Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160-179)
MR MARK
THOMPSON, MR
JOHN LOUGHRAN,
MS CLARA
REILLY, MR
TOM HOLLAND,
MR MIKE
RITCHIE AND
MS BERNICE
SWIFT
9 FEBRUARY 2005
Q160 Chairman: Let me just ask you one
question. I do not want to go into the rights and wrongs, that
is not what we are here for today, but when you say there are
people who are asking how their mothers and their grandmothers
were killed, we are not then talking about any combatants from
any side or any paramilitaries or anything else? Or are we?
Ms Reilly: Well, most of the ones
that we would be talking about would be people who had been shot
by the British Army in the early Seventies, or the RUC in the
early Seventies, where the families do not have any records as
such. They do not have inquest papers, they do not have ballistic
records, they do not have anything like that. It is amazing how
many families—
Q161 Chairman: Mothers and grandmothers?
Ms Reilly: Yes, very much so.
Q162 Chairman: Bloody Sunday aside, that
was a pretty rare occurrence, was it not?
Mr Thompson: Three hundred and
seventy-six people were killed by the British Army and the RUC.
Q163 Chairman: I did say, and I will
leave this subject in a minute, I do not want to get into this.
This is not what this inquiry is about. You just mentioned mothers
and grandmothers, who by implication had no part whatsoever in
the argument but were just sort of killed on the way?
Ms Reilly: Yes.
Q164 Chairman: There must be very few
of those?
Ms Reilly: Absolutely not.
Q165 Chairman: How many of them?
Mr Thompson: One hundred and ninety-one
civilians, 75 of them children, killed—
Q166 Chairman: Has no one provided any
explanation at all as to how those deaths occurred?
Mr Holland: I can give you an
example of a 76 year old over in Ardoyne who was killed in January
1973 walking down Ladborough Grove and she was shot there by the
British Army in the Old Park Road. The British Army put a statement
out right away saying they had shot an IRA gunman. It was not
until the next day that the British Army changed their statement
and said they had seen an IRA gunman stand beside this old woman
and they shot at him but they accidentally killed that woman.
That family had no recourse to any sort of justice or inquiry
in relation to that woman's death. It was just put down as an
accident of war, but that is a real case. That was Elizabeth McGreggor,
by the way.
Q167 Chairman: Okay. I just wanted to
be clear.
Mr Loughran: I think one of the
other cases often forgotten is the case of the New Lodge Six,
aside from Bloody Sunday, where you had six men basically who
were shot dead as a result of activity by the British Army, nothing
like what happened in Ardoyne. The policy of disinformation was
certainly that almost immediately they said that these men were
gunmen and their whole characters in some sense were tried to
be publicly discredited. I just want to finish on one of the key
points. What we have done as families and also as a community
is to begin to tell our story around that series of events on
that night. The report which was submitted to the Committee highlights
the very fact of the failure with the process of an effective
investigation. A lot of these things were not effectively investigated,
but what we have done is—and I think it is important in
the sense of acknowledgement and recognition—we can acknowledge
what happened, but we also began our own process to talk about
these things and we established the facts of what happened and
we got the eye-witness accounts. One of the other things, just
going back to what Clara said, the key thing is that the community
now knows what happened. We have a version of events that will
be challenged and I suppose the key point is that I do welcome
the opportunity to be here. At least people are aware that these
things happened. I am not being selective, I am talking right
across the board, and the key thing is that these are mothers,
fathers, brothers and sons.
Q168 Chairman: Okay. I asked because
it was the phrase "mothers and grandmothers" which got
to me, but we really do not want to go down that road at this
stage because that is for whatever inquiry comes to look at it.
Mr Ritchie: Can I just come back
quickly to Mr Beggs's question about the Strategy?
Q169 Chairman: Mr Beggs has not finished,
so you certainly may.
Mr Ritchie: I think in a sense
what people get is that there is a willingness at long last to
resource victims' organisations. It is sad that it never happened.
Sometimes it is kind of a stand that it never happened before
and I think there is an appreciation of the fact that regardless
of the victims' organisation it will get resourced if it is a
legitimate organisation that has proper governance, and so on.
So I think that is positive. But I think there is a broader sense
in which, apart from resourcing community victims' organisations,
there will be a sense that the tendency is to direct mainstream
resources into mainstream ways of dealing with victims' issues
and that is probably wasting money. For example, at the victims'
centre over in the university, the Trauma Centre, it is a very
kind of top-down approach, which is maybe the way in which government
departments like to work, but there is a feeling that those resources
are not getting to the people who need them. The final thing I
would like to say just in relation to the Strategy is that there
is an unwillingness to deal with harder issues, such as the question
of truth, such as the question of information, and our experience
is that so many victims require information and once there is
state involvement then it becomes a bit tricky. Once you start
talking about truth, there is a desire to long-finger it. So I
think it is kind of a mixed thing, even on the question of resourcing.
