Episode 8 Lasting Legacy

The guns may have largely fallen silent after the Good Friday Agreement, but the battle over what happened during the Troubles is far from over. In the final episode of SAS: The Shadow War, The Independent’s international affairs editor Sam Kiley examines the legacy now confronting the soldiers who fought Britain’s secret war. Former SAS commanders describe the strain of decades-old investigations and argue that the state has failed those it once sent into danger. But the families of those killed are still searching for answers of their own. As veterans, journalists and former commanders confront the same unresolved past from very different sides, the series asks whether truth, justice and closure can ever be reconciled, or whether Northern Ireland’s shadow war is still being fought today. Subscribe to The Independent All Access Membership and unlock all eight episodes for just £1 https://www.independent.co.uk/subscribe Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 1:11Speaker 02

  Today, the families of the dead return to these same streets, marching this time for those who opened fire to be prosecuted. And after 47 years, they finally had a breakthrough. One former British soldier will be charged with murder.

• 1:31Speaker 03

  When wars end, the fighting doesn't always stop. The battlefield changes. In Northern Ireland, the guns largely fell silent when the Good Friday Agreement was signed on the 10th of April, 1998. Today, memory has become a new battlefield. Some of the soldiers who fought in that conflict are now being investigated for what they did decades ago.

• 1:57Speaker 03

  I'm Sam Kiley, World Affairs Editor at The Independent, and you are listening to the final episode of SAS: The Shadow War, revealed for the first time by Britain's secret soldiers in their own words.

• 2:16Speaker 03

  For many in the Special Forces, something fundamental has changed in the contract between the soldier and the state. Many feel let down by the nation that they once served, and now those at the sharp end of war but low in the hierarchy say that they find themselves answering for what they were ordered to do.

• 2:40Speaker 03

  SAS Commander David is one of those who's faced several judicial inquiries over his use of lethal force. He may face more. He's been haunted by allegations that the killings at Coke were illegal in 1991. The IRA men's car was riddled with automatic gunfire as it approached the centre of Coke Village. It hurtled out of control, crashing into a parked car and a wall.

• 3:07Speaker 03

  So where do you find yourself right now? Well, that's a very good question because I don't think anyone knows. A number of soldiers have now been through the inquest process. A number of them have had their actions and decisions judged to be worthy of further investigation with a view potentially to prosecution. And normally, that would result in then that file being passed to the DPP and the DPP deciding whether there's a case to prosecute. And then if he decides there is a case, then investigation or prosecution following. But actually, because the existing Northern Ireland Legacy Act has come into force, it exists at the moment, it's not been repealed yet, it applies.

• 3:49Speaker 03

  In 2023, the British government passed a law, the Legacy Act, and it was intended to draw a line under the troubles, ending many investigations and offering conditional immunity to all those who cooperated with the Commission. But the law was opposed by families of those who'd been killed and challenged in the courts. The current government is trying to repeal and replace much of the 2023 Act. Three years on, it remains unresolved. Because the amendments to the Legacy Act have not yet been approved, have not yet been passed, we're in a curious situation where I don't think anyone knows quite where we all stand.

• 4:34Speaker 03

  SAS Commander Aldwin had a duty of care to those serving under him. What has the effect been, what has the effect been on your comrades from that era?

• 4:44Speaker 04

  Well, for some of the people who've, you know, been around three or four or five, there's some people who've been around, God knows how many times, you know, it's actually messed up their complete lives.

• 5:00Speaker 03

  Messed up their lives.

• 5:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, and in some, it's led to, you know, I think actually probably, I can't, I can't personally enumerate, I don't think, but I think there've been one or two suicides. It's definitely led to family breakups. It's definitely led to, you know, mental problems for veterans, et cetera, et cetera, 100%, 100%. Because they don't see any way out of it. It's, it's a sort of nightmare, you're just caught in this loop. Hang on, the dear old IRA get off with a clean sheet, but the boys who actually produced the conditions for a peace agreement, as it were, GFA, stuff like that, Good Friday Agreement, are getting punished by the people who employed them and they did what they

• 5:46Speaker 04

  were, it doesn't make any sense. It literally, it is, when you actually put, put the simple building blocks together, you just go, would a sane government do this?

