{"id":344,"date":"2014-03-14T23:25:36","date_gmt":"2014-03-14T23:25:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/nelr\/?p=344"},"modified":"2014-03-27T11:49:27","modified_gmt":"2014-03-27T11:49:27","slug":"what-the-dogs-in-the-street-know-on-the-runs-and-hanging-peter-hain-out-to-dry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/nelr\/2014\/03\/14\/what-the-dogs-in-the-street-know-on-the-runs-and-hanging-peter-hain-out-to-dry\/","title":{"rendered":"What the Dogs in the Street Know: On the Runs and Hanging Peter Hain Out to Dry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"outside-in\"<\/a><\/p>\n

–\u00a0Colin Murray (Senior\u00a0Lecturer, Newcastle Law School)\u00a0<\/em><\/em>colin.murray@newcastle.ac.uk<\/p>\n

This post was first published on\u00a0Human Rights in Ireland<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIn Northern Ireland\u201d, Peter Hain opined in his autobiography\u00a0Outside In<\/a>\u00a0<\/i>(pictured left), there is \u201calways a crisis around the corner\u201d (p.323). There is more of a feel of truth than truism to the statement, especially as the\u00a0on-the-runs scandal<\/a>\u00a0dominated recent headlines (before being eclipsed by developments in the Crimea). I\u2019d be surprised if a good few Irish viewers watching the BBC 2 drama miniseries\u00a037 Days<\/a><\/i>, on the slide towards the First World War, haven\u2019t felt there is something queasily apposite in the scenes where the UK Cabinet\u2019s attention is wrenched away from the \u201cmuddy by-ways of Fermanagh and Tyrone\u201d and towards a developing European Crisis.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve previously\u00a0highlighted<\/a>\u00a0on humanrights.ie, Northern Ireland has repeatedly seen victims\u2019 interests cranked up or down depending on the aims of the political parties. As the n-the-runs scandal broke, the DUP leader\u00a0Peter Robinson<\/a>\u00a0quivered with outrage at the injustice of \u201camnesties\u201d, whilst Gerry Kelly\u2019s\u00a0television interviews<\/a>\u00a0stuck rigidly to the acronym \u201cOTRs\u201d, perhaps hoping people would lose interest in his review of the technicalities of why it was inappropriate to describe the assurances given to on-the-runs as amnesties. But in this case the DUP\u2019s readiness to hang Peter Hain, Northern Ireland Secretary from 2005-2007, out to dry for supposed\u00a0misleading of Parliament<\/a>\u00a0seems particularly vindictive.<\/p>\n

Hain\u2019s establishment of a seven-person PSNI team to evaluate whether it was possible to inform individuals linked to historic offences that they were now not wanted by police in the UK (Operation Rapid) has been firmly in the spotlight since news first broke on 25 February of the\u00a0collapse of the prosecution<\/a>\u00a0of John Downey for his alleged role in the IRA\u2019s Hyde Park bombing of 1982. The problem, as Mr Justice Sweeney explained, was that the PSNI investigation had not so much been Operation Rapid, but Operation Hasty (at [173](19)):<\/p>\n

At the time of Operation Rapid\u2019s review of the defendant\u2019s case, [the PSNI] was aware that the defendant was wanted by the Metropolitan Police in relation to the Hyde Park bombing, but failed to pass that on to the DPP(NI).<\/p>\n

On the strength of this review, Northern Ireland\u2019s Director of Public Prosecutions certified that Downey was not wanted in the UK. Downey\u2019s subsequent letter from the Northern Ireland Office, informing him that he was not wanted, had seemingly not counted for much when he had been arrested at Gatwick on route to a holiday in Greece in May 2013. But Mr Justice Sweeney effectively found that Downey had a legitimate expectation that he would not be subject to arrest over the Hyde Park bombing if he came to the UK (at [173](8)):<\/p>\n

The standard letter did not amount to an amnesty as such. However, its terms (and in particular the references to the PSNI and the Attorney General) were intended to and did make clear that it was issued in the name of the Government and that the assurances within it could be relied upon with confidence as meaning what they said, namely an unequivocal statement that the recipient was not wanted \u2010 with the obvious implication from the remainder that thus the recipient would not be arrested or prosecuted unless new evidence came to light or there was a new application for extradition.<\/p>\n

Hain\u2019s effort at a quiet \u201cresolution\u201d of the on-the-runs issue, so thorny that it officially remained part of the\u00a0Haass Talks<\/a>\u00a0agenda, was now very much in the public domain. Cold comfort that, as the judge affirmed, he could not talk account of the impact of his decision on the peace process (at [168]).<\/p>\n

