SIR KEIR Starmer plans to axe legislation that protects Army veterans from prosecution over deaths that happened during the Northern Ireland Troubles.
Labour says that the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 is unpopular with Irish political parties and victims’ groups, and judged incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The move could lead to veterans being reinvestigated after being previously cleared of wrongdoing.
Veterans Minister Alistair Carns is, it is reported, about to resign because of Starmer’s latest surrender to the enemies of our country. There may be other resignations, and opposition across the political divide is strong. To add insult to injury, the changes proposed by Starmer might well, it seems, open the door for IRA suspects, and those like Gerry Adams who have championed them, to receive payouts from the taxpayer.
This is only the latest attempt to betray of those who serve our country. On April 20, 2021, Prime Minister Boris Johnson dismissed his Minister for Defence People and Veterans, Johnny Mercer MP. Mercer, an Army veteran, had repeatedly criticised the decision not to extend protection from prosecution to Northern Ireland veterans under the Overseas Operations Bill and underlined the perception of many veterans who had served during what became known as ‘the Troubles’ that their main enemy was no longer the IRA, but their own government in Westminster – whatever its political colour.
This was a perception exacerbated by Tony Blair’s issue of ‘Letters of Comfort’ to IRA terrorists linked to around 300 killings – meaning, in effect, that they could never be prosecuted. This shifted the focus of the proposed Historical Investigations Unit (HIU) unfairly towards veterans and retired police officers who had received no such letters. Even those who did possess ‘no prosecution’ letters from the Government found that they carried no legal force. This continues to be a matter of great concern to all members of the armed forces who served in Northern Ireland. Many have been pursued to a point of harassment over alleged events in the Province. I myself was threatened with prosecution for something that had taken place before I even joined the Army, never mind served in Northern Ireland.
Before and after Mercer’s dismissal, investigation of veterans for alleged criminal acts relating to military operations and events has continued apace. At the abandoned trial of two soldiers with court identities ‘A’ and ‘C’, both from the Parachute Regiment, who had been accused of killing IRA terrorist Joe McCann in 1972, which immediately followed Mercer’s removal, it is now a matter of record that as long ago as 2010, senior detectives investigating the case found that there was no case to answer. It must therefore be asked why, in 2014, a decision was taken by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) to refer the case to the NI Attorney General, which led to the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) informing lawyers of the two soldiers in 2016 that both would be charged with murder. Which police officer took the decision to ignore the advice of PSNI’s own senior detectives? Why was so much time and public money wasted and more importantly, why were these two veterans harassed for so long, for no reason?
In December 2020, the Chief Constable of NI made a statement to the press that the PSNI was pursuing investigations from the Troubles equitably. Yet a Freedom of Information (FOI) request from the organisation Veterans for Britain clearly showed this to be untrue, since it appeared that not a single death of a soldier at the hands of terrorists was being investigated while at least 200 cases of terrorist deaths were being pursued.
As a classic example, it has been suggested by some that at the behest of Simon Byrne, Chief Constable for Northern Ireland, detectives from the Bedfordshire Constabulary were actively harassing veterans on their doorsteps, trying to intimidate them into making statements or otherwise incriminate themselves, an illegal process in investigation. If this is so, how much taxpayers’ money did Byrne commit to paying the Bedfordshire police force to pursue these ageing veterans? Who was instructing the Bedfordshire force to carry out this aggressive harassment – and why was the Chief Constable of Bedfordshire complicit? If the PSNI had evidence of a crime, they should have produced it; or else let themselves be dragged from their homes to account for alleged misdemeanours, just like Dennis Hutchings and other veterans.
Veterans’ groups point out four inalienable facts: first, a number of these incidents, like the Ballymurphy episode, happened a very long time ago, some in the early 1970s; secondly, allegations had been investigated at the time; thirdly, that veterans have repeatedly been interviewed to the extent of harassment as explained above in relation to historical incidents causing considerable stress to men with honourable service records; and last, that there is no new evidence to warrant further prosecutions. However, there has been an increasing number of cases of veterans being approached by the PSNI, or by local police forces on the PSNI’s behalf, and put under pressure to attend interviews ‘voluntarily’. Often these requests are based on wholly false information.
