Lasting legacy solution being undermined and victims left in the dark

TWENTY-TWO years on from the Belfast/good Friday Agreement, the legacy of the past and the failure of successive governments to deal with it casts a long shadow over Northern Ireland.

We in the Labour Party, as co-signatories to that agreement while in Government, feel deeply the responsibility to deliver a legacy process that has the confidence of victims.

But to do so, it is clear we need to see an urgent change of direction from the Government in Westminster.

I have been deeply affected in my role by the many victims I’ve met and how fresh their trauma is — of course, how could it not be?

There is no doubt their pain has been compounded by decades of having to fight for the truth about what happened to their loved ones.

With so much pain, any solution must have those victims at its heart. Without that, it is no solution at all.

That is why, I regret to say, the Secretary of State’s approach so far has caused real anger.

His proposals, delivered barely two months into his role, represented a significant departure from the broad consensus reached at Stormont House.

He announced it with virtually no consultation with those scarred the most by the decades of violence.

The victims and survivors I meet are wearily accustomed to being let down, but this, and the way they have been treated of late is wrong — from gaslighting organisations like Wave, failing to deliver on the victims’ pension, and the announcement on the inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane.

All of this suggests victims are very low down the priority list.

There is, though, still an opportunity for Northern Ireland to escape the grip of the past with a mechanism that delivers the truth.

The work of Operation Kenova, led by Jon Boutcher, is demonstrating that years on, evidence can still be uncovered.

But time is running out, and any broad-based consensus on a lasting legacy solution is being undermined by the Government’s unilateral approach and victims are being left in the dark.

The Secretary of State must change course and urgently establish a formal process of engagement with victims as he brings forward proposals on legacy that will deliver the truth to survivors, and allow society as a whole to move forward.

It is down to our generation of politicians to finally deliver that lasting legacy solution, with victims at its heart. Those scarred by the Troubles deserve no less.

‘There is no doubt the pain is compounded by decades of having to fight for the truth’