Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 29th March 2023 Lords Chamber

I was speaking to a principal who said that a few years ago she wanted to introduce Gaelic football to the state primary school, which was a good thing. However, an incident like this happened on the day they were going to do it for the first time; half the parents walked in, removed their children for the day and said, “We are not doing it”. It is not just the victims and their families getting humiliated by these songs and other things, which is bad enough. It is the future, and if we allow this to go on and it becomes a lovely thing to do, to sing those songs outside a school or close to children whose grandparents may have been killed—uncles, aunts, whatever—this is really important. We must not look at it as something that is acceptable. It would be totally unacceptable if somebody who supported ISIS went to Borough Market and shouted “Up ISIS” or whatever. Straightaway, in this country, they would be landed on and would not get away. With us, we accept it, but this is about our future and the children. It is with the primary schoolchildren that it has to start. We should support these amendments.

[Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)]

My Lords, anyone who lived through the years of Northern Ireland’s violent past will understand that we want to save the present generation and generations to come from such an awful fate. Practically every week I meet a family that still feels the hurt and endures the scars of the past, whether it be the widow who still grieves or the little boy or girl who has had to be raised without a father because their father was brutally murdered.

In light of the serious, severe threat for the future that has now been announced by the Secretary of State, we need to be very careful. If folks are glorifying acts of terrorism, young people can easily get sucked into this and think that it is just a bit of a thrill. The lives of those who get involved will be scarred. I am speaking about those who are actually involved in acts of terrorism, because their lives, their conscience, will never be the same again. Quite a number of them cannot live with their conscience and quite a number have done themselves to death.

The glorification of murder cannot be accepted. It is very sad when the leader of Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland excuses the years of murder and mayhem that the Province experienced, stating that there was no alternative. Ministers in the past have rightly said that there always was an alternative, and that was the pathway of democracy. But the reason Michelle O’Neill says this is that they are rewriting history. They want to excuse and cover up the bloodthirsty past that many of them have.

I am fearful that this is the mindset that, even today, political leaders in Sinn Féin engender in the hearts of their young people. From their earliest days, they have ingrained in their minds a deep hatred of Britishness and those who desire to remain British. When I was growing up in Northern Ireland, people could live together. They could have completely different political outlooks but nevertheless lived within one community. They lived and let live.

History reminds us that there is a small step from holding that hatred in your heart to its expression in acts of murder and brutality. It is disgusting that over recent months we have seen an increasing number of incidents where young nationalists and republicans chant “Up the Ra!”, whether it be at Gaelic matches, in bars or at west Belfast community events, glorifying some of the vilest past atrocities that many of us lived through.

Skulking behind a hedge in the darkness and gunning down a member of the security forces during the Troubles was not an act of bravery. Neither was it courageous to set up your workmate, who fed you from his lunchbox, only to plant a bomb under his van at work, as happened in West Tyrone to a young man I knew very well. In Nan Rices Bar in Newry, social media displays crowds of young people singing this republican propaganda. Can anyone imagine what the innocent victims of terrorism feel when they hear this laughter and singing commemorating some of the vilest atrocities in our Province? It opens up deep wounds that only those who have experienced it will understand.

There is nothing to be proud of in acts of terror of any community. We must therefore do everything within our power to ensure that terrorists are taken off the backs of the people of the Province and that the Government never again permit through appeasement, as they have in the past, terrorists to get a grip of the community. I wholeheartedly support the amendments in my noble friend’s name.

[Baroness O'Loan (CB)]

My Lords, these amendments relate to Clause 18 and immunity from prosecution. Those provisions are profoundly flawed, as was stated just two weeks ago by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, which condemned the immunity provisions.

This group of amendments is described as relating to glorification. They seek to ensure that a person seeking to avail themselves of the immunity provisions that we have discussed, as the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, said, is not engaged in activity which precludes reconciliation. For that reason, I support all the amendments from the noble Lord. We have seen a whole range of activity which undermines attempts at reconciliation on both sides of the community and activity referring to past atrocities and glorifying those involved. The noble Lord gave a very graphic example in South Down.

I think also of the murals, in particular one in north Belfast that I regard almost with terror; it depicts two hooded gunmen who say, “Prepared for peace, ready for war”. It is a declaration of war and has stayed there regardless of all the attempts at promoting reconciliation. Many of these murals have been painted over, but some very deliberately have not. The problem is that there is nothing to be glorified in shootings, bombings, torture or exile. We all know that what results from those is pain, trauma and terror that sometimes lasts a lifetime.

I have worked with people who were at some of those incidents, where gunmen arrived to shoot somebody in a workman’s hut, or something like that, and 20 or 30 years on they still live in terror of those who came, because they did not get shot dead and others did. So I do support those amendments.

I have put my name to Amendment 167 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, because that seeks to prevent individuals who have been granted immunity from profiting from their conduct, in relation to the offence for which they might be granted immunity, through empowering the Secretary of State to make regulations to prohibit such activity.

I have put my name also to Amendment 177, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, which creates a new offence of glorifying terrorism. I think it could be quite difficult to prosecute and it may need a little fine-tuning. Perhaps the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, has indicated how we should approach this, namely by accepting the purpose of the amendment and agreeing on that.

For the moment, the immunity provisions themselves have been roundly condemned, nationally and internationally; there is no merit in them. I hope that, ultimately, your Lordships will reject not only immunity provisions but the Bill also.