• 6:00Speaker 03

  Like all of them, SAS Commander David believes that he was just doing his job on behalf of the state. I've no, I never, I've never felt a moment, a shred of guilt or a shred of shame about what we did. I think we did a, generally speaking, fantastic job and we're proud of what our men did and I've never lost a wink's sleep over what happened at Coke or any, or any other operation in Northern Ireland for that matter, actually. Soldiers are not above the law, but these men say that they obeyed the rules back then, and new legislation will not change that fact. Well, I mean, you could argue, and in fact, indeed, I would argue that, that having a system that necessarily contains the actions of people who are risking their

• 6:44Speaker 03

  lives but killing other people on the behalf of the state prevents it, them from sliding off into something much more dangerous. I mean, individually or even institutionally, you would argue, I would hope that that would never going to happen. But we all know that if you don't have a series of guardrails around this kind of military operation, as you had in Northern Ireland, things can go awry. Yeah, things can indeed, and, and no one is, I've never heard anyone articulating that there should be, should have been no rules around what we did in Northern Ireland. That would be an absurd position to take. What the rules should be is not our issue, but there clearly should be rules.

• 7:25Speaker 03

  And also, I've never heard any soldier suggesting that soldiers should somehow exempt from the rules or should somehow be immune from prosecution if they break the rules. No, no one's ever said that to me, and I don't believe that myself. We're all subject to the law. At the end of the day, we act in support of the law and we should be subject to it. But there's difference between being subject to the law for either making mistakes or doing something wrong. And on the one hand, and on the other hand, being subjected to pretty much endless vexatious lawfare, often with really no grounds whatsoever, essentially, the other side essentially flying a kite, trying to generate kind of headlines and, and, and support amongst their own, their own power base. And the victims of that are the soldiers.

• 8:09Speaker 03

  Because we don't, generally speaking, have the right to defend ourselves, we are defended by the state, to the extent the state does defend us. And, and we are, we are kind of the punchbangers, if you like, that are involved in, that are in the middle of this, this lawfare. Northern Ireland was neither a conventional war nor an ordinary policing operation. It was a military campaign, bound by the laws of war, but also fought within the British civilian legal system.

• 8:38Speaker 03

  Former Veterans Minister MP Al Khanz was in the Special Forces. He served in Northern Ireland after the main fighting had stopped in 1998. He opposes his own party's plans to allow new inquiries into old Special Forces operations. Can you understand the perspective of some families of people who were killed in the use of lethal force by British Armed Forces in Northern Ireland? That there was a suspicion, given a kind of accelerated rate of numbers of people killed, that there was a professional energy there that sought satisfaction in killing

• 9:22Speaker 03

  the bad guys, that perhaps even got out of control?

• 9:25Speaker 05

  No, I think everybody I've worked with in the past have been deeply professional. And I think taking life is one of the most difficult things you'll ever ask anyone to do, and very few, if any, people enjoy or thrive in it. What they do enjoy is a successful operation with a successful outcome. And if that means neutralising the threat that is trying to neutralise you, then that is a positive outcome.

• 9:50Speaker 03

  Why do you use the word neutralise?

• 9:52Speaker 05

  Well, because I think it's useful to dehumanise this in some cases, especially in this discussion for people that are listening.

• 9:59Speaker 03

  Because it is, I mean, at the end of the day, and this is one of the sort of basic truths, I don't need to tell you as a veteran of many combat operations, the role of the Armed Forces when they are deployed in a combat role is to win the fight by killing people.

• 10:18Speaker 05

  And then what this is, gets to the crux of the point, which was the legal parameters of the conflict in Northern Ireland, which was never clearly outlined. And so effectively, you're working a military operation inside a civilian context on British soil. And this is, and you're then reflecting on it now, 20, 30, 40 years after the event, where you have no context of what it was like at the time, even the technology, there's no mobile phones, you know, it's like, just comprehensible, there were bombs going off every day in every major city from Birmingham to London, not every day, but you know, every month, the threat was there, major explosions on the British mainland, no one could walk around in uniform. You know, the security threat was ever present.

