Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 640-656)

MRS ANN BOAL, REVEREND ANDREW RAWDING, MRS GILLIAN GRIGG, MRS ROSALIND DILLON-LEE AND COMMODORE TOBY ELLIOT

23 FEBRUARY 2005

  Q640 Chairman: That means it comes out of his budget. I think you may just have misunderstood her there. I was talking to her this afternoon. She is very clear that she has the overall sight, or wants to have the overall sight, of all the victims' problems. It may be she has to refer them to another Minister. Mr Pearson is also the finance minister and he has the purse strings, and so everything has to go to him in the end. From the Northern Ireland point of view, that should be the absolute focal point.

  Mrs Grigg: I am not quite sure who exactly Angela Smith is.

  Q641 Chairman: She is the Northern Ireland Under-Secretary with responsibilities, one of which is for victims' affairs in Northern Ireland.

  Mrs Grigg: That is for Northern Ireland. Is there such a person equivalent on the UK mainland?

  Q642 Chairman: That is Ivor Caplan.

  Mrs Grigg: I have regular contact with the Minister.

  Mrs Dillon-Lee: If one has a problem with the Veterans' Agency over pensions, it would be nice to be able to go to somebody higher up.

  Q643 Chairman: That is the Minister; that is Ivor Caplan in the Ministry of Defence, who is the Minster responsible for Veterans' Affairs. The Government has tried to provide a focal point. How successful it has been is another matter.

  Commodore Elliot: I was going to make the same point myself. I do not have a view about whether there should be a Victims' Minister but I most certainly have a very clear understanding that there are two Ministers to whom we go. Angela Smith hears us very carefully and understands; she has not actually managed to solve some of the problems I am putting to her yet, but that is another matter. Ivor Caplan is our Minister for Veterans, to whom we go frequently and who actually gives us a very good hearing and gives his own team an extremely hard time until he gets the right answers. I am quite happy about that, I really am.

  Chairman: I think the changes this Government has made have been a great improvement.

  Mr Pound: For a minute I thought you said there have been great improvements this Government are making.

  Chairman: I did say that.

  Mr Pound: I am speechless.

  Q644 Chairman: Mrs Grigg?

  Mrs Grigg: Could I say that from the services' point of view, I am very heavily involved with the RAF Widows' Association. We have direct access to the Air Force Member for Personnel. With the Army, we are hoping that General Palmer will also be a good focus particularly for military issues. Again, we have two prongs.

  Chairman: That was always the case but there is now one Minister. That is the point. We are talking about the political direction.

  Q645 Mr Swire: I am going to roll these questions together as much as I can because I know we are short of time. This is really to Mrs Boal, please. What has the reaction of your members been to the changes that have occurred in the Police Service of Northern Ireland since September 1999?

  Mrs Boal: When the name change was first announced, it caused the biggest wound and our members felt that they had been betrayed. That is the way it came across, and not just the members. I listened to Sir Ronnie Flanagan give the midnight speech when the name change came about. I was broken-hearted because I have been in the police family for 35 years. There was hostility towards the new police service, although all the serving officers are ex-RUC officers now, but we have found that that has changed within our organisation over the last year or 18 months, and change was inevitable. We had started to accept the change and we are now working closer with the PSNI. They wanted our members to know that although they were still RUC officers when they left, they are as close to the PSNI.

  Q646 Mr Swire: You would say down the line things are calmer than they were initially?

  Mrs Boal: They definitely are with regard to the name. We carried out a survey or our members last September/October. It is as well that our members cannot vote in the General Election here because Labour would not have got one of their votes. Their hostility has been directed away from Patten and the changes towards the Government because they feel that this Government has totally let them down.

  Q647 Mr Swire: Can I ask, to no-one in particular, a question about cross-community work and, where your organisations and members have engaged in cross-community work, have they have found that therapeutic? Have they have found that too much cross-community work can put too much pressure on them? Do they feel that it is a good thing to work with people outside the Armed Forces or Police communities? Can any of you comment on that?