It is very much short-term resourcing, rather than allowing organisations
to build up a credible strategic plan over the next five to 10
years. It is all about one or two years' resourcing and that does
not allow people to plan properly.
Q170 Chairman: As we said to the previous
witnesses, that is the way government works. No one is going to
change that. Can I just get one thing on the record. We have got
a list of everyone who has had government funding. We have got
Relatives for Justice nearly £800,000, we have Firinne £248,000,
the Ardoyne Commemoration Project £9,000, but we have nothing
for Coiste n-Iarchimi.
Mr Ritchie: One of the difficulties
is that we do not actually fit under the victims' strategy because
we are an ex-prisoners group, but we have received Peace Two funding.
Q171 Chairman: You have received Peace
Two funding?
Mr Ritchie: Yes, but that is not
from government.
Mr Thompson: £800,000 is
not the figure that we have received.
Q172 Chairman: No £778,497?
Mr Thompson: No, it is just over
a couple of hundred thousand pounds. It is the wrong figure.
Ms Swift: The figure you have
for me is also incorrect.
Q173 Chairman: Well, that is interesting.
I am very glad I asked the question.
Mr Thompson: It is completely
wrong.
Ms Swift: I wish I did receive
that amount.
Q174 Chairman: How much have you had?
Ms Swift: It would not be anywhere
near that. The Community Relations Council will be something in
the region of £40,000 to £50,000 and the Community Foundation
for Northern Ireland would be just over £70,000.
Mr Thompson: What we will do is
furnish the Committee with the exact amount of funding, because
I am very concerned about this.
Q175 Chairman: Well, this is a Parliamentary
answer and if it is wrong I am concerned.
Mr Thompson: It is completely
wrong.
Q176 Chairman: What about the Ardoyne
Commemoration Project?
Mr Holland: I have not got the
figures with me, but is it £9,000 you had?
Q177 Chairman: £9,800.
Mr Holland: I would question that,
but I will come back to you. I could give you a more accurate
answer later, but I would question that.
Chairman: We need to get these things
right.
Q178 Mr Beggs: We are leading into my
next question anyhow. What is the risk if official victim strategies
focus on service delivery and ignore issues of truth, justice
and acknowledgement?
Mr Ritchie: In some sense these
questions follow on so logically, as with Mr Pound. I think that
is the issue. It is important that the services deliver, but one
of the things that informed our discussion around the Eolas document
was looking at international practice and increasingly you find
that unless you have some process which tries to deal with unresolved
issues, then those unresolved issues will come back and hit you
a bit later down the line. That was really our kind of commitment,
that if we want to see Ireland (north and south) moving forward
in a peaceful way, some mechanism has to be found whereby all
those people who really feel marginalised because of their victimisation
during the conflict, unless they feel that their story has been
told and there is some kind of official process which deals with
all those cases then we feel that those unresolved cases will
just pass on the trauma down the generations. So it is very important
in terms of some kind of a victim strategy that this question
is looked at, and of course we feel that it should be somebody
other than the NIO, somebody independent of that.
Q179 Mr Beggs: Are there any pressing
service needs affecting victims in the nationalist and republican
communities which need to be addressed?
Mr Thompson: I think in general
throughout the sector the same issues in terms of service delivery
that would affect the people in our community would also affect
people in the Unionist and loyalist community. I think on the
question of resources—and I am concerned about the grossly
exaggerated figure that we have received—I think it has
been under-funded. I think the CRC in its last tranche of funding
had applications which exceeded three times the amount they had
to divide out amongst the various communities. The issues again
can be sector issues that are top-heavy. We think that the statutory
bodies need to work in partnership on the ground with the communities
and the groups, delivering service provision. They need to work
with them. They are regulated. They need to work in partnership,
and we need the network for resources as well. There are so many
competing needs in terms of the small pot that is available to
service the entire sector. So there also needs to be the building
of networks as well. I think that on the issue of service delivery
and the needs, as I say, you can network on this. It is when you
get into the difficult stuff of the contested area about causes,
nature and extent of conflict and people bereaved, traumatised
and injured that you will find that is where the division is,
and that is the tendency that leads to the long-fingering of this
issue.
Mr Beggs: Thank you.
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