• 11:01Speaker 05

  Try and explain that to a judge, a jury, and everybody involved in a case massively difficult, because it's incomprehensible in today's society. And so trying to get to truth and justice through the system of inquest inquiry is exceptionally difficult. He should have seen the safety catch was on the duschka in the middle of the night at 20 metres without MBGs, night vision goggles. What, what are you talking about? It's difficult for people to understand that. And only if you're in the military, you sort of look people like a Labrador Luchsie if you don't, you know, doesn't understand what you're saying, you sort of tilt your head to one side, it's like, what are you talking about?

• 11:38Speaker 03

  Is there also a kind of cultural issue here? You talk about the, you know, things have moved on, people simply do not understand the threat. I grew up during that period, we all got anxious, well, we would have reported any stray bag in this room, you know, people would say, is that your bag?

• 11:55Speaker 05

  You'd cordon off the whole, you'd cordon off this whole edge of London if there was a suitcase found on the side of the street.

• 11:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:00Speaker 05

  Like, and the bomb squad would be called in.

• 12:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:01Speaker 05

  Because it could be an IRA.

• 12:03Speaker 03

  And it quite often was.

• 12:04Speaker 05

  Or indeed, you're a UNIS bomb, there are different terrorist groups working all in other areas, which you know. I think that, like, understanding that threat, and this is, this series will be very good, like, bringing that threat to life, and making people understand what it was like. I mean, the IRA were one of the most effective terrorist organisations probably to have existed in recent history. I mean, they put some of the, you know, broader terrorist organisations to shame. If you look at the sophistication of what they used to do, and they were armed, not just by weapon flows, you know, internally, but from, you know, Libya, for example, was arming the IRA with huge shipments of ammunition. And we're not talking like the odd pistol, we're talking AK-47s to huge amounts of explosives,

• 12:48Speaker 05

  in some cases to anti-air missiles. I mean, it's a proper military organisation.

• 12:54Speaker 03

  Facing that military organisation was the British military organisation, do you think that in, particularly in the contemporary Labour Party, there is an assumption of guilt that is, that you are, you as ex-servicemen, or servicemen themselves, are baddies?

• 13:11Speaker 05

  No, we've got more veterans than ever before in the Labour Party. What I think there is, across all sides, is a misunderstanding of the visceral nature of the conflict, of what it's like to be in some cases in conflict, the difficult decisions that you need to make. And usually, nothing is black and white, multiple factors, you know, lead to decisions. And I think the more we can do to explain that to people, the better. And I, but I think as we get into this debate, and as we got into it in the Labour Party, people absolutely realised the difficult situation we're putting Armed Forces in in Northern Ireland.

• 13:45Speaker 03

  So you've been in that situation as an officer, making split-second decisions that can lead to life or death. Can you just, you know, can you describe what that's like in the heat of battle? You know, you and I have been in Helmand, it's very difficult to explain to somebody what it's like being in a firefight in Helmand, and particularly in your case, if you're calling in a close air support, yeah, to come and strafe the enemy and so on. What, how, how tight are those decisions? How much time do you have when things kick off?

• 14:18Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, there's split-second decisions, you know, imagine, imagine only ever seeing a place via a drone feed, landing on in the middle of the night in a helicopter, jumping off into the dust, running to a dusty wall, which you think is the target compound, turning a corner with all the guys behind you or around you, in the middle of the night, and you see a guy with an AK-47 stood within 10 metres.

• 14:48Speaker 05

  And you've got, until he can raise his gun to shoot you, to work out whether you should shoot him or not.

• 14:55Speaker 05

  I mean, and then on top of that, you've probably got a gunship or an Apache engaging, you've got the radio gun in one ear, the JTAC, Joint Tactical Air Controller gun in the other, guys bumping around the back, the dog ready to go. Like, make the decision, you're going to shoot him or not? Because if you're too slow, he kills you. That's the decision you're going to make. And you're on MBGs, everything's green, you can just see his AK-47, he's probably in the shadow of a wall. What you can do.

