Stuart Nicolson: State killing can never be brushed under the carpet

It seems a preposterous question to even ask. But it is not a rhetorical one because, incredible as it may seem, the answer from the current UK Prime Minister and Government, their parliamentarians and swathes of their supporters appears to be an overwhelming “yes”.

The Irish Government last week took the almost unprecedented step of raising a formal action against the UK Government in the European Court of Human Rights to challenge Conservative legislation to block any prosecutions being brought against former members of the armed forces for alleged crimes committed during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

In doing so, Dublin has thrown a metaphorical hand grenade into its already tense post-Brexit relations with London. But Taoiseach Leo Varadkar made clear it was not an action taken lightly, and that ultimately his government felt it had “no option” but to lodge the so-called interstate lawsuit against the UK.

The Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act, to give it its full title, shuts down any remaining possible prosecutions against members of the UK armed forces who were active in Northern Ireland at the time, putting potentially hundreds of ex-servicemen forever beyond the reach of the law.

Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar

There is at least a plausible argument that can be put forward in defence of the UK Government’s position, along the lines about how there has been a widespread amnesty on offences committed by paramilitary gangs on either side of the sectarian divide in Northern Ireland – with hundreds of convicted inmates long since freed from their sentences – a similar waiver should be given to former military personnel for anything they may have done during the Troubles.

The suggestion is not entirely without weight, hence the UK Government’s rhetoric that the Act is about “drawing a line under the Troubles”, which is much the same as the language used at the time of the Good Friday Agreement to justify the mass release of paramilitary prisoners which that peace deal brought about.

However, there is an overwhelmingly powerful counterargument which is simply that the state must always – especially in a democracy – be held to a higher standard than those it condemns as lawbreakers and terrorists. That is true today – indeed, it has echoes in the current situation unfolding in Gaza – and was also true at the time any offences were committed by British troops in Northern Ireland.

No one would envy the job of a young British soldier dispatched onto the streets of Belfast or Derry in the 1970s, or sent to patrol the hedgerows of “bandit country” along the border with the Republic in the 80s or 90s. Scared witless, demoralised and just waiting for the next street corner or treeline to herald a deadly attack, it is easy to understand how trigger fingers were nervy and poised to fire at the slightest threat, real or imagined.

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But however much one might empathise with the humble squaddie sent out on a thankless mission and wondering if he would return home alive, or in one piece, it cannot change the fact that those soldiers had a responsibility, as agents of the state, to act within the law. Just as that same state now has the responsibility not to wash its hands of the consequences of the fingers it employed to fire the triggers.

This issue matters and matters deeply. The killing of civilians by the state should never be regarded as anything less than the highest order of seriousness. And the fact that many of the deaths which might be the subject of legal action occurred decades ago – in some cases, around half a century ago – does not diminish that seriousness.

Tellingly, the only other time Ireland has taken a similar action to the one now under way was also more than 50 years ago. That was in 1971 when UK-Irish relations were strained close to breaking point as, just a few months later, the British Embassy in Dublin was burned to the ground amid a mass protest in the wake of the Bloody Sunday massacre. Though Bloody Sunday was the most notorious instance of innocent civilians being shot by troops, it was far from the only one, as multiple would-be legal cases suggest.

The issue is also of relevance and resonance because it touches on a raft of deeper questions about the current UK Government’s foreign and domestic policies, and about what happens to the Tory Party and the right-wing of Westminster politics once the Conservatives are, almost inevitably, cast deep into opposition at the next election.

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WITH Brexit already massively complicating UK-Irish ties, and with Stormont still suspended in the face of a DUP seemingly determined never to sit in a parliament led by a Sinn Fein first minister, the deepening diplomatic row over the Troubles Act just complicates things further.

Meanwhile, the right-wing of the Tory Party is already lining up to say that – just as with the madcap Rwanda policy – Ireland’s move means the UK should pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights in a bid to dodge such actions and the influence of dreaded “foreign courts”. Suella Braverman is now, inevitably, leading that charge. That is despite compliance with ECHR being an integral part of the Good Friday Agreement.

Depressingly, it is almost impossible not to view the row over the Troubles Act through the lens of the culture wars test which it seems almost every current UK Government policy must pass before being unleashed.

Equally depressing – although all too predictable – is the tone of rhetoric emerging from the UK Government in the wake of Ireland’s move. One supposedly senior Tory source said Dublin should “back off”, adding: “The Irish Government, Sinn Fein and Joe Biden are all cut from the same cloth”.

There, in one short sentence, the hubristic, neocolonial and delusional mindset of the modern Conservative Party is laid bare.

It’s an arrogance they will take with them as they swagger towards electoral oblivion.