Legacy of the Troubles needs to be dealt with properly -

Letters from George Larmour to the Irish News published on Wednesday 31 May 2023 and a Response from the Truth Recovery Process on Friday 2 June 2023

George Larmour - Legacy of the Troubles needs to be dealt with properly Wednesday 31 May 2023

In my 74th year I was recently diagnosed with the dreaded ‘C’ word. Thankfully it was detected early during routine tests.

My consultant and surgeons decided that the best way to deal with this cancer was to remove it completely. Thankfully they successfully completed that procedure.

I can accept that when we get to our retirement years, we are all essentially in the departure lounge of life. We are all going to die some day. That’s a simple fact of life.

So I consider myself lucky to be able to talk about life and death at such an age and after such invasive surgery.

However, our cemeteries are filled with men, women and even innocent children who never got the chance to reach my age and reflect on that wonderful journey of life.

Their hopes and dreams were cruelly stolen from them by that other cancer in our sadly divided society – our casually referred-to ‘Troubles’.

People whose lives were extinguished by a bullet fired by a heartless, hate-filled killer or by a bomb assembled and planted by someone who didn’t care whose life or how many innocent lives would be ended in its no-warning blast.

Skilled surgeons dealt with my cancer with careful decisions and precision learned over many years.

Compare their skill, empathy and professionalism to the insulting, uncaring attitude of Secretary of State Mr Heaton-Harris who has, like his predecessors, learned nothing about how best to deal with our cancerous ‘Troubles’ legacy.

His proposed Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill takes no consideration for the mental well-being of victims and their families. Instead, it offers a reward to killers who simply have to pretend they are sorry for what they did.

The legacy of the Troubles is a cancer that needs to be dealt with properly. It should not be treated with half measures and it should be victim-focused.

I can accept it is unlikely I will see justice for my brother John’s murder. That is something I can reluctantly live with.

But I haven’t spent almost 34 years trying to find any glimmer of justice or the truth for Mr Heaton-Harris to callously sweep away any hope under his blood-stained amnesty rug. Hope should never be taken away from victims.

This proposed odious and cancerous Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill has no place in a supposedly caring, civilised society. It needs to be removed completely.

GEORGE LARMOUR

 Author of They Killed The Ice Cream Man, Belfast

Reply by Truth Recovery Process

Friday June 2nd 2023

George Larmour – ‘The legacy of the Troubles is a cancer that needs to be dealt with properly’ (May 31) – eloquently describes the situation of many ageing victims and survivors of the Troubles. In the same edition The Irish News carried a report on what Mr Justice Humphreys in the High Court condemned as the ‘shocking and disgraceful’ failure by the police to properly investigate the brutal death of Rosaleen O’Kane 47 years ago. The prime suspect in the case has now died, bringing any hope of a successful prosecution to an end.

As another ageing survivor of cancer and the Troubles, I can empathise with George Larmour’s situation. But I have to ask if, as a member of the same generation in the ‘departure lounge’ of life, George Larmour would consider the Truth Recovery Process’s proposal for a conditional amnesty for victims and survivors as an option, where former combatants are willing to come forward and make full disclosure of their own involvement in someone’s death or serious injury? The decision to activate such a process would rest with victims and survivors.

If they don’t wish to avail of this option, victims and survivors can still pursue their cases through the courts, although their prospects for doing so in the majority are rapidly diminishing. Nor is success guaranteed in the handful of cases that do reach the courts. What is guaranteed is that continued reliance on an under-resourced police service and painfully slow criminal justice system will ensure that, whatever the outcome of a trial, the legacy of the conflict and the divisions it generates will continue into the foreseeable future.

PADRAIG YEATES

Secretary

Truth Recovery Process