[A-List] UK state: Northern Ireland

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

John Ware co-authored a notorious Independent article with David McKittrick
on the subject of Colin Wallace in 1987, designed to smear the latter as he
was making public his later vindicated allegations concerning the Wilson
plot. Maybe that was also a "good idea at the time", although Ware, like
McKittrick, appears never to have retracted or apologised for that article.

----

A good idea at the time...

Two years ago Tony Blair asked a judge to investigate alleged collusion
killings. Now he wishes he hadn't

John Ware
Tuesday December 9, 2003
The Guardian

Appointing a judge of international standing to decide if six public
inquiries on both sides of the Irish border into collusion between
terrorists and the security forces were merited seemed like a good idea at
the time to the British and Irish prime ministers.

It was August 2001. Weston Park, a grand mansion in Shropshire which once
captivated Disraeli, was host to the main participants of the Good Friday
agreement. The peace process was at yet another of its many critical
junctures. Nationalists were refusing to implement police reforms unless
Tony Blair agreed to a public inquiry into the murder of the Belfast
solicitor Patrick Finucane, whose assassination by loyalists had been
urged - and perhaps assisted - by elements of the police and the
intelligence services.

Mr Blair was also digging in his heels, as the one public inquiry he had
agreed to - Bloody Sunday - was not exactly shaping up as the uplifting
experience he'd hoped for. Fees from the ranks of legal vultures were
rocketing. (Latest estimates put the cost at £155m and we may not even get
the report until 2005.) The proposal to appoint an international judge to
take the decision on Finucane out of Blair's hands came from the Irish
taoiseach Bertie Ahern.

To unionists, this was yet another sop to republicans. If this was where
parity of esteem was leading, there would have to be parity of victimhood.
David Trimble wanted the judge to investigate long-held unionist suspicions
of collusion between the Irish police force, the Garda, and the IRA. In the
end, Blair and Ahern settled on three nationalist and three unionist cases
of suspected collusion between the security forces on both sides of the
border and loyalists and IRA terrorists.

This compromise freed Blair from being stuck between a rock and a hard
place. His release, however, looks to be temporary. The judge the two
governments appointed was Mr Justice Peter Cory, a man whose mild, courteous
manner belies the steely spine that earned him a place in Canada's supreme
court. Judge Cory has done what Blair must have prayed he would never do.
Having read many volumes of very sensitive intelligence, unpublished police
reports, including the one into collusion by Metropolitan police
commissioner Sir John Stevens, and some papers to which even Sir John did
not get access, Cory has recommended a public inquiry into no fewer than
five out of the six cases. Four are in Northern Ireland and include the
murder of another solicitor, Rosemary Nelson, against whom RUC officers are
said to have made death threats.

The judge is said to be a passionate advocate of public inquiries (albeit
with strict cost controls) as the only satisfactory remedy when other
democratic means have failed to establish the truth. But to the Northern
Ireland Office, a nightmare beckons of back-to-back legal marathons, as
greedy lawyers feast on the discomfort of the security and intelligence
services, blackening their name for the foreseeable future.

Little wonder then that the Northern Ireland Office is said to be
considering some softer options. One overall inquiry into collusion rather
than four has been mentioned. Milder still is the suggestion that these four
tricky cases might be absorbed into some sort of wider truth and
reconciliation process. Judge Cory is not happy about this. Failure to hold
any of the inquiries he has recommended would be a clear breach of his terms
of reference, signed by the then Northern Ireland secretary, John Reid, and
the Irish foreign minister, Brian Cowen.

When Judge Cory presented his reports to both governments in October, he
remarked that if either party dishonoured its commitment he would behave
like his grandson when he does not get his way. "I don't think I would kick
and scream and I don't think I would turn blue, but I would make a lot of
noise," he said. We wait to see if the judge was only joking, for his terms
of reference also commit both governments to publish his lengthy reports.
The Irish have no problem with that, but the British do.

Last month, Judge Cory returned from Canada to consider requests for amend-
ments. On the British side, this has turned into a gruelling marathon
following the intervention of the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith.
Publication has slipped twice and no firm date is being offered. The
Northern Ireland secretary, Paul Murphy, says only that there are issues of
"national security" and the "safety of individuals" which "need to be
considered". Cory says he took these into account and wrote his report in
such a way that he did not expect to have to make significant amendments.

Despite the many millions of pounds spent by police forces investigating
collusion in Northern Ireland over the past 14 years, only the most general
conclusions - damning though they have been - have ever been published. An
authoritative official account of the gritty details of who was
assassinated - and with what murky state assistance - remains hidden from
the families of the victims and the public. Judge Cory was invited out of
retirement into the kitchen. What passes for open government in Britain
still seems incapable of withstanding the heat.