Orange Order Grand Secretary Mervyn Gibson says it's time for unionist "co-operation"

Watch Orange Order Grand Secretary Mervyn Gibson says it's time for unionist "co-operation" - News Letter on Dailymotion

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00:00So Mervyn, how come you've come to Dariachi this year for the Twelfth?

00:04Well, all the demonstration feeders bid for who they want to speak and Dariachi picked

00:08me last year and so they were just lucky enough to get me.

00:13And obviously, it's been a difficult year for unionism, politically, the election wasn't

00:18too bad, but will politics feature heavily in your speech today?

00:23Ah, the speech will cover that, I have to say. You're right, it could have been a lot

00:26worse, the election. We started out with eight unionist MPs and we ended up with eight unionist

00:30MPs, so it could have been a lot worse, but there's a lot to improve on, there's a lot

00:35of lessons to be learned.

00:38Will unity amongst unionists be part of your message today?

00:41I think co-operation is a much better word than unity. Individual parties need to co-operate.

00:46I don't think unity would do unionism any good in that sense because people nowadays

00:50need a choice, a choice of parties with different principles, different policies, but one over

00:56riding concern for us is that they are unionist parties and that's where the co-operation

01:00needs to be, at the top level. If there's no negotiations about the union, we're united

01:06and that's unity and purpose.

01:07Where that sort of co-operation normally falls down is when it comes to picking candidates

01:11for seats. Should there be more agreed joint candidates?

01:16I think so. I think there needs to be work done now for the Assembly election that's

01:20coming up and of course there'll be differences in personalities, but we lose seats if we

01:26allow them to get in the way of unionist co-operation and I think it's important that parties sit

01:30down and the Orients were involved in doing it before the last election to try and get

01:34people to sit down, but it didn't work out. People have their own agendas and we see that

01:38as well, but certainly the institution will be encouraging unionist co-operation and the

01:42other thing we'll be doing is trying to fight the apathy. There's apathy out there amongst

01:45the union committee for a whole variety of reasons and we need to address those things.