Bloody Sunday Inquiry

Lord Carswell Excerpts

Wednesday 13th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carswell]

My Lords, by way of exordium, I tender congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, on his maiden speech, which has been a notable contribution to this debate. He, of course, is better known to the profession and the world at large as Ken Macdonald, Director of Public Prosecutions from 2003 to 2008. That, as everyone connected with the law certainly knows, is one of the most difficult and exacting jobs in the law. If I may paraphrase the great showman Barnum, you can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot please all of the people all of the time, and that is engraved on the heart of every DPP.

The noble Lord’s early training fitted him well for the duties of the post that he discharged with such distinction. After reading PPE at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, he was called to the Bar and engaged in criminal practice for 25 years, taking silk in 1998. In the process, he not only acquired the thorough knowledge of criminal law and practice that is the essential grounding for a DPP but also acquired the mature experience and honed the fine judgment that are so necessary for making some very difficult decisions on prosecutions.

It has been said—I think this goes back to Lord Kilmuir—that judges should be very careful to conduct themselves and to speak in such a way that they do not get reported in the daily papers. A good DPP may aspire to that, both by the quality of his decisions and by avoiding unnecessary controversy, but he can never hope to escape what Horace called the “civium ardor prava iubentium”—the horrid citizenry yelling at him telling him what to do or, if you like, the newspapers. The noble Lord has come through that experience with a high reputation and he is a worthy addition to this House. We look forward to hearing many more contributions from him.

Some 37 years ago, in August 1973, I appeared as counsel at the inquest into the deaths of those who died in Londonderry on 30 January 1972. My function was to present to the coroner and the jury the evidence that had been furnished to me, which was a mere fraction of the material considered by the Saville inquiry. Many years later, when I was Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, I presided over a court that considered at least one legal issue arising out of the inquiry proceedings. If those are interests, I certainly declare them very willingly and at once. For those reasons, and for many others, I do not wish to make any comment in the House on the content of the Saville inquiry or the findings of the tribunal, nor do I think it appropriate for me to attempt to comment on the elaborate and expensive form that the inquiry took.

My purpose in speaking today is to raise the more general issue of whether it is beneficial to hold further inquiries into the many distressing events that occurred over the past 40-plus years in Northern Ireland. We must be the most inquired-into segment of the populace in the world. The litany of inquiries is long and ever lengthening: Cameron, Scarman, Widgery, Diplock, Gardiner, Baker and Saville as well as the recently concluded Billy Wright inquiry and the ongoing Hamill inquiry—and those are only the ones that I can remember. All of them have involved huge amounts of time, energy and resources.

Successive Governments have been understandably concerned about the proliferation of open-ended inquiries and the diversion of ever scarcer resources to them, and Governments have sought powers to limit them. Again, I do not want to get involved in the arguments about the usefulness of the limitations that might be imposed. I have a more fundamental point to make about whether we should call a halt to inquiries into the past and to investigation of events that took place long ago.

Two reasons are generally advanced in favour of pursuing such inquiries in future. The first is that, if those who have committed crimes can be brought to justice, they should be, and so investigation of cases long regarded as old and dead may be justified so long as those carrying it out can see a realistic possibility of resolving them. I would certainly not dispute that the process is generally in the public interest and it must always go on. The second is the more arguable question of the extent to which inquiries help victims or benefit the community. The prevailing view, which your Lordships have heard expressed many times this afternoon, is that the extended pursuit of truth gives comfort to those who have suffered bereavement or trauma through terrorist action and that such pursuit is always justified.

One cannot live in Northern Ireland, as I have done all my life, without being all too well aware that a considerable body of people have suffered badly—some have suffered dreadfully badly—from terrorist action. No one could fail to feel enormous sympathy with them over the hurt, pain and distress, bodily and mental, that so many have endured and will endure until life’s end. Nothing I say is intended to minimise that. Numerous government initiatives have rightly been directed towards assisting such people and the provision of welfare for them. The work and effort of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, and his Consultative Group on the Past are only one part of that.

One of the aims of many of the bodies concerned with this is the investigation of past deeds and the ascertainment of the truth, as far as it is possible to do so. To that end they support continuing with inquiries and investigations of all kinds. This does not factor in the indefinable issues involved in the public interest. Many, though by no means all, of the people who have suffered are extraordinarily keen to pursue the facts of past events, however long the journey and however far it may take them. One respects this desire if it will help to heal their wounds. However, against that I detect a growing feeling that we, as a community, would benefit from trying to put the past behind us—in the common and overworked phrase, to “move on”—and that focusing for too long on the wrongs of the past is picking at old scabs, keeping old wounds raw and keeping people on edge, which is detrimental to the health of society.

Like so many things, this involves a balancing of interests. Should the desire of some to pursue inquiries to the very end prevail, or should the interests of the community prevail in drawing a line? I have come to the conclusion—which I must express unequivocally, though I fear I find myself in disagreement with many noble Lords who have spoken—that those who say it is in the public interest to call a halt to further inquiries are right. People have been hurt—many badly and some dreadfully. Much can and should be done to help them in various ways. However, as a society we badly need stability. One of the best ways of achieving that would be a long period with as little disturbance as possible. Furthermore, Northern Ireland is now in the process of tackling the many problems of today. It needs all the impulse and creativity that it can summon, untrammelled by the weight of old divisions and antipathies. To this end, the talents and energies, both emotional and practical, of its people must be harnessed. That can only be for the public good.

Like all societies riven by divisions and strife, Northern Ireland has to put them behind it if it is to flourish. In that, increasing prosperity can only be a useful lubricant. If people in countries with problems such as those experienced by Croatia can do it with some success—I am assured by responsible people there that many of them are trying to—we can do it. If we are to develop as a mature and peaceful society, it is better that we should do so without inquiries, which are commonly so prolonged and often controversial, and may produce too little real enlightenment in the end. To reiterate the cliché: it is time to move on.