Fatalities in Northern Ireland and British Military Personnel

Emma Little Pengelly Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)]

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I follow three Members whose contributions were different in many respects. They are all engaged in this issue and have considered it thoughtfully throughout the Select Committee inquiries. It is a privilege for me serve on the Defence Committee and to be a part of the inquiry.

While I was listening to our esteemed Chair, the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis)—I mean that respectfully—I was thinking of Otto von Bismarck’s quote about legislation being a bit like sausages: no one needs to see how they are made. The right hon. Gentleman and I have had many private conversations about this report. He knows very clearly that my party colleagues and I are not supportive of an amnesty and that many victims in Northern Ireland—whether they are victims of republicanism, nationalism, Unionists, loyalist paramilitaries or of state forces—collectively do not believe in an amnesty, nor are they interested in having the hope or the pursuit of justice snuffed out. That is the environment in which it is important to consider this report.

This morning I was listening to BBC Radio Ulster, which had a contribution from Northern Ireland victims about Holocaust Memorial Day. One victim, Alan McBride, lost his wife on the Shankill Road when she went to her local fish and chip shop to get an evening meal and was blown up by the IRA. He spoke about a day of reflection in Northern Ireland, which is 21 June. I did not know this, but he shared the reason that 21 June was selected: victims across the Province had sought to find one single day in the calendar on which there has not been a troubles-related death, but they could not. They could not find a single day when someone had not died as a consequence of the troubles. They focused on 21 June because of the solstice representing a change in culture and weather, and the hope and aspiration of warmth and sunshine.

Our history is harrowing. Anyone who has been personally or directly affected by it is left with the scars and the emotion of the troubles of Northern Ireland. The report is about who “guards the guardians”, to use the phrase from a previous Defence Committee report. It is about how we look after those who protected society in Northern Ireland, not those who persecuted and were prosecuted for the most heinous crimes in Northern Ireland.

A total of 300,000 service personnel served in Northern Ireland—there were 27,000 of them at the height of the troubles—and 1,441 human beings who we, as a nation, asked to serve and protect our interests, perished. They died. Three hundred individuals died as a direct consequence of engagement with security forces, but that does not mean 300 murders. It is important to make that point. It does not mean that 300 people were murdered at the hands of the state: 300 people died engaging against the state. They were legitimate deaths—deaths that arose out of conflict and out of those individuals who we asked to defend us standing on the frontline and defending us as best they could.

[Emma Little Pengelly (Belfast South) (DUP)]

I thank my hon. Friend and his colleagues on the Select Committee for the huge amount of work they have put into the report and its conclusions. Does he agree that there is a stark difference between someone who went out with murder on their mind to hurt and to kill in the pursuit of terrorism, and the brave men and women of our security forces and armed forces? They went out night after night and day after day to serve and to protect, and some were involved in difficult operational decisions with very tragic outcomes. We should be protecting them, as opposed to a terrorist on the loyalist side, a terrorist on the republican side, or somebody in the armed forces who went out with the intention to murder. That is not what this is about. It is about protecting those who are honourable and who went out to serve and protect.