Hyde Park bomb families and a new mockery of justice
They are refused legal aid to bring prosecution
VICTIMS of the IRA Hyde Park bomb attack have been refused legal aid to fund a private prosecution against the chief suspect.
John Downey, 64, is accused of murdering four soldiers and injuring 31 in the July 1982 nail bomb blast – one of the terror group’s most notorious mainland atrocities.
The case against him collapsed following a catalogue of appalling blunders by police and prosecutors.
Now in a ruling that has sparked outrage, the Legal Aid Agency threw out the families’ bid for £150,000 of taxpayers’ money to fund their own fight for justice.
It claimed this was not in the public interest – and suggested the families should go cap in hand to the Army or military charities for financial backing.
The decision is in stark contrast to the £400,000-plus in legal aid granted to the killers of 16-year- old schoolgirl Becky Watts. Nathan Matthews was jailed for life and his girlfriend Shauna Hoare was given 17 years for manslaughter.
It is a fresh blow for the Hyde Park families, who have been denied justice for 34 years.
The attack killed four members of the Royal Household Cavalry on their way to a Changing of the Guard ceremony. Seven horses also died but another, Sefton, survived and became a national hero.
A nail bomb containing 25lbs of explosives was hidden in a blue Morris Marina car and detonated by remote control as the troopers rode past. Lance Corporal Jeffery Young, 19, was killed alongside Squadron Quarter- master Corporal Roy Bright, 36, Lieutenant Anthony Daly, 23, and Trooper Simon Tipper, 19.
Only one person, Gilbert McNamee, was jailed over the bombing but that conviction was later quashed.
Downey, from Donegal, was due to stand trial at the Old Bailey in February 2014. But the convicted IRA terrorist was told he would not face prosecution because he mistakenly received a ‘ comfort letter’ – dubbed a ‘get-out-of-jailfree card’ – sent to 187 on-the-run paramilitary suspects saying they were not wanted by police.
The letters were issued after a secret deal between members of Tony Blair’s government and IRA leaders under the Good Friday Agreement of 1999. The existence of the letters only emerged when Downey’s trial collapsed.
Lady Justice Hallett, who carried out an inquiry after a blunder became public, described the sending of the letters as a ‘catastrophic error’.
Sarah Young, the daughter of L/Cpl Young, is spearheading the push for the private prosecution. She applied for l egal aid to help fund the case last August with the full backing of all the victims’ families.
Miss Young, 38, recalled: ‘ The last vision I ever had of my dad was he turned to me and smiled as he went through the door. I can
‘We are left devastated’
see the men, the soldiers, running back into the barracks, shouting.’
She added: ‘Once again the victims’ families are left devastated by our own Government.’
‘To suggest an Army charity could help fund a civil action is insulting and disgusting. To also say it is not in the public interest is ludicrous, just crazy.’
Lawyers acting for Miss Young, 38, from South Wales, were today set to l aunch a request f or judicial review of the decision to refuse legal aid. Matthew Jury, of law firm McCue and Partners, said: ‘Week after week, we read of terrorists being granted amnesties, released on bail and being paid compensation by the State.
‘Yet, when an innocent victim who, as a small child, witnessed her father’s death at the hands of a terrorist organization asks for help to prosecute his killer, the State turns its back.’
The Commons Northern Ireland Affairs Committee has recommended that the authorities should help victims of terrorist attacks bring civil actions where there has been no prosecution. Mark Tipper, older brother of vic- tim Trooper Tipper, said: ‘Whenever a terrorist atrocity happens we are told time and again the government will not rest until justice has been dealt.
‘Yet in this case, when we the families were told there was sufficient evidence, the accused walked free because of a government error. This is not about money ... This is only about justice.’
A Legal Aid Agency spokesman said: ‘Legal aid can only be granted where the case meets the statutory requirements for funding which have been set in law.’
IT was former US president Franklin D Roosevelt who said that government should not be an ‘alien power’ and that the ‘ultimate rulers’ are the voters.
That s i mple s t atement reflects values most of us hold dear and indeed which many in the Western world rarely question: often we take democracy and our power to influence politicians for granted.
But the temptation to dismiss Roosevelt’s warning as a commonplace of political textbooks should be resisted.
The ‘alien power’ in Scotland today comes in the form of the ‘named person’ policy, perhaps one of the most sinister and intrusive measures ever to be implemented by a democratic government.
Under the guise of boosting children’s welfare by ensuring their development is properly monitored and recorded, it imposes so-called named persons or state guardians on every child in Scotland.
A vast network of officials – chiefly health visitors and headteachers – is being mustered to oversee child progress up to the age of 18, with powers to snoop on family life in almost every conceivable way.
Ministers insist they are providing unobtrusive (and indeed unasked-for) parental backup, an entirely benign form of support for all families, to guard against neglect and abuse.
