Court ban ‘will draw line under Troubles’
BORIS Johnson said ending all prosecutions linked to the Troubles will protect veterans and let Northern Ireland move forward.
The Prime Minister said a statute of limitations was a measured way to “draw a line” under the past.
But victims of the violence and some politicians attacked the plans – which apply equally to veterans, to ex-police officers and to IRA terrorists – as a “de facto amnesty”.
Mr Johnson said many terrorists effectively had been given an amnesty in 1998 by the Good Friday Agreement.
He told MPs yesterday: “There are many members of the armed services who continue to face the threat of vexatious prosecutions well into their 70s, 80s and later, and we’re finally bringing forward a solution... to draw a line under the Troubles.”
A truth and reconciliation-style body will help families with details about incidents involving their relatives.
Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis said in the Commons the policy was “the best way to help Northern Ireland move further along the road to reconciliation”.
But Ireland’s premier Micheal Martin said the plans were “wrong for many, many reasons”.
MEMBERS of the British Armed Forces who risk their lives for their country should be held in the highest esteem. Yet, in a shameful inversion of morality, too many veterans of the conflict in Northern Ireland have been subjected to a relentless, politically motivated campaign of judicial harassment. Instead of being honoured for their service, they are hounded by investigators and the courts. It is a disgraceful way to treat brave men, made all the worse by the institutional leniency displayed towards terrorists.
Under the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, which ended the Troubles after 30 years of violence, 500 of them were released early from prison, while another 300 were told by the British Government they would not be prosecuted. No such generosity has been shown to men like Dennis Hutchings, formerly of the Life Guards regiment, who is due on trial this October for a fatal shooting in 1974, though he has previously been cleared by two separate investigations and now, aged 80, is suffering from renal failure.
“They have dragged me through the dirt for six years,” says Hutchings. It has been estimated that over 230 other veterans’ cases are currently under investigation, though their only crime was to do their duty.
BUT now these ugly witch-hunts may soon be over. In a bold move yesterday, the Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis announced Government plans to introduce a statute of limitations for all cases relating to the Troubles, without exemptions. Effectively, there will no longer be any prosecutions of ex-soldiers or paramilitaries over allegations that arose before the 1998 Agreement.
This long overdue decision is a triumph for decency and dignity, removing a stain on Britain’s reputation for fairness. The Daily Express has also fought hard against the cowardly betrayal of the British veterans.
The Government’s scheme, which amounts to a pre-1998 amnesty, has not been universally welcomed. From both sides of the divide, victims’ groups have reacted with outrage, arguing that they will now be denied the chance to seek justice.
Some of this response is understandable. But, given the extent of the lethal sectarianism that scarred Ulster for 30 years, there would never have been an easy solution. Brandon Lewis’s policy is not only the best compromise available but also a pragmatic recognition of reality.
The truth is that most of these prosecutions were always doomed to failure, since witnesses’ memories had faded with the passage of time, while political interference and extensive media coverage denied the chance of a fair trial. Only in
May, court cases against two former paratroopers, charged with killing an IRA man, collapsed due to the inadmissibility of evidence against them. The legal weaknesses of cases also explains why there have been only seven prosecutions of Republicans in the last 14 years.
SOME military veterans, like the Tory MP Johnny Mercer, oppose the Government’s plan because they feel it implies an equivalence between the British Army and the IRA. But the two forces are on completely different moral planes. In a dark hour, British troops were the heroic defenders of civilisation, whereas the gunmen maimed and murdered on an epic scale to impose their cruel ideology.
The IRA’s ultimate failure
the 1990s was a remarkable tribute to the defiance and determination of the British Army, for which it has never received the credit it deserved. This was no glorified policing operation but a struggle for survival.
At the peak of the Troubles in the 1970s, there were 21,000 British troops in Ulster, and altogether 1,441 of them lost their lives in the conflict. Up against an implacable foe, the Army was engaged in an extended, often savage guerrilla war that required its own brand of ruthlessness for success, such as the use of double agents, black propaganda, and secret collusion with loyalist paramilitaries, which is why it has been so absurd to attempt judicial prosecutions as if bombed-out Belfast was the same as Bristol.
At heart much of the agitation to put ex-soldiers in the dock was really driven not by the desire for justice, but the politicised quest for vengeance. Having suffered strategic defeat in the war, Republicans used this legal assault to beat the British Government and whip up a renewed sense of grievance among their followers. By drawing a line under the Troubles, Brandon Lewis has broken this weapon, reinforced the peace process, and protected our valiant warriors.
‘This long overdue decision is a triumph for decency and dignity’