It seems that we are having our own Truth and Reconciliation Commission over the North: the truth being all right provided it was the Brits Wot Dun It. Are the only skeletons in the cupboard Brit ones? Or is the old cupboard a rattling ossuary, and is Sinn Fein simply using British/RUC intelligence as a convenient lightning-rod for all paramilitary crime?
If it's acceptable to want detailed knowledge of those responsible for the Dublin and Monaghan bombings or for the murder of the solicitor Pat Finucane - and I believe it is - is it unreasonable also to want detailed knowledge of the identity of whoever authorised, say, the Bloody Friday bombings in Belfast and the abduction, murder and secret disposal of Kevin McKee, Seamus Wright and Jean McConville?
Can of worms
And if the answer is yes, you open more than a cupboard; you open a can of worms which could consume the peace process. Nobody wants that; so Bloody Friday has become a closed chapter, and those responsible for making The Missing missing are to be the beneficiaries of unprecedented protective laws. The reward for this studied British forgetfulness about republican terrorism is endless speculation about the involvement of British/RUC involvement in other terrorist incidents. The demand for such partial disclosure about terrorism is not merely working to a Sinn Fein agenda; it is not a very cleverly concocted agenda either.
Firstly, there is no evidence that the British were involved in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. Recent RTE reports in particular have referred ominously to the "military precision" of the bombings, with the semi-racist implication that the poor dumb Prods could never have managed to explode three bombs within a few minutes of each other in Dublin without British army assistance. But nobody suggests that the IRA had Irish Army assistance in detonating nearly two dozen bombs within a matter of minutes right across Belfast two years previously.
And if MI6 was involved in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, its man in Dublin might possibly have known that car-bombs could not have been left at the apparently intended targets - Grafton street and O'Connell Street - because of parking restrictions. Though this is not to say that British agents were not involved. After all, intelligence agencies are often not all that intelligent; ask the Chinese. If the British were responsible, the least we owe the dead of Dublin and Monaghan is that truth.
But the evidence still suggests that loyalist paramilitaries were perfectly capable of such bombings. Jim Cusack's and Henry McDonald's excellent history of the Ulster Volunteer Force, published by Poolbeg, records that by November 1973, the UVF had been responsible for abut 200 bombings, some in the Republic, compared with the IRA's 300. Loyalists had begun a bombing campaign even before the Provisionals were founded, destroying the water and electrical supplies to much of Belfast in 1969.
Dublin cover-up
The allegation about British involvement in the 1974 bombings is often accompanied by the suggestion that Dublin governments have since aided in a cover-up. Really? Why on earth should taoisigh as diverse as Liam Cosgrave, Jack Lynch, Charles Haughey, Garret FitzGerald, Albert Reynolds and Bertie Ahern; numerous ministers for justice, including Ray Burke, Sean Doherty, Nora Owen and John O'Donoghue; and tanaisti such as Brendan Corish, Brian Lenihan, Dick Spring and Mary Harney all conspire to protect the authors of the greatest crime in the history of this Republic?
Now there are some terrorist cases in which there is clear evidence of security force involvement, one such being the murder of the solicitor Pat Finucane. At least one person in British intelligence seems to have been at the very least passively complicit in this atrocity, and that is simply inexcusable. It demands both an inquiry and an explanation. But if there is to be such an inquiry, will it be a full one? We have had two allegations from within the Northern security apparatus - from Sir John Hermon, former Chief Constable of the RUC, and Ken Maginnis, formerly a major in the Ulster Defence Regiment - that Mr Finucane was not any ordinary solicitor but was deeply associated with the IRA.
Scope of inquiry
Are these allegations to be simply dismissed as "irresponsible and ill-founded", in Liz O'Donnell's words, and so outside the scope of any inquiry? Are we then to have inquiries into whatever subjects Sinn Fein-IRA and Liz O'Donnell find suitable, but on Sinn Fein terms only? So, yes, the murder of Pat Finucane might be investigated, but with limitations, so that the alleged collusion between terrorists and an army intelligence officer, bound by oath to uphold the law, may be investigated, but alleged collusion between terrorists and a solicitor, an officer of the court bound by oath to uphold the law, may not. Is that it?
Naturally, this would seem very congenial for the Sinn Fein propaganda machine. It's actually counter-productive. As we here in Tribunaland know full well, inquiries tend to result in wholly unexpected and spectacular truths emerging. (Ask Ray Burke.) Is that what Sinn Fein wants? For the whole truth could well be ruinous both to the Sinn Fein leadership and to the peace process. Oh to be sure, a detail-by-detail examination of who did what through the Troubles might make fascinating reading for the rest of us; but it makes very bad peace politics for Sinn Fein.