Northern Ireland Reflects on the Troubles

Earlier this year, a consulting group recommended the creation of a “legacy commission” in Northern Ireland to promote reconciliation and closure for the “Troubles” that plagued the country for most of the last four decades of the 20th century and remain a source of lingering tension today.  A parliamentary committee, however, announced on December 15 that it had decided not to pursue that recommendation at this time.

The committee’s rationale moved in several directions, and the Belfast Telegraph did not do a particularly effective job of presenting that rationale.  The story’s lead, that Northern Ireland is “not yet ready for a legacy commission to investigate its troubled and violent past,” suggests many possible underlying problems, including a lack of public buy-in for the concept.  As the committee members explain, though, their concern in this area focused on redundancy, given that “bodies such as the Police Ombudsman and the Historical Enquiries Team [have] been carrying out fresh investigations into unsolved murders going back over 40 years.”  In other words, the problem is not a lack of public will but a question of need – what would a new commission contribute and in what ways would it simply provide another layer of bureaucratic clutter?

That said, the committee did support exploring the consideration of the creation of a fund for victims and survivors.  The consulting firm’s original suggestion – 12,000 pounds to the closest relative of every person killed in the conflict, regardless of political affiliation – was immediately shot down by the government.  That will likely remain a sticking point as discussions proceed in this area.

An editorial from the same paper does a better job of unpacking the issues underlying the opposition to the legacy commission.  Most importantly, the original recommendation called for amnesty-for-truth for those speaking in front of the commission, similar to what occurred in South Africa.  It seems clear that the consulting firm, while promoting ideas recognized as valid by many in the field of transitional justice, called for too much, too soon, in a country that remains very much scarred by its past.  In other words, the opening premise of the Belfast Telegraph’s article might actually speak the truth.

The question, as always, is at what point has the scab reached the point where its work is done and it can safely removed without aggravating the original wound.  When is it in the best interests of a country to openly address the painful past and when will it only spark a return to instability?