Ulster chief denies threat to quit

Press, 30 September 1983, Page 6

Ulster chief denies threat to quit

NZPA London The Northern Ireland Office yesterday flatly denied that the Ulster Secretary, Mr James Prior, had threatened to resign from the Government over the Maze prison break-out. Reports in “The Times” and the “Guardian” yesterday suggested that Mr Prior had threatened to quit his post, if his junior Minister in charge of prisons, Mr Nicholas Scott, was forced to resign.

Mr Scott has been under pressure from Ulster Loyalist politicians and some Right-wing conservatives. The basis for the Prior resignation rumour appears to be a meeting with the Rev. lan Paisley and his deputy, east Belfast member of Parliament, Peter Robinson, on Tuesday. In the two days after the meeting both Mr Paisley and Mr Robinson have made numerous assertions about admissions Mr Prior was supposed to have made to them — each one has been firmly denied by the Government.

Now it is suggested that Mr Prior, under pressure from an irate Mr Paisley, threatened to quit if Mr Scott was forced to resign. But a Northern Ireland Office statement said yesterday: “The Secretary of State made it clear at the meeting and he makes it clear now that neither he nor Mr Scott is considering resignation.” At the press conference Mr Scott held on Tuesday, Mr Prior was quick to jump to his deputy’s defence. He said: “The escape does not justify demands” for resignation calls. Even Mr Robinson conceded yesterday that at the

end of his meeting with .Mr Prior the Secretary of State had made it clear that neither he nor Mr Scott was planning to quit.

Mr Robinson added, however: “They certainly should resign.”

He explained that during the meeting with Mr Prior, Mr Paisley had said to Mr Nicholas Scott — who was also present — that he should resign, and that Mr Prior had said that as the Secretary of State he was the one with ultimate responsibility and not his deputy. ? ‘I put it to Mr Prior that had it been on the mainland that one prison officer had been killed, another shot, five more stabbed and 38 prisoners escaped, the resignation of the Secretary of State to the Home Office would be qxpected. “I suggested to him that he ought to resign and he made some remark like “you might be surprised if Nick and myself resigned.” But, Mr -Robinson said that the end of the

meeting Mr Prior said quite clearly: “I want to make it clear that I have no intention of resigning.”

It is the second time within two months that there have been calls for Mr Scott’s resignation. During the visit in August to Northern Ireland by members of Noraid, the American I.R.A. support group, Mr Scott apparently offered to meet representatives.

Later there were demands for his resignation and a sheepish Mr Scott quickly said that no invitation had been issued to Noraid for a meeting, and that it would be wrong for him to see them as one of the delegation had been charged with rioting during street disturbances in Belfast.

Exactly what was said during the meeting between Mr Prior and Mr Paisley on Tuesday has been the cause of dispute between the two sides all week.

Mr Paisley left the meeting saying that the Secretary of State had told him the main gates of the Maze prison were wide open when the prisoners made their run for freedom.

The next day the Democratic Unionist Party, which Mr Paisley leads, asserted that the Secretary of State had admitted there had been 12 breaches of security within the Maze.

Both allegations were firmly denied by Stormont together with numerous other stories from various sources which suggested collusion by prison officers and the prison authorities who knew there was a gun somewhere in the jail, and that the Army had broken in and out of prison 10 times to show how lax security