  Commodore Elliot: We came very late to this. We have paid too much attention to our own business rather than to the community relations side of the house. I have to admit that I had forgotten about this funding but we do get a little bit of funding for one of our welfare offices from a community relations programme. We are encouraging our welfare officers to engage with all the various committees that are sitting looking for ideas as to how to improve what we are doing with our own people and how to help to improve their attitude to society in general. I think the more we do that, the more we find out and the more we find there is common ground and a lot of it is very good.

  Reverend Rawding: We are participating in a form of reconciliation work specifically with IRA ex-prisoners and other ex-prisoner groups. This is essential to some of our veterans because the one way they might get to wholeness or to real reconciliation is to get to a point where they actually accept that they are no longer under threat and they no longer have an enemy. The only way they will get that is actually to come into physical contact with someone who they would perceive to be their enemy. We are proactively looking at this. Some of the veterans from the early Seventies have tried every single therapy and psychiatric treatment. Some have actually insisted that they are not interested in the other agencies; they want to meet Republicans, they want to meet IRA or former-IRA people[5].

  Q648 Mr Swire: How is that funded?

  Reverend Rawding: I am having to work through a charity in Northern Ireland to put funding through the Community Relations Council and get funding from over there. That is the way we are doing this at the moment. I have not tried the Veterans Minister. I am having to work through other charities that are already in place and charities that are willing to work with this sort of project.

  Q649 Mr Swire: How many members of your organisation are former Special Forces?

  Reverend Rawding: I do not know.

  Mrs Boal: We do receive some funding under Peace and Reconciliation. When we applied for the funding, and it was just three years ago, we made it clear that we would have to establish or organisation first and help our members to become reconciled with themselves before we could move to cross-community. It happened quicker than we thought. We have participated in five separate projects working with other community groups of women from Londonderry and women from the Republic of Ireland. I even had the chance to go to an international conference held in Northern Ireland where we came face to face with an ex-IRA prisoner. Our members only meet with people who have given up paramilitary activity and who are committed to peace, as these people were. With the projects we worked on, we thought we were making small steps and things were going well. Obviously other people felt we were doing better because we were nominated for an award, an achievement for our cross-community work. That award will be presented on 7 March. Our people do want to move on. They do not want the same problems for their children in growing up as we had and that may mean meeting someone half-way. We also want to make people feel aware in both communities that under the police uniform there is a human being who has suffered as others have. This may help our current members of the PSNI and future members. We are doing it in consultation with the PSNI as well because they are participating in the cross-community exercises too.

  Mr Clarke: First, I want to acknowledge how difficult this session is, given that we have four organisations representing many different services, and also we are firing many questions at you. Some are aimed at one organisation and some at another. I for one wish we had more time.

  Chairman: This is because of the pressure of having to finish in an hour.

  Q650 Mr Clarke: I think we ought to acknowledge that, Chair, and we apologise that it may seem as if we are rushing you all in terms of the answers. One of the other difficulties we have is dealing with the question of the truth. When we talk to communities that were affected by the troubles in different ways, they often say that the Government wants reconciliation without the truth. I noticed from the submissions that the Veterans' Association is saying that families of some soldiers have said that they require the truth.

  Reverend Rawding: Yes.

  Q651 Mr Clarke: Yet, Mrs Boal, in terms of your members, only 30 per cent have said they would support a truth and reconciliation committee; 70 per cent said that they did not think it would be a good idea. I wondered if we could have a view from across the organisations as to how important it is to get to the truth, irrespective of how painful it may be, irrespective of what it involves in terms of possible amnesties and possibly people not being brought to justice for crimes that they have committed.

  Mrs Grigg: First, I think most people would like an apology. I spoke to two ladies who said they have never received an apology.

  Q652 Mr Clarke: From?

  Mrs Grigg: From anybody for what happened; nobody has apologised. That is one issue for a lot of people. The second one is that they have never known whether the perpetrators have been arrested, caught, punished, or whatever happened, and they would like to know that. Who did it; why did they do it, and what punishment have they received? Those are two issues.

