose suffering has been acute'. Of Sir Wyn's 17 case studies, two focus on Scottish cases. The first is Susan Sinclair. She moved to Scotland in 1998 from America. In 2001, she began working as a court clerk in Ellen. Within months, she'd become postmistress of the branch nearby. Over the next year and a half, Horizon began to report shortfalls. A February 2003 audit disclosed an apparent shortfall of £10,700. Sinclair was interviewed by Post Office security goons, suspended and locked out of her branch. Later that month, she had her second encounter with PO investigators, who referred her case to the procurator fiscal, culminating in in her prosecution for embezzlement in 2004. She pled not guilty but was convicted by the sheriff. She ended up paying more than £10,700 to the Post Office. In September 2023, Ms Sinclair was the first person in Scotland to have her conviction quashed by the High Court. READ MORE: Keir Starmer's Donald Trump pandering proves the UK's global influence is fading The second Scottish case which Sir Wyn chose to highlight was Robert Thomson's. Rab has been quoted extensively in the Scottish media since interest in this story caught light. He was persuaded by his lawyer to plead guilty to charges of embezzlement from his Alloa Post Office. Following his conviction, there was significant adverse publicity in the local media. He was 'branded a thief'. Mr Thomson lived in a small rural community and the whole community knew of and believed in his conviction. This stigma was felt not only by Rab and his wife, but his two children, who were bullied at school in consequence of his conviction. This is one feature of this scandal that feels particularly troubling. Driven by its exaggerated suspicion of its own staff and misplaced faith in the infallibility of its accounting system, the Post Office did terrible things to its staff. But its false allegations also induced other people to act in ways which in retrospect do nobody any credit. Its suspicions were catching. In the Scottish human impact session in Glasgow, one postmaster – who eventually found himself being accused of being on the take after Horizon declared an apparent shortfall – talked about his sense of guilt at having accused and then dismissed two of his blameless staff after he concluded that if money was going missing and he wasn't responsible, one of them must have been responsible. 'I've apologised to them,' he said pointedly – but I was left with the distinct impression that this admission didn't entirely clear his conscience. Perhaps it shouldn't. I wonder how others in similar situations feel, confronted with the negative impact their own actions had on people affected. In Scotland, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service has consistently depicted itself as a secondary victim of this scandal, whose good faith and trust was abused by the cynical manoeuvres of the Post Office. But even if you were misled, it was you who did the prosecuting, you who were the instrument of this injustice, you who remains – at least on some level – implicated. Local journalists who wrote up stories of postmasters being sent down may reasonably retort that they covered local court cases in good faith and in the public interest. Nobody would seriously suggest, I think, that they were not entitled to report who was convicted in local courts, particularly if the people involved had some community standing, particularly if they plead guilty. You wonder what all the local gossips and pharisees make of their behaviour now they know the targets of their whispering campaigns didn't deserve any of the hard words visited on them and their children. I suspect quite a few schoolyard bullies look back on their teenaged behaviour with regret. But it is difficult to escape the impression that it is was the whispered conversations in the supermarket, the pointed stares and being cut dead in the street by former friends which inflicted a significant part of the harm this scandal caused on people who found themselves caught up in it, their social identities spoiled by official suspicion and condemnation as crooks, thieves and embezzlers, exploiting public trust and helping themselves to the contents of your favourite granny's pension book. Even if you were deceived, even if you honestly believed these postmasters were guilty as charged, it was still you who stigmatised these people, still you who played an indispensable part of the great harm done to them, even with all this mitigation. READ MORE: Richard Murphy: Passing laws that destroy our freedoms is tyranny Continued denial, I suppose, is one response. Talking to one affected postmaster last year, she told me that she and her husband were still subject to a degree of community mistrust and hostility, even after ITV had broadcast its game-changing drama about the scandal in January 2024 and widespread community awareness spread that these people did nothing wrong. There's always a committed sceptic on hand to say 'no smoke without fire', determined in the teeth of all the evidence to believe some of these postmasters must have been guilty, and are only jumping on a convenient bandwagon to clear their convictions and get themselves some unmerited damages. But you wonder if even this reaction isn't its own kind of evasion. Dimly conscious of the monstrous self-reflection required by realising you've played a key part in what made this injustice go so deep down, all the way to the social nerve, it is easier to pretend you have no regrets, and nothing to answer for.
