Northern Ireland Legacy Bill Will End Court Case ‘Merry-Go-Round,’ Defence Secretary Wallace Says

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace in an undated file photo. (Ian Forsyth/PA)

British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has lauded new legislation to deal with the legacy of The Troubles in Northern Ireland as the best way of ending the “merry-go-round” of court cases.

The Legacy Bill, which is advancing through Parliament, would provide immunity for those accused of offences during The Troubles as long as they cooperate with a new truth recovery body.

It would halt not only criminal proceedings but also prevent civil cases and would also negate the need for hundreds of inquests linked to killings during The Troubles.

Wallace, who served in Northern Ireland as a soldier in 1991, said the current system is “not serving the peace process well.”

Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer, a former director of public prosecutions, has said he will scrap the bill if the opposition win the next general election, but Wallace urged him to be “very cautious before making these type of commitments.”

“I understand the sense of loss many victims have held,“ Wallace said in Belfast on Jan. 18. ”But it is also important that we stop what has become a merry-go-round of legacy inquests, and constant reopenings and retrials that don’t actually seem to serve the peace process well.”

‘It’s Really Important ... to Draw a Line Under It’

He said the current process “doesn’t help either the victims that I have seen or indeed many of the people accused, I think it’s really important we do our best to draw a line under it.”

Wallace said, “The Good Friday Agreement was as much about forgiveness and coming together as anything else, and this legacy legislation is about saying, we want to move out of the constant reopening of inquests through the same processes—when I was a junior minister here, I think they thought it would take 30 years to get through that weight of inquests—and to put it into a better system where people can come forward, and if they engage with this legacy programme then, of course, they will achieve a level of immunity.”

He said former paramilitaries and members of the security forces who didn’t choose to engage or cooperate would be “open to be prosecuted.”

Meanwhile, Sinn Fein politician Gerry Kelly, a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, called Wallace’s comments “insulting and disrespectful to victims of the conflict who have waited decades for truth and justice about the killings of their loved ones.”

More than 3,600 people were killed during The Troubles—the period of sectarian strife between 1969 and 1998 when the Provisional IRA sought to force a united Ireland through terrorism—and 1,000 of those killings remain unsolved.

One is the killing of Roseanne Mallon, a 76-year-old spinster from the Roman Catholic community, who was shot dead in her isolated cottage in Killymoyle, County Tyrone.

Her nephew, Martin Mallon, a former IRA man who served time in prison for explosives offences, has always claimed she was killed by a loyalist death squad with the connivance of the British Army.

The Good Friday Agreement, which ended The Troubles in 1998, allowed for convicted killers on both the republican and loyalist sides to be freed from prison, but didn’t create a process for what should happen if new evidence emerged about the unsolved killings.

The head office of Saoradh, the political wing of the New IRA, in Derry, Northern Ireland, in October 2019. (Chris Summers/The Epoch Times)

Later this month, Soldier F, the only member of the Parachute Regiment ever to face charges over the events of Jan. 30, 1972—better known as Bloody Sunday, when 14 unarmed demonstrators were shot dead in Londonderry—is due back in court.

Soldier F has been charged with the murders of James Wray and William McKinney and the attempted murders of Joseph Friel, Michael Quinn, Joe Mahon, and Patrick O’Donnell.

In April 2021, defense minister Johnny Mercer, a former soldier, resigned from his role in protest at the treatment of armed forces veterans who served in Northern Ireland.

This week, the government amended the legislation to allow the truth recovery body to conduct criminal investigations “where it judges that to be appropriate.”

Sinn Fein Calls Wallace’s Comments ‘Callous’

“Comments by the British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace that the British government’s flawed legacy bill will end a ‘merry-go-round of legacy inquests’ are insulting and disrespectful to the families of victims of the conflict who have waited decades for truth and justice,” said Kelly, a former Provisional IRA man who planted car bombs in London when he was 19. He later endorsed the peace process and was one of the negotiators of the Good Friday Agreement.

“His comments are arrogant, callous, and completely unacceptable,“ Kelly said. ”Access to the courts and to due process is a human right.”

He said the amendments to the bill made by the government this week “do not deal with the substantive issue of victims being entitled to access to due process.”

“The legacy bill is in breach of human rights standards and international law and should be scrapped now,” said Kelly, who was described in 1986 as an “extremely dangerous, resourceful and dedicated terrorist.”

The Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill will move to the House of Lords next week.

PA Media contributed to this report.