Yet evidence is accumulating on a near-daily basis of the true intent of this enterprise and its totalitarian ambition. Despite a clamour of objection, our ‘rulers’ plough on regardless.
Today, five Supreme Court judges will begin considering the latest appeal against the moves, following an earlier judicial review and a failed appeal at the Court of Session in Edinburgh.
Lord Pentland, who rejected the initial legal bid to halt the named persons policy, dismissed the argument that it fell foul of European human rights law but admitted: ‘Nothing is known about the practical impact of the new system on any individuals.’
It was a statement that was intended as a vindication of the legality of the policy but in fact it summed up the main objection to it: this scheme is being introduced even though no one knows what its ‘practical impact’ will be.
The assumption that l i es behind named persons is that the state’s record on child protection is beyond question.
But all available evidence points to the exact opposite being the case, with social workers routinely failing to rescue children from the clutches of abusers and drug addicts.
This is the same state, after all, that has decreed junkies can be effective parents and that it would be wrong to deny them the right to look after their children.
The Scottish Government has just launched a review of the entire system of child protection in Scotland, following a string of scandals where children fell victim to abusive parents who were supposedly on the radar of the local authority’s social work department.
The timing of this overhaul is deeply telling: here is a state prepared to tell you how to look after your children while simultaneously conceding it has failed thousands of them.
Disturbing
Indeed, one of Scotland’s first named persons, appointed in a trial run of the scheme, was recently found guilty of child sex offences.
Dayna Dickson-Boath, who taught in Elgin, Moray, was struck off the teaching register for sharing fantasies about abusing youngsters. Scotland’s teaching watchdog also recommended she be placed on a list of persons unfit to work with children in any capacity.
In addition, the Scottish Government’s statutory inquiry into institutional child abuse is hardly a ringing endorsement of the state as ‘ corporate parent’ – but none of these profoundly disturbing ironies has proved fatal for the named persons project.
If the Supreme Court judges decide the scheme is lawful, named persons will be assigned to all children from August.
Troublingly, even those in the womb will be allocated one, proving there is no refuge from the reach of the state guardians. The scale of this disturbing project – and the scope of the guardians’ powers – are mind-boggling.
Pivotal to the smooth operation of the system is the free flow of personal information between public bodies. The named person can demand sensitive personal information, for example, from the NHS if they believe the circumstances demand it.
Named persons must judge each youngster’s well-being against a Scottish Government checklist that includes indicators such as a pupil needing fillings, being disruptive in class or failing to carry out voluntary work.
An investigation involving social workers could follow if a youngster is not ‘generally optimistic’, fails to display ‘positive attitudes to others’ sexuality’ or ends up injured playing sport.
The private family details of every Scots child are to be held on a giant government database, inevitably leaving them at risk of cyber-attack.
The results of tests designed to tease out information about children’s family lives will be stored on SEEMiS, a databank run by local authorities.
Teachers are being trained in how to transfer the answers on to SEEMiS (in between less pressing matters such as teaching pupils how to read, write and count).
Ominously, the system was hit by a cyber attack l ast December that knocked out some of its functions for a month.
Not only is the state intent on snooping on your family – it may well lose all the precious information it harvests.
Even taxi drivers have been ordered to spy on child passengers and report conversations to their state guardians – once a f avoured i ntell i gence - gathering method in former Soviet states.
The scheme so far has cost around £61million, according to campaigners who raised the legal challenge. And yet there are major logistical questions over how on earth it can ever be implemented.
Councils are threatening to shut schools and send children home because of staff shortages brought on by the squeeze on public funds, while a record number of hospital operations are being cancelled.
And yet local government and the NHS are expected to provide the manpower for this absurd waste of resources.
Ultimately, named persons will be required for more than one million young people, around one-sixth of the Scottish population.
All of this suggests that the ‘ practical i mpact’ of this scheme in the short term – assuming judges decide it is lawful – is likely to be organisational chaos.
And yet the watchdog overseeing state guardians will be powerless to force councils to respond to parents’ concerns.
Intrusion
Scottish Government guidance reveals the many hoops families will be forced to jump through to complain about state intrusion.
They must go to the local council, health board or named person service first, and if they are unsatisfied with t he response, appeal to the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman (SPSO).
But even if the SPSO agrees with them, it can only make recommendations to organisations overseeing the state guardians, which they are free to ignore.
The Soviets prized such maze-like bureaucracy as a way of controlling the populace and reminding them of their duties to their ‘ultimate ruler’.
Often the sheer weight of the government apparatus was more than enough to crush the will of the ordinary citizen.
The mechanism to keep named persons in check is the sort of sham Soviet officials would have been proud to implement.
But it is also another example of the way in which families’ rights have been usurped by an administration that increasingly resembles the sort of ‘alien power’ Roosevelt identified as the greatest threat to democracy.