• 15:20Speaker 03

  And so if you go turn the clock back to the 70s and 80s?

• 15:24Speaker 05

  But take away the drone feed, take away the Joint Tactical Air Controller, and probably take away the decent radio that you've got. In the middle of the night, guys with balaclavas turn up, you know they're going to, your intelligence says they're going to attack, they're going to use lethal, lethal force already. You can see they've got AK-47s, they're in balaclavas, they're in full boiler suits.

• 15:49Speaker 05

  It's a difficult decision, but you've got seconds to make that decision, split seconds to make it. And you know if they turn and see you, or if they know you're their way to be arrested, they're going to kill you, they're going to fight their way out of it, because they are the most active ASU in the whole of Northern Ireland.

• 16:05Speaker 03

  An ASU was an IRA active service unit.

• 16:09Speaker 05

  So there's no difference. In fact, it's harder then, because you don't have all the intelligence that we had when we were in Afghanistan or Iraq.

• 16:15Speaker 03

  There's another problem. This was a conflict that lasted for decades. People didn't experience every shooting as an isolated event, they were living inside the war. Ex-BBC security correspondent Brian Rowan has lived in Belfast all his life as a journalist. He witnessed first-hand the decades of violence, often reporting from the scenes of bombings and shootings. He believes the reason the demands for inquiries are coming now is that people were desensitised to the violence at the time, now they've had time to reflect.

• 16:51Speaker 04

  I think this is the other point, Sam, that is worth making. You can get used to war, you can become numbed by war. When conflicts last so long, you can become dehumanised. And so many of the questions that are being asked today about IRA actions, or loyalist actions, or political actions, or SAIS actions, or military, or policing actions that date back into the conflict period, those questions were not as loud back then, because while they're a headline in a moment, they're only a headline until the next news.

• 17:31Speaker 04

  And I think also, when I talk about being numbed by conflict and becoming used to war, I liken that to today. So I listen to what's happening in Iran, I listen to what's happening in Gaza and in the Lebanon. We were all made up, made sit up and pay attention on October 7th, 2023, and the Hamas attacks. But there comes a point when we can no longer listen, when news of that type goes in one ear and out the other ear, that our hearts and our heads will only take so much, and only allow us to take so much.

• 18:13Speaker 04

  So I think the questions, the big legacy questions that are being asked now, about 20 years ago and 30 years ago, those questions were nowhere near as loud in actual time. Because, as I say, people were thinking about the next news, or what had happened the day before, or the week before. And some of these things held our attention for only a short space of time. And my own experience, you know, 30 plus years now after the ceasefires, 25 plus years after the Good Friday Agreement, I think it's after conflict, it's after war, it's after

• 18:53Speaker 04

  all of that violence, that you take more time to reflect on what had happened in actual time. And I think in the moment of these things, there is a kind of news shield that protects you, that you hide behind, that allows you not to think too deeply about these things. But, so those questions about legacy that are loud and very loud today, I don't remember them being as loud in actual time. When you look at the Good Friday Agreement, the political agreement, which is often described as our peace agreement, it is silent on the conflict period, other than we need to do what we can for the victims.

• 19:37Speaker 04

  But there was no suggestion within the Good Friday Agreement that there should be a truth commission, or that there should be this deep excavation and exploration of the conflict period. That has come after the Good Friday Agreement. And I think that fits with that point that I'm making, that it's after conflict that you have more time to reflect.

• 20:06Speaker 03

  The issue here is who is held responsible? The man who pulls the trigger? The intelligence services? The military in charge or the politicians that they served?

• 20:18Speaker 04

  The point where the trigger is pulled by the SAS is a nan point in an operation. And I think when people talk about a truth process, they want to go much deeper than who pulled the trigger. There's this saying about who pulled the strings. So it's about the intelligence that's available in those moments and in those in those operations. What surveillance occurred as a as a result of that intelligence? Was the intelligence from an agent? Or was it from some listening and and monitoring process? Who then beyond the intelligence shapes the operation?

