Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180-199)
MR MARK
THOMPSON, MR
JOHN LOUGHRAN,
MS CLARA
REILLY, MR
TOM HOLLAND,
MR MIKE
RITCHIE AND
MS BERNICE
SWIFT
9 FEBRUARY 2005
Q180 Chairman: I am very sorry I interrupted
you, Mr Beggs, but it is very important we get this on the record.
I am just going to come back to it for a minute. Can I just perhaps
deal with you because the Parliamentary answer says that between
April 1998 and March of last year you had £778,497. If you
are telling me categorically that is not true—
Mr Thompson: I can tell you that
is categorically not true.
Q181 Chairman: Even over all of six years?
The answer then says that in addition to that, victims' groups
may also apply for funding from any programme or scheme such as
district council, communities relations programme or European
Union funding—which of course applies to you. Have you had
any European Union funding?
Mr Thompson: Yes.
Q182 Chairman: —from which they
can satisfy the relatives, but this actually says "allocated
by the NIO". So if we could have a definite figure, I will
go straight back to the Minister because Parliament should not
be given inaccurate information. I am sure it is a cock-up and
not a conspiracy—
Mr Thompson: No. Absolutely.
Q183 Chairman: —because nine times
out of 10 it is. I have been there. I am asking you because you
are a more formal organisation. Are you easily able to do that,
you two?
Ms Swift: Yes, we are.
Mr Holland: Yes.
Q184 Chairman: And could you be in touch
as urgently as possible with our office so that we get the record
straight, because I think that is very important?
Ms Swift: Absolutely.
Chairman: Thank you so much. Now it is
Mr Iain Luke.
Q185 Mr Luke: Thank you, Chairman. First
of all, could I congratulate you on the rigorous approach you
have developed in your consultation paper on truth and justice,
the Eolas Project. You talk about in the conclusion obviously
asking for comment, and obviously it is a credit to you how you
have built through the seminars the discussion and brought this
paper together. Could you give us some idea of how that consultation
process on truth and justice has progressed?
Mr Ritchie: We have facilitated
a number of discussions within our own wider community because
in a sense there is an identified number of individuals who came
together and wanted to share it through nationalist and republican
communities in Belfast, in Derry and in Fermanagh, I think, and
in Dublin we have had public meetings. We in some senses feel
that the loyalist document, which I think you were considering
last week with Tom Roberts and William Smith, was in some senses
a response to that document and we are very, very pleased about
that, that it has kind of encouraged some reflection on the loyalist
side, and we hope to be able to have a kind of face to face discussion
with them in relation to that. I think broadly within the nationalist
and republican community there will be a deal of—and in
some sense I am kind of slightly disappointed—nervousness
about the issue. I think it has provoked, even at a political
level, Sinn Fein to consider its position in relation to truth,
and that has been a welcome development from our point of view.
There have been some senses in which many people fear that we
are taking an approach which is limited to the north, and particularly
in Dublin people would have said, "This is a conflict which
affected us too". We used a formulation initially invented
by the Healing Through Remembering Project, "the conflict
in and about Northern Ireland", which in some sense has tried
to expand the remit of the discussion. We feel that there are
issues across the island which need to be addressed in relation
to this. So that was a very strong reaction. There was also a
reaction that we are maybe letting the government off. For example,
republicans would say, "Yes, republicans were involved in
the conflict." They were quite happy to kind of acknowledge
their role in the conflict, and they have paid for their role
in the conflict if you think that 15,000 republicans and 10,000
loyalists have been through the jails then there has been an element
that people have been punished, if you like, by the state for
their involvement. When you look at the state's involvement in
the conflict, the figure we use is that republicans have spent
100,000 years in jail and state agents have spent 20 years in
jail. That is the kind of imbalance that republicans would look
at. When the state was responsible for 300 plus killings, what
is it, four people have been convicted and two of them, of course,
were accepted back into the Army. Their criminal record did not
stop them getting employment. So there has been the sense that
if we are looking for an accounting for people's role in the conflict
the British state has a lot more accounting to do than the republicans.
They (republicans) have been subjected to the law, if you like.
