Powder-keg politics of 1972 have denied justice to the bereaved and injured

ANALYSIS:Failures to act by police, William Whitelaw and the church have all but buried the truth

THE BOTTOM line about the Claudy bombing is that the bereaved and injured did not get justice and almost certainly will not get justice.

Some of the families want the case pursued but Northern Secretary Owen Paterson said yesterday evening there would be no point in holding an official inquiry, because so many of the suspects and principals are dead.

Had senior RUC officers done their duty 38 years ago – after nine people died as a result of the Claudy bombing and more than 30 were injured – then the guilt or possible innocence of Fr James Chesney, one of the alleged bombers and the Provisional IRA’s suspected director of operations in south Derry, might have been firmly established.

Others of the reputed eight-member IRA unit that carried out the attack might also have been convicted. A number of them are now dead, including two who, according to a senior Derry republican, took their own lives.

Had the then Northern secretary William Whitelaw dismissed those overtures from the RUC to allow Chesney to effectively escape across the Border into Donegal then a similar outcome of convictions might have followed.

Had the then Catholic primate Cardinal William Conway told the police and Whitelaw to “get lost” – as would certainly happen now, according to former Bishop of Derry Edward Daly – then the police may have been prompted to press ahead with a proper investigation and the families may have got justice. But they won’t.

Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman Al Hutchinson said it was the police who made the decision to allow Chesney to evade due process. He detailed how Whitelaw became a party to that decision and how Cardinal Conway was also briefed about how Chesney was a prime suspect.

Therefore the verdict of a “collusive act” fell against the PSNI “in seeking and accepting the government’s assistance in dealing with the problem of Fr Chesney’s alleged wrongdoing”, said Hutchinson.

The current Catholic primate Cardinal Seán Brady was robust in insisting that the Catholic Church was not party to a “cover-up” over Chesney.

It may be in terms of the letter of the law that Cardinal Brady is correct, but as for the spirit of the law that would appear to be another matter.

Another bottom line is that the RUC, the British government and the Catholic Church at its highest level in Ireland knew of Chesney’s alleged involvement in the attack. Yet, instead of being arrested and facing possible trial, he was transferred to a parish in Donegal at the apparent say-so of the late Cardinal Conway, and with the connivance of the RUC and Whitelaw.

Hutchinson was clear that there is the matter of a moral imperative that must also be considered that affects the police, the British government and the Catholic Church, and should be debated publicly.

But he also said that the decisions taken in 1972 must be considered in the “context of the time”.

It was the worst year of the Troubles with 500 killings, and the year also of Bloody Sunday and Bloody Friday when Northern Ireland at times appeared on the brink of civil war.

It’s frightening to even contemplate what would word of Chesney’s alleged involvement have triggered in the powder keg of the time

That was a fair point, the SDLP MP for Foyle Mark Durkan accepted. But the oldest of axioms took priority, he believed: “Let justice be done, though the heavens may fall.”