John Humphrys asks: What should be the approach taken to the issues in Northern Ireland?
What can it feel like to be a child who sees, before your own eyes, your mother seized and abducted, never to return? To grow up not knowing how she met her end? To know who your mother’s murderers are and to see them walking the streets untouched by the law? To wait thirty years before your mother’s body is dug up on a seashore and still, ten years after that, to remain so afraid of reprisal that you daren’t, even then, breathe the names of those you know killed her? What, in short, is it like for all the surviving relatives and friends of those who disappeared during the ‘Troubles’ that engulfed Northern Ireland for thirty years?
We had some insight into these questions from interviews given by Michael McConville to my colleague, Sarah Montague, on the Today programme on Thursday morning and by his sister, Helen McKendry, later that day. They are two of the ten children of the Catholic convert, Jean McConville who, back in 1972 when she was a thirty-seven-year-old widow, was thought falsely by the IRA to be a British army informer and who was murdered by them as a consequence. The IRA then denied all knowledge of what had happened to her.
Mr McConville said: “I was eleven years of age when the IRA gang came in and trailed our mother out of our arms. A rap came to the door, they barged their way in. Me and all my brothers and sisters were holding on to my mother, crying and squealing.” His mother was dragged away and nothing was heard of her again.
Six weeks later he himself was abducted and beaten up, even though he was only eleven. It was a warning that if he ever told anyone what he had seen, he and other members of his family would get the same treatment. “They were putting a gun to my head and told me they were going to shoot me. … They fired a cap gun and stuck a penknife in my leg.”
In the years after that he saw his mother’s murderers “many times” around Belfast. He kept his silence and still does. “I do know the names of the people. I’ve never told anyone. I wouldn’t tell the police. If I told the police now a thing, me or one of my family members or one of my children would get shot by those people. My blood boils in my body. I just can’t stand those people for what they have done to us.”
His sister now feels less constrained. She said: “I spent the first twenty years of my life being afraid of these people, of fearing to speak out, but now I am no longer afraid. … If full cooperation into the murder of my mother includes naming those who I saw bursting into our flat, who dragged my mother away from us at gunpoint, and who were directly involved in her disappearance and murder, then yes – I would be prepared to name names. To me that is not informing but doing my duty to my mother.” As for the possibility of reprisals, she said: “What are they going to do to me? They’ve done so much to me already in the past 42 years. Will they come and put a bullet in my head? Well, they know where I live.”
These interviews took place after the arrest of Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein. Mrs McKendry believes Mr Adams was the IRA leader responsible for ordering the murder of her mother. He has always strongly denied it.
The opening up again of the case of Jean McConville’s murder follows revelations that have come from America. A US court ruled that tape recordings of interviews with former paramilitary republicans made as part of a history project at Boston College should be handed over to the police. Eleven such tapes are believed to bear upon the McConville case and it’s as a result of their contents that Mr Adams and others are being questioned.
In many people’s eyes this is not before time. The issue of the ‘disappeared’, the sixteen people who vanished, allegedly following orders for their murder from the IRA high command, is one of many unresolved ‘legacy’ issues from the Troubles.
It is easy for those not directly involved in the affairs of Northern Ireland to suppose that the Good Friday agreement of 1998 closed the book on those troubles. Undoubtedly it radically changed the whole situation in Northern Ireland. But it was more the opening of a new chapter than the closing of a book.
That new chapter has seen over fifteen years of greater peace, order and economic and social progress. But it has left many issues unresolved, especially those relating to matters of justice. A controversial provision of the agreement led to the release under licence of those convicted of paramilitary crimes who had served two years in prison. But there remained the problem of what to do about those still on the run and those, like the killers of Mrs McConville, who had never faced justice at all. This is still an open sore for many who feel themselves to have been the victims of the Troubles, whether it be at the hands of paramilitaries of either side or indeed of British security forces.
What, then, is to be done about this? One option is simply to ignore the problem and hope that time does the healing. This, though, seems to many to be an outrageous affront to justice.
Another course would be to issue a blanket amnesty. A version of this seemed to many to have been secretly authorised when it emerged, earlier this year, through the abandonment of a high-profile case, that scores of suspects had been written to informing them that they need not expect any further action to be taken against them. This caused outrage too.
The alternative is to proceed with prosecutions, an option that may be more feasible following the evidence provided in the Boston College tapes. Proponents of this view argue that justice cannot be done unless the law is allowed to proceed whatever the consequences. Speaking of the arrest of Gerry Adams, the first minister of Northern Ireland, Peter Robinson, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, said: “I cannot say whether Mr Adams will be charged or released … But what I can say is that it strengthens our political process in Northern Ireland for people to know that no one is above the law.”
Nonetheless, such a move is bound to have political consequences. The former Northern Ireland Secretary, Labour’s Shaun Woodward, said of Mr Adams’ arrest that it created “a very serious and tense moment in the history of the peace process and the political process.”
Some people suggest that the only way through this quagmire is for Northern Ireland to follow the example of post-apartheid South Africa and set up some sort of Truth and Reconciliation Commission in which all the issues can be aired. But attempts last year by the American diplomat, Richard Haas, to bring all sides to an agreement about how to handle the legacy issues came to nothing. In any case, the question of whether or not to pursue the killers of victims like Jean McConville would still have to be addressed.
Meanwhile, Sinn Fein claims the arrest of Gerry Adams is politically motivated, coming as it does just before elections in both Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. The charge is strongly denied by both the Police Service of Northern Ireland and by the Prime Minister.
So how should we handle the legacy issues of the Good Friday Agreement? In particular, how should we respond to the deep yearning for justice so movingly expressed by the children of Jean McConville?
