The proposed Northern Ireland Troubles Legacy Bill, which comes before the House of Lords this week, has been criticised by the leaders of the Catholic and Anglican Churches in Ireland who have warned it will “deepen division”.
In a joint letter in today’s Financial Times, Archbishop of Armagh Eamon Martin and Anglican Archbishop of Armagh John McDowell say that the Bill will further demoralise all but a tiny minority of those it purports to help.
They highlight how their predecessors, through the worst years of the Troubles, walked in front of thousands of coffins.
“A good deal of the Church’s pastoral ministry in any society involves being with people who have suffered. In Northern Ireland, too often that has meant supporting those who have suffered the violent death or serious injury of a loved one. Our generation of clergy has comforted and prayed with individuals and families for whom the heartbreak has, in some cases, seeped through generations.”
Describing the legacy of the Troubles as “an open wound” and “the frailest of seams in our political and social life”, the two church leaders say that there is no universal remedy for this great pain, but there can be honesty, integrity and compassion in trying to find the best way forward.
However, they criticise the promoters of the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill for having “effectively set aside the toil and goodwill of those who have been journeying with victims for decades”.
“They may say that they are ‘listening’ but the fact that they have produced a Bill so heavily weighted in favour of the perpetrators of violence suggests otherwise.”
Elsewhere in their joint letter the Catholic and Church of Ireland Primates highlight that the Bill contains provisions that set the bar for immunity from prosecution “pitiably low” effectively granting an amnesty, and “will not, in all likelihood, provide relatives with the quality of information for which they have yearned for so long”.
Other concerns around the proposed Bill relate to doubts cast by legal experts as to whether the case review provisions of the Bill will comply with Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights which requires access to a proper investigation of loss of life.
“Anyone with a basic understanding of paramilitary culture in Northern Ireland could not expect many perpetrators to risk offering their accounts for the record,” the churchmen criticise.
On the inclusion of the word “reconciliation” in the title of the Bill, they say its “liberal scattering like fairy dust throughout the provisions remains a mystery”.
“Reconciliation in both the religious and civil senses involves the restoration of relationships; it requires patience, the slow building of trust leading to courageous truth telling, and immense forbearance. Nothing in this Bill goes anywhere near providing the environment for that to take place. Perhaps the very opposite.”
Archbishops Martin and McDowell say that the individual at the heart of this Bill is not the victim but “a strange hybrid of the perpetrator and the secretary of state for Northern Ireland for the time being”.
The Bill grants the secretary of state powers to appoint personnel, make regulations regarding its work, issue “guidance” on the immunity process, initiate reviews, direct a response to historical findings, appoint those responsible for the historiographic work and control the overall budget.
“In other words, it grants the secretary of state the powers of a commissar rather than a minister of the Crown,” they say.
They conclude their joint letter by waring that addressing the legacy of the past has been perhaps the greatest failing of both politicians and civil society in Northern Ireland since the signing of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement in 1998.
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