MPs again show they have not grasped the legacy scandal

Recently, members of the Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee grilled three academics who are or have been linked to the Committee of the Administration about the planned legacy structures that the NIO has drawn up (as its disastrous detailed interpretation of the 2014 Stormont House Agreement).

MPs showed their failure to grasp the criticisms of that deal that have been reported on regularly in this newspaper: namely that the whole structures will turn against state forces, including the one element that was hoped to bring balance to the process – a Historical Investigations Unit (HIU).

The academics were asked questions that either missed this central concern, or else asked a vaguely difficult question that the questioners seemed not to understand, and so failed to follow up on. It demonstrated a serious failure in the House of Commons to understand what is happening with legacy, and the vulnerability of a state that prevented civil war.

Now the Defence Committee, which has been looking at prosecutions of soldiers, has been discussing a possible truth and reconciliation process similar to South Africa.

What part of what is happening do MPs get?

The legacy scandal is much deeper than soldier prosecutions, outrageous though such trials are in the absence of trials of IRA leaders. It is a chronic imbalance that shows no sign of being rectified, in terms of inquests and civil actions and other sub-criminal standard investigations of the security forces, with no real prospect of sustained examination of terrorism — perhaps not even in HIU, which will be partly overwhelmed with probes into police ‘misconduct’.

If MPs have not seen that the IRA contribution to legacy has been one of shameless lying alongside vindictive pursuit of the state, then we must draw a complete line on the past before lasting assistance is given to republican propaganda.