• 21:03Speaker 04

  Gives the orders, makes the plan before any triggers are pulled? So when I talk about it being a much deeper excavation that people are looking for now, it's into that granular and fine detail that that they're they're hoping to dig to the surface and bring to the surface. And that not just relating to the SAS, but relating to the IRA, the loyalist organisations and and the many others who have who have questions to answer in terms of the conflict period.

• 21:36Speaker 03

  The use of lethal force on operations always flowed from intelligence, but very often the raw data and where it came from remained secret, even when incidents were picked over decades later. Former surveillance operator Bob.

• 21:52Speaker 04

  Most of the intelligence remains secret because it's vitally important to protect the sources from where the intelligence emanated. So if it was a human intelligence source, quite clearly you've either got to remove him and send him abroad with a completely assumed identity and all the members of his close family. Or you leave him living in that community and sooner or later, somebody will come for him and probably kill him. If the sources come from elsewhere, diplomatic intelligence sources, technical intelligence sources, it is vital that we maintain the secrecy around those sources. We do not want hostile intelligence actors in the contemporary era to know how as we do it.

• 22:37Speaker 04

  It's why I said coming to this interview that I would not give any details about precisely how we would conduct covert surveillance. Very important that those techniques remain protected.

• 22:48Speaker 03

  To judge a soldier fairly, you need to understand the intelligence and circumstances in which he acted. But to protect the spies inside the IRA, who were the sources of intelligence, they remain secret and so does what they said.

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• 24:58Speaker 03

  Former SAS Colonel Richard Williams was in Northern Ireland as the Good Friday Agreement, a deal to end violence on all sides, came into effect.

• 25:08Speaker 04

  And so when they did that Good Friday Agreement, it was vital that the Human Rights Act applied on a go-forward basis. And they saw that logically, the peacemakers, the conflict resolution guys, the Jonathan Powell's of this world, as a good way of calming the non-security force side that Sinn Fein sympathises, the Irish on their side. And it's logical, it's I mean, it makes sense.

• 25:35Speaker 03

  The Human Rights Act, which came into force in October 2000, put the rights guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights into British law. The Good Friday Agreement made those rights a cornerstone of the peace settlement, a guarantee that the state itself would be subject to the new law retrospectively.

• 25:57Speaker 04

  And what they didn't realise was it was exposing the military to issues in Ireland, but issues subsequently. And it was a great failing of the Ministry of Defence not to win the argument to allow there's a carve-out. And that's what we're living today. And believe me, the Ministry of Defence did try. Charles Guthrie, Colonel Commandant of the SAS when I commanded it, he and I would speak about this long because he tried and failed to do that, which is why we're in the mess we are now.

• 26:26Speaker 03

  And that mess hasn't caught up with the politicians, but it has with the people at the sharp end of the spear, who risked their lives on operations like Drumna Killie, where SAS soldier George was a tethered goat in an IRA murder plot.

• 26:42Speaker 04

  So that burst was all around me and he was hanging out the car at the rear window, but he was still firing under the truck. And I remember thinking, because the guys were in the hedge behind me, I wonder whether those rounds are going, I hope nobody's hurt.

• 26:56Speaker 03

  George faced an inquest into the 1988 killings, which recorded an open verdict five years later. Twenty years later, a High Court judge found that the police should have investigated the operation sooner. Article two of the Human Rights Act allowed for the new inquiry to examine the alleged violation of the gunman's right to life.

• 27:20Speaker 04

  All these incidents were investigated by the DPP, CID at the time, with no further action because everything was fine. It was legally within the terms of British law.

• 27:33Speaker 04

  But as soon as you introduce Article two and the fact that an individual was killed, what they've added with the Article two is, and all extenuating circumstances in relation to the the death of the individual, because it's all about the state. Was the state behaving reasonably? And it's that bit which has opened up all the cases where what they go on is fishing exercises. So they'll say, oh, young Kylie, you were involved in an operation in 1984 in South Derry. You tell us what you know about this, when this individual was killed or whatever. You quite rightly say, I don't know, I can't remember, to be frank, because most people can't.