This is not the first time that the potent mix of judicial authority and conflict resolution in Northern Ireland has landed Hain in\u00a0political trouble<\/a>. But unlike the unfortunate passage in\u00a0Outside In\u00a0<\/i>in which he questions Lord Justice Girvan\u2019s impartiality and speculates over whether the judge had reached his decision over Bertha McDougall\u2019s appointment as Victims\u2019 Commissioner in a fit of pique at property tax reforms in Northern Ireland (p.333), at least Hain has yet to question Mr Justice Sweeney\u2019s integrity. He has, however, been insistent that the issue was not hidden from Parliament. These claims drew a caustic response from the Alliance Party\u2019s\u00a0David Ford<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve heard Peter Hain say \u201cI have stood up in the House of Commons and said that this has to be addressed\u201d, as if this was somehow was saying \u201cthis is how we\u2019ve addressed it\u201d, including the letters. So I think he needs to examine his precise background and perhaps that\u2019s something a judge will be doing over the coming months.<\/p>\n

Everyone seems to have jumped on the Blame-Hain Game. Even Labour\u2019s shadow Northern Ireland secretary,\u00a0Ivan Lewis<\/a>, has called the John Downey letter a \u201ccatastrophic error\u201d, for which he offers an \u201cunequivocal apology\u201d. Just as cutting is Lewis\u2019s air brushing of Hain out of the peace process picture in his letter to the\u00a0Belfast Telegraph<\/i>, expressing his pride instead in \u201cwhat people like Tony Blair, Mo Mowlam and Jonathan Powell \u2026 did so under the banner of a Labour Government\u201d. Ouch.<\/p>\n

Hain\u00a0has long admitted to a love of the bargaining process, and a reluctance to let an issue sit, even where caution may be wise: \u201cThere are ministers who prefer a quiet ride and manage the in-tray without changing anything, and I never saw myself as one of those\u201d (p.332). Perhaps it is this wheeler dealing, so useful on the ground in 2005-2007, which makes it so easy to ensnare Hain\u00a0today (and why legal processes in particular have left him so uncomfortably on the spot). But this really feels like hanging the (manifest) faults of the peace process on one person\u2019s shoulders. It wasn\u2019t just Peter Hain, who suffered an addiction to crisis talks and back-room deals. Most of Northern Ireland\u2019s political elite stand implicated alongside him.<\/p>\n

And whatever temporary bounce the DUP currently see in the polls, the reckoning from this scandal may well be yet to come. Although on-the-runs play no part in Hain\u2019s autobiography, the prominence of issues surrounding former IRA members in the run up to the St Andrews\u2019 Agreement are plain to be seen. Discussing the suspension of Sean Kelly\u2019s licenced release in 2005, Peter Hain claims that \u201cDUP leaders, often uncannily well informed\u00a0from within the police, knew all about it well before I did\u201d (p.324). The scandal has all the feel of a \u201cdogs on the street\u201d issue in Northern Ireland. The importance of the on-the-runs issue to Sinn\u00a0F\u00e9in before the St Andrews Agreement was no secret. Equally, it was evident that no arrests were being made or extraditions\u00a0sought after St Andrews. The missing link did not take much effort to fill in, even had those involved had been discrete in the interim. And they haven\u2019t. Back in 2009 Jonathan Powell set out in his account of deal-making in Northern Ireland,\u00a0Great Hatred, Little Room: Making Peace in Northern Ireland<\/a><\/i>, that the DUP leadership had accepted the deal and made hay from it for their own purposes:<\/p>\n

They said they could accept the implementation of the unpopular undertakings we had made under the Joint Declaration on OTRs as long as Tony wrote to Paisley making it clear that these concessions had been agreed during David Trimble\u2019s watch, not theirs.<\/p>\n

This makes the DUP\u2019s ratcheting of the tension on this issue harder to understand, whatever the short-term gains of being seen, as\u00a0David Cameron<\/a>\u00a0put it, to be willing \u201cto unpick or call into question all the difficult decisions that were made\u201d in negotiating a settlement to the Troubles. Mr Justice Sweeney may have vindicated \u201cthe public interest in holding officials of the state to promises they have made in full understanding of what is involved in the bargain\u201d (at [175]), but an inquiry will illuminate not only official actions but the approach of Northern Ireland\u2019s politicians towards them. For if the judicial inquiry into the on-the-run letters does reveal widespread knowledge of the scheme in the higher echelons of the DUP, and gives Powell\u2019s claims the imprimatur of judicial legitimacy, the issue will very quickly rebound upon them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

–\u00a0Colin Murray (Senior\u00a0Lecturer, Newcastle Law School)\u00a0colin.murray@newcastle.ac.uk This post was first published on\u00a0Human Rights in Ireland \u201cIn Northern Ireland\u201d, Peter Hain opined in his autobiography\u00a0Outside In\u00a0(pictured left), there is \u201calways a crisis around the corner\u201d (p.323). There is more of a feel of truth than truism to the statement, especially as the\u00a0on-the-runs scandal\u00a0dominated recent headlines (before …<\/p>\n

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