Dannatt questioned over Troubles death

Our Armed Forces should not have to pay for peace in Northern Ireland – it’s time to leave veterans alone

The former head of the Army was questioned by police over the death of a paramilitary gunman during the Troubles more than 45 years ago, he reveals today. Writing in today’s Daily Telegraph, Gen Sir Lord Dannatt disclosed for the first time that investigators quizzed him in the hours before his official retirement as Chief of the General Staff. His admission will fuel growing calls for former soldiers to be protected from prosecution over deaths in Northern Ireland.

After the shameful investigations into allegations of misconduct by the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, one might have thought that the appetite for further investigations into the conduct of members of the Armed Forces in other conflicts might have diminished. Not so. Attention has now returned to Northern Ireland.

As Field Marshal the Lord Bramall wrote in this newspaper, the 2010 Saville report should have been the end of Bloody Sunday. After it, David Cameron apologised for the actions of a very small number of soldiers and the residents of Londonderry seemed to accept that apology. But now the case of Sergeant “O”, one of those who gave evidence to Lord Saville, has become prominent – eight years after the inquiry and some 46 years after the incident itself. There is a horrible suspicion among veterans that the non-self-incriminatory basis on which they gave evidence to Saville has been breached, and that some soldiers now stand liable for further investigation and in fear of a knock on the door.

I, too, have had the knock. On my last day as Chief of the General Staff, on August 28 2009, the final appointment in my diary before I left the MOD for the last time in uniform was with two investigators from the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s (PSNI) Historical Enquiries Team. They had travelled from the Province to London to quiz me about the killing of a young man in Belfast some 36 years before. In as polite a way as possible I explained that if the soldier standing next to you has just been shot dead, that might just explain a return of fire from my soldiers. Terrorists must accept the consequences of their actions – as the military and civil police concluded at the time.

There are troubling issues with all these cases. First, while the Army kept extremely good operational records, the terrorists did not. This makes a very uneven playing field on which to conduct retrospective investigations.

Second, all allegations were investigated by service and civil police at the time, which begs the question why, 30 or 40 years later, revisiting whatever evidence may still exist is likely to bring any greater clarity. Third, of the 2,547 cases referred to the new PSNI Legacy Investigation Board, 2,265 are deemed to be terrorist cases and only 282 – about 10 per cent – are deemed to be British Army/royal Ulster Constabulary cases.

The reality is that 90 per cent of killings by Nationalist and Loyalist terrorists were murder by any description of the word, while the 10 per cent attributable to the security forces were deaths brought about by troops and policemen doing their lawful duty. Finally, while more than 500 prisoners convicted of terrorist offences were released on licence as part of the Belfast Agreement, another 365 Royal Pardons were handed down over the last 35 years; and while over 300 “On the Run” letters were issued, just four servicemen were convicted for murder while another 10 were prosecuted and acquitted. Does this not speak to the integrity of the Army?

The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Karen Bradley, has launched an open consultation, “Addressing the Legacy of Northern Ireland’s Past”. But it is flawed, in that it has precluded the introduction of a statute of limitations, ending these historic investigations. The Army is now caught in the crossfire between the Sinn Féin nationalist agenda and the DUP’S insistence on bringing predominantly nationalist terrorists to justice.

But the British Army is a national institution that should be regulated under the authority of the Westminster Parliament. To many British soldiers fighting in the Province, it felt like a war zone, although the IRA insurgency was never branded as such. The peace process has brought better times but that peace cannot be at the expense of soldiers’ lives ruined.

Soldiers understand Von Clausewitz’s dictum that “war is but a continuation of politics by other means”. But perhaps Miss Bradley should reflect on the reverse: a peace process should not be a continuation of war by other means. The Nationalist agenda to divorce Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom is as alive today as it was throughout the 38 years of the Troubles.

General Sir Lord Dannatt was Chief of the General Staff from 2006-2009