• 28:15Speaker 04

  The family's lawyers then write to the MOD, who push a button and it spews out every piece of data about the killing. And they sift through it and find something like a hook and then they mount a civil case. So suddenly you're back into the legal process and you're being investigated again.

• 28:36Speaker 03

  Former SAS Colonel Richard Williams.

• 28:39Speaker 04

  The discussion here is, you know, as we have this complex list of rules of engagement going into these areas, did it protect us? Did it allow us to do our job? Well, hopefully a little bit of that. But the bedrock was rotten. And the bedrock is the Human Rights Act. They basically say, we're going to hold our soldiers accountable in the combat zones overseas or at home, to a Human Rights Act that was never designed to be applied for combat. Article two of the Human Rights, the inviolate right to life, is compromised the moment someone picks up a gun and tries to shoot you. Must be. And again, it's so

• 29:21Speaker 04

  easy for me to simplify things, to make my argument, people can do the counter. But what we have, and this is what we ask for, and I think it's the big point, not just the important points to sort of get some common sense in what's happening in Northern Ireland, get some common sense to what's happening elsewhere, but the go forward position is, come on Ministry of Defence, come on UK, if you've got yourself into this muddle, this legal muddle, that denies you the ability to conduct effective operations across the spectrum of conflict, one end, Northern Ireland, very controlled, other end, stopping nuclear war, we're in a real bind, and we're in that bind right now.

• 30:01Speaker 03

  I mean, an ordinary listener would say, what on earth is your objection? What is your problem with human rights? Why would the existence, just on a technical level, explain to me how you think universal human rights are somehow getting in the way of good old fashioned war fighting?

• 30:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, it's a fundamental question, Sam, and it's a political question in so many respects. It comes down to our values and our principles guiding what we do in the international state. But what actually does those values and standards mean? And does it deny you the ability to do what's necessary? What's necessary? Not a choice, what's necessary? And let's look at the definition of war, therefore. The currency of war and combat is death. We exchange our lives and our enemies, and where unfortunately it happens, civilian lives, for political outcomes. It's the only thing in human affairs where death

• 31:01Speaker 04

  is a valued currency, a valued input to an outcome. And that's what makes soldiers different to policemen.

• 31:10Speaker 03

  I mean, are you suggesting, therefore, that the currency of war is death?

• 31:14Speaker 04

  Yes, it is. You defeat your enemy by destroying his courage, and you destroy his courage by killing his forces and, where necessary, others. And as commanders of a unit, when you're designing an operation, you factor in how many of your men you can have killed, but still achieve the mission, and you still go and do it. If you don't have that mental calculus, that you're prepared to sacrifice some of your own people, tragic as it is, and yourself, then you can't be a combat soldier. And the Human Rights Act, by its conception, application, denies that exchange. It's utopian, it's wonderful, it's what I would hope the world could be. But it doesn't work.

• 32:00Speaker 03

  Colonel Williams believes that the legislation hampers how Britain fights wars today. I asked former SAS commander David what he thinks.

• 32:09Speaker 04

  If you expect young men and women to sign up and to serve the state and risk their lives serving the state, then you owe them a duty of care in the long term. And that duty of care is not just making sure they're properly equipped and led and tasked and so on, but it means also in the long term, making sure that then they don't become victims of a kind of retrospective campaign of vengeance by the other side. And that's what we're seeing in Northern Ireland.

• 32:34Speaker 03

  Why do you think, if you're right, what's in it for Britain to allow that to happen?

• 32:39Speaker 04

  I don't think there's anything in it for Britain to allow that to happen. I think there is a sense that it is politically easier to abdicate responsibility to lawyers than it is to take decisions, particularly if those decisions are moral decisions that require someone to stand up and make a point. So in this case, we're talking about what are largely kind of moral decisions, about whether it was right for the state to do what it did in Northern Ireland. I think it was, many people think it was, but obviously some people don't think it wasn't. And it's easier to hand that problem to a lawyer and say, was it right, than it is to actually stand up and say, no, it was right, that's what we did, get over it.

• 33:15Speaker 03

  As somebody who's led troops in battle, this must strike you as something of a failure of leadership?