Until December 2020, there were numerous cases where veterans agreed to be interviewed about matters which took place many years ago, and of which their memories were at best patchy. They did so without legal representation: they could not afford it, their regimental associations could not help, and Ministry of Defence policy provided advice only once a caution had been issued. However, to be fair, this situation eventually changed when the MoD, with assistance from regimental associations, did provide legal assistance to those involved in the Ballymurphy Coroner’s Inquiry. But the more serious result is that veterans who went unaided for a voluntary interview have ended up being charged with an offence for which, if found guilty, they would go to prison. In December 2020, the Army Board agreed that legal aid should be provided in such cases; however, it has been suggested by some sources that other, unidentified, departments within the MoD have insisted that this is not publicised. Natural justice demands at the very least that in all cases where veterans are ‘invited’ to be interviewed, they should be notified of their right to legal aid, and the means of getting it. Natural justice like this is surely the basis of the Military Covenant? Or has that been set aside?
Most veterans see the re-opening of old cases as mere political expediency to satisfy Sinn Féin. Johnny Mercer wrote in his letter to the Prime Minister marking his departure that veterans are the victims of ‘a changing of the political tide’. The implication being that the PSNI and the PPS have pursued and are predominantly pursuing soldiers over historical Troubles-related allegations for wider political expedience rather than that of justice. No government, of any political party, has ever repudiated this view to any satisfactory extent – so perhaps it is true.
Files released in 2013 showed that in January 1974 Sir Peter Rawlinson, the Attorney General for Northern Ireland, told senior military officers that he and the Director of Public Prosecutions were sympathetic to the Army, not least because of their own military service, and would use their discretion accordingly. Decisions had been taken not to prosecute in ‘more than a few cases where the evidence, to say the least, had been borderline’. Implicit in this use of discretion was surely the understanding that service personnel involved in these cases were in those theatres of operations acting under the orders of the military chain of command and on the instructions of the government of the day. They operated under a mandate provided by the government or international authorities. In the case of Northern Ireland, this was initially an order by the government of Harold Wilson to provide Military Aid to the Civil Powers (MACP). The Emergency Powers Act 1920 was amended in 1964 and invoked under proclamation in 1974.
The responsibility for unforeseen consequences of such mandated deployments lies with those who issued the orders, and not with those charged with carrying them out, except in the case of deliberate criminality as already discussed. It must surely be noteworthy that in the example of so-called Bloody Sunday – portrayed as the blackest day in the Army’s recent history, subject to multiple inquiries including one that took 12 years to complete and cost £400million, scrutinised a direct chain of command starting at cabinet minister level and descending through GOC, brigade commander, CO and company commander – the only person held to account was a solitary lance corporal.
Rawlinson’s remarks also assume implicitly that in the line of duty in such theatres of operation, service people have the same unalienable right of self-defence as any other individual and as any group of people, as set out in Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations. When attacked or threatened with attack, or in defence of others in the same situation, service people may, indeed must, respond robustly. Rules of Engagement (ROE), although not legally enforceable, are in place to describe and permit the degree of force that may be used. This may well include the use of lethal force. When service people are threatened with, or are under, attack, decisions have to be taken rapidly and intuitively, a function of their training, and it must be expected that training will take over in highly stressful situations.
In an examination of their actions, veterans also have the right to insist that consistent rules must be applied. Rules are rules, and rules are for everybody. It is wrong, for example, to have issued a blanket pardon for criminal acts committed by IRA men in Northern Ireland while persecuting those soldiers operating in support of the laws that those same IRA men set out to break. Equally it is unjust to prosecute soldiers involved in the Bloody Sunday shootings on the narrow basis of the Saville Inquiry, since this inquiry took no account of the actions of armed IRA men on the day and of the fuller context in which individual soldiers may have found themselves. The Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 made an attempt to address the legacy of the Troubles in Northern Ireland by transitioning away from criminal investigations and civil litigation towards reconciliation and information recovery. It established the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR) to review deaths and serious injuries, with a conditional immunity scheme for those who co-operate. The Act also ended most existing inquests and civil claims related to the Troubles. However, since then, a coroner’s inquest into the shooting by British troops of IRA men who had attacked Coalisland Police Station in February 1993 with a truck-mounted anti-aircraft gun, has led to the case being referred to the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland on the ground that, in the coroner’s view, the use of lethal force was not justified. It appears that the government may challenge this, but the latest moves by Starmer’s government make this seem unlikely.
Thus far, all historical prosecutions aimed at service people in Northern Ireland have collapsed, bar one. Even one is too many and there must be an end to this cycle of harassment of public defenders. To continue in this way will surely make it impossible for anyone to serve in the armed forces of their country with any degree of confidence in the Law of Armed Conflict and the recently adopted Military Covenant when judicial scrutiny of military occurrence becomes the issue. Starmer’s latest act of treachery may well fail, but doubtless he will try again: he is, after all, no stranger to the business of defending terrorists, as the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir know very well.
