Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-106)

MS JO DOVER

2 FEBRUARY 2005

  Q100 Mr Pound: Have you ever thought of publishing any of the shared experiences?

  Ms Dover: We are in the process of trying to get funding to produce an archive of experiences where people can share their stories, and they are then going to be published, maybe in a book or maybe a website, maybe an exhibition, but that was certainly a need that was identified and a recommendation in our report that that kind of public sharing is also very useful. It can be anonymous, people do not have to be identified in that, but that kind of thing has definitely been expressed from people we work with, that they would like other people to hear about it, not just in that small story-telling environment, and that is why we also put in the paper about an archive of experiences, a public place—not a truth process but a place where people can say this is what happened to me and they can read other people's stories as well. I think for some people writing it might be really cathartic, for others it might be difficult. Some of it is about how people express themselves and so, yes, we are looking at people being able to tell their story in whatever format that is, so when we are trying to get our funding to produce an archive of experiences, it may be that people write poetry, draw pictures, have photographs, use memorabilia, record it, make a song, whatever way they can express themselves is really important, it is not necessarily just about a book or something like that, but I think we are going to look at trying to get people to talk in whatever format they can.

  Mr Pound: Thanks very much indeed. That question was absolutely nothing whatever to do with our inquiry and I am very, very grateful for your answer. I apologise to the chairman for asking it, thank you very much indeed.

  Q101 Mr Luke: Jo, in earlier questions you stressed the point of the importance of a trust in the process of reconciliation; how important do you believe truth and justice is to the victims in this process?

  Ms Dover: I think, again, it is one of those individual things and I can only speak generally. One of the things that we found really interesting in our research—and possibly it might have been about the people we actually interviewed—was that justice in terms of criminal justice did not come out as a really major issue. I think that is probably more about some of the people who have been in some kind of criminal justice system that had happened, and for others there was none. I know, for example, in the case of Warrington nobody was ever prosecuted for it and my sense of where people are with that is that there is not any calling for that person to be found at this stage, so I think it is an individual need. When something awful happens, people often want to know why and I think sometimes that can be gained by hearing exactly what happened in your instance. I also think again, when I go back to the story-telling, one of the things that is really important about story-telling is when you have somebody who can talk about it from the former combatant point of view about why they got involved, what they did or how their actions played out, that can be really beneficial for someone in trying to just understand why their incident may have come about. It might not be the direct person or even the direct group responsible, but it gives them an indication of sort of looking at it from a human perspective. So I think for some people that is their burning need, for some people they want to go back to the place where it happened, talk to the people involved and know exactly what went on. Some people will do that in a really underground, very quiet way, and some people will want to do that in a very public way. It is very difficult to give a concrete answer because it is very personal for people in terms of where they are at, whether they feel some kind of justice has been done or not. Sometimes some of the people we work with have felt that there is a need for some kind of reparation; that does not necessarily mean somebody being prosecuted but some kind of reparation for what happened; it can be an acknowledgement from one side, an apology or those kinds of things.

  Q102 Mr Luke: How effective do you think the criminal justice system has been at discovering the truth or uncovering the truth and obtaining justice for the victims of the conflict?

  Ms Dover: For some people that may have been successful and for others it probably was not, It is known that there are 1,800 unsolved murders; that is where people died, and I am wondering how many unsolved crimes there are where people were injured but not killed. There must be thousands, so I am sure that people generally probably do not feel that it has been very successful, but for some people it might have been and then of course with the Good Friday Agreement the release of prisoners has been very contentious for a lot of victims in terms of feeling, you know, has justice been done because the person has been released? There is also some lack of understanding as to why and how that came about, but for people over here that may well have been around not being connected to the decision-making process.

  Q103 Mr Luke: You made that point about the prisoners being released, would you agree then that people often talk about the rights of defendants and indeed the prisoners on release, but maybe there is an imbalance in that people do not concentrate enough on the rights of the victims in this context?

  Ms Dover: I think that is not just in relation to the Troubles, I think that is a general thing in relation to victims and offenders. This is a personal view, but possibly my organisation may agree, in terms of victims of crime, a lot of money, time and effort is spent on the rehabilitation of offenders, people are given a lot of time in terms of the court time, maybe a prison sentence and then rehabilitation afterwards, but there is no parallel process for victims, there is not as much time, effort and money spent on the rehabilitation of victims back into society, if you like. I am not suggesting I know how that happens, but certainly there is an imbalance in the time, money and effort spent in supporting people and a lot of victim support is done by voluntary organisations. I do not know if that answers your question or gives you another dilemma.

  Mr Luke: Thank you, Jo, thank you chair.

  Q104 Chairman: How about other mechanisms like public inquiries, official investigations? Do you think they help as a means of uncovering the truth?

  Ms Dover: They probably do in certain circumstances, but I think what needs to be weighed up is the benefits to the amount of people for those kinds of inquiries and maybe evaluating whether there are other mechanisms that could be used to be of more benefit to more people. There is a lot of criticism about the Bloody Sunday inquiry, for example, and how much money has been spent for a particular incident; I do not think we take a particular view on that, from our organisation's perspective it is about looking at what are the benefits of such inquiries in the longer term, not just for the people directly involved but where that fits in a peace process, for example.

  Q105 Chairman: Presumably the Bloody Sunday inquiry has not done much to help any victims in Great Britain. Do you think there is anything in particular that would benefit the people that you are set up to try and help, ie victims in Great Britain, is there any particular incident that you think might be served by having, not that sort but some sort of official inquiry?

  Ms Dover: At the moment I cannot think of one particular incident, but the way we would respond to that is that what is missing probably in relation to GB is an equality of treatment. I have heard some ex-soldiers say there is the Bloody Sunday inquiry but where is the inquiry into when the IRA did this to us? You could have inquiry after inquiry for every single incident, so I think for me that is where some of the useful processes are something like a truth process—which is not going to deal with every single thing—story-telling processes and archived experiences, there are lots of different approaches that could be used. In the nature of inquiries it needs to be coming from people who have been affected, that that is what they want, and maybe that has not come from people in Great Britain yet, or maybe it has been asked for and been ignored, I do not profess to know everything about all of those things. There is certainly a feeling that such a lot of money is spent on one incident; people do not necessarily feel that the incident does not warrant having an inquiry, but certainly the amount of money that has been spent and then the allocation of only £500,000 to deal with victims in Great Britain via us, when we are only a small organisation with only two of us on a project—there are a large number of people affected here: 350,000 soldiers served in Northern Ireland, over 2,000 people were injured, a sixth of the people killed were from here, so I think it is about how that balances really. I do not know if that answers your question.

  Q106 Chairman: Thank you very much indeed, it has been very helpful and nice that we were able to listen to your evidence at last; renewed apologies about last week, but it has got you down to the big city twice.

  Ms Dover: We are really pleased to have been asked, firstly, and with the press release that was sent out there was a bit of scepticism about whether people from here would be listened to, and we have actually gone back and said they are listening to us, we are going to give evidence, please submit something, so I think you may get some more submissions.

  Chairman: We have certainly listened; thank you very much for coming. The Committee is adjourned.





 
previous page contents next page

House of Commons home page Parliament home page House of Lords home page search page enquiries index

© Parliamentary copyright 2005
Prepared 14 April 2005