IT is hard to avoid the conclusion that the British government is planning a state funeral to bury the truth about its conduct here.
The Queen made the announcement on Tuesday, when she confirmed that Westminster intends to dispose of the concepts of guilt, responsibility and justice, probably by granting an amnesty for Troubles-related offences in the 30 years up to 1998.
While the details remain unknown, the proposed legislation would bury the truth about Britain's long and bloody history here of state violence, loyalist collusion and sectarian manipulation. It will need a deep grave to hold it all.
It would mean that although the Ballymurphy victims were innocent, those from the Parachute Regiment who shot them could never be deemed guilty.
Five months after Ballymurphy, that same regiment shot 14 people on Bloody Sunday in Derry.
It would be a travesty of justice if those who killed a total of 24 unarmed civilians in two separate incidents should be immune from prosecution.
Instead, Britain now proposes "information recovery" (but not necessarily truth recovery) "to address the legacy of the past", as the Queen said.
She might have quoted Shakespeare, who wrote that no legacy is as rich as honesty.
The legislation would also presumably exonerate Britain's intelligence services, who were equally complicit in multiple civilian deaths.
The loyalist Glenanne Gang, for example, which killed about 120 Catholic civilians, operated with British intelligence support. Guilt goes beyond the gunmen, often right to Downing Street.
The gang's activities are believed to have included the Dublin and Monaghan bombings.
An Irish government inquiry into the bombings revealed that Britain held 68,000 files of relevant information, but they sent just 16 pages to Dublin. Those 68,000 files will now lie in Britain's mass war grave.
Westminster Abbey contains the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Westminster's parliamentary majority now hopes that all those with a military record here will be unknown soldiers, so that none of them will ever have to face justice.
Of course, the legislation would not just conceal Britain's crimes, it would also bury the truth about paramilitary offences.
No one would be charged with IRA atrocities such as the Abercorn restaurant, La Mon House, Bloody Friday, Enniskillen, Birmingham and Kingsmills.
Those incidents alone killed 58 innocent civilians and injured 515.
The IRA failed to provide information to the Ballymurphy inquests. As long as it continues to hamper the search for truth, it will undermine Sinn Féin's claim to stand for justice.
The Ballymurphy relatives deserve immense credit for their campaign. So too does justice advocate, Alan Black, sole survivor of Kingsmills.
The same credit must go to truth campaigner, Julie Hambleton, whose 18-year-old sister was killed in the Birmingham bomb while handing out birthday party invitations.
Many on this side of the Irish Sea will complain about the proposed legislation, but will willingly carry the coffin at the funeral of the truth.
They include, for example, those keen to bury the truth about Stakeknife. An informer for 25 years, the IRA allowed him to torture and kill an estimated 50 people, whom he claimed were informers.
Both the IRA and his British handlers would enjoy an amnesty by burying the awful facts about him.
The amnesty would also apply to those who killed our children. They include, for example, eight-year-old Kathryn Eakin, killed in the IRA's Claudy bombing, while cleaning a window and 12-year-old Majella O'Hare, shot in the back by the army in Whitecross on her way to confessions. What sort of society denies justice to a child?
To hold no one responsible for the sheer inhumanity of it all would be a huge stain on our collective conscience, if we have one.
If we haven't, the proposed legislation will be based on political horse trading, rather than justice.
Of course an amnesty, by whatever name, will mean that all sides can then tell the truth. All they will have to do is make it up.
