Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
MR TOM
ROBERTS AND
MR WILLIAM
SMITH
2 FEBRUARY 2005
Q20 Chairman: Is that right across the
civil service or just in sensitive areas?
Mr Smith: It is right across the
civil services.
Q21 Chairman: It is right across, it
is not in areas involving security?
Mr Smith: No, right across the
civil service, and also in the Armed Forces.
Q22 Chairman: Is that a stated civil
service policy?
Mr Smith: Yes.
Mr Roberts: I need to point out
that we would not go to the extreme and advocate, as Republicans
do, that former prisoners should be involved in the police service
because pragmatism tends to kick in there, we do realise that.
Chairman: I understand that. Mr Roy Beggs.
Q23 Mr Beggs: Good afternoon. Why did
EPIC decide to open the debate within loyalism about truth recovery
and why was the debate confined to being within loyalism rather
than a wider cross-community debate?
Mr Roberts: We do not claim to
speak for all of loyalism, we are talking about one particular
element within loyalism, so being quite modest in what we can
do we felt it was a starting point to look at our own constituency,
given the fragmentation within loyalism and even unionism for
that matter, I am sure you will all be aware of the difficulties
to get a gathering where loyalists and unionists in their entirety
would look at this problem, so we decided to make a modest start
and look at it from our own constituency.
Q24 Mr Beggs: So your report then would
have a restricted range of views even within loyalism.
Mr Roberts: Very much so, but
why we produced this interim report was that it became apparent
to us pretty quickly that the view within our constituency was
not unlike that within broader unionism and loyalism, in that
there is a resistance to any sort of truth process because one
of the primary reasons that we see is that republicans are using
this as a weapon to put the British Government and all its surrogates
in the dock if you like, they seem to want to make everybody else
accountable for their role in the conflict except themselves.
Q25 Mr Beggs: Were loyalist victims of
the Troubles involved in your discussions and debate?
Mr Roberts: It would depend on
what you would define as victims; there is a huge debate about
what constitutes a victim in Northern Ireland and I do agree that
there are degrees of victimhood, but I presume the victims that
you are talking about are what are termed innocent victims. A
lot of ex-prisoners who were involved in the conflict, much of
their motivation for becoming involved was that they were victims
in that their friends and relatives had been murdered or maimed
as a result of the Republican onslaught on our community.
Q26 Reverend Smyth: I took it from you
that you felt that the British Government may have something to
gain with a truth recovery process; what do you think they would
gain from it?
Mr Roberts: One of the obvious
things that the British Government could gain from it is that
it could possibly put to rest this endless stream of one-sided
inquiries that presently exist, so that would be the obvious benefit.
You have quite an expensive series of inquiries going on such
as Bloody Sunday and if people do not get the right answers, or
what they consider are the answers they want to hear out of Bloody
Sunday, it will have been a waste of time.
Q27 Reverend Smyth: Who do you think
has the most to gain from a truth inquiry?
Mr Smith: I would say the republicans.
Q28 Reverend Smyth: What are the main
reasons why you ultimately come out against a truth inquiry?
Mr Roberts: There are lots of
reasons which are tabulated in the document.
Q29 Reverend Smyth: Can we put them on
the record?
Mr Roberts: The conflict in a
sense is not over here; hopefully the main degree of the violent
conflict has drawn to a close but you have two irreconcilable
political ideologies in Northern Ireland and a truth recovery
process is liable, in our opinion, to do more harm than good if
it rekindles all the old hatreds and resentments of the past.
Certainly, we are aware of the plight of victims and would be
sympathetic to any measures that would be put in place to assuage
their suffering, bur we find that the more we probe into this
whole notion of truth recovery the more overwhelming it becomes
because there are so many different needs and, to me, it would
be difficult to find a concise answer to all of that.
Q30 Reverend Smyth: Are there any people
within your own constituency who you think would really want to
know what happened to loved ones and would like to see some disclosure
on these issues?
Mr Smith: The vast majority of
people we have met who are victims do not want it. A lot of people
live with their misery or their grief in their own way and they
do not want these big inquiries. I would like to say too that
although we are from one section of loyalism I would say that
the views expressed on it would probably be for the majority of
loyalism, that people do not want to go down this road.
Q31 Reverend Smyth: Is there underneath
a concern arising, for example from the so-called Bloody Sunday
inquiry, that they may not even get to the truth and you would
have half-truths flying around?
