Editorial: For once London issues an excellent response to Dublin over its disgraceful decision to sue the UK over its handling of the legacy of Irish terrorism

​For more than a decade, this newspaper has been pretty much alone in highlighting almost daily the scandal of legacy of terrorism.

There is not much need to recap on the essence of that scandal, because we have done it so often before but the whole apparatus of the UK criminal justice system has been turned against the security forces who prevented civil war, while IRA murderers – in particular their blood-soaked leaders – have enjoyed de facto amnesty on both sides of the border.

While some foolish and naive politicians in the UK government and within unionism have thought this will simply go away, or that it is not a major political problem, the scandal has worsened and worsened. Vast sums of money continue to be spent on utterly lop-sided inquiries into the past and utterly lop-sided criminal investigations. Prosecutions have been grossly lop-sided against the security forces.

It is a scandal that reached its peak this week when Ireland, which was allowed by the UK and unionists in the Stormont house deal to escape scrutiny for its long harbouring of terrorists, took a legal action against the UK.

We warned repeatedly about unionists allowing apologists for terrorism to say that “all the parties” were opposed the Legacy Act, which Ireland is citing in its shameful, hypocritical legal action.

But there is hope this week. After years of the lamentable failure of UK ministers to hit back at the endless stream of criticism from the hypocritical Irish establishment, where the undeclared amnesty for the IRA is entrenched, London hit back. Chris Heaton-Harris’s statement on Wednesday night was excellent, detailing Irish hypocrisy. Lord Caine contradicted woeful recent comments by Michael Gove that an Irish legal action would not hurt relations – Lord Caine in effect said it would.Let us hope this new approach is sustained.