Examination of Witnesses (Questions 700-719)
MR MICHAEL
GALLAGHER, MR
WILLIAM JAMESON,
MR WILLIAM
FRAZER AND
MR WILLIAM
WILKINSON
28 FEBRUARY 2005
Q700 Chairman: What I am saying is I
do not know what the Secretary of State is going to do, but there
is nothing to stop you people writing in and giving him your views.
Mr Frazer: Could I just say, Chairman,
that this is the problem. We have been doing that since we were
formed; if the Government had listened to us at the very start,
even though I did not agree with the Agreement—I told Mo
Mowlam that if she dealt with the victims there may be a chance
of getting away with it; they did not do that, they dealt with
the terrorists and they are still dealing with the terrorists,
they are not dealing with the victims, and we will not accept
it, it is as simple as that. If there is going to be reconciliation
it has to be with the victims first, they are the people who paid
the price in this conflict.
Chairman: That is why we are here. Mr
Beggs.
Q701 Mr Beggs: If we could look at investigations
and inquiries for a moment, I will probably get a short answer.
Do you agree with Hugh Orde's view that the Bloody Sunday inquiry
is "a waste of time and money"?
Mr Gallagher: Could I just say
that it was no less than the Prime Minister who approved the Bloody
Sunday inquiry.
Q702 Chairman: That does not answer the
question. We know the Prime Minister set it up.
Mr Gallagher: It does not answer
the question—let me answer the question. We ourselves are
calling for a full cross-border public inquiry; it would be wrong
of us to deny other people the opportunity to make a case for
a similar inquiry, but I think there are a few things that have
happened here. Rightly or wrongly, the Government has approved
and agreed to Bloody Sunday, and there is a certain opinion out
there that they agreed to the Bloody Sunday inquiry and they did
not have any problem making it as expensive as they could make
it so that that would finish any future inquiries in Northern
Ireland. There is another view out there that somebody in Derry
took the decision that they would bankrupt the British Treasury,
but I think it is excessively expensive. Whether it will achieve
what it set out to achieve, personally I think if it does not
meet the folklore of the people in Derry, whatever the answer
be, it will not be acceptable. Dublin is the European capital
of inquiries: they have had some very, very effective inquiries
in Dublin and at the end of that process some people have actually
went to prison, so inquiries can work but they have got to be
controlled, the parameters have to be set at an early stage so
that it is not a freefall spend like they have in Bloody Sunday.
But they also had an inquiry in London which lasted, I think,
18 weeks. It looked at some of the most complex issues of security
and intelligence and people from no less than the Prime Minister
down were witnesses at that inquiry; I did not hear anybody saying
that it was too expensive, that it did not work, and that was
the inquiry into Dr Kelly's death.
Chairman: We are straying a long way
away; if we could just make our answers briefer. I do not want
to stop you saying what you have to say, but we are never going
to get through otherwise.
Q703 Mr Beggs: How could public inquiries
in Northern Ireland be more effective, and maybe others who respond
to that question—
Mr Frazer: Could I just make a
quick point, if you come from South Armagh you have never seen
justice; 94 or 95% of the murders were never solved—or the
incidents—so we know a lot about not getting justice. As
a matter of fact, a lot of the people who killed our people actually
were involved in the Omagh bomb, back in the Seventies, and they
were still operating the Omagh bomb. We believe the reason for
that is that there was no system set in place so that justice
can be at least seen to be done, even though it was not sometimes
maybe going to be possible to do it. We all have to be realistic,
you need evidence in some cases, but at the very least, especially
coming from a Protestant background, we always relied on the state
and we were sure that the state would see justice done. That has
not happened, the state has betrayed the people who served their
country, so we believe there has to be something put in place
where never again will that be allowed to happen, but justice
will always be an issue and human rights will always be an issue
in the community, and we need people in the community who run
their own organisations to make sure that it never happens again.
Mr Wilkinson: We must use this
because it has been the first inquiry to perhaps draw lessons
from, and I think one of the most important lessons that must
be drawn from the Saville inquiry with reference to the truth
recovery process is the differential that exists between the legitimate
forces of the state which can be very easily held to account,
as has been shown in the Saville inquiry, and sub-state terrorist
organisations which, again as the Bloody Sunday inquiry has shown,
are extremely difficult. Their members are extremely reluctant
to freely give information and we must learn lessons from the
Saville inquiry about any truth recovery process and we must remember
that unless these organisations are forced into a position where
they can give this information, they will not do it freely. Sinn
Fein IRA campaigned for many years for a Bloody Sunday inquiry
and then when they are given the opportunity to tell their version
of the truth—and they know at the end of the day that that
is all that they have really been asked for—they step back.
As Lord Saville himself concluded, when he spoke of Martin McGuiness's
refusal, he said: "I understand your answer as being that
you feel that your duty of honour [meaning as a terrorist] overrides
the desire of the families for the tribunal to discover the whole
truth about Bloody Sunday." I think that speaks volumes about
the terrorists' commitment to any truth recovery process.
Chairman: Once again, we have got a long,
long way away from the question. Mr Bill Tynan.
