NOW here is a sorry state of affairs. At least 350 families are preparing to go to the courts in Northern Ireland just to get the truth about their murdered relatives. They are civilians. And they represent decades of pain caused by hundreds of senseless killings during the Troubles.
But it isn’t the thought of convictions and compensation that keeps most of them going. They simply want to know whether the British State played a role in the death of their loved ones. They all allege collusion. And they have never been given the answers they deserve.
Such is the utter failure of Westminster and Stormont to help these families that they are now turning to the courts in record numbers. In their view, Belfast High Court is the closest imitation of a “truth-recovery mechanism” they will ever see during their lifetime.
It is a hard to think of a more damning indictment than that of the politicians who are supposed to represent them.
“This action is a last resort after every other avenue has been closed to us,” said Margaret Urwin of Justice for the Forgotten as relatives of the Dublin-Monaghan victims announced last week that they would become the latest group to sue the British Government on the grounds of collusion.
The decision came after more than a decade of Westminster’s refusal to open its files on the worst atrocity of the Troubles, including its shunning of two unanimous Dáil motions calling on it to do so. Ms Urwin added: “It really is the last chance saloon.”
To be clear: All these claims will be listed as civil actions for “damages” against the British authorities – compensation claims. But their real motivation is the access to Whitehall files that such claims could allow. The Belfast-based solicitors who represent the vast majority of the bereaved families, Kevin Winters and Paddy Murray, agree on that.
And they anticipate a war of attrition ahead; lengthy legal battles over access to documents and against government requests for secret court hearings on the grounds of “national security”. They are only speculating at this stage, but such a move 15 years after the war ended should be seen as nothing more than an attempt to cover up the truth.
Victims’ need to seek truth through the courts has been sharpened by the failure of the Haass talks, according to the Pat Finucane Centre.
Faith in politicians was then damaged further last month when Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers said too much focus is being put on killings in which the State was involved. That was a telling comment.
It revealed that a once-popular view of the Troubles remains commonplace today at the highest echelons of the British State. According to such a view, Britain was the arbiter of a bitter war, a neutral authority whose only actions were taken to prevent two warring tribes from murdering one another.
That is a myth.
It was Ulster Defence Regiment members who helped paramilitaries plant a bomb inside the Miami Showband tour bus on July 31, 1975. They then shot three of the group’s members dead when their explosives detonated prematurely.
That was two years after the Ministry of Defence knew that up to 15 per cent of the regiment’s ranks had paramilitary links. But rather than close the unit down, ministers let it expand.
It was four serving Royal Ulster Constabulary policemen – agents of the British State – who hatched an evil plot to put a nail bomb outside Armagh’s Rock Bar and murder its inhabitants on June 5, 1976. (Their lives were only spared because the device malfunctioned.)
It was also RUC officers who failed to prevent paramilitaries planting a deadly bomb outside the Step Inn two months later despite having reliable intelligence of the plot 10 days before two civilians were killed when the bomb exploded.
The list goes on.
Three decades of bloody conflict left the British State with dirty hands. It is hard to imagine how that could have been avoided in such a dirty war.
But it is deeply troubling that the false view of Britain as arbiter seems pregnant in Ms Villiers’ attitude to the collapse of the Haass talks. Standing back on this side of the Irish Sea, she spoke of her “disappointment” as the two tribes, now warring on the battleground of politics, failed to come together yet again.
It is time to realise that Britain has an interest in such stalling.
This is not about score-settling and fault-finding. It is about the utterly iniquitous situation that has arisen, in which hundreds of scarred families are being forced through the judicial system to get answers. They deserve better than that.
They deserve better than being forced into a dystopic battle between weak individuals and a mighty State that has a clear interest in keeping its dirty secrets out of public view.
They deserve better than a Historical Enquiries Team that was said to be using “less rigour” in its investigation of deaths involving the British State in a scathing report from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary last year.
They deserve better than the Northern Ireland Office’s pitiful response to questions from this newspaper this week.
They deserve at least the same urgency that was shown after it emerged that 230 republicans had received “letters of comfort”. An urgent investigation into the scandal was launched immediately and is now on-going.
Compare that to the Government’s response to the shocking allegations raised in Anne Cadwallader’s forensically researched book Lethal Allies. It reported deep links between British State agents and a gang of loyalist killers connected to more than 120 murders.
But more than seven months after publication, they are still waiting for a response from Ms Villiers’ office and have had repeated meeting requests rebuffed.
Instead, the quest for truth is now a desperate race against time for many, as either they themselves or the people who hold answers to their questions reach old age.
It is unfortunate that Britain and Ireland’s newfound friendship has been of little value to those who suffered most from the two countries’ violent past.
As the mayor of Monaghan, Seán Conlon, said to a chorus of applause last weekend as wreaths were laid to the 34 people who died in Dublin-Monaghan, improved Anglo-Irish relations will “count for very, very little indeed” until those people get the answers they deserve.