North Wales Chronicle
6 hours ago
- North Wales Chronicle
Antisemitism an ‘urgent issue' for all of British society, Penny Mordaunt warns
The former Conservative minister joined Lord John Mann, the Government's antisemitism adviser, in chairing an independent commission on antisemitism on behalf of the Board of Deputies, Britain's largest Jewish community organisation. Writing in the Telegraph newspaper, the pair described themselves as 'hard-nosed politicians' who are 'used to dealing with the extremes of human emotions and catastrophe'. But they added: 'Even with decades of these experiences, we were still stunned into silence by the evidence that we received as independent chairs of the Board of Deputies Commission on Antisemitism, particularly from young people in the Jewish community.' 'This is an urgent issue not just for the Jewish community but for the United Kingdom as a whole,' the pair added. They also said: 'We are all harmed if we tolerate the abuse of some of our fellow citizens by those who hold warped or extreme views.' Their warnings of growing antisemitic prejudices across British society, from the NHS to arts organisations and the police, comes as the report they authored is set to be published on Tuesday. Among its recommendations are that the NHS should hold a summit to tackle the 'specific unaddressed issue of antisemitism' within the health service. Lord Mann and former defence secretary Dame Penny set out 10 recommendations calling for educators, public services and trade unions to do more to tackle antisemitism. Among them was a recommendation for every NHS trust to have 'basic training on contemporary antisemitism'. They stated: 'From evidence that we heard, we can identify that there is a specific unaddressed issue of antisemitism within the NHS. We recommend that a summit should be held with NHS leaders across the UK to begin to address this.' They noted an 'identifiable lack of consistency and capacity in antisemitism training' and recommended the creation of a specific antisemitism training qualification, adding that such training should be included within equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in organisations and institutions. Efforts to teach primary school teachers how to avoid passing on antisemitism and anti-Jewish tropes in their lessons should be rolled out in faith schools across the UK, the commission said. It added that professional organisations and trade unions should ensure that all Jewish members are treated equally and with respect, while there must be a consistent approach taken by police when dealing with antisemitic crimes. The commission said it had seen evidence of 'hidden barriers being put in front of Jewish involvement within the arts' and said there must always be a 'robust response for those who choose to discriminate and government at every level should ensure this'. Lord Mann said: 'It is unacceptable that the Jewish community has faced an onslaught of antisemitism since October 7th. 'Whilst this is not new, the commission heard shocking experiences that we will not ignore. Antisemitism is racism and it must be treated as such. We hope these recommendations will provide additional guidance and action for civil society.' Dame Penny said: 'No person should face abuse or discrimination whilst going about their business, whether it is pursuing the career of their choice or accessing public services. 'We wanted to suggest some very practical things that can be dealt with swiftly and will dramatically improve people's experiences.' Board of Deputies president Phil Rosenberg said: 'Overall, the challenge in civil society can be summarised as one of a failure to apply the protections rightly afforded to different vulnerable groups equally to Jewish people in the same positions. 'Many sectors promote strong Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) processes, which are very important, but too often, these protections seem to exclude Jews.' He said the board will insist that 'Jews must count' and will use the recommendations of the commission's report 'to ensure that they do'. An NHS spokesperson said: 'It is completely unacceptable for anyone to experience racism, discrimination or prejudice in the health service, whether staff or patient, and the NHS takes any instance of antisemitism or discrimination extremely seriously. 'The NHS provides care and treatment for everyone regardless of race, faith, or background and all NHS healthcare providers should have policies in place to address issues like this in the workplace.'
