It’s difficult to close the book in N. Ireland

He has his son in waiting, just as the IRA will still have access to fertiliser, just as soon as they feel they are not getting their due. The extremists are doing better than they have ever done at the polls, and the province, once the safest place in Europe to bring up a teenage daughter, now appears to have an unfailing ability to produce a steady supply of street thugs.

Most serious of all, perhaps, are the skeletons that are slowly but steadily walking out of the British government’s closet. This summer was supposed to see the publication of long judicial inquiry into the events of 33 years ago when British paratroopers opened fire on a crowd of non-violent catholic protestors, killing thirteen. Known as the events of Bloody Sunday, the truth, by all accounts, is going to be devastating. But the report has been delayed.

Then there is to be another recently announced inquiry, arguably with an even more explosive content than the Bloody Sunday one. It concerns the murder of the catholic civil rights lawyer, Patrick Finucane. A loyalist, armed group, killed him in February 1989. The evidence to be considered by the judges seems damning — that army intelligence worked had in hand with protestant militias to murder suspected members and sympathisers of catholic armed groups. However, the family of Finucane and human rights organisations are now saying they will not cooperate with this inquiry as it is not going to be truly independent — under new legislation, governing official inquiries, state actions can be shielded from scrutiny.

This is consistent with previous government attitudes. In 1984 John Stalker, a senior British police officer, was officially appointed to investigate a series of supposed cover-ups. Stalker alleged he was obstructed from carrying out a full investigation. Before he could complete his work he was moved from duty. He was later to state that that he had uncovered new evidence of unlawful killings by the police. However because of ‘national security and public interest’ considerations no officers were prosecuted. There were many subsequent such killings. In 1988 soldiers publicly killed three unarmed people in Gibralter. When Amnesty International called for an inquiry Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher accused the organisation of being "IRA apologists". Finally in 1995 the European Court of European Rights declared that the killings by the British army were unlawful.

In February 1985, three IRA men were killed by the Special Air Services (SAS — the army’s elite regiment) while returning weapons to a cache. At the inquest it was stated that an army patrol had encountered the armed men in a field and had only opened fire after the men had pointed guns at them. Yet a pathologist testified that one of them had been hit by 28 bullets, most of them fired whilst they lay on the ground. Moreover, all three had a single gunshot wound to the head, suggesting they had been cold-bloodily ‘finished off’.

The torture, brutality and other subterranean practices carried out by the army, police and secret services cannot be compared with that inflicted by their counterparts in, say, Chile or Guatemala. Nevertheless, by the self-imposed standards of a long-standing mature state, it has been a serious falling short. Human rights standards are not meant for periods of harmony in a society, but for situations of conflict and stress in a body politic. In this light, successive British governments ignored the gospel they regularly preach to the outside world. How could a country that prided itself on its notions of liberality subvert the law and undermine the worldwide raising of standards it is always intent on promoting?

One chapter closes. Another opens. Now Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has done much to bring peace to Northern Ireland, is talking about amending British adherence to European human rights law in the light of the recent bombings in London by Muslim militants. Will the British government now go down the road of provoking and feeding the paranoia of Islamists just as it did the Catholics of Northern Ireland for so long? Are no lessons being learnt? No wonder the fat lady daren’t sing.