Sir, – That a journalist should argue against seeking the truth is strange. Yet this is what Chris Ryder did, while also criticising bereaved families who wish to know more about the deaths of their relatives ("Picking over the past in Northern Ireland is a waste of time and money", Opinion & Analysis, November 14th).
Currently, a small minority of families in the North have at least a measure of truth, thanks to Police Ombudsman’s reports, through investigations carried out by the now-defunct Historical Enquiries Team (HET) or through the diligent inquiries of a small number of victims’ relatives, researchers and journalists.
In some cases, those inquiries have uncovered shocking facts on state collusion, or direct intervention, in both republican and loyalist paramilitary activity, such as the Police Ombudsman’s report into the Louginisland killings or the HET’s into the Glenanne series of murders.
We await the findings of the inquiry under Jon Boutcher, the chief constable of Bedfordshire Police, into claims that a British military agent within the IRA, Stakeknife, colluded with his military handlers in multiple murder.
Many families, however, have not even been offered inquiries, which is in itself a grave injustice.
This piecemeal approach to the past is causing bereaved families immense pain that they either suffer in silence or alleviate somewhat by public campaigning.
Those who choose to campaign should not be characterised, as they are by Chris Ryder, as being at the top of a self-defining hierarchy. Is he suggesting that, because not all victims wish to find out more, those who do should sit on their hands?
The Stormont Agreement between all the Northern parties now offers all families the same right to truth recovery, wherever possible – although it is being held back by London’s demand to censor anything it wishes on grounds of “national security”.
The proposed Historical Investigations Unit and Independent Commission for Information Retrieval would offer all families different channels for seeking truth should they choose to avail of them.
Chris Ryder seems to suggest also that those of us working to resolve legacy issues are responsible for “bedevilling” British-Irish relationships and challenging reconciliation between communities who interpret the conflict very widely.
Could it be, however, that it is our collective failure to address those issues that is preventing reconciliation? Will it ever be possible to build peace if we resolutely fail to address the past?
He points, rightly, to the corrosive effect this failure is having on confidence in new policing arrangements. The failure by the PSNI to release files certainly makes it look as they have something to hide. But he fails to follow through by suggesting remedies other than a self-imposed code of silence.
He calls the independence of the judiciary into question while failing to note that Lord Chief Justice Sir Dermot Morgan had no option but to intervene because of legal obligations imposed on him – and on the British government – under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Rightly, Chris Ryder says the past cannot be reshaped – but it can be better understood by all sides in the conflict to prevent any recurrence.
As for his claim that public money spent this way would be wasted, the truth may never be simple and rarely plain but it certainly exists. Covering it up is what is costing money. Where is the cap on military spending? Why not spend it instead on copper-fastening peace?
He contrasts the agendas of republicans, loyalists and governments – but leaves out the agenda of those who suffered the most as the result of conflict, the victims’ families and the grievously injured. Surely it is their lead we must follow, not that of the paramilitaries.
Advocating that “all post-conflict proceedings” be halted and the files sealed is nihilistic and impossible under law. The simple passage of time does not make criminal acts lawful. What lesson are we teaching the young if we show them that, if you can hide your crimes for long enough, you can avoid accountability?
We musts not jettison the bedrock of civilised society, that no-one is above the law and the law must be equally applied to everyone regardless of status.
Arguing that unspecified historians be selected to tell us the truth at an unspecified time is equally wrongheaded. Show me the unbiased historian. We all, without exception, carry the heavy baggage of the past on our shoulders.
Throughout the peace process, there have been prophets of doom arguing that disaster is just around the corner. So far, it hasn’t proved so. Victims’ families deserve, and indeed have the right to be offered, a fair attempt to find the truth. – Yours, etc,
ANNE CADWALLADER,
Case Worker,
The Pat Finucane Centre,
Armagh.