Sorry For What, Exactly?

I read that UUP leader Jon Burrows has recently been flaunting his hard man credentials by suggesting that Ireland should apologise for ‘unjustifiable conduct’ during the decades of violence in the North. Stating that:

I think they should make a major statement about the past, I would love Ireland to say that some of their conduct during the Troubles was unjustified and unjustifiable. I think it would be seismic for our relationships … seismic for good relations [….]

I think there’s something specific about the Irish state’s approach to extradition that stands out as an equivalent of Bloody Sunday, but over a long period of time, and it was a decision at the highest level. They refused to [extradite] murderers

Jon’s equivalence focuses on the occasional refusal of the Irish judicial system to extradite IRA suspects to the UK jurisdiction and that these were ‘a decision at the highest level’ which, certainly for me, infers a political decision rather than a judicial conclusion and that,

[….] ‘there is a double standard on legacy today’ and that and the Irish Government needs to ‘engage in good faith, with equal footing’ So many attacks were planned in the South; people came from the South, devices were made in the South, and they escaped to the South, and they’ve left Northern Ireland and the UK with the burden of investigating and responsibility for the sort of ownership of legacy, and they need to take their part

For me the two issues that Jon raises are judicial decisions in extradition cases and the investigation of broad-brush general allegations.

It seems that the problem Jon has with the judicial decisions is that the Irish judicial system isn’t an exact carbon copy of the UK model and that Irish judges didn’t follow the same legal processes and come to the same outcomes. There were numerous legislative reasons that some extraditions were refused but rather than go into legalese, the extraditions were generally refused under the Irish Extradition Act 1965 while under Articles 38 and 40 of Bunreacht na hÉireann Irish Judges were constitutionally obliged to consider matters including fundamental personal rights, including equality before the law, the right to life, personal liberty etc. Under the Irish Extradition Act 1965, (amended in the 8os and 90s to narrow the political offence exception), Ireland was able to refuse extradition if the offences were considered ‘political’. Irish courts applied a broad interpretation to allow extradition requests based on things like armed attacks on state forces, explosives offences and prison escapes linked to the conflict in the North if these could be shown to be ‘political’ as opposed to ‘criminal’.

For me there are a number of false equivalences in Jon’s approach, Judges following the letter of the law simply aren’t equivalent to the ‘unlawful killings’ of Bloody Sunday, Ballymurphy and Springhill. Judges interpreting legislation is the same principle as Judges interpreting the law which saw Jon’s erstwhile colleagues in the RUC not be held culpable for the killings of sixteen year old Michael McCartan or that of mother of two Nora McCabe, (at whose inquest the RUC members perjured themselves) and his ‘security forces’ colleagues not be held liable for the killings of sixteen year old John Boyle, Aidan McAnespie and many others.

What Jon seems to want is some type of quid pro quo that because the British Government apologised for incidents like Bloody Sunday, collusion, (in the murder of Pat Finucane) and the shooting dead of twelve year of Majella O’Hare then the Irish Government should do the same as some form of contrition for similar illegality.

They shouldn’t and it’s not.

As an aside, if Jon is really serious about addressing legacy issues he ight have noticed that the Finucane family are feeling frustrated at the hold up in the public inquiry they were promised.

I’m sure Jon could lend a hand to the campaign to have the proceedings expedited. I’m not sure how much electoral worth this would have to the unionist hard line, though.