Q704 Mr Tynan: Thank you, chair. The
Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement states that it is essential to
acknowledge and address the suffering of victims. How far has
the suffering of victims been acknowledged in your view?
Mr Frazer: It has not been. As
a victim, as somebody with five out of his family killed and a
few injured and other members tried to kidnap, and numerous times
friends killed, we have got nothing, I mean nothing. When they
blew our home up five times we never claimed money, it is not
about money, but from this Good Friday Agreement we are supposed
to deal with the victims. Even if they had offered a lump sum
of money, at least it would help my mother and maybe some of the
family, but we did not have any. What we want to see is something
put in place where this will never happen again, that is what
we would prefer to happen. There are people who need money, there
are women in our group, but everything we have got we have had
to fight for; that should not be the case. If it is needed and
it is essential, it should be justifiable. That is not the case.
Just to give you one quick example—I know you want to keep
things short—even a plan for applications for grants to
the Government, where we spend a week filling an application for
our own group, a group who was only starting up, a deadline of
two hours was left to do their application. We done the application
in two hours for them; we got turned down and they got theirs.
We were told that they filled their form in better and it was
us that filled their form in. That is the sort of carry-on that
is going on in this country.
Q705 Chairman: Which organisation was
that that you filled the form in for?
Mr Jameson: South Down Action
for the Bereaved.
Chairman: Thank you.
Q706 Mr Tynan: Obviously you have a very
negative outlook as regards what has been done to recognise victims.
In your view how could the victims be acknowledged, how would
you do that?
Mr Jameson: Your colleague, Mr
Chairman, mentioned the Good Friday Agreement; I, like the rest
of the 65% of the fools in this country, voted for it. Little
did I know that four months down the line I would be going cap
in hand to the Government to address my financial problems because
of my wife's severe injuries and my son's severe injuries. My
wife was a college lecturer with 25 years service, she cannot
handle observations and is not allowed to work. My son was at
the local grammar school, I got no help from nobody. When I applied
for compensation I was referred to the 1988 Criminal Justice Act,
as I mentioned before; unless you are within a certain radius
of the bomb going off you will not qualify for compensation. I
myself was earning £30,000 to £35,000 a year as a financial
consultant and had been for the last 20 years, so I was not a
fly-by-night or anything. I sent all my accounts up to the Compensation
Agency from the Down, I was then referred to the Bloomfield Report,
as I mentioned before, "Oh, too late, it's 1999." Mo
Mowlam sat on my youngster's bed in the County Hospital in Omagh
and she sat there and told me the biggest—I will say it
in front of you all here now as colleagues of hers—the biggest
bullshit that I have ever heard in my life. She said to me, "You
will want for nothing." Those were her words, yet within
six months she was down the road. Mr Blair brought another Secretary
of State in, Mr Reid, I went cap in hand to him—I might
as well talk to that door out there. Nothing. I have met Mr Murphy
not once, twice; all he does is write, write, write and I am thinking
of this exercise here today, is this just write, write, write
and nothing comes from it? That is my experience with the Government
agencies, I got nothing.
Q707 Mr Tynan: My question was what could
be done—okay, it could be compensation—to acknowledge
the suffering of victims in your mind. That is what I was asking,
and you are saying it is purely down to compensation?
Mr Jameson: Proper compensation.
Q708 Mr Tynan: That is what it is down
to?
Mr Jameson: Yes.
Mr Wilkinson: We would take the
opinion that whilst that is necessary, practical support, we would
also look to the issue of recognition. One of the main ways for
society to recognise victims, whether they be of terrorism or
ordinary victims, is through justice. There has been a problem
in Northern Ireland whereby a political process based on the inclusion
of the people who created the victims appears to be the dominant
concern of successive governments. When you have a process like
that, of which the integral principle is the inclusion of those
who created the victims, you automatically exclude victims, you
automatically demean victims. We think that there needs to be
an alternative structure—perhaps a victims commissioner
is one way—and there needs to be a guarantee of justice,
and hopefully we will touch on this, perhaps, later in the questions.
Chairman: We will not unless the answers
are a little shorter. Mr Bill Tynan.
Q709 Mr Tynan: In terms of the situation
as far as victims are concerned, what you are saying is that the
failure to pay adequate compensation is a major problem.
Mr Gallagher: I would agree with
my colleagues that justice—that is the least you expect.
We live in a country—
Q710 Mr Tynan: I am going to come on
to justice; what I am asking you specifically now is regarding
compensation. In your view recognition of the trauma that victims
have suffered and acknowledgement of their plight, is that down
to compensation as far as you are concerned?
Mr Jameson: I cannot speak for
the rest of my colleagues here, but that is my main concern. I
lost my job over this atrocity but nobody has come back to me
and said we will recompense you for it.
Q711 Mr Tynan: The criminal justice system,
as it exists at the present time, do you believe that is failing
the victims in Northern Ireland?
