Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 26th June 2023 Lords Chamber

We have to try to prevent glorification of what happened in the past, because what happened in the past was wrong. It caused mayhem, destruction and murder, and it robbed many families of their loved ones. In supporting Amendment 114A, I urge noble Lords to consider that there are paramilitary forces out there—and a certain political party—that are involved in deep levels of revisionism at this moment in time.

[Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)]

My Lords, I join my noble friend Lord Dodds and the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, in supporting Amendments 114A and 114B in the names of my noble friends Lord Dodds, Lord Weir and Lord Morrow.

Recently, the absentee MP for North Belfast, John Finucane, was the main speaker at what was billed a “South Armagh Volunteers commemoration and fun day”. Let me remind noble Lords of just one action of these South Armagh IRA terrorists—there is certainly no reason to celebrate it, or even commemorate it. I want noble Lords to imagine a young husband leaving home and going to work as usual. His family hear later on that their loved one has gone missing; his young wife is pregnant and has three young children already. Think of the agony this family circle is going through as it becomes clear that the IRA have abducted this young man. Think of the absolute terror he is feeling as he is hooded and taken captive by IRA terrorists.

Then there comes that—in many ways inevitable—phone call that tells the family that that young man has been found dead. However, that call also tells them that his body cannot be recovered, even though it is seen lying in a field in south Armagh, because it is surrounded by Claymore mines. Yes, that body is booby-trapped to explode if moved. A huge, 500-pound bomb is attached to him in milk churns, with command wires leading across the border. Any attempt to move him will blow his corpse to pieces, along with anyone attempting to retrieve him. The authorities have to let him lie there, dead, covered in blood and mud, naked except for his pants and on display for all to see, until the explosives are defused by the bomb squad. Can anyone with a heart have any idea what that dear wife, her three young children and the family circle have to go through as they wait and wait?

In another place, a Member of Parliament at that time said:

“One of his relatives said that they were horrified at the look of torture and agony … on the face. The fingers of both hands were blackened to the knuckles and holes were punched in the finger tips. Handfuls of grass and earth were clutched in the hands. One side of the face was smashed … to the extent that the nose was broken and displaced to one side. Both arms seemed limp and the genitals had been kicked until swollen out of all proportion. The teeth were smashed, he was shot through the wrists, the mouth, the neck, the throat and several times in the chest”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/5/72; col. 1788.].


What was his crime? His crime was that he was a part-time UDR corporal. Of course, Sinn Féin said that he was therefore a legitimate target; he was a part of the British war machine, simply because he wore the uniform and tried to keep people safe from those who so cowardly and viciously ended his life. Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill has claimed that there was no alternative to such IRA activity and yet, amazingly, she is lauded and applauded by Presidents and Secretaries of State, and John Finucane thinks such deserve to be commemorated—actually, their names written on a marble scroll as if they were heroes and then celebrated with a family fun day.

I ask you: what sort of persons could be so evil as to commit such torture on another human being? What sort of mentality justifies this in any shape or form? Nobody has ever been charged or convicted of this murder, this torture, and those who directed it are equally guilty. The so-called IRA Army Council has not been brought before the International Court of Justice. Rather, some of its leaders are lauded and applauded too. The Sinn Féin leaders and John Finucane talk much about and demand inquiries, they pontificate about human rights, equality and justice, but they do not want justice for them. They do not want inquiries into their leadership role in some of the most vile atrocities ever carried out against mankind. All they want is to blame the police, the Army and the part-time soldiers—indeed, everyone who stood against their 30-year campaign of slaughter and murder in their quest for their dream of a united Ireland. Sadly, on many occasions, successive Governments rolled over to Sinn Féin demands and granted it concession after concession. Even just over a week ago, we found that the chief constable apologised to those who were called the hooded men. I ask the Minister: does this legislation stop the memorialisation and glorification of those terrorists across our community?

I finish by saying that every year, in January, I gather with others at the side of a road outside Cookstown, the Teebane. The men there were returning from doing an honest day’s work, but they were murdered, slaughtered, on their way home. We stand at a roadside. Yes, there is a stone there with the names of those lads on it: not to glorify but to humbly remember that they were cruelly done to death along that road.

We cannot have the glorification of terrorist acts. They are to be condemned. While many tell us that everyone, every political party in Northern Ireland, is against this legislation, let me make it clear that the party which I belong to is not to be equated with Sinn Féin/IRA, because its objection to the legislation is that it does not want its comrades to be prosecuted, but it wants the security forces to be persecuted. I will not lend my hand to that.

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I speak to support Amendments 117 and 118 in my name but agree with the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, as well.

I want to look at the academic research clause, because it addresses a problem with the Government’s funding body, UK Research and Innovation and its councils. Many of us interested in legacy are genuinely concerned about what seems to be the one-sided nature of much of the academic research into our past and the way that the funding has been monopolised by what could be seen as a single legal view that is radical and investigates only faults with the UK state and its security responses during the Troubles.

I need to refer to the Queen’s University Belfast’s transitional justice department, which produced the model legacy Bill and many briefings that Opposition and Cross-Bench Peers will have been provided with. That department alone has received the huge amount of £4 million in funding for legacy research—nobody else has. The transitional justice department works in open conjunction with the Committee on the Administration of Justice, the CAJ, which is a largely anti-state nationalist body in Belfast that encourages legacy litigation. Indeed, it is leading efforts to get the Dublin Government to take an inter-state case against the United Kingdom at the European Court of Human Rights over this very Bill once it receives Royal Assent.