Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 (Remedial) Order 2024

Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2025 Lords Chamber

If 70% of nationalists and young people are told—or believe—that there was no alternative to killing their fellow Irishmen in the cause of Irish unity, and if that is perpetuated by the First Minister of Northern Ireland, we have to start to realise the extent of the challenge that we have. I ask the noble Baroness to address those issues when she sums up.

[Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)]

My Lords, the real backcloth to this debate is that 58% of all murders were perpetrated by republicans and 29.2%, we are told, were carried out by loyalists. We are told that 10% were at the hands of security forces. Whenever you drill down into that figure, however, you will find that the real figure is 0.5% to 1%, because the vast majority of those attributed to the security forces were cases when terrorists were on their mission to murder but were thankfully intercepted by the security forces, preserving the lives of innocent, law-abiding people in Northern Ireland. We must also remember that thousands were injured, and billions of pounds of damage was done not only to property but to the fabric of our society.

One has to ask the question: why did successive Governments fail to protect the innocent people of the Province and allow the IRA to rain such terror on Northern Ireland for 30 years? The IRA sought to make Northern Ireland ungovernable and drive it into civil war. The IRA tried hard to turn not only south Armagh but Northern Ireland into bandit country, but, even after all their years of murder and mayhem, they failed. Sadly, because of decisions recently made by this Government, the republican agitators are using legacy to fight old battles, rewrite the narrative of the history of their murderous deeds, sanitise their evil actions and of course keep the pot stirred to cause division, from which they in the past have gained oxygen and electoral success.

There are those in Northern Ireland who are greatly exercised about having inquiries into the actions of the security forces alone, but they do not have the same urgency when it comes to recalling that most of the IRA victims were gallant members of our security forces or members of the isolated Protestant communities along the border areas.

Let me make it clear. I stand tonight to salute the bravery and professionalism of our security personnel during the years of republican terror. They faced a merciless foe that usually hid behind their hedges, waiting to carry out their acts of murder, whether it was of one of our young British soldiers, or members of the RUC/RUCR GC or the UDR—or indeed by planting bombs under the vehicles of their Protestant neighbours.

I remember when I was in the other House, holding a wedding photograph of a young Castlederg couple. It was the happiest day of their lives. In July 1984, a 20 year-old UDR woman, Heather Kerrigan, and her colleague Norman McKinley were murdered when an IRA landmine exploded while they were on a UDR foot patrol. Heather’s brother was injured in that attack and left to lie in his sister’s blood. Previously, in March 1984, Heather’s brother-in-law, Thomas Loughlin, the groom, was also murdered while off duty.

Let me remind the House of what I am recalling. The photograph that I held that day had four persons in it—a groom, a bride, a bridesmaid and a best man. The groom, the bridesmaid and the best man were all murdered by the IRA and the only one left was the bride, left to journey through life alone. I wonder how many remember that and how many really care.

Out of the 29 people from Castlederg murdered by the IRA, 93% of those cases remain unresolved and their families have no closure nor hope of closure. The loss, the hurt, the injustice and grief that they feel to this very day have been carried with great dignity, but in many ways, they feel abandoned by successive Governments. Like so many families, I understand their hurt, for no one has been brought to justice for the murder of my loved ones; nor is there any hope of them being brought to justice. Nor is there any hope for justice for the eight workmen murdered along the roadside at Teebane, outside Cookstown; nor for the 10 men who were ordered out of the bus at Kingsmill and massacred—although at the inquest, the families were told that one of the suspects had been linked to almost 50 murders; nor for the 11 innocent people brutally murdered at the Enniskillen Remembrance Day service on 8 November 1987. Some 63 people were injured that day as a bomb ripped the Fermanagh town, and Ronnie Hill, a school principal, spent 13 years in a coma afterwards, dying in 2000, aged 68. The list goes on.

Why do I mention these? Most of them, the media will not mention. They have been long forgotten. Indeed, their names seldom, if ever, appear in news headlines. However, republicans parade their dead and the media will readily present the anger and the tears of their families, forgetting to remind especially the international world that it was the IRA which commenced and deliberately carried on this campaign of slaughter.

The security forces could have stopped this carnage years ago, but their hands were tied by successive appeasing Governments who were more concerned about international opinion than the safety and protection of their citizens. The southern Government also stands condemned, because, let us remember, it was the Haughey Government who first armed the IRA, and their territory was used by the IRA for years as the safe haven to run to after carrying out their evil and murderous deeds.