Mr Jameson: Yes, because all you
have to look at is the Hillsborough disaster, and I told this
to the Secretary of State. A guy who sat by his TV at home saw
the trauma going on in Hillsborough, I saw it too, the football
fans. He went to the court and he got his case; when I said this
to the Secretary of State he said, "Yes, but here it is the
Criminal Justice Act (Northern Ireland)." So the circumstances
are different over here, according to the Criminal Justice Act.
Q712 Mr Tynan: Could victims benefit
from being involved in the justice system more than they are at
the present time?
Mr Gallagher: Very much so, yes.
Q713 Mr Tynan: How could that be done?
Mr Jameson: From their experience.
Mr Wilkinson: One simple example
would be in Canada and in certain states in the United States
victims have the opportunity before sentencing, for example, to
make a victim impact statement. That is a very practical way that
victims could be included in the justice process, but we must
also bear in mind that there are on-going security concerns in
terms of witness protection. Many victims are also witnesses,
but the state has failed to protect those witnesses and there
is no confidence in the criminal justice system because of prisoner
releases; there is no confidence in the criminal justice system
because of the difficulty that there has been in bringing the
perpetrators to court and because of what has been seen as a hands-off
approach to terrorism and certainly the more criminal aspects
of it. I think there have to be confidence-building measures specifically
targeted to victims in order to balance some of the concessions
that have already been built into the political arrangements in
Northern Ireland.
Mr Frazer: I would refer back
to something we said at the start about having something in place
regarding justice and human rights. Compensation is an issue;
if people live their life at a certain level they cannot be expected
to live far worse because some terrorist put a bomb under their
car, or blew them up, or shot them; they cannot be expected, it
should not be the case. I think after 9/11 every individual got
$3½ million, so you cannot put a price on people's lives
but the security thing means that there needs to be organisations
that will take justice issues up with people who are genuine,
not a body where I was told you only work nine to half four, if
you work after that you are a fool. That is the problem, people
like that in this sort of sector are not genuine, it has to be
genuine people that are in the sector who are actually interested
in it.
Mr Tynan: Thank you, chair.
Q714 Mr Clarke: Just picking up on that
last point, it seems sometimes—and I do not include you
gentlemen in this—as if we have created a victim industry.
There are a lot of people who represent victims and my question
is based around one thing we do allow victims, and that is the
opportunity to tell their story. It is almost as if that is all
we want, we do not want to pay the compensation, we do not want
to give support but we want them to tell their story. Is there
not a risk that simply by asking people to continue to tell their
story it stops being therapeutic and it starts being damaging,
because you cannot move on. What, in your view, is the benefit
of story-telling without the ability to move on?
Mr Frazer: The first part of your
question about an industry is correct, but it was not created
by the victims, it is the people who have come along to make money
out of the victims who are getting the money. Those people need
to be weeded out and taken out of the sector; they know nothing
about victims, common-sense tells how to deal with the victims.
The victims are the people who are dealing with the victims. Of
course we need professional help in certain instances, but we
do not need to bring people from South Africa—there must
be a route from South Africa now that you could follow with your
eyes closed because there are that many people coming from there.
The other part of it, the story-telling, there is a time for story-telling
and we have had 30 years of not talking about talking. It is not
simply the story-telling, it is about getting the story out and
not being stopped in the middle of it by some individual who is
supposed to be a professional with victims and trying to tell
them that they need to change their story a wee bit because it
would help them.
Q715 Mr Clarke: The reason I am asking
the question is that it is framed in the context of saying that
if we have some sort of process, some sort of commission, it is
going to involve a lot of story-telling.
Mr Frazer: Yes.
Q716 Mr Clarke: But why are we doing
it, are we doing it simply because we want to hear it or because
it is of therapeutic use to individuals? Do we expect people who
may not want to go through that process to do that?
Mr Frazer: I think it builds up
the sector, it builds up the people within the sector, the opportunity
to talk to someone who has been there, the opportunity for somebody
to be able to relate to what they are going through then helps
them to help somebody else. That is where the benefit comes from;
people start helping each other, and that is the main problem.
If the Government would give us the resources we need, we the
victims can move on. The problem is that we are not getting the
proper resources. If you start a business you need a certain amount
of money.
Q717 Chairman: What do you call the proper
resources?
Mr Frazer: The proper resources?
For a start-off we want to be able to build an organisation or
a sector that is sustainable, because this problem is not going
to go away.
Q718 Chairman: You have had over half
a million pounds from the Government, have you not?
Mr Frazer: Yes, but we are dealing
with some 2,000 odd people.
Q719 Chairman: There is a limit to everybody's
funds and you are one of the organisations—and there are
nearly 100 victims organisations—you have received a fair
slice of money.
Mr Frazer: I could take that list
and bring that down to 10 victims groups because they are not
working with the victims. I am there at two o'clock in the morning
sometimes because some lady who is a widow, living on her own,
some boy with a hooter is out in her garden. That is what I call
working with victims, whenever they need help they get it, not
between nine and half four. £500,000 over a period of a few
years, when we pay £20,000 for somebody to go fly-fishing
in the Maze Prison—if you compare that, which was given,
with the £500,000 given to the victims of South Armagh, if
you put it in context I think the laughable part of it is the
£20,000 for fishing in the Maze Prison.
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