• 33:22Speaker 04

  It's very disappointing, and it's disappointing at a number of levels. I mean, I'm disappointed in our, in our sort of, in our political leaders to a degree, but I'm not surprised. What I'm quite disappointed about is the relative silence from the, from, if you like, the military hierarchy, both serving and retired. Now, some people have spoken out very eloquently and very strongly, and for that, I'm very grateful. But there seems to me to have been less outrage than I would have expected to hear from both serving and retired senior officers when it comes to the treatment of what were their soldiers fighting in their cause in Northern Ireland.

• 34:06Speaker 03

  By who? Name names. I mean, who do you want to hear from? Who were in positions of operational power, control, senior roles now? I mean, who's not coming to your defence? I mean, I think this is frankly a really important point, and I can see your immediate discomfort in being asked to name names. But, you know, as with other state failures or perceived failures, I think Britain's all too skilled at resorting to sort of gentlemanly behaviour in lieu of pointing fingers at failure.

• 34:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, but I think it's also slightly trivialising it just to point fingers at people and say, why are you speaking up? But I'll give you an example. There's a very senior figure in defence, or put it no more precisely than that, who, despite being briefed in detail about the effect that these legacy cases have on current and future special forces capability, nonetheless has been advising ministers that in fact, there's no effect. And when you have that, when you hear that, you begin to wonder what game is being played at that level? Why are you failing to either listen to what you're being told, believe what you're being told, or pass on what you're being told? What's going on now?

• 35:27Speaker 03

  General Sir Nick Parker was the last general officer commanding in Northern Ireland. He oversaw the final withdrawal of British troops from the province, and he has spoken up.

• 35:37Speaker 04

  Fifty years on, after all the statements that people have given, yes, if there is new clear criminal evidence that someone has misbehaved, of course they have to be held to account. I don't think you'll get any officer in the military who says that you shouldn't hold people to account if they've conducted a criminal act. If people are trying to wind this up, they will, they will start approaching you with old evidence that drags you back into the courts, that is totally unnecessary, and, and begins to have an impact

• 36:17Speaker 04

  on those of us who thought we were doing the right thing for our country. We start to feel that the country's no longer behind us.

• 36:28Speaker 03

  Sir Nick argues that this isn't simply about veterans from Northern Ireland, it changes the relationship between the state and the people it will send to war.

• 36:38Speaker 04

  This is a threat to national security because it undermines what we all call the moral component of fighting power, because people will feel if they serve and then they're not protected in the future, that why serve? You then look through not just Northern Ireland, but the campaign in Iraq and Afghanistan, and you look at the way rules of engagement were applied there, and you just wait for scrutiny on those. Scrutiny on those compounds this sense that even 50 years, you know, they're now going back 50 years, how are we going to be protected by the state if we fight for them? I think with the correct

• 37:22Speaker 04

  motivations, so the threat needs to be a clear and present danger, and that needs to be explained better to people. And then with proper training, proper equipment, and a sound chain of command, the British will do their duty when the country is threatened. I'm convinced of it. But you do need to put those other pieces in place. And the Northern Ireland legacy of troubles build doesn't help. It sends a signal that our government is not behind the sort of the basic requirement for us to protect ourselves.

• 37:59Speaker 03

  But the people who died in these operations had families too, and those families have spent decades asking what happened and why. For Mary Kelly, a former journalist with The Belfast Telegraph, the defence of soldiers and the rights of the relatives of the dead are a conundrum. Do you think there's any prospect of this new legacy process bringing to light any of those, in your words, more vexatious issues such as, you know,

• 38:31Speaker 03

  Manifestly innocent people being caught up or indeed

• 38:37Speaker 03

  the ability of of of paramilitary groups to commit murder with some level of impunity.

• 38:43Speaker 04

  I honestly am at a loss. Seems to me that there are two there are two opposing points of view.

