RITE AND REASON: In the North "the demand for truth far exceeds supply," writes Dr David Stevens
Prof Simon Lee (former professor of jurisprudence at Queen's University Belfast) has produced a book called Uneasy Ethics which deals with ethical dilemmas. One of the chapters is about the Northern Ireland peace process. The process has produced all sorts of uneasy ethical dilemmas.
Some of this ethical unease is around the tension between peace and justice - the moral demands of justice and the political requirements of peace, e.g. over the release of politically motivated prisoners. However, there is also the tension between peace and truth - peace seems to require a letting go of the past but truth seems to require an acknowledgement of wrongdoing, accountability and the validation of painful loss and experience.
There is the tension between generosity and justice. People may see generosity, particularly if reciprocated, as a way forward, indeed the only way forward.
However, there is a distaste for treating generously those who have behaved badly - it violates a sense of fairness. Justice in its punitive form demands the punishment of wrongdoers, and it seems to violate justice when wrongdoers who are released early, are included in how the society is governed and in how justice is determined.
Some of the tensions are illustrated by the Bloody Sunday inquiry which seems to drag on endlessly (now three years and counting) and at vast expense.
On the one hand Mr John Kelly, whose brother was killed that day, said: "The cost for the search for truth and justice should be immaterial". On the other hand, the Chief Constable, Mr Hugh Orde, said, regarding the recently reactivated inquiry into the 1972 IRA bomb which killed nine people in the Co Derry village of Claudy that he was "investigating so much history" at a time when his force is short of detectives.
He also pointed out that only 30 per cent of murders of police officers during the Troubles had been solved. He went on to say that "if the government wants me to start looking backwards, then I'll look backwards across the board". The claims of the past versus the claims of the present and the future. The demands of equity in dealing with cases. Such are the dilemmas, and all resentments and injustices cannot be addressed.
Peace processes seem to be characterised by unease, but the making of war seems to be characterised by ethical unease as well.
The Stevens Report (April 2003) lifted a veil on collusion between the security forces and loyalist paramilitaries in the murder of innocent Catholics.
The revelation about a top British army agent in the Provisional IRA (May 2003) shone further light on the "dirty war" on terrorism; the value of the intelligence provided apparently required the state's agents to collude in torture and murder - more ethical unease.
The actions of the British state in Northern Ireland raise the question: "How far does state security override legal and moral rules in the interest of defeating deadly enemies such as the Provisional IRA?"
A state must be held to higher standards than terrorist organisations, otherwise the state becomes, in the words of St Augustine, "organised brigandage".
The rule of law and moral distinctions between actors collapse. On the other hand there is a danger of holding the state to an impossible moral perfectionism (which some human rights activists do). The reality is that politicians constantly fail and engage in wrongdoing (if only by omission or because decisions often involve choices between evils) and this is why the issue of forgiveness in politics is important - political life has to keep going and not be paralysed by past wrongdoing.
However, the state and its agents have to be held to account. At a minimum if dirty wars are dirty, we are entitled to know how dirty. And the exclusive concern should not be on the misdeeds of the state. We should see wrongdoing in the round. To further complicate the ethical issues involved in the dirty war in Northern Ireland; did the peace process emerge from the stalemate produced by the dirty war? Do we require some sort of formal truth-seeking process in Northern Ireland - some sort of honest disclosure?
The report of the Healing Through Remembering project last year suggested that a full truth recovery process should be given careful consideration. It was proposed that an important first step would be acknowledgement by all organisations and institutions that have engaged in the conflict of their responsibility for past political violence.
The Bloody Sunday inquiry suggests that the judicial inquiry direction is not the way to go. Nor can we go the way of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission which traded amnesty for disclosure, chiefly because most of the paramilitaries have already had their effective amnesty.
Truth commissions mostly inquire into state wrongdoing but in Northern Ireland, about 87 per cent of the deaths were caused by paramilitaries. How can the deaths caused by paramilitaries be satisfactorily investigated when they already have been effectively amnestied? What would be the motivation for disclosure by paramilitaries?
The Good Friday agreement carefully side-stepped issues of guilt and responsibility and the demand for truth far exceeds supply. Huge holes are left in some people's biographies - as one reviewer said of Gerry Adams's autobiography, it was like reading a biography of Field Marshall Montgomery that leaves out the British army.
We need a structured process of honest disclosure and it seems we cannot have one that will actually produce honest disclosure. More ethical unease.
• Dr David Stevens is general secretary of the Irish Council of Churches.