So there would be a kind of quite negative approach. What we are
trying to do is to encourage people to say, "This has to
be a victim-led approach. Victims of republican violence have
had more satisfaction than victims of state violence." Everybody's
pain is the same is what we are saying, whatever the ideological
approach behind people's involvement in the conflict. So we are
trying to encourage people to take a more holistic approach and
I think one of the key things—and we said this in a sense
to the loyalists—is that loyalists are very, very scared
about this individualising approach. They say actually in their
document, "We are the ones who will lose out," and this
is a very small place and everybody knows everybody else. If it
is like the South African model with people coming forward and
giving evidence and saying, "This is what I have done,"
people will never be able to move on. So what we have said very
strongly is that you need to have an institutional approach. It
is not about the individuals who are involved, and this is an
important thing as well for republicans. There is such a very
strong sense that people do not talk about their involvement because
that is the kind of habit of 30 years and army discipline, if
you like, in terms of the IRA. So people are unlikely to talk
about their individual involvement, but if we could have a process
whereby the organisations, the combatant organisations and institutions
were willing to take a role in saying, "This is what we did,
this is why we did it," in relation to their policies and
in relation to individual incidents, we feel that would protect
individuals but also provide societal healing. So it has been
a mixed response, but I think we have managed to provoke much
more of a realistic discussion about the issues.
Mr Thompson: Can I just add, within
the community there are informal mechanisms for families to deal
with issues. We have dealt with quite a number of people within
our own community who have been affected by republican violence
where they have come to us privately and they have asked us to
support them to engage the republican movement to find out what
happened. That process has happened privately. Sometimes it has
happened publicly. Recently the family of a young 15 year old
boy who was murdered in the early 1970s, Bernard Taggart, engaged
with us with the republican movement. They have received a lot
of information privately and publicly they have received an apology
from the IRA stating that it was wrong, that it should never have
happened and essentially setting the record straight for the family.
A couple of families in the loyalist community have come to us
as well who have felt isolated in their own community. They have
initiated a process as well with the UVF and it is being resolved.
Those are informal mechanisms. How do we formalise those in a
process which also includes the British Government? I think that
is the key to it. It kind of perplexes me at times when we talk
about issues of truth, justice and accountability and we have
issues in the loyalist community that are raised, and then we
have people in the Unionist community who publicly say, "Oh,
that shouldn't happen. We don't want this. The victims don't want
this," but in the next breath they say that there should
be an inquiry into this with the IRA, and that is when we get
into this kind of struggle. Either we believe there is a process
of legitimacy, being engaged in dealing with the past, or we do
not. I think we all believe there is and I think if we can begin
to kind of dismantle some of the prejudices that exist and see
them in the human context we will there begin to deal with it
because it is a very human issue and no matter who you meet in
the human context, whether they be a British soldier, a policeman,
a member of the IRA, or whatever, or a civilian, I think people
become disarmed when they see that human element and that need,
and it is a need for accountability. Do you know where the starting
point is? Again, I refer to Healing Through Remembering, whom
we have had engagement with as well. I think there needs to be
a commitment, in the absence of a process a commitment to find
a process and a commitment to acknowledge, and in relation to
the Irish Government and the British Government and I believe
all the other participant organisations to the conflict, I think
a public statement from them, a willingness to explore, engage
in dialogue, about a process as a starting point would be helpful.
Chairman: Well, whether you get that
from the Government is not for us to say, but you have had it
from us, which is why you are here.
Q186 Mr Luke: You have actually answered
some of the other points I was going to raise, but just to tease
it out, Mark was making the point that it has to be inclusive
but we know that on both sides of the communities there is probably
some sort of fear and resistance to a move towards the truth and
reconciliation. On the republican side, can you foresee an acceptance
of the process on a wider scale? What is the width of acceptance
on your scale on that side just now, and do you think we can bring
everybody on board?
Mr Ritchie: This is just a guess
and other people should come in on this. My guess is that if there
was a real independent, probably international process to explore
how it could happen, I think there would be a willingness on the
republican side to engage with that. It is important that people
do have some input. It should not be kind of a finished model,
saying, "Here is the model. Either you participate or you
don't." There has to be negotiation. Every truth commission
has had an element of negotiation amongst the parties and every
truth commission has been different, so to that extent the process
whereby you set up a discussion that can come to a consensus around
the model is important and I would feel that the republicans would
be up for that, the wider political process having settle down
a little bit, certainly from the current state of play. But I
feel, if you look at Sinn Fein's statement on truth processes
which they issued I think a year and a half ago, it is reasonably
advanced and reasonably open and I have seen no evidence that
that has changed. So I would be reasonably confident.
Mr Holland: That would be reflected
in the work that we have done in Ardoyne, that some of those 99
victims were also killed by the IRA and some of them were in contentious
areas, and the families have come to us and asked us to go to
the IRA and ask them questions about certain aspects of their
loved ones' cases that they had. We were able to go to the IRA
and talk to the IRA and come back to the families and resolve
some of the issues. Not all the issues were resolved, but there
appeared to be a genuine willingness there amongst republicans
to actually deal with those and I would say without doubt that
republicans in general are willing, as long as the circumstances
are created, because republican are not going to move on their
own. But if there was definitely a willingness, particularly on
behalf of the British Government, then yes, I think republicans
would definitely come along.
