Misrecognising the victim of state violence: denial, ‘deep’ imperialism and defending ‘our boys’

Abstract

This article critically examines public responses to attempts at holding former British soldiers accountable for historic human rights violations committed during conflicts fought overseas. Using the case of British Army veterans who served in the North of Ireland and Iraq as an empirical basis, it posits that such responses are defined by a moral myopia that distinguishes between state violence 'here ' and 'there' and 'now' and 'then'. This moral myopia, it is submitted, is a form of identity politics forged through a marriage between deep imperialism and the strategies of denial used by the state. This essentially misrecognises the victim of state violence and ultimately leads to public sympathy favouring those who stand accused of human rights abuse over and above those actually subjected to it. Ultimately, the article concludes, this means that public opinion is channelled in a way that calls for such violations not to be punished rather than for them to be punished. treatment of those who had served in Iraq. Far from needing convinced by the letter, May had herself espoused a similar sentiment at the 2016 Conservative Party conference when she proclaimed that 'we will never againin any future conflictlet those activist, left-wing human rights lawyers harangue and harass the bravest of the bravethe men and women of Britain's Armed Forces' [86].The emerging discourse evidences a 'shoot the messenger' strategy of questioning the timing and motivation ([16]: 534), rather than the actual accuracy, of allegations of wrongdoing by 'the bravest of the brave'. Deflecting blame like this has been a discursive strategy of denial consistently used by states complicit in human rights violations [15][16][17], hence there is little peculiarly British about it. However, in framing British soldiers as 'the bravest of the brave', denial is now articulated in terms of Britain's 'warrior nation' past [24,70]. The discourse exposes what Johan Galtung [33, 34] labels a culture of 'deep imperialism' still common in Western states. The injection of 'deep imperialism' into discourses of denial has allowed identity politics to frame how the British 'imagined community' [4,10] views its military. The British 'imagined community' have been conditioned through such a discourse to view the British Army as a transhistorical force for good [18], reflecting how official discourse shapes narrative identities subscribed to by the public [83]. Granted, one may question to what degree a hegemonic discourse successfully embeds itself into the public mind. However, with most people in the UK relying on media, cultural and popular portrayals of, rather than personal interaction with or connection to, 'our boys', their understanding is shaped by what these portrayals want to show and what they want to hide [101]. Unsurprisingly, then, a significant body of research drawing on public views of 'our boys' has shown that they are sufficiently influenced by official discourse [18,24,42]. When confronted with allegations of wrongdoing by 'the bravest of...

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

“…The self-image of British troops being benign peacekeepers was cultivated, and then sustained, by the colonial lens through which the British ‘imagined community’ has always viewed its armed forces (Hearty, 2020; McGovern, 2019), and, in the North of Ireland more specifically, how the state sought to control the public narrative that Operation Banner was a peacekeeping mission premised on restraint and respect for human rights (Lord, 2020). When veterans like Hutchings stand over their past record in NI, then, their self-image mirrors the British Army's institutional way of ‘seeing’ its NI campaign.…”

“…At the same time that former British soldiers are facing reinvestigation over their conduct in NI, evidence of systemic human rights abuse has cast a shadow over the British Army's record in post-NI deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq (Mallory, 2022). Persistent allegations of systemic human rights abuse spanning from Belfast in the last century to Basra this century is thus injurious to the moral self-superiority inherent in post-Brexit English nationalism and to the colonial mindset that ‘our boys’ have been dutiful peacekeepers while deployed overseas (Hearty, 2020; McGovern, 2019).…”

“…By the same token, veteran mobilisation also channels anger, largely understood as an umbrella of expressive emotions provoked by a perceived or real sense of injustice, betrayal or insult (Schieman, 2006: 496), towards those veterans believe are ‘reclassifying’ the past The primary outlet for their anger has been Irish republicans (i.e., Sinn Féin as the political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA 4 )), and, to a lesser extent, human rights groups and lawyers (Hearty, 2020) dismissed by veterans as the ‘human rights proxies of the republican movement’ (Justice for Northern Ireland Veterans, 2020). With these legacy case prosecutions ‘being driven by Irish Republicans’ (Rolling Thunder, n.d.b), they are, according to NIVM (NIVM, n.d.d) at least, part of a ‘propaganda exercise to discredit the British Government by rewriting the history of Operation Banner and to further the Nationalist cause’.…”

“…They were people acting under orders and under instruction and fulfilling their duty in a dignified and appropriate way’ ( BBC, 2019a). Bradley's comments wilfully overlook shortcomings in how state violence was legally regulated and investigated at the time (Bryson, 2021; Lundy and Rolston, 2016; McEvoy, 2020), yet in reducing the discussion to a macabre and simplistic numbers game they typify the UK Government narrative that the ‘dealing with the past’ process has been hijacked by human rights groups, activist lawyers and former ‘terrorists’ intent on ‘rewriting the past’ (Hearty, 2020).…”

“…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.…”