A dreadful stain on the reputation of our armed forces

Friday, 18 April 2003

The Stevens report into allegations of collusion between loyalist terrorists and the security forces in Northern Ireland could scarcely be clearer, or more damning. Elements of British Army intelligence and the Royal Ulster Constabulary actively and deliberately helped a loyalist paramilitary group to murder Catholics in the late 1980s. Their activities may well have prolonged the Troubles.

While the past few weeks have witnessed the bravery and professionalism of our armed forces, the revelations in the Stevens report represent a terrible stain on their reputation. The British authorities are in the humiliating position of having to admit that the claims made by Sinn Fein and others about collusion, dismissed at the time as wild and politically motivated, were in fact well grounded.

Prosecutions should follow, of course, not least in the case of the Catholic solicitor Pat Finucane, who was murdered in 1989. The difficulty in this and other cases is the long period of time that has elapsed, time enough for key figures such as Brian Nelson to have died. Early suggestions that the report might lead to 20 prosecutions have been superseded by the latest strong steer that as few as six cases may go to court. The protracted nature of the search for justice in this affair (it dates back to the Stalker enquiry of 1986) does certainly give the impression of an official tendency towards delay.

When the prosecutions are completed, however, there is a strong case for a full public enquiry into collusion in Northern Ireland, and indeed that now looks inevitable. There should be one caveat to that development, however – a plea that such an inquiry should neither take as long nor cost as much as the extremely lengthy inquiry into Bloody Sunday.

Northern Ireland has not had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the manner of post-Apartheid South Africa, and that might not have been an appropriate way forward for the province; but all of these separate and long overdue inquires, painful as they are for all concerned, should help Northern Ireland to face its future, as well as its past, with greater hope, and perhaps even a degree of confidence.