Ben Lowry: The UK has tipped into an amnesty after a long approach to IRA that lacked bite

In the case of the News Letter much of that archive, going back to 1737, is missing or scattered between libraries, private collections and our own bound copies.

In 2018 and 2019 I edited an On This Day 280 Years Ago column based on copies from exactly 280 years previously, in 1738 and 1739.

No newspaper in history had run such a daily column — and I can say that confidently, because no English language daily title has survived as long as we have done.

Most people’s eyes glaze over when I show them a very old News Letter. The old papers look very forbidding. There are no nice pictures, not even black and white ones, because it is more than a century before photographs, and indeed there are not even drawings. The page is crammed with text that looks boring, set on now crumbling paper.

The stories seem to come from a backward, impoverished and cruel time. In many respects it is all of those things, and there are reports for example of hangings of thieves.

But in fact when you read those early papers, they are filled with intrigue, gossip, wonder, high politics and international affairs. There is plenty of war too, including conflicts across Europe that are raging, or just beginning, or ending.

Some of the most violent News Letter reports come from Corisca, where there had been a civil war to get independence from Genoa.

In late 1738 there was a peace deal on the island.

The outline agreement was divided into eight ‘articles’.

The first article describes “a general amnesty ... for all Persons that have incurred those Penalties on Account of the Rebellion”.

The second article deals with decommissioning. It reads: “A general Disarming, under Pain of Death of all Persons that shall afterwards be found to have Arms.”

The final article: “For the Future, Murders shall be punished with Death without Remission.”

The peace deal is one of the many reports that are a reminder that people were of course not primitive 300 years ago, but capable of making intricate legal agreements.

In some respects the Corsica deal was more sophisticated and bold than the 1998 Belfast Agreement, because it included both an amnesty and a bite (death penalty for rebels who did not play ball).

The Belfast Agreement did not include a formal amnesty but it did seem to have an informal one.

How realistic was it that overall political and criminal decisions would have panned out in such as way that IRA Army Council leaders such as Martin McGuinness, Billy McKee, Brian Keenan or Kevin McKenna would, if still alive, be facing jail terms?

It included lots of other elements that had the characteristics of amnesty such as the early release of prisoners, the criminal justice exemptions given to those who co-operated in decommissioning or finding the remains of the Disappeared. It was later followed by On The Run letters.

Yet the Belfast Agreement had no bite. Few people in this era would suggest execution of paramilitaries who did not accept that 1998 deal, but there was no sanction for those who did not co-operate except they faced full jail terms if convicted of ongoing terror.

There is a plausible case to be made that the UK cleverly succeeded in a long policy of normalisation of NI from the early 1970s to the 1990s, but then threw away their successes over the IRA with a policy of non stop appeasement of Sinn Fein post 1998.

This amnesty is the latest phase in that appeasement, hastened by the homicide trials of veterans.

The legacy paper unveiled by Brandon Lewis this week does not answer the questions I posed in my column last week (see link below), as to when republicans and the Irish government are going to face meaningful pressure on legacy — the sort of elementary pressure that might make them think twice about lecturing the UK on the past.

And details of the government’s plan are uncertain, such as whether or not it will be able to shut down legacy inquests (which are mostly into killings by the state).

Or whether people who carry out non criminal investigations of the past will also adjudicate on it. Last year two lawyers Neil Faris and Peter Smith QC wrote in this newspaper about how the Stormont House legacy plans included “a gross violation of the maxim Audi alteram partem — a fundamental principle of justice requiring that no one may be judged to have done wrong without ... a fair opportunity to challenge the evidence against them”.

Ex RUC were particularly vulnerable to such adjudications (although a planned ‘police misconduct’ element of legacy has rightly now been ditched).

Having said all of the above, the UK government has made a surprisingly emphatic attempt to close ballooning investigations into the past.

Anyone who wants this amnesty to be overturned needs to be realistic about the fact that it is those former soldiers and police officers who will bear an undue burden.

