I was asked to
speak at the Féile last week as part of the Victims and Survivors Forum. The
topic was "Unfinished Peace". Three colleagues and I touched upon the range of mechanisms laid out in the Stormont House Agreement
aimed at dealing with the legacy of our violent conflict. The UK Government is
currently consulting on the legislation which will form the basis of these
institutions. I was tasked with looking at the Independent Commission on Information Retrieval (ICIR).
These are my opening remarks:
I have been engaged with people in
the so-called victims’ sector for about ten years now and I have worn many
different hats, at different times, in different places. I have been a direct victim, a victims’
campaigner, an inside researcher, a victims’ group member, a victims’ group
chair, a citizen educator, a victims’ Forum member, but most of all, I am Paul
Gallagher, a member of this society. And as a member of this society, this
broken and divided society, I have a responsibility to help fix it and bring us
together in any way I can.
When I look at all previous
attempts to deal with the past, I always ask myself who is it for and will it
do any good? Some will say: dealing with the past is only for the victims and
survivors, the families of the dead; and the injured. To help them to come to
terms with what happened to them. I believe that dealing with the legacy of the
past is for all of us in society.
Whether we were directly affected or not, we are all living with the
consequences of that past. A cursory glance at the TV news or the papers, on
any day of the week, will reveal some reference to the conflict. It permeates
through society; it poisons our body politic. We are all affected by it and if we don’t deal
with it, it will always be there.
Over these past ten years, and for
many years before that, I have met people who have been affected in a number of
ways by the conflict. They have been asking for a variety of things that they
hope will remedy their harms. Justice, truth, acknowledgement, and reparations. I now want to concentrate on truth, but in
many ways, all of these are interconnected.
The current consultation on the Stormont House Agreement (SHA) deals with
truth through the Independent Commission on Information Retrieval, the ICIR.
ICIR is one of the mechanisms to
come out of the SHA, agreed by the two governments and the five main parties in
late 2014. It did not, however, come out
of thin air. It came, like many of these mechanisms, from the demands of victims
and survivors themselves, from the people who were most affected, from the
people who need answers to the many questions they have been asking for
decades.
It is based on the need to know
about the death of their loved ones. About finding information as to their
final moments. About whether they died in an instant or whether they suffered.
About whether they were targeted or whether it was a random killing. It is
about the why and the how. About getting to the truth of what happened to them.
It is about engaging with those who
caused the harm; and asking questions. For in many cases, it is they and only
they who hold the answers, who hold the truth.
The answers may not always be what
we want to hear. Sometimes the truth can be bitter. It can be hard to swallow.
But in my experience, it is better to have the truth out in the open instead of
being hidden in dark corners. Surrounded by conjecture, rumour, victim-blaming,
stigma, uncertainty, doubt, and downright lies. It is only once we have the
truth that we can then process it in our minds, and be able to live with it.
But this process should not about
those that caused harm spinning the truth to suit their ends. To justify what
they did. To lie about what happened so they can live with themselves.
I have my own experience of this
type of thing. There was a book written a few years back about a certain
sectarian gang and their heroic operations, taking on the enemy. They gave details of all their killings, and
failed attempts, of which my attack was one.
Their claim was that all of their targets were legitimate targets. That
they were all members of paramilitary groups; and so deserved their fate. The fact
is that their targets were mainly civilians. Sitting in their homes. Walking
down the street. Driving their taxis. In the right place at the right time. Just
living their lives.
But this gang got their version of
the story down on paper first. They muddied the waters. They blamed the
victims. They stigmatised them.
ICIR must not become the same
thing. Their reports must be scrutinised. They need to be verified. To be
credible. To be put against other evidence and corroborated. This is the supposed remit of ICIR.
Now, when it comes to engaging with
ICIR, people may not get everything they are looking for but at least they will
have tried and may get something. It may be good enough. It may be enough to clear someone’s name. To
remove the stigma around the killing. It
may be enough to give the families a sense of closure, in that, this part of
their journey is complete, that the quest for truth and acknowledgement has
been satisfied, and they can move onto the next stage of their lives. So many have been held back by this denial of
truth, unable to move on. It is hoped
that ICIR can be the mechanism to help with this process.
This requires a buy-in from all
concerned. From the families and from those who caused their harm. Expectations
will need to be managed. Trust will need to be built. Fears will need to be
overcome.
There are concerns about how much
information will be forthcoming from different actors. About who keeps records and who doesn’t.
About what will be told and what will be concealed. About who will be
vindicated and who will be embarrassed. About whether something revealed can be
used against someone else to bring them before the courts. About whether people
are labelled traitors or touts. All of these things can scupper the process and
leave victims and survivors wanting. This cannot happen again.
That is why I am asking all
stakeholders to think about who this is for how they can do some good. You can be cynical and only give snippets of
information that serve your own agenda; or you can fully engage with the
process and give the victims what they need.
Put yourselves in their shoes and
ask yourselves would this be good enough for me. Could I go a bit further
without putting others in jeopardy? Is
this the best I can do to help people to move on? Because if you don’t you will
be holding the victims back. And not just them but their children and
grand-children, even those yet to be born.
We all know that some families have
been campaigning for truth for nearly five decades now. Those who hold any
knowledge must understand that these families will never give up. By releasing
the truth, you are releasing your hold over these families.
Allow your members to engage with
ICIR if they so wish. Don’t shame them or call them traitors. Do something for
yourselves, for the victims, and for society. Take a risk with ICIR.
And I say this to the various
groups within Loyalist circles: don’t hold yourselves back because you weren’t
part of the political negotiations around it. Once ICIR is set up engage with
it. Find the courage to do the right thing. Don’t let the petty politics of
inadequate negotiations or the lack of an electoral mandate stop you from
engaging in what could help your fellow citizens.
The same goes for the British Army
and other state forces: come forward if you have something to say – don’t let
the top brass muzzle you for fear of embarrassing the Crown. Get it off your
chest. Tell the truth about what you did. About what happened in terms of
collusion or in the many shooting incidents that you were involved in.
To Republicans: let go of your
Omerta vows – set the truth free. Lift the lid on the secrets you hold. Tell
all that you can without putting people at risk. Be honest with the community
that gave you support, about those who were branded touts and informers by the
Stakeknives of this world. Give the
families of those who served in the police or the army the answers that they
too deserve. Don’t just pass yourselves with the stock justification that they
were legitimate targets – think about the individual, the person – think about
the family they left behind. What can you do for them?
To all stakeholders, to the people
who will hopefully engage with ICIR, whether you are the victims or whether you
are someone who caused harm – put yourselves in the shoes of the other –
empathise with them. Ask yourselves, what would be good enough for you? What do you expect they could reasonably give
you and what could you live with?
That is the promise of the
Independent Commission on Information Retrieval. It is a way to gain information that may give
victims’ families some knowledge or understanding about the death of their
loved ones. Now is the time for the UK
Government to live up to its responsibilities and deliver for these
families. By helping them to move on in
their life journeys you can also help the rest of society do the same.
