Tomorrow, my school is being visited by