Issue 2 - 2024 200dpi

29 February 2024 Edition

Resize: A A A Print

British ‘Legacy Law’ buries families’ hope for truth and justice

An Phoblacht’s Peadar Whelan looks at the British Government’s agenda in passing the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023, whose purpose is to conceal the role of not only Britain’s armed forces in the conflict in Ireland, but also the brutal and deadly counter-insurgency war waged against the nationalist community during those years.

Text divider

In an Orwellian twist that only a cynical arrogant British government could conjure up, they titled their legislation dealing with the past conflict in the Six Counties the ‘Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill’. It is none of these of these things.

Passed into law in the British Parliament in early September 2023, the only reconciliation the legislation managed to bring about was to unite all strands of political thought in Ireland in opposition to the bill, albeit from different political standpoints.

The British ‘legacy bill’ proposes to halt criminal investigations, civil proceedings, inquests, investigations by the Police Ombudsman and any other investigation or inquiry into the Northern conflict.

That the legislation is being used to ‘bury the truth’ has stirred anger across the country and forced the Dublin government, under pressure from Sinn Féin and rights bodies, to take an interstate case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The court revealed, on Friday 19 January, that the case has been formally launched.

The Legacy Bill originated when Boris Johnston was Prime Minister. The British Government published its “Legacy Proposals” in July 2021, outlining plans for an ‘amnesty bill’. At the time, it was coming under pressure from a British military establishment enraged that the North’s Director of Public Prosecutions had the temerity to charge a number of British soldiers with conflict related killings.

Speaking in Westminster in July 2021, then Prime Minister Boris Johnson claimed: “The sad fact remains that there are many members of the armed services who continue to face the threat of vexatious prosecutions well into their 70s and 80s”. Johnson added that, “We are finally bringing forward a solution to this problem, to enable the people of Northern Ireland to draw a line under the Troubles and to enable the people of Northern Ireland to move forward.”

Legacy2

•  27-year-old Tyrone man John Pat Cunningham, who had learning difficulties, was shot in the back and died of his wounds in 1974

Much of the focus at the time was on the trial of former Life Guard regiment soldier Dennis Hutchings, who had been charged with shooting Tyrone man John Pat Cunningham in 1974. The 27-year-old, who had learning difficulties, was shot in the back and died of his wounds.

Hutchings, who would die in October 2021 while his trial was underway, was the cause celebre of a coalition of British military figures and veterans’ organisations, the British right, Northern Unionists and, needless to say, voices in the English news media who would decry the idea of ‘veterans being dragged from their beds to face vexatious charges, while republicans were given immunity’.

This victim complex was reinforced as members of the Parachute Regiment were also facing charges in relation to two killings on Bloody Sunday in Derry and the shooting of 'Official IRA' Volunteer Joe McCann in Belfast, also in 1972.

Ironically, in early May 2023, as the bill was being fast-tracked, the trial of the paratroopers charged with the McCann killing collapsed. Subsequently, charges against two paratroopers over the killings of Patrick Doherty and William McKinney on Bloody Sunday were dropped. However, the Public Prosecution Service later reinstated charges against Soldier F after an appeal and a court ruled in December 2023 that he will face trial with a date to be set.

The furore over these ‘vexatious’ investigations and the ‘persecution of veterans’ needless to say created more heat than light. It was the classical conjurors trick, get you to look the other way as he pulls your card from his top pocket!

At the time the legislation was being promoted in 2021, the British government was being challenged in Belfast’s High Court over its refusal to implement the 2014 Stormont House Agreement (SHA). The abandoned agreement, endorsed by all the North’s political parties, the Dublin and British governments, and underwritten by the United States was seen as the mechanism that would, finally, provide victims and survivors with a way of dealing with legacy issues.

Unsurprisingly, the Tories stalled, refusing to enact the necessary legislation and effectively mothballed the Agreement.

That inaction was at the heart of a legal challenge taken by Thomas Braniff, whose father David was shot dead by loyalists in 1989. Despite commitments to enact the SHA legislation, the British refused to do so.

