Current Issues - 2003

July 2003

A Question of Political Will - PoliceBeat Editorial

When Lady Hermon asked the parliamentary question of the Secretary of State what further resources he would make available to the Chief Constable to investigate the unsolved murders of police officers, he must have winced, at least inwardly.

That the question was not immediately answered is no surprise because it is not simply a matter of financial and professional resources. It is a matter of political will and a fear of where opening the files of the unsolved murders of innocent police officers and civilians will take us. Yet if Northern Ireland is to become at ease with itself, then it must become reconciled to its violent and murderous past. There can be no prospect of achieving personal peace except through the healing of time unless victims' families can be satisfied with some form of closure. And to complicate matters, there is no single predominant view among victims' families. Some have brought the emotional shutters down on the past, others would be content simply to know the truth around the circumstances of their loved one's murder and others want the guilty caught, convicted, given life sentences and the key thrown away.

Northern Ireland is now obsessed with the need for inquiry into past atrocities. Yet the current investigations into Finucane, Nelson and Bloody Sunday seem to offer no prospect of delivering universally acceptable conclusions and will merely be an abyss swallowing millions of pounds as long as the lawyers can get to their feet.

The Federation believes that with sufficient political will, police files can be re-examined and where possible, prosecutions initiated. There is no expectation that many of the files will bear fruit. The passage of time, the destruction of police stations and the forensic science laboratory, the deaths of participants, all militate against the chances of successful prosecutions. But that is not what dismays the Federation and the victims' families. It is the feeling that somehow police officers' deaths (and other innocent victims) now matter less than those currently being investigated, despite a recent interpretation of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights to include a positive obligation on the state to investigate unlawful killings, an obligation which may be relied upon by the family of a murdered police officer.

If the Northern Ireland Office were a bit more perceptive and courageous it might realise that pursuing closure for all the innocents' families might well be their best prospect of political progress. At least then we might look forward to building our future instead of being trapped in the past. Lady Hermon asking the unwelcome question of the Secretary of State may make the Northern Ireland Office uncomfortable but it is a question to which this Federation wants to hear the answer.