Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Debate between Stuart Anderson and Iain Duncan Smith

2nd reading
Tuesday 24th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stuart Anderson (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)]

I am honoured to speak in the debate and I understand the sensitivities, the emotion and the hurt that many people in the Chamber feel, given their personal experiences and those of loved ones. I shall try to temper what I say in my speech as a result.

I served for 18 months at the back end of the troubles, so I am one of the youngest of those who served there. My father served in Northern Ireland in the early days of the 1970s with the SAS. I grew up in Hereford watching my dad search under cars. I would ask, “Why are you looking under the car, Dad? What have you dropped?” We grew up with that—I lived two or three roads from the SAS camp. The fathers of many of the kids I went to school with served in Northern Ireland and were family friends. The whole community felt it, and we would regularly have bomb threats near the camp.

On a lighter note, some of my friends realised that if they called in a hoax bomb threat to the school, we would be sent home for the day. After three days of hoax threats, the school said that we would have to go in at the weekend, so the bomb threats stopped—at least, the hoaxes did.

In my community, we grew up understanding all that; it was always there. We would see it on the news when I was at school throughout the early ’80s. When I left school, I joined the Army and the Royal Green Jackets, which as a regiment probably lost among the most soldiers throughout the troubles. If we put it with The Rifles and the Light Infantry, they would without a doubt have lost more than anybody else. Every single loss of life in that experience is a tragedy.

When I joined, all our instructors at the depot were Northern Ireland veterans—they could not have been instructors without having gone through that—and we knew that, within a few years of passing out from the depot, we would be going to serve in Northern Ireland. Everything was geared around that. Twelve months after getting out of the depot, getting shot and recovering, I went on Northern Ireland training. Unlike my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), who did not look to enjoy it, I could not wait to go to Northern Ireland. I was looking forward to it and could not wait to serve my country over there.

I had had extensive training; I knew right from wrong; I knew my rules of engagement. I knew, in no uncertain terms, what I could and could not do. I and all my colleagues were tested to breaking point on the ranges in scenarios over and over again for several months. We took the experience from those who had served many times before. I know that quite a few hon. Members served over there. During the process, we were shown what had happened to some of our colleagues who sadly never returned. We saw, in graphic detail, the loss of life from car bombs and murders. We saw videos. We knew that, if it was to go wrong for us, it would really go wrong. We knew what that was like.

When I was deployed, I remember getting to Belfast—we were in big, armoured trucks—and, as I looked out of a gap, I could see what looked like my home area. I saw streets, not a war zone as I had thought. It looked like a normal area. I am not afraid to admit that I was afraid. I was nervous and did not know what to expect. I was a teenager on an operational tour. Most of my colleagues had not been there before—I think that only the corporals and above had—so we were very wary.

Initially, there was a ceasefire, but the Canary Wharf bomb going off at the beginning of 1996 changed what was happening. I was in Drumcree in the summer of 1996 when we stopped the marching, and the whole Province erupted. Several RUC, who were always outstanding in operating with us, were shot. I think that four were shot in one night. There were multiple attacks, with people getting burned out of houses. We were in riot, and we were being full-on attacked left, right and centre. That went on for a long time. After about three or four days, we realised that we had not slept. We were tired. We were exhausted. We were getting bricked and people were getting shot at and petrol-bombed. That was going on and on, but we knew what we could and could not do.

We must weigh up how, in that scenario, every one of us had a split second to decide whether the person running round the corner with something in his hand was running away from someone trying to attack him or running towards us to attack us. At that very moment, we held life and death in our hands. If we took action, we took a life. If we did not take action, we died or our colleagues died. We were in that scenario.

I believe that, through all of my operational tours, people acted in the most professional manner. There have been mistakes that have happened, and there has been wrongdoing by people in unform. That is a stain on what the British Army represents. Those incidents are few and far between, but mistakes happen in the heat of the moment. Things do go wrong. I am 46 years of age, and I sometimes struggle to remember what I did last week, let alone 25 years ago—

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

You’re a young man.

[Stuart Anderson]

I know—my right hon. Friend served the year before I was born—but many people would not remember exactly what happened then. Everyone in my patrol would describe those incidents in a different way. Dragging soldiers through the courts for what has happened is a stain on what we had.

The Good Friday/Belfast agreement was put in place in 1998. I can see why it has taken until now to get to where we are, because there is a lot of talk and there are a lot of reasons—people always have a reason for why something cannot be done—so I take my hat off to the Secretary of State and the Minister of State for getting us here. We have heard that there will not be unanimous support for the Bill. We see that. I look to my colleagues on the Opposition Benches who serve in Northern Ireland. The hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) said that Democratic Unionist party Members do not agree with the Bill and do not support it, but want to make some reasonable changes as it goes through. I understand that this has a different impact on them and their communities. Many of us will be touched by these issues, but DUP Members still live in those communities. It will be decades before there is change. No Bill will change the impact of the lives that were lost or the impact on people who went and served over there. People are never the same afterwards.

I would like to think that I am quite a reasonable person and I tend to measure what I say, but those on the Labour Front Bench have put up one Back-Bench Member to debate the Bill, and I find that an absolute dishonour to this House. I find it an insult.