Section:GDN 1N PaGe:18 Edition Date:190815 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 14/8/2019 20:26 cYanmaGentaYellowb
- The Guardian Thursday 15 Aug ust 2019
18Dan Sabbagh
Defence and security editorVeterans of the British army’s 38-year
deployment in Northern Ireland gath-
ered at a rain-sodden memorial in
England yesterday after the defence
secretary said those who had served
should not fear prosecution if no new
evidence ha d emerged against them.
In carefully worded remarks, Ben
Wallace said that “veterans in their
70s and 80s” should “not [be] deal-
ing with the trauma of waiting for a
knock on the door where there is no
new evidence that an off ence has been
committed ”.
The minister was the most sen-
ior political figure present at the
commemoration at the National Arbo-
retum in Alrewas, Staff ordshire, and
his remarks were widely welcomed at
an event described as “a family reun-
ion” by one of those attending.
Around 300,000 military person-
nel served in Northern Ireland as part
of Operation Banner, which began
in August 1969. An estimated 3,
people were killed during the 30-year
Troubles, including 1,441 members of
the armed forces.
But the idea of an amnesty from
historical prosecution for soldiers
remains controversial in the nation-
alist community because it appears
one-sided, although some believe it
could be justifi ed if it was extended to
cover former paramilitaries.
One veteran present at the event,
Nick Cross, who served several tours
in Northern Ireland between 1970 and
1976 as a military policeman, said it
was time to draw a line.
“It makes sense to apply it to every-
body. We should have done something
similar to what happened in SouthAfrica, with the truth and reconcili-
ation commission .”
Sitting in the late 1990s, the TRC
illuminated horrors committed under
white minority rule in South Africa,
where perpetrators were able to con-
fess their crimes in hearings broadcast
live on TV, lured by the promise of an
amnesty for politically motivated
violence.
The British service, presided over
by the newsreader Alastair Stewart ,
was a secular event organised by the
Royal British Legion rather than the
government, with Wallace the only
senior minister present.
Cross, originally from Blackburn,
described the event attended by hun-
dreds as akin to “a family reunion”.
The veteran signed up in Liverpool at
the end of the 1960s, when “I’d ended
up penniless”. A year later, aged 20,
he was deployed in Belfast and said
“nobody had any idea what we were
supposed to be doing”.
He told the Guardian that he
believed initial goodwill in 1969 from
large sections of the Catholic commu-
nity was too rapidly squandered and
the growing tensions were catastroph-
ically worsened by the introduction of
internment in 1971.
“It was the most crass, ill-thought-
out operation conducted by the British
army ever,” Cross said. At one point
during internment – military detention
without trial – he was sent to a border
farm near Strabane to arrest a man.
“There were four men there, playing
cards. I asked them which one was the
man I was after, and one by one they
all said they were. So I said to the lieu-
tenant who was with me, ‘take the lot
of them’”.
Eventually Cross left Northern Ire-
land in 1976 after he was nearly killed
by a car bomb on the Falls Road. “We
were driving past in a military vehi-
cle and if that bomb had gone off two
seconds later, we’d have been blown
to bits ,” he said.
At fi rst he went to work at Nato’s
Allied Command in Belgium “because
all I was good for was opening car doors
for people” before leaving the armed
forces. Subsequently he suff ered from
post-traumatic stress disorder which
was “never recognised by the army
then. People just said ‘go for a drink’.”
But Cross believed the contribution
he and the other military personnel
made did help secure peace in North-
ern Ireland, and that it was important
it was recognised.
“I do think we made a diff erence in
the end. You have to think that, oth-
erwise it negates a large percentage
of a young person’s life,” the former
soldier said.Minister: former
soldiers should
not live in fear
of prosecution
W
hen the British
army deployed
in Northern
Ireland 50 years
ago, Anthony
Kennedy, then
aged 21, was not out on the streets
protesting or lobbing petrol bombs.
“The truth, I was trying to get
laid,” he recalled this week.
It was the start of what becameknown as the Troubles. As the
months and years ground on, pitting
those who sought a united Ireland
against those dedicated to keeping
Northern Ireland in the UK, Kennedy
stayed on the sidelines.
He did not identify as nationalist
nor unionist. He was in the middle, a
“neither” in no man’s land. It turned
out to be crowded with plenty of
others. “I never felt isolated. I always
felt I was part of a group.”
But the bloodier the confl ict
became, the more images of soldiers,
shootings and bombings came to
defi ne Northern Ireland, the morethose in the middle felt invisible and
powerless. Tribalism ruled, and they
weren’t a tribe.
This week’s commemorations
have again left them in the shadows.
Former combatants and victims
with tales of courage, atrocity and
suff ering have taken centre stage.
Yet the “neithers”, also known as
the non-aligned, are emerging as a
political force that could determine
the fate of Northern Ireland.
“Fifty years ago the door closed
on the non-aligned,” said Kennedy,
who is now 71 and chair of a society
named after the late poet John
Hewitt, who famously described
his identity as Ulster, Irish, British
and European. “It feels the door is
gradually opening.”
Over the past decade, unionist
parties have not won an overall
majority of votes and support for the
nationalist parties of Sinn F éin and
the Social Democratic and Labour
party has plateaued. An annual poll
by Queen’s and Ulster Universities
found 50% of people identifi ed as
neither unionist nor nationalist.
By 2021, a century after Northern‘The neithers’ Doors
open for Northern
Ireland’s non-aligned
▲ Military casualties of the 38-year
deployment remembered yesterdayNational
The TroublesRory Carroll
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