Editorial: Ministry of Defence has failed to stop the legacy betrayal of veterans who served in Northern Ireland

The letter in The Times this week from nine former military leaders is both predictable and momentous.

The nine distinguished men – eight four-star generals and an air chief marshal – chose Armistice Day to say that soldiers’ trust in the legal system is being eroded by lawfare against the security forces in Northern Ireland.

The letter was momentous in the sense that it is remarkable that men with such records at the very top of the army and RAF should speak out in this way. It is hard to think of a precedent for it.

It is predictable though too. This newspaper has been reporting for a decade on the legacy scandal, in the which the truth of the Troubles has been turned on its head by Irish nationalists and activists in the legal and academic worlds in order to portray the UK security forces as the culprits, not Irish terrorists.

It has taken a very long time for observers to catch up with what is happening, and its implications for helping to legitimise not only past terror but present and future terror. But it was as good as inevitable that when people saw the scale of what was happening to appease, above all, Sinn Fein (but also foolish allies of theirs such as Ireland’s new president Catherine Connolly) there would be an outcry – or at least among ex security forces.

They have been betrayed by Labour. The so-called protections for veterans either apply to everyone, including terrorists, or are meaningless. Nationalist Ireland would not accept less. The Irish government has not even been put under pressure to drop its hypocritical legacy legal action at Strasbourg against the UK, and if it does so will no doubt be praised, rather than treated with contempt for bringing the case when it has given the IRA amnesty since the 1990s.

The Tories and Reform must plan a future overhaul of the Northern Ireland Office, which has defeated the Ministry of Defence to betray veterans who served in NI.