Mr Ritchie: Can I add one more
thing, which I think has poisoned the atmosphere in relation to
this—and I am not talking about the Northern Bank—it
is the Inquiries Bill. In terms of how republicans see other people
dealing with the past, they see the continuing resistance to have
a public inquiry that the British Government committed to in the
Pat Finnegan case, and then the Inquiries Bill coming out in the
midst of the negotiations last year. I must say, having looked
at the Inquiries Bill, I find it a mechanism to prevent absolutely
the emergence of any information and any real acknowledgement
about agencies' involvement in the past. So I think that has created
quite a difficult atmosphere.
Chairman: We are coming back to that.
Mr Luke: Thanks for the generosity of
your answer.
Q187 Mr Clarke: The ICP did some very
good work in terms of looking in as much detail a it was able
to in terms of those 99 cases. We always talk about the subject
of closure. In terms of the 99, how many of those feel there is
still no closure? You talked about the fact that not everybody
is going to be satisfied if you give somebody the answer that
they do not necessarily want to hear. Of the 99 how many were
you able to achieve closure on?
Mr Holland: Well, for a lot of
families closure meant different things. The very fact that they
were able to tell their story and raise the issues in book form,
for a lot of families that was closure. But if you are talking
about in terms of the truth surrounding the circumstances of the
death of their loved ones, which will be the sort of general level
of closure that we come up with, for instance the 26 people who
were killed by the British state agencies, not one of those families
would say they have closure.
Q188 Mr Clarke: Let me redefine it. How
many of the 99 accepted the outcome of your judgment as to who
was responsible?
Mr Holland: Oh, 100%.
Q189 Mr Hepburn: In the Eolas Consultation
Document you talk about the "macro truth" of the conflict.
What does "macro truth" mean?
Mr Ritchie: I think what we are
doing there is acknowledging that there are individual cases and
individual victims who may have issues they want to have closure
on or information about, but there is also what in the South African
context was described as the nature, causes and extent of the
conflict. So you have individual incidents but there is also a
historical narrative. That is part of the purpose of a truth commission,
to come up with an agreed historical narrative as to why the conflict
happened, how it took place and who is responsible for what policies
and issues. So it is not just about individual incidents, it is
about wider questions and allows then society to move on with
an agreed historical narrative. That is really the kind of thing
we were aiming for.
Q190 Mr Hepburn: Just following on from
what you are saying there—I presume this is what you mean—do
you think that the social and economic background for the Troubles
should be included in any discussion?
Mr Ritchie: Yes. Some of the models
that we have put up for discussion looked not only at what victims
wanted to raise in terms of individual cases but also in terms
of whether they felt victimised by particular structural causes.
Now, whether that should be done in the same way as kind of individual
incidents of violence, if you like—we suggested as well
there could be separate hearings around institutions and that
could be around the judiciary, as happened in South Africa, the
media, the role of the churches, various important institutions
of the state. What did they do to try and ensure that violence
did not come about? Once violence came about, did they actually
try and end it or did they by the decisions they took actually
allow violence to continue? The civil service should be considered.
How was policy developed? Did policy allow for a rapid move towards
negotiations or did it actually prolong the conflict? There are
serious accountability issues, and that would apply to the organisations
as well. So the IRA should be asked, "What was your rationale
for car bombing? What was your rationale for a bombing campaign
on the island of Britain?" They should be asked to justify
it and then the panel should be able to make judgments. Was this
a legitimate strategy for a guerrilla organisation? Did it actually
bring about the end of conflict? Did it move us rapidly towards
an end to the conflict, or did it prolong the conflict? Those
are issues which the IRA has to answer. Similarly, the British
state has to answer questions about its policy, I would say, on
criminalisation in relation to the jails. By bringing five years
of conflict in the jail, did that simply reinvigorate the conflict?
What was their rationale for it? Do they feel that it had a beneficial
role to play? So all those kinds of institutional policies, and
those include social and economic policies, should really be involved
in some kind of holistic truth mechanism.
Q191 Chairman: This is all very, very
interesting and challenging stuff, but I think by the time we
have finished with all the things you think need to be gone into
we are going to make the Saville Inquiry look like a minor incident
because the next question I want to ask you is in your paper,
and I am afraid it is Relatives for Justice again. If we are serious
about dealing with the legacy of the past, painful though it must
be, there must be an examination of the historical, political,
legislative context in which the conflict happened. So where do
you want to start?
