Hunt hit by serious blunder on The Troubles

Jeremy Hunt has become embroiled in a row about the prosecution of former members of the armed forces for historical offences they are alleged to have committed during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The Conservative leadership candidate suggested that military veterans should be treated “the same” as IRA terrorists, during a digital hustings conducted on Wednesday evening.

Boris Johnson supporters were quick to condemn Hunt’s remarks, while both of Ulster’s main unionist parties criticised the idea that soldiers and paramilitaries were equivalent.

During the hustings, the foreign secretary claimed, “the peace in Northern Ireland was hard won and under the Belfast / Good Friday Agreement, there is a need to treat both sides the same way, however angry we may have felt about what happened.”

On Twitter today, Hunt appeared to backtrack, or at least qualify his comments, writing, “as someone who grew up in a military family, there is no moral equivalence between the actions of terrorists who seek to kill and soldiers who act to protect the public. We must end the injustice of historic prosecutions of brave veterans, and in a way that supports peace in NI.”

Both candidates are criss-crossing the country frantically and fatigue may account for the occasional sloppily worded answer, but Hunt’s blunder comes after Theresa May ruled out including an amnesty or statute of limitations for troops in the government’s consultation into dealing with the past in Northern Ireland. These plans are likely to involve the reinvestigation of every Troubles-related killing by the armed forces, while many terrorist atrocities will be ignored.

Far from being based on equal treatment, the peace process has been nudged along by letters of comfort and royal pardons granted mainly to former IRA members suspected of the most appalling crimes. “All of the terrorist organisations benefited from the early release of prisoners and there have been many other concessions made to terrorists,” the DUP MP, Jeffrey Donaldson, points out, “none of that has been sought or replicated for members of the armed forces, nor would we want them to be.”

The Ulster Unionist MLA, Doug Beattie, a veteran of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was just as scathing. “The law must be applied equally and fairly,” he asserted, “and that has patently not been the case.” The statistics support his analysis.

Currently, the coroners’ court in Northern Ireland is investigating ninety two deaths supposedly caused by the police and army. Forty of these investigations involve the deaths of terrorists, including, for example, eight IRA men who were killed by the SAS at Loughall as they tried to bomb the local police station. There are no equivalent inquests into murders committed by paramilitaries.

Republican groups were responsible for sixty per cent of killings during the Troubles and loyalist groups accounted for another twenty per cent, with every single incident amounting to murder. The remaining ten per cent of deaths were caused by the security forces and, while many of these killings will have been lawful and justifiable, each and every one is being investigated.

The government’s consultation proposals are based on structures agreed by the DUP and Sinn Fein during the Stormont House Agreement negotiations back in 2014. They include an Historical Investigations Unit (HIU), which critics believe will entrench an unbalanced approach to investigating the past. The HIU will take on the PSNI’s current caseload, just forty five per cent of which focuses on deaths caused by republican paramilitaries, as well as hundreds of allegations of ‘non-criminal misconduct’ against the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

Victims of republican terror suspect that the new structures will leave them searching in vain for truth and justice. And organisations representing veterans believe the HIU will be used to persecute ageing soldiers and policemen, who successfully prevented Northern Ireland from descending into outright civil war, even while the IRA did its best to kill them.

They’ll be exceptionally disappointed that, instead of addressing their concerns, Jeremy Hunt’s first instinct was to call for terrorists and former service personnel to be regarded equally. If the defence secretary was actually calling for fairer treatment for ex-soldiers, then he expressed himself clumsily and the point was lost. His subsequent tweet seemed less like a clarification and more like a contradiction.

Indeed, the government’s stance on the legacy of the Troubles has for some time seemed contradictory. The defence secretary, Penny Mordaunt, and other ministers, talk about protecting soldiers from prosecution, while Northern Ireland secretary Karen Bradley polishes up proposals that will probably make them the target of more investigations.

If Jeremy Hunt becomes prime minister, veterans will wonder if they can expect a more consistent policy, or more of the same?

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