CHERISHING ALL THE CHILDREN OF THE NATION EQUALLY? by Tom Cooper                                                                                                                                               

Let me see if I have this right.  A recent report compiled by House of Commons MPs from the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee has called for the next UK government to finance a compensation fund for victims of IRA attacks using Libyan explosives.  This report found that the administration led by former prime minister Tony Blair missed a vital opportunity, during the period in which Libya was seeking a rapprochement with the west from 2003, to act on behalf of IRA victims by placing this issue firmly on the negotiating table to secure a compensation package.  It is without question that the late Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gadafy was responsible for shipments of weaponry around the world, but  we should not ignore the source of these weapons.

In 2007, agreement was reached on co-operation between Tony Blair and Colonel Gaddafi on defence matters in the training of specialised Libyan military units, special forces and border security units. Despite the killing of WPC Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in London in 1984 and the killings of 270 people in the Lockerbie bombing in Scotland in 1988, the British government approved for export to Libya military hardware which included projectile launchers, explosives, crowd control ammunition, small arms ammunition, teargas/irritant ammunition, electric batons, sub-machine guns, assault rifles, shotguns and sniper rifles. Britain’s professed ‘ethical dimension’ to foreign policy in relation to the export of arms to suspect regimes did not appear to apply to Libya.  The British government prides itself on being one of the world’s leading champions of peace, but they are also one of the world’s leading suppliers of weapons of war. They are also masters of double standards.

This committee of MPs are not alone in seeking financial redress from the North African country.  Mr Willie Frazer of ‘Love Ulster’ infamy, who represents the group FAIR (Families Acting for Innocent Relatives), also seeks an apology and monetary compensation from Libya for Northern victims of IRA attacks. Bizarrely, this demand for compensation is confined to Protestant victims of republican violence with Catholic victims excluded. Mr Frazer, accompanied by the DUP MPs Jeffrey Donaldson and Nigel Dodds along with some British Labour and Conservative MPs, met with Colonel Gaddafi in Tripoli to press their case.

Perhaps Mr Donaldson and Mr Dodds might make a similar case for compensation and an apology for relatives of loyalist victims from the South African government. On November 10th 1986 in the Ulster Hall in Belfast, the loyalist paramilitary group Ulster Resistance was formed. In 1987 two members of this group were arrested in France along with a South African diplomat. It was reported that attempts were made to exchange information on Shorts’ missile technology in return for South African guns. In 1988 a substantial haul of weapons was reportedly smuggled into the North from South Africa by the British military intelligence officer Brian Nelson and distributed between the UFF, the UVF and the shadowy Ulster Resistance, some of which were subsequently used to murder innocent Catholics. It is believed that Ulster Resistance weapons were used in the 1992 Sean Graham’s betting shop massacre in Belfast that claimed five lives. Surely If we are to be consistent in applying principles of justice and equality to all and to liberate the anachronistic political structures which pass for a functioning democracy in the North, then all victims must have parity of esteem and all suffering acknowledged equally.