The release from jail of 400 loyalists and republicans on licence, many of them convicted killers, was always one of the most controversial and difficult-to-swallow aspects of the 1998 Belfast Agreement. It was a galling but arguably necessary price for paramilitary consent to any peace deal, as former Northern secretary Peter Hain argued on Wednesday in the Commons. It was accepted reluctantly by most parties and even by many victims' families as the price of peace, but never formally by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) even though its provisions included loyalist releases.
The deal left hanging the issue of the so-called on-the-runs (OTRs), although a formula to provide for them was clearly, by the same logic, a corollary of the deal. It was crucial to Sinn Féin, the party argued, to ensure support for the process from all IRA activists. And few Northern politicians can have been under any illusion that a deal was not eventually done, though, admittedly, few knew its precise form – not least because the silence on the issue from Sinn Féin – the dog that didn’t bark – clearly suggested it had been placated.
So there is something disingenuous about the chorus of righteous outrage emanating from unionist politicians, and notably First Minister Peter Robinson, with threats to resign, over the "shock" dismissal of Hyde Park bombing charges in London against John Downey. Much of the indignation is clearly an attempt ahead of local elections to capitalise on and refight the well-settled broader amnesty issue, a cornerstone of the agreement that underpins the powersharing Executive and which most of the DUP has implicitly, if grudgingly, now long accepted and internalised in practice.
The principle of an OTR deal should stand. Its repudiation by the British government, demanded by Robinson, would certainly be legally dubious and would also threaten to unravel the Belfast Agreement itself.
It is crucial to the credibility of future agreements that undertakings, albeit unpalatable, by any of the parties are honoured. But in criticising its form, the "letters of comfort" and "royal pardons", the secrecy on specifics of the bilateral deal with Sinn Féin, its apparently partisan nature in excluding loyalist OTRs, and particularly the ignoring of victims' rights to know how their loved-ones died, Mr Robinson and others, like Alliance's Minister for Justice David Ford, have a case to be answered.
The British government has behaved badly and in bad faith with the non-Sinn Féin parties to the Belfast Agreement. It must accept its responsibility to attempt to unpick the mess and restore confidence. Prime minister David Cameron's judicial inquiry may clarify who did and knew what, and when. And some of the victim issues remain to be addressed in the "dealing with the past" element of the Haass process which needs to be kickstarted all over again.
