Army veterans will this week launch a campaign against what some feel is Labour’s ‘total betrayal’ of soldiers who served in the Northern Ireland Troubles.
They will make last-ditch appeals to Sir Keir Starmer’s government to abandon hugely controversial plans which they fear will expose veterans to ‘relentless and vexatious’ court prosecutions for events which took place decades ago.
The Parachute Regimental Association is urging all 13,000 veterans of the elite unite to write to Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Hilary Benn, the Northern Ireland Secretary, to spare ageing ex-British soldiers from being dragged before the courts for actions taken while on duty during the Troubles.
A draft letter seen by the Mail on Sunday advises veterans to tell Ministers that Parliament should ‘be ashamed’ of the ‘relentless and vexatious pursuit of Northern Ireland veterans [that] has continued for more than 50 years’.
The row centres on Labour’s decision to press ahead with repealing the Legacy Act brought in by the last Conservative government and which ended future investigations into Troubles-related violent events apart from those carried out by a new reconciliation commission.
It also sought to offer a conditional amnesty for people suspected of Troubles-related crimes in exchange for co-operation over providing information in connection with specific events although a court later ruled that provision breached human rights rules.
When he was Prime Minister, Boris Johnson hailed the plans as a way to ‘draw a line under the Troubles’ and to help ‘many members of the armed services who continue to face the threat of vexatious prosecutions well into their 70s and 80s’.
British Army veterans welcomed the overall legislation plan as a step toward providing them with the protection from prosecution for which they had campaigned.
Army veterans will this week launch a campaign against what some feel is Labour’s ‘total betrayal’ of soldiers who served in the Northern Ireland Troubles. Pictured: British troops with their armored personnel carriers surround a blazing barricade near the Andersonstown Police Station in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1979
They will make last-ditch appeals to Sir Keir Starmer’s government to abandon hugely controversial plans which they fear will expose veterans to ‘relentless and vexatious’ court prosecutions for events which took place decades ago
The Parachute Regimental Association is urging all 13,000 veterans of the elite unite to write to Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood (pictured) and Hilary Benn, the Northern Ireland Secretary, to spare ageing ex-British soldiers from being dragged before the courts for actions taken while on duty during the Troubles
However, the legislation was fiercely opposed by Northern Ireland political parties and by representatives of victims of violence in the conflict between the late 1960s and the Good Friday agreement in 1998.
Last year, Mr Benn reaffirmed the new Labour government’s determination to ‘repeal and replace’ the law which he said ‘does not have the support of any of the political parties and victims’ groups in Northern Ireland’.
However, in its draft letter, the Parachute Regimental Association calls for a ‘Statute of Limitations’ on further cases unless a court was persuaded that ‘there is truly new evidence.’
It also suggested that in coroner’s courts, ageing ex-soldiers unable to remember precise details of actions taken decades ago were ‘often pilloried by serried ranks of lawyers’ funded by legal aid in Northern Ireland.
The letter asks: ‘The Northern Ireland Secretary defends the changes he proposes, insisting that justice must prevail, but for whom?’
