Clause by clause: the reasoning in the Stormont House Agreement ‘Model Bill’ on dealing with the past in Northern Ireland

Abstract

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Law, ‘presentist’ agendas, and the making of ‘official’ memory after collective violence

“…In other cases, such as NI, 'national security' may operate to the detriment of collective memory by allowing the state to legally withhold significant bodies of information relevant to a fuller understanding of its role in the conflict. 115 Victims of state violence in NI have, however, used law to successfully pursue the release of state files through the courts. 116 In this context, the lawmemory nexus descends into a struggle between deformed legalism firewalling the 'permanent space' from scrutiny and transcendent legalism intent on opening it up to a fuller exploration.…”

Closing the ranks: Bondedness, sense of self and moral injury during legacy case prosecutions

“…Against this backdrop, British Army veterans have framed the prosecution of a small number of veterans as a politically motivated ‘witch hunt’ against those previously cleared of wrongdoing. Their ‘witch hunt’ claim, however, fails to stand up to empirical statistical scrutiny and, just like Bradley's comments, overlooks well documented flaws in many of the original investigations (Bryson, 2021; McEvoy, 2020, 2022; McGovern, 2019). Nevertheless, within the veteran constituency ‘reclassifying’ the past has become synonymous with the post-Good Friday Agreement (GFA) scapegoating of veterans, leading them to close ranks (Brewer and Herron, 2019: 56) and take to the streets in protest at legacy investigations.…”

“…While the British state narrative has always insisted that Operation Banner was a human rights compliant ‘peacekeeping’ mission amidst escalating violence in Northern Ireland (NI), social science scholarship has long problematised this narrative through exposing systemic state violence (Burke, 2018; Burton, 1978; Hearty, 2020; McGovern, 2019; Sanders, 2021). As NI undergoes the difficult process of ‘dealing with the past’, the state narrative has been further challenged through truth recovery and belated official acknowledgment that a number of killings attributed to the British Army were unjustified (Lundy and Rolston, 2016); the most notable examples here being the shooting of civil rights marchers on Bloody Sunday in 1972 for which the UK Government formally apologised in 2010 following the Saville Inquiry (Rolston, 2010) and the shooting dead of a number of people in Ballymurphy in August 1971 that an inquest in July 2021 concluded were innocent (McEvoy, 2022: 10). A former British soldier – Soldier F – was subsequently sent for prosecution over Bloody Sunday in March 2019, 1 while a small number of former British soldiers are being – or have been unsuccessfully - prosecuted over other conflict-related deaths in what has been a bitterly contested and highly convoluted criminal justice process.…”

“…These legacy case prosecutions, however, could be coming to an end should the UK Government successfully pass the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill into law. Introduced to parliament in May 2022 under the pretext of bringing closure and providing information to bereaved families, the move to close down further criminal prosecutions – as well as civil cases and inquests - has been seen as legally, politically and morally problematic by legal experts, human rights groups and victims across the board (Bryson, 2021; McEvoy, 2022). Here, the Bill insulates NI veterans from criminal prosecution in a similar way that the recent Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act 2021 protects those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan will (Mallory, 2022).…”

“…While there has been an emerging body of criminological (Hearty, 2020; McGovern, 2019), legal (Bryson, 2021; Mallinder, 2020; Mallory et al, 2020; McEvoy, 2020), and political (Chung, 2021) scholarship on veteran prosecutions in NI, sociological examination has been surprisingly absent despite the clear relevance of several strands of sociology. Situating itself within a broader sociological terrain that includes military sociology, the sociology of emotions, and social movement studies, this article seeks to encourage sociological exploration of the internal mobilisation of ‘intimates’ (Jasper and Poulsen, 1995) within the veteran constituency (i.e., veterans and/or their families) against NI legacy case prosecutions.…”