Legacy4

• Victims groups protest against the British secretary of states failure to deal with legacy issues, January 2018

The court heard that despite promises made by then British Secretary of State Julian Smith in the New Decade New Approach deal of January 2020 to legislate for the SHA within 100 days the British government reneged once again.

Smith was subsequently sacked by Boris Johnson to be replaced by Brandon Lewis and the SHA was unilaterally dumped.

As well as the opposition from the parties in the North and groups advocating on behalf of victims and survivors, the British government is also facing international criticism. 

In September 2021, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic told then British Secretary of State Brandon Lewis that, “Rather than upending previously agreed approaches [i.e. the SHA], I urge [you] to focus on concrete action to remove barriers to a human rights compliant approach”.

Previously a 36-member group of US Congress members signed a letter telling then Prime Minster Boris Johnston “not to renege on commitments to the Stormont House Agreement”. However, the decision by the Dublin government to file its interstate case seems to have rattled the British most.

When Dublin issued proceedings against the British legacy plans in December 2023, it received the backing of campaigners and rights organisations such as Amnesty International. The interstate case according to Taoiseach Leo Varadkar is based on the “Attorney General’s very strong advice that the UK Legacy Act is in breach of the UN Convention on Human Rights”.

The Dublin challenge also argues that the legislation is “incompatible with the UK’s obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights”.

The challenge has provoked anger among both the British government and Northern Unionists. British Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris said it was “unnecessary” and “misguided” before accusing Dublin of double standards, saying “We believe the Irish government’s stated position on dealing with legacy issues is inconsistent and hard to reconcile with its own record”.

Legacy3

• The scene after the Sean Graham’s Bookies killings on the Lower Ormeau Road, Belfast, February 1992

The issue was raised again in a recent phone call between current British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. According to a British statement on the 30 January call, Sunak “expressed his disappointment at the timing and course of action in December, coming at such a sensitive time”.

While British military figures and Tories argue that the legislation is the best way to ‘put the past behind us’, the real driver behind it is to stop all and any investigations into the culpability of the British state and its dirty war in the North, as well as the role the state played in covering up incidents such as the Ballymurphy killings.

In May 2002, just weeks before Boris Johnson’s July 2021 legacy proposals were tabled the North’s coroner Mrs Justice Keegan declared that 10 people killed by the Parachute Regiment in August 1971 in Ballymurphy were unjustifiably killed, exposing the lengths to which the British military and political authorities went in covering up the actions of the killers.

Added to this are Police Ombudsman Marie Anderson’s 2022 reports into multiple killings carried out by loyalist gangs in South Belfast. Focusing on the Sean Graham’s Bookies killings of 1992 and 18 killings in the County Derry/South West Antrim area, the reports found “collusion behaviours” between British forces and loyalist groups, a tolerance of “serious criminality and murder’ by informants”. The concerns of the survivors and bereaved families were “legitimate and justified”.

The Operation Achilles report revealed the extent to which the British Army and intelligence agencies aided loyalist death squads in carrying out multiple killings of nationalists and republicans across the North.

By coincidence, two of the men whose names are most associated with Britain’s military repression died at the end of November 2023. Colonel Derek Wilford commanded the Paras who carried out the Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry, while General Frank Kitson died in early January 2024.

Notoriously, Wilford, who was decorated by the British state, refused to accept the reality that troops under his command gunned down unarmed civilians and is on record as saying “We were under attack”.

The death of Kitson saw the passing of one of the main British military counter-insurgency strategists. He famously wrote: “The law should be used as just another weapon in the government's arsenal, in which case it becomes little more than a propaganda cover for the disposal of unwanted members of the public." In the case of the Tory legacy bill the law is being used as a weapon to suppress the truth about how the British state ‘disposed of’ people in Ireland. 

GUE-NGL-new-Jan-2106

An Phoblacht
44 Parnell Sq.
Dublin 1
Ireland