• 38:51Speaker 04

  There are the the the people who want to know what happened. They, in many cases, the the victims of ordinary people who were innocent. And the people who who carried them out for a variety of reasons and circumstances that might look different. You know, with hindsight, forty years on, but you know, in the heat of the moment or in fear or whatever. And it's the ones that have the air of being a planned incident that you do think, well, why did that happen that way? Could there have been a a different result? I don't see how the two, the the right of veterans, for example, the right of veterans

• 39:33Speaker 04

  to say, we were, we were carrying out orders to the best of our abilities at the time. Most of them were quite young. Relatively inexperienced and how that matches against the human rights of the people who were killed and their families to know the truth. I honestly think the two things are pretty reconcilable. I'd be intrigued to see how the government, well, both governments, because the it's the Irish government is involved in this as well. How the governments are going to come up with a solution? Because I think it is one that has defeated politicians and of every hue.

• 40:20Speaker 03

  The anger today of the families who had loved ones killed in the conflict burns on in their need to know what happened. But if there's no new evidence in cases decades old, right, wrong and guilt are all near impossible to find. Former BBC security correspondent Brian Rowan feels that the current approaches just don't work. He'd like to see a truth telling forum, not prosecutions.

• 40:48Speaker 04

  And my argument in the peace process period is that we need to establish some table of explanation, which allows all of the sides to come into the room and to tell their stories and to offer their information. Now, the big challenge here is how we get to that point. We've had the guts of twenty years of a legacy conversation that began with a consultation team being set up in twenty oh seven, so almost, almost twenty years ago. We've had numerous other consultations, negotiations, agreements and disagreements, legislation in that period of twenty years. I think all of that, Sam,

• 41:31Speaker 04

  in my opinion, is about avoiding the past rather than addressing the past. So out of all of those processes, we've talked about a commission for this and a commission for that, a legacy investigations team, a legacy information recovery team. We've talked about processes of reconciliation and truth. And what we haven't done is actually go to those who were at the coalface of this conflict, all of those sides who were directly involved in it, and ask them, if we put this process together, are you coming to the table? Are you coming inside the commission? None of that has happened. And the longer we wait, the more critical memory we lose. I mean, I think of the generals

• 42:16Speaker 04

  who are now gone. I think of, you know, Margaret Thatcher, who's now gone. I think of the chief constable, John Herman, who's no longer with us. I think of the IRA leaders, Martin McGuinness and Brian Keenan, Kevin McKenna and others, no longer with us.

• 42:34Speaker 04

  I I'll tell you one little story. I mean, I, in the nineteen seventies, I ran for a club called Willafield Harriers,

• 42:42Speaker 04

  based in East Belfast, in the loyalist area of East Belfast. Many years later, I learned that Bobby Sands, the first of the hunger strikers to die in nineteen eighty one, also ran at Willafield Harriers. Mike Nesbit, who became the Ulster Unionist leader, also ran at Willafield Harriers. And in nineteen ninety one, when I was reporting on an IRA rocket attack on a police Land Rover in West Belfast, when I got back to the office, I was called by someone who said to me, do you know that that's Stephen in the vehicle? Stephen Gillespie was a police officer who I ran with at Willafield Harriers in in East Belfast. Now, there is a tiny little

• 43:26Speaker 04

  running club in East Belfast. We weren't all there at the same time, but we all passed through the doors of that running club. And yet, in this mad place, this mad place that we live in, we're all taken down different roads. For what purpose? For what purpose?

• 43:50Speaker 04

  People talk about a peace process as a fifty year process. If it is, we're only halfway there. And and I think the next twenty five years have to be about the next generations shipping the future because we made one hell of a mess of the past.

• 44:17Speaker 03

  The Shadow War is an Aura Studios production for The Independent, hosted by me, the world affairs editor, Sam Kiley. It was produced by Will Aslett, edited and sound designed by Keith English, and the line producer was Claire Cotrell. Executive producers were Mark Popkovitz for Aura Studios and Olivia Foster and Rod Adahaly for The Independent studio.

• 44:42Speaker 03

  Thanks for listening to this episode of SAS The Shadow War. Want to hear all the episodes without waiting? Then join Independent membership today for just a pound for your first six months. To join, head to independent.co.uk forward slash subscribe.

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