‘Cabinet needs to stand firm and call time on one-sided witch-hunt’

Twenty years after the historic Peace Agreement, the IRA and their friends in Sinn Fein want to revisit the Troubles in Northern Ireland. They’ve always wanted British troops investigated for their involvement in peacekeeping operations. It now looks as if the Cabinet has gone wobbly on key proposals to bring this vindictive process to a halt through a statute of limitations. This is a serious mistake.

Many of these allegations relate to events that took place more than 40 years ago or even longer. Nobody in their right mind would have suggested in the Nineties that we reopen allegations of misconduct by British or American troops on D-day or in the battle of Normandy. Who can now be precise about what they may have seen or heard on a dark, rain-swept night in West Belfast in 1971 or 1972? How could any judicial proceedings that might flow from an investigation

‘If the Province really is to find a lasting peace, at some stage a line has to be drawn’

possibly be fair to those involved, given lapses in time and memory?

This will be not just a witch-hunt but a one-sided witch-hunt. IRA units did not keep records or operate within regular command structures. It is our British servicemen and women who will be the victims – hundreds of them in well-deserved retirement now fearing an early morning knock on the door, a flight to Belfast and a swift journey to the cells. All because of a purely political decision and a craven surrender to Sinn Fein campaigning.

Most of these alleged incidents have already been investigated, some of them more than once. The soldiers concerned were told that their cases were completed, that they had nothing to answer for. Now they face being arrested out of the blue all over again.

We’ve seen similar investigations following the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns. I really fear for the effect on future Army recruitment as junior NCOS and officers see that all three of the Army’s major operations of the last 50 years are now being endlessly reopened, and that split-second decisions taken on the ground can be second-guessed years after the event.

We need to learn the lessons of the botched Iraq inquiry. Driven by the courts, fuelled by the worst kind of ambulance-chasing lawyers, thousands of demonstrably false claims were filed against entirely innocent soldiers. It took years for us to unravel it, with all the consequent worry for so many servicemen and women and their families.

Instead of pandering to Sinn Fein, there is a better way. First, there should be a clear distinction between our troops who were doing their duty to the state, and risking their lives to protect others, and the terrorists who were happy to blow up or maim entirely innocent civilians, Protestant and Catholic alike. It should be a sufficient defence for any soldier facing these allegations that they were carrying out what at the time they honestly believed to be their duty.

Second, allegations that have already been investigated should not be re-opened unless new evidence has emerged. And that means actual evidence, not vague conspiracy theories or suggestions of collusion.

Third, there ought to be some kind of time limit. That may well be painful for both communities in Northern Ireland where there are families still unsure how exactly their loved ones died. But if the Province really is to find a lasting peace, at some stage a line has to be drawn. Some would draw it at no earlier than the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998; you could go further back with a 30-year rule. But it certainly is time for the people of Northern Ireland to have their say about the merits or otherwise of a statute of limitations.

So the Government needs to think again. We should bring the current, quite arbitrary series of cases to a halt; insist on new evidence before any previously investigated incident is re-examined; and ask the people of Northern Ireland whether they would be prepared to support a cut-off in time. That would require a large amount of courage all round, for the politicians and more importantly for the families of those who died. But no more courage than that displayed by nearly a quarter of a million British troops who served there so bravely.