Opinion

Newton Emerson: Time for a new conversation on role of victims groups

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson writes a twice-weekly column for The Irish News and is a regular commentator on current affairs on radio and television.

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald called for “an agreed process for reconciliation”
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald called for “an agreed process for reconciliation” Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald called for “an agreed process for reconciliation”

If we want a shared conversation on the past, we should stop paying for the divided conversation we have at present.

Mary Lou McDonald’s speech to a ‘civic unionism’ event on Monday night has been overshadowed by her clanger a few hours earlier about appointing the next chief constable.

In her speech at Queen’s University Belfast, the Sinn Féin president called for “an agreed process for reconciliation”, not as “a Trojan horse for unity” but as something that “sits above the constitutional question.”

Her prerequisite for this was “a process to resolve the past”.

“We need a new conversation about the past, a focus on finding common ground, a compassionate approach”.

Some unionists have been inclined to spot conspiracy in these fine words, coming just after McDonald damned the PSNI as institutionally untrustworthy on legacy cases, following its failure to disclose files on the Sean Graham bookmaker’s massacre and related loyalist murders.

But McDonald’s pointed reference to a Trojan horse, unmistakably damning the cynicism of her predecessor, suggests she had high hopes of headline-grabbing outreach on Monday.

That she ended up spending all week defending Sinn Féin over its support for policing unwittingly proves her point. The combative approach to dealing with the past is toxic to reconciliation. You cannot be drawn into the former and advocate for the latter, even if your desire for reconciliation is sincere.

Many people have called for a new conversation on legacy over the years but there is surprisingly little critique of the existing conversation as a divisive construct. It has come to seem natural that there should be loyalist and republican victims groups and campaigners, with the authorities in some contested position between them, all pushing partisan narratives against each other.

In fact, this system has been consciously designed and financed. The Northern Ireland Victims and Survivors Service (VSS), the main institution running the system, has £8.5 million a year earmarked for “organisations”. Although most of the criteria for applicants require providing counselling, health and welfare support to individuals, one criteria for “truth, justice and acknowledgement” has generated a mini-industry - or more accurately, two mini-industries - of justice campaigns and general Troubles ‘research’.

Equality in the system is provided by a rough match of funding for both sides.

The last time this approach was seriously questioned by those within it was during the 2009 consultation on the Eames-Bradley report on dealing with the past, when what were described as “partisan” victims groups were viewed as part of the problem and de-funding them was considered essential to an overall legacy solution.

Eames-Bradley has formed the basis of all official solutions since, including the latest proposals in the Stormont House agreement, but its concern about victims groups has disappeared as such groups have come to dominate the system.

One of the few remaining points of decency in Northern Ireland politics is that we do not denigrate the bereaved. Individual Troubles victims have every right to be partisans in their pursuit of truth, justice and acknowledgement and that must continue to be respected. Nobody should have a burden of expectation placed upon them to ‘balance’ their case against the needs and causes of others.

But does this always have to be facilitated through a system set up for confrontation?

Funding could instead be prioritised for groups representing multiple categories of victims. Or legal and financial assistance could be provided directly to individuals, via VSS or a cross-community panel.

The funding of activist researchers looks particular absurd now the Police Ombudsman is to be granted access to the PSNI’s huge warehouse of records, as a result of the Sean Graham disclosure scandal, yet it has received no extra budget and can barely handle its existing workload. That should be the first call on cash for trawling through documents.

Nationalism is perceived to be winning the legacy narrative battle, so changing the system might look like a unionist demand.

McDonald’s Belfast speech was a recognition that nobody can win this battle: there will simply be another cycle of recrimination, in which everyone will lose.

At Queen’s, the Sinn Féin president referred to the 1983 IRA murder of unionist lecturer Edgar Graham and the 1992 UVF murder of republican student Sheena Campbell.

Although McDonald meant to be conciliatory, a lazy balance is not enough.

The only possible ‘success’ from a system that plays deaths on each side off against each other is for everything to cancel out in a sullen conspiracy of silence - and we are not even managing that.

newton@irishnews.com