I have written many times that if the UK and Northern Ireland had not suffered a moral collapse in the face of an IRA that was repudiated across society, we would have embarked on a major London-led review as to how such a scandalous anti state legacy imbalance ever reached this level.

But there is barely any stomach for that and London has instead done something some of us warned about years ago — it has been intimidated by the welter of probes into the state, it has allowed the terrorists to face barely any scrutiny, and it has inadvertently tipped into an amnesty.

• Ben Lowry (@Benlowry2) is News Letter deputy editor

• Ben Lowry July 15: We should be honest as to how we have arrived at a Troubles amnesty

Other articles by Ben Lowry below, and beneath that information on how to subscribe to the News Letter:

• Ben Lowry July 10: We will find soon if UK is for once going to criticise Ireland

• Ben Lowry July 10: I once always wanted England to lose, now I want them to win

• Ben Lowry July 3: The mild DUP response to the protocol will cause Boris little concern

• Ben Lowry July 3: The extreme heat in Canada shows why we might come to like Northern Ireland’s mild weather

• Ben Lowry June 26: Neither Dublin nor IRA have been put under any pressure on legacy

• Ben Lowry June 26: A slight sense of sadness as the days again begin to shorten

• Ben Lowry June 19: Somehow the appeasement of Sinn Fein got worse

• Ben Lowry June 12: Now above all, when unionists are winning the argument on the Protocol, is time to stand firm against it

• Ben Lowry June 5: It is clear that Edwin Poots is not taking the DUP in a remotely hardline direction

• Ben Lowry May 29: There is much confusion in unionism, so here are some suggested core pro Union principles

• Ben Lowry May 22: Instead of ‘moving on’ from IRA funeral, we still need proper answers

• Ben Lowry May 22: If Joel Keys, 19, wants to help unionism he should get a law degree

• Ben Lowry May 15: Edwin Poots and Doug Beattie will offer two distinct shades of unionism

• Ben Lowry May 8: Formal UK ideas for an amnesty are almost exactly 20 years old

• Ben Lowry May 8: Let us hope that the brilliant Eoghan Harris keeps on writing

• Ben Lowry May 1: Unionism can’t just be about managing long-term defeat

• Ben Lowry May 1: Arlene Foster was given huge opportunity by DUP after her exit helped ruin UUP

• Ben Lowry April 24: NI seems to rely increasingly on just one pollster for data on attitudes to a border poll

• Ben Lowry April 17: DUP still has to choose between managing this disaster or total rejection of it

• Ben Lowry April 10: His enduring marriage to the Queen was key to our understanding of Prince Philip

• Ben Lowry April 3: Radio grilling of UUP leader exposed folly of unionists blaming Simon Byrne for funeral

• Ben Lowry Mar 27: There should not be an Irish language act, but it is too late — the DUP has agreed one

• Ben Lowry Mar 20: We have made it through the worst of the dark, dreaded winter lockdown

• Ben Lowry Mar 20: MLAs lost control of abortion by rejecting modest law reform

• Ben Lowry Mar 13: Whatever future Boris Johnson adopts for Northern Ireland seems set to lead to a crisis

• Ben Lowry Mar 13: Scotland tunnel isn’t fantasy, but something kids of today might see

• Ben Lowry Mar 6: The cost of victims’ pension has ballooned without explanation as to why 


• Ben Lowry Feb 27: Unionists have fully turned against Irish Sea border because they’ve seen the scale of disaster

• Ben Lowry Feb 20: We still lack answers as to why IRA funeral got special treatment at Roselawn

• Ben Lowry Feb 13: Peter Robinson has long experience of what is and is not politically feasible

• Ben Lowry Feb 6: There is barely any unionist support for violence, despite justified anger at sea border

• Ben Lowry Jan 30: At last, clear reason for UK and unionists to stop being weak towards Ireland/EU

• Ben Lowry Jan 23: Lockdown sceptics have been undermined by crazy theories, but sensible criticisms haven’t gone away

• Ben Lowry Jan 16: The Irish Sea border was imposed because UK knew unionists would take it

• Ben Lowry in 2020: Last night unionists celebrated a move towards Irish unity

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