Ben Lowry: Ireland has repeatedly chided the UK yet it was Greece that was snubbed

The prime minister cancelled a meeting with his Greek counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis in London after the latter called for the return of the ancient marbles, which have been in the British Museum since they were removed from Athens in the 1800s.

Whether or not it is true that Mr Mitsotakis reneged on an understanding that he would not raise the status of the Elgin Marbles, as Downing Street said, it was nonetheless an easy issue on which Mr Sunak could take a stand. Red wall voters, the patriotic typically Labour supporters who backed Boris Johnson in 2019 in his bid to ‘Get Brexit Done’, thus securing a general election victory for the Tories, are the sort of people who might be seen to understand a display of British fortitude against grumbling Mediterranean types.

Yet when it comes to an issue in which such voters have little interest, Northern Ireland, there are no votes to be harvested by taking a firm UK stand against an often complaining foreign prime minister, Leo Varadkar. Mr Varadkar has begun to draw the ire of conservative commentators in London over Ireland’s anti Israeli policies and indeed for his swipes about the UK (as noted in my October 21 column on Irish exceptionalism).

Yet nothing he says ever even draws a verbal riposte from Britain, let alone a cancelled meeting.

Last week Michael Gove, who was in Dublin for the British Irish Council meeting, was asked about the possibility of Ireland suing the UK in Strasbourg for its legacy act, which offers a form of amnesty for people accused of Troubles wrongdoing.

Dublin has repeatedly said that it is considering such action, the mere hint of which should have been met with an immediate slap down from UK ministers, followed by a pledge to challenge any such case to the bitter end, and indeed to explore belated options for examining Ireland’s role in facilitating Irish terrorism by stubbornly refusing to extradite republicans (102 out of 110 UK requests 1973 to 1997), as a result of which hundreds of border Protestants were killed. In a major political failure in 2014, the agreed Stormont House legacy structures for examining the past did not come up with a mechanism to investigate the impact of extradition denials.

But there is an even more stark reason why Irish legal action against the UK would be contemptible: Ireland’s own one-sided amnesty for IRA terrorists. That amnesty might not be written in law, but is clear given the way IRA terrorists there talk freely about their terror – in the case of Father Ryan, boast about it.

The amnesty is also apparent in the obvious fact that there has been a cross-border amnesty for IRA leaders such as Martin McGuinness since 1998. We all knew this intuitively at the time of the Belfast Agreement. The political system simply would not have allowed him to be charged with so much as a single act of terrorism, let alone with the full list of murder and mayhem that he and his fellow leaders ordered. Meanwhile, for years, we have watched lowly soldiers brought before the courts for single shootings, almost all of which lacked pre-meditation.

But just in case there was anyone to whom this de facto amnesty was not clear, the former Irish justice minister Michael McDowell said that from 1998 to 2006 Sinn Féin had “incessantly demanded” immunity from criminal prosecution for IRA members and the Irish government of which he was a part decided “that further investigation and prosecution by An Garda Síochána of such historic offences was no longer warranted or justified by reason of the greater interest”.

​The UK introduced its legacy legislation with two aims: to stop these outrageous prosecutions of soldiers while not annoying Sinn Fein (which any major probe into republican terror would do, ie my suggested probe into extradition refusals). Yet asked about Ireland’s legal threat Mr Gove merely said: “We know and understand the Irish government’s position, and we respect the autonomy of the decision-making process within the Irish government.”

No doubt people in London would emphasise that he went on to say: “We, I think it is clear, believe it would be preferable not for a case to be taken forward.”

He did, but he also said that it was a “decision for the Irish government and it in no way leads to any deterioration or difficulty in any of the other conversations that we have. Because we respect Ireland’s sovereign right in this regard, and we continue to work well with the Irish government in so many other areas”.

I could list all the other anti British things Leo Varadkar has said, but I did that in previous articles (‘Unionists and London have consistently failed to challenge Ireland's repeated criticisms of the UK on legacy,’ Ben Lowry, June 2023), or the same re President Higgins, but I did that last year (‘Surprise us President Higgins, say something nice about Britain,’ Ben Lowry, 2022).

I could cite how the most visible London Tories when it comes to Northern Ireland are MPs who typically side with Ireland when it has a complaint about the UK, men like Simon Hoare (outgoing chair of the NI Affairs Committee) and Julian Smith (the secretary of state whom unionists in 2020 allowed to tear up the three strands and give the IRA what it wanted on legacy in the then deal to restore Stormont, before he was deservedly sacked, albeit to DUP and UUP tributes). But again, I have done that before (Unionists lamented the exit of Julian Smith, a man who did lasting damage to unionism,’ February 2020).

Instead I rest my case with the fact that Ireland’s threat to sue the UK over its handling of the legacy of Irish terrorism will not in London’s eyes lead to any deterioration in relations.

Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter editor