Northern Ireland Secretary of State Dr John Reid has announced that new legislation will be introduced to criminalize sectarianism.

Dr Reid made the announcement as part of his closing speech to delegates attending the Labour Party Conference in Brighton.

He said: “This summer in the Ardoyne we saw young children subjected to violence, intimidation and abuse as they stared a new term at primary school. It was, quite frankly, a disgusting spectacle, which tarnished the reputation of everyone in Northern Ireland.”

Pledging to protect the right of children to be educated free of intimidation and harassment whatever the cost, Dr Reid said if there was to be hatred in Northern Ireland it should be hatred for poverty, unemployment, deprivation, and sectarianism. Hatred, he said, should not be directed at those people in the next street who were of a differing religion, but rather at the ills of society.

SDLP Assembly Minister Brid Rodgers welcomed the announcement of impending legislation against sectarianism: “All summer we have seen ugly sectarianism in Northern Ireland. It must be tackled head on and the Secretary of State is right to make it illegal.

“The law alone however will not solve this problem. We must al redouble our efforts to tackle this issue if we are ever to create the new society we all want.”

Alliance Party justice spokesperson Stephen Farry said he was delighted that the government was prepared to legislate against what he described as “hate crimes”

He said: “There is a long history of sectarian attacks on people and property in Northern Ireland. In recent years there has been an increase in the reported number of racist attacks. Hate crimes are not only attacks upon the individual victims, but the values of shared, multicultural society.”

Din his speech Dr Reid also called for a commitment to “exclusively peaceful and democratic” political strategies. He branded terrorism as “indefensible” and said that a ceasefire was insufficient - paramilitaries had to be prepared to put arms beyond use and finally bring violence in Northern Ireland to an end.

Hitting out at the murder of Sunday World journalist Martin O’Hagan, Dr Reid said that it was an attack on both a free press and on democracy. He said it was not loyalism, but gangsterism and said no one in Northern Ireland wanted anything to do with these “murderous ways”.

Concluding, Dr Reid said he would work to bring an end to the “residual violence and terrorism in Northern Ireland”. (SP)