Mr Ritchie: Well, a hundred years
ago!
Q192 Chairman: I am putting this light-heartedly,
but I think you can see from our perspective—and we really
are trying to take an independent view of this—if you are
going to do all that then we are talking four or five years of
some poor soul with two or three helpers sitting, sitting, sitting,
listening, listening, listening, and then having to try and produce
a report. You said the IRA should come and explain their campaign.
Do you see the slightest chance of that happening? Is that a realistic
aspiration?
Mr Ritchie: Well, I think in relation
to both those questions—
Q193 Chairman: I mean, I could just as
well have asked the question about the Shanklin butchers, but
you said the IRA must come and answer.
Mr Ritchie: Well, I think from
my point of view it is more likely that the IRA would be willing
to do that than the loyalists.
Q194 Chairman: If I may say so, the example
of Saville was not a very good start.
Mr Ritchie: Well, let us put that
to one side. The key thing is how you get organisational buy-in.
I talked earlier on about the fact that there needs to be an inclusive
negotiation. In South Africa they defined the timeframe. They
decided, "We will cover this period," and that would
be part of the negotiation. But I think at the very least the
period before the start of the Troubles, say start in 1960, and
at least you can talk about, "Well, what was it in that society
then that led to conflict?" But that will be a matter for
negotiation between the parties and I think if, for example, the
republican community (but I would also say the loyalist community)
felt that they had a say in the shape of the process that then
is more likely to achieve organisational buy-in, shall we say.
I think the fact that in our model we are not talking about being
punitive to individuals is more likely to allow the organisations—
Q195 Chairman: We are coming to that.
Let me just press you once more and then of course, Mr Thompson,
you can come in. If the IRA refused to cooperate with a judicial
inquiry for which the republican community asked and got as part
of the Good Friday negotiations and they will not cooperate with
that, what makes you think they would cooperate with the sort
of inquiry we are thinking we might be able to set up? I am genuinely
interested to know if you have any indication that they would
see this as being any different.
Mr Ritchie: Well, there are two
things there. The republican movement, as I understand it, encouraged
people to participate in the Saville Inquiry but because it was
about individuals taking the stand, I mean, they were not going
to take guns to people and make sure they went to the stand. Either
an individual decided to or not. For example, Martin McGuiness,
as a representative of the republican movement, did give evidence
and I know of other people who gave evidence. The kind of the
republican line, if you like, was to go and give evidence, but
you cannot force individuals and in some senses we are taking
that into account.
Q196 Chairman: No, I was not suggesting
they be forced, I was asking you what gives you cause for optimism
that the next inquiry they will cooperate with and come and say
why they bombed London and Canary Wharf?
Mr Ritchie: Well, I think because
republicans have a commitment to a peaceful future where the past
has been dealt with. That is my guess.
Q197 Chairman: Okay. That is very interesting.
I am sorry, you wanted to say something?
Mr Thompson: It is just that in
terms of getting into a new experience something could be four
or five years.
Q198 Chairman: Can I just say, in case
I am sounding to be one-sided, I put precisely the same questions
last week to the other side.
Mr Thompson: Oh, no, no. I appreciate
that completely. We are not going to look at individuals. We are
not going to say, "This individual British soldier, this
individual policeman, this individual loyalist or republican,"
and we look at it organisationally. We have to look at the context
in which violence took place. It did not just take place for the
sake of violence. Violence took place within a context of a series
of developments, whether they be legislative, being made here
at Parliament, whether it happened through the policy of the NIO
or the policy of the particular organisation, that has to give
that framework out of which things unfolded. People just did not
become violent. People did things that happened, that should not
have ordinarily happened in ordinary times. We did not live in
ordinary times. There is a context to that and I think that that
context must frame some of it to provide an understanding, to
families as well, to begin to understand that.
Q199 Reverend Smyth: I want to look for
a moment at the question of investigations and inquiries and get
your understanding there. How successful do you believe public
inquiries have been as a way of uncovering the truth and obtaining
justice in Northern Ireland?
Mr Thompson: I think it depends
on what your concept of justice is. If we take Saville as an example,
nobody is going to go to jail and I think that we have been on
the journey with families and saying to them—and I think
this is something that the unionist and loyalist community unfortunately
have not been on a journey to yet—that to look for punitive
measures, to look for imprisonment, to have that sense of justice
it is not deliverable, it is not realistic. We have a sense of
responsibility and a duty to say to families, "People will
not be going to jail for what happened."
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