There are two parts to making this a whole picture. Both its components are the NIO.
Slipping out on New Year’s Eve that the British government had decided to appeal the High Court decision to compel a public inquiry into the murder of Seán Brown was of course to try to bury bad news.
It was more than that, however. First, because the reason for the timing fooled no-one for a second. It was a typical demonstration of the arrogance, insouciance and sleekit behaviour that has characterised the NIO for the whole of its malign existence. So, it wasn’t only to try to bury bad news.
The timing was because the NIO doesn’t, and never has, given a damn about what people here think. The crocodile tears added to a subsequent statement, piling insult on injury, prove they couldn’t care less.
They don’t because they can get away with anything. As a colonial administration they’re accountable to no-one and never have been.
Now, don’t say they’re accountable to a proconsul for the time being. Being sent here as proconsul from the imperial parliament is the easiest job in Westminster.
At Northern Ireland question time the House of Commons empties. The bi-partisan approach on the north means both main parties gang up on any impertinent MP challenging a proconsul’s action.
No proconsul could ever lose his/her seat because of a mistake made here because they’ve no votes here and anything that happens here is a matter of indifference to their constituents.
On umpteen occasions the NIO has issued statements at 5.45pm on a Friday when their proconsul has long flown back to England, usually on a Thursday if they’ve bothered to spend two days here. It’s what they do.
However, understanding the cavalier, untouchable behaviour of the NIO is only part of what’s going on. The decision to appeal the High Court judgment is part of a wider plan.
The NIO is also seeking to appeal to the Supreme Court Lady Chief Justice Siobhan Keegan’s judgment that the NIO has too much power to veto disclosure of information in ICRIR inquiries, which it has.
The NIO has indicated that the appeal against a public inquiry involved ‘matters of constitutional significance’. Grandiloquent eh?, But what it boils down to is whether a court can compel a secretary of state to establish a public inquiry.
The NIO will contend such a decision is a political decision, otherwise public inquiries would be sprouting up all over the place.
It’s a very dubious position to take given that it would mean that, even in a case where state agents have conspired to commit murder, as in the Brown case and many others, a secretary of state could reject a court order and prevent the culprits ever being brought to justice. The NIO is obviously content with that position and so, regrettably, it appears is our proconsul.
This is the point at which the appeal against Keegan’s judgement dovetails. The NIO want to argue that the widely unacceptable ICRIR’s inquiries can be circumscribed by, altogether now, ‘matters of national security’, which of course the NIO and their mates in the MOD will decide. That is regardless of whether these matters took place 30 years ago or 50 years ago.
The single consistent motive driving this nonsense is the same as the previous contemptible Conservative governments: to cover up the illegal actions of the security forces, including authorising the murder of citizens of the state.
The motive has never changed. Sometimes it’s brutally blatant, sometimes, as at present, with a superficial veneer of legal sophistication.
To give a brutal example: the killing of Julie Livingstone (14) by a British soldier with a plastic bullet in 1981.
Initially, after decades of procrastination, the NIO passed the file to the National Archives at Kew where it was closed until 2064 (sic).
Last July it emerged it will be reopened, a mere 43 years after her murder, at an inquest. Needless to say, all facts may still not be made public.
Needless to say, this more sophisticated legal approach both to block public inquiries and the revealing of state files will wend a torturous route through this year and into next because there’s no question but the NIO will go to the Supreme Court, notwithstanding the case opening next week.
In the meantime there’ll not even be an inadequate ICRIR inquiry. A public inquiry – if there is one – won’t even start until 2026 and report in maybe 2028.
As far as the NIO is concerned, job done. At least they’re consistent.