My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group, in particular those in the names of my friend the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, the noble Lord, Lord Godson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey. This is an important issue. The last time we were in Committee on the Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Eames, was speaking about reconciliation, and we spent some time on that. Reconciliation will come only if there is an understanding that the things that happened in the past in Northern Ireland were wrong. To do that we need a factual history, because there has been a lot of rewriting of what has happened in Northern Ireland over the past 35 or 40 years.
Just this week, Gerry Adams was reported to have spoken in a podcast to Rory Stewart about the attempted murder of Baroness Margaret Thatcher back in 1984. When he was challenged by Rory Stewart about the violence, Gerry Adams said, “We never went to war, you came to me”. That is a skewed view of what happened in Northern Ireland in the 70s and 80s but a predictable source of rewriting of what went on at that time. But sometimes we have unpredictable sources of rewriting. It was distressing, not just for victims of terrorism but for many of us living in Northern Ireland, to hear the current Secretary of State, in an address to Queen’s University at the 25th anniversary event that the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, mentioned, refer to
Martin McGuinness, a self-confessed IRA commander, as a man of courage and leadership. That was astonishing, and many victims voiced their opinion and distress at those comments. Ann Travers, a victims’ advocate whose sister was murdered by the IRA on her way home from mass, said that those comments insulted innocent victims of republican terrorists. And so it continues, this rewriting of what actually happened in Northern Ireland.
Last year, we had the putative First Minister of Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill, telling us that there was no alternative to the violence that happened in Northern Ireland—no alternative to terrorism: that there was no alternative to the bomb in Enniskillen in 1987, when people went to remember the dead of the World Wars; that there was no alternative to the attempted murder of my friend the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, when he visited his son in hospital; that there was no alternative to placing a bomb on the bus that I was going to school on because the man driving the bus was a part-time member of the Ulster Defence Regiment. What about the alternative to lying in a hedge and waiting for police officers coming home from their day’s work, only to murder them as they stepped out of their cars?
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The reality is that of course there was an alternative—there was always an alternative. That is why we need a factual history of what happened in Northern Ireland. I strongly support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Godson. It is so important that we do not have a one-sided, warped agenda as to what happened in Northern Ireland. It is important for three reasons. First, for historical reasons and context, it is important to have the facts. Secondly, as we have already heard today in the context of memorialisation, it is important that the young people of today are not encouraged by what happened in the past or by glorifying those acts of terrorism. I was deeply disturbed when, after the attempted murder of Chief Inspector John Caldwell, there appeared posters in Omagh encouraging young people to become involved with dissidents. That is the consequence of glorifying past terrorism. Thirdly, it is important because we cannot have equivalence between those people who stood between the community and terrorism and those people who committed these dreadful acts and heinous crimes against the wider community in Northern Ireland.
I strongly support the amendments in this group. I hope that my friend the Minister will listen carefully to the very clear need to have memorialisation in an appropriate way and to have a historical, fact-based history of what happened in Northern Ireland.