The beginnings of the British government’s ignominious legacy legislation can be traced to a 2017 Sunday Telegraph article by the late James Brokenshire.
Crassly coinciding with the 45th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, in which 13 civil rights protesters were shot dead in Derry by soldiers from the Parachute Regiment, the platform from the then secretary of state set out the template for how the Tory administration planned to deal with the residual elements of the Troubles.
Published the day after some 1,000 British army veterans protested in London against former soldiers being “subjected to witchhunts”, the article and the subsequent legislation began with the premise that investigations into Troubles’ killings were “vexatious” and disproportionately focused on British state forces.
It was an approach that chimed with Tory backbenchers and their supporters in the shires but its basis was false.
In reality, the British state was continuing to frustrate efforts by the families of civilian victims to secure justice. It abandoned the way forward agreed at Stormont House three years previous and embarked on a unilateral approach that would ultimately be shown to have no regard for human rights.
The act introduced conditional immunity from prosecution for perpetrators of crimes carried out during the Troubles and ended conflict-related inquests and civil actions.
Any moral high ground the British government could have claimed ahead of loyalist and republican paramilitaries was lost completely, as every party in Ireland, including the Dublin government, rejected the legislation.
Nonetheless, it was passed by Westminster in September last year and the associated Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR) established. However, it soon ran into quicksand when the High Court in Belfast ruled in February that the act was in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The then opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer had already signalled that he would repeal the legislation, if elected. Following the King’s Speech on Wednesday, that is now the official policy of the Labour government.
It’s worth noting that Labour has said it cannot repeal the act without having something to replace it. With the ICRIR’s work effectively on hold, the new Downing Street administration has said it will work with Stormont’s parties, the Irish government and victims’ representatives to shape a new process.
But it has said it will “explore options to strengthen the independence” of the ICRIR, which suggests not every element of the controversial legislation will be discarded.
There is no doubt Labour has historically been more sympathetic to the cause of victims on all sides, while Sir Keir’s previous association with Northern Ireland’s Public Prosecution Service has given him insights not afforded to his predecessors.
Yet while all the talk is of new beginnings and a resetting of the relationship between Britain and Ireland, we shouldn’t be too optimistic that whatever emerges from the new process will satisfy everybody.
Legacy by its nature is a vexed issue on which consensus has yet to be achieved. There is also often a marked difference between what politicians say publicly and what they think privately.
It’s seven years since James Brokenshire’s article appeared and 30 years since the first IRA ceasefire, while more time will be taken developing and legislating for the alternative to what the Tories produced.
Time is unintentionally becoming the greatest healer while our politicians to continue to bicker and regularly seek advantage by highlighting past hurt. The legacy act in its current form may be dead but no there’s shortage of people ready to rake over the past to suit their own agenda.
