Ex-NIO advisor urges new safeguards for Stormont House Agreement to stop former terrorists rewriting their past

A key advisor during the Stormont House Agreement deal was always concerned that it would allow terrorists to spuriously rewrite their history - and says government must act now to stop it happening.
By Philip Bradfield
Published 12th Oct 2020, 06:30 BST
Updated 12th Oct 2020, 09:00 BST
The former NIO advisor Jonathan Caine (Lord Caine) asking a question in the House of Lords, on October 28 2019.The former NIO advisor Jonathan Caine (Lord Caine) asking a question in the House of Lords, on October 28 2019.
The former NIO advisor Jonathan Caine (Lord Caine) asking a question in the House of Lords, on October 28 2019.

The revelation was made by Lord Caine, Special Advisor to Secretary of States from 1991-95 and 2010-19, and one of the governments’ top experts on NI of recent decades.

The news is significant because the government and all the main parties, except the UUP and TUV, have continued to sell the Stormont House Agreement (SHA) - and the 2015 Fresh Start Agreement (FSA) based on it - to vociferous sceptics who expressed identical concerns to Lord Caine from the start.

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Speaking to the News Letter, Lord Caine said: “I’m aware of the very genuine concerns about rewriting the past, which is why I wrote into successive Conservative NI manifestoes commitments to resist any attempts to do that.”

He added: “I’m aware of the very genuine concerns about re-writing the past, which is why I wrote into successive Conservative NI manifestoes commitments to resist any attempts to do that. I was just wondering whether there was concern over a specific SHA body or the SHA overall. It appears to be overall.

“I’ve always had a concern that the ICIR [Independent Commission for Information Retrieval] and the Oral History Project [both SHA institutions] would be used by former terrorists, on both sides, to justify their actions while many former police officers and victims would be reluctant to engage.

“And any information recovery process or history archive relies on people telling the truth, a big ‘if’ in this case.”

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But he also said the main responsibility for the flaws lay not with government but with “the Executive-led Haas/O’Sullivan process” in 2013. 

“We inherited their architecture and tried to improve it to end the disproportionate focus on the state. But I suppose whatever is put in place there is always the risk that former terrorists will seek to hijack the process in a concerted way.  Government and Parliament would need to look at what further safeguards are possible that might minimise that risk.”

Kenny Donaldson of Innocent Victims United responded: “We have consistently argued from the start that the ICIR could not possibly verify the accuracy of information provided and that it could be manipulated by terror organisations.” Contributions to the Oral History project must be validated or the entire system will be at risk of endorsing their justifications for countless murders, he said.

TUV leader Jim Allister said Lord Caine was “absolutely right in all that he says”. He added: “These agreements are perfectly set up to allow terrorists to justify their bloodshed with unverifiable ‘Provo truth’. Steps must be taken to ensure this cannot happen.”

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Lord Caine also said that Martin McGuinness was allowed to veto legacy from the FSA because the main focus of 2015 was resolving the welfare reform crisis at that time. “Some in the DUP were quite happy with that” he said. “As one put it to me after the FSA was signed, ‘great, we’ve got welfare sorted without having to do any of that crap about the past’!” Both he and DUP MP Sir Jeffrey Donaldson agreed that legacy talks continued anyway, resulting in paramilitary crackdowns, a victims pension and pending protections for veterans. “It remains our view that the ongoing legacy discussions must be victim centred,” Mr Donaldson added.

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