  Reverend Rawding: First, I think it is very difficult to give just a quick answer on that because there has been no consultation or education on truth processes amongst veterans. Secondly, it is problematic for us because we are seen to be perpetrators. We have people within our organisation who have killed other people, so we are as likely to be dragged in front of people and held up as the perpetrators and the offenders as others. It is a very difficult issue. On the one hand, we have families saying, "We cannot move on without the truth". For the soldiers who died at Warrenpoint, we still do not know who did that. I do not know who tried to kill me on two occasions. There are those sorts of issues, but, on the other hand, there needs to be a consultation and education process before we are dragged up as soldier X or soldier Y and put forward as the people who are part of the problem and who caused the problem. So it is far too early to be coming to quick decisions on the truth recovery process.

  Chairman: That is partly what this committee is trying to draw out.

  Q653 Mr Clarke: Just to speed things up in terms of what you have just said, is it possible that there can be a collective general truth rather than having to rely on individual incidents?

  Reverend Rawding: I think that there needs to be an ongoing process of truth recovery where people volunteer to step into it and give information and other people volunteer to step in and receive information. I think there should be an ongoing process. There is a real fear that the Government is going to make a decision and say, "We are going to do this". People will be very sceptical about whatever Government as to why it is being done. Of course, some people have real issues about the Government, including veterans, so why should the Government be controlling this? A lot of veterans would have issues with the Government.

  Q654 Mr Clarke: That is what some of the communities in Northern Ireland say?

  Reverend Rawding: Yes.

  Mrs Boal: All you have to do is to look at the Bloody Sunday Inquiry. How many hundreds of millions of pounds are we going to spend? I listened to a statement made by Mr McGuinness—I do not have the date—during that time. He made it clear that the IRA take an oath of allegiance which forbids them from telling. Who are going to be the truth tellers and who are going to be the truth demanders?

  Reverend Rawding: And who is accountable? We feel accountable because we have regimental numbers.

  Mrs Boal: If someone stands up and says, "Yes, I blew your father up" or, "I murdered your son", and then the next day they are going to get an amnesty, that is just going to cause further stress to the families. The prisoner release caused enough stress without this all coming up again.

  Mrs Grigg: While you have unfinished business, whatever it happens to be, to do with what happened, then you cannot have closure; you cannot completely move forward; you cannot take a second new life. Secondly, there are people who would like to go and visit where it happened but who have never had that opportunity. It would be helpful if that were to happen, too.

  Q655 Chairman: Thank you very much indeed, all of you, for the points you have made. I am sorry if this has seemed a little confusing and foreshortened. If we were not having a General Election, we would have liked to have seen you in different groups. We really do want to try and get something so that we can offer preliminary comments before we all disappear. I hope the next Northern Ireland Committee will want to take this up because it is a very important subject. Thank you all very much for coming.

  Mrs Boal: In closing, may I just ask this, Chairman? What is the point of this inquiry? What do you hope to achieve?

  Q656 Chairman: The point of this inquiry is to try and see if there is any way whereby we could get a consensus amongst all the different groups and communities in Northern Ireland to find a way to try and put this wretched 30 odd years behind us. What moved us to do it was the Secretary of State nine months ago said he was going to consult to see if there was a way forward. He then went off to South Africa and came back and said he did not think that model was in any way suitable for the situation in Northern Ireland. I must say, I agree with him. We have not yet come to a view because we have approached this with an entirely open mind. We have had a lot of evidence recently from various groups in Northern Ireland, from you and from others. We have only concentrated on the victims' side because there is not time to look into the rest of what is a very complex matter. We are going to try and produce just some interim remarks on what we have learnt. I think, when we publish what people have said, that is going to open a lot of minds to a lot of aspects which have not been considered before, not least the ones that you have opened our minds to today. If you think it is a waste of time, I am sorry.

  Mrs Boal: I did not say it was a waste of time.

  Chairman: I know you did not, but previously, I knew very well the views of your association because I had a lot to do with it when I was the Minister over there. We are doing our best to see if there is any way. I will not give a personal view because I really do want us all to have a moment to discuss this before we move forward. That is what we are about. You will see, at the end of March, the fruits of our labours. If you think they are worthwhile, that is something. Thank you very much indeed.





5   We are also keen to encourage reconciliation between veterans of the different regiments that served in Northern Ireland and with the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Many veterans never had the opportunity to grieve properly whilst serving in Northern Ireland. Also the intensity of the conflict meant that at times resentment and antipathy developed between members and groups of the Crown Services. Back


 
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