Mr Roberts: What came across in
our deliberations was that there was an agreement that republicans
seem to be driving some sort of process towards truth, and people
were asking the question if you have the likes of Gerry Adams
who, at this point in time, cannot even admit he was a member
of the IRA, then what truth are they talking about.
Q32 Chairman: I do not think he has gone
as far as to say he was never a member of the IRA; I keep asking
him when he left but he will not answer that question.
Mr Smith: The other thing too
is what is truth? That was one of the questions that we came up
with, what is truth? Whose truth is it? We do not see any benefits,
either of us here, and who is going to go into the dock and talk
about the wee man with the black bag over his head who was shot
by somebody on a lonely road? Who is going to come up and say
"I did that, this is why I did it"? People are not going
to say that.
Chairman: There are many problems. Mr
Iain Luke.
Q33 Mr Luke: I take it from your comments
then that you do not think there is any place for an official
truth recovery project in the efforts to reintegrate loyalist
ex-prisoners into society, and if there is it has to be balanced
on both sides of the community with the republicans being as truthful.
Mr Roberts: I do not see a direct
relation really between truth recovery and the reintegration of
prisoners; from the perspective of a truth recovery process I
think the question of reintegration needs to be addressed in isolation
from that.
Mr Smith: For only 25% of the
people who were killed in Northern Ireland were people convicted;
75% of murders remain unsolved, so why would perpetrators come
forward now.
Q34 Mr Luke: But surely the official
truth recovery project, if it worked properly, could remove some
of the barriers that you have already outlined that block not
only people like yourselves but your families from entering professions
like the civil service or the army; would that not be a positive
thing?
Mr Smith: But you have misconceptions
there, you are blaming the prisoners for all the people that were
killed in Northern Ireland; what I am saying to you is 75% of
murders in Northern Ireland are unsolved. In fact, the chief constable
is now forming a task force to try and get the people who have
escaped the law and who are now living and working with their
families. What is that going to do, especially with the size of
Northern Ireland where everybody knows Uncle Tom Cobleigh and
all? People are not going to do that, so you cannot blame the
prisoners for the whole of the people that were killed in the
conflict.
Chairman: Bill Tynan.
Q35 Mr Tynan: Thank you, chair, good
afternoon. Do you think that truth recovery would affect the families
or how do you think it would affect the families of loyalist ex-prisoners?
Mr Smith: We are talking about
the loyalist community, and there are people who have killed people
who were not caught. If they were to admit the things that they
did their whole family would suffer. There are only one and a
half million people in Northern Ireland and everybody in each
community knows everybody and for somebody to get up, having escaped
the law, who now has a family and a job—there is no way
they are going to say "I murdered two blokes 20 years ago",
especially with the discriminations that you have for the existing
ex-prisoners population. You imagine what would happen if there
was some guy who was working in a bank or working in a hospital
and he says "I murdered Joe Bloggs 20 years ago", he
would be out of work for a start, his family would be affected,
his kids would be affected, he would be on TV and the kids would
see him.
Q36 Mr Tynan: So you think that individuals
would not participate in admitting to crimes because to do so
could affect their families?
Mr Roberts: The best case scenario
that I could see personally at the moment is some sort of blanket
acknowledgement at an organisational level that they have caused
great harm or whatever, but on an individual level, as William
said, it would be very difficult in the society that we live in
for anybody to voluntarily expose their role in the conflict,
given the treatment of those who have involuntarily had their
role exposed.
Q37 Mr Tynan: In your opinion would the
truth recovery re-open old wounds?
Mr Smith: There is a train of
thought among some scholars etc that this type of recovery thing
actually does more damage and opens up wounds. As I say, you could
be living two streets away from a guy who gets up and says "I
murdered your brother 20 years ago", it is only going to
open up old wounds. In fact it will do more damage.
Mr Roberts: Within Northern Ireland
society there tend to be long memories because people are still
suffering for the sins of their grandfathers.
Q38 Chairman: It goes back further than
that.
Mr Smith: It goes back to about
1690 or something.
Q39 Mr Tynan: What impact would a truth
recovery process have on the children of ex-prisoners? How do
you see that impacting if there was a truth recovery and the children
then found out that their fathers had been specifically involved
in crimes which they might find abhorrent?
Mr Smith: Put yourself in the
position of an 18 year old or a 20 year old and your dad comes
up and says, "Yes, I murdered three people"; how would
you feel? Your total relationship would be affected. People are
not going to do that.
Mr Roberts: Again, if I use a
personal example, my children were both under the age of two when
I went to prison and they obviously had no influence on my day
to day actions, yet they are still restricted in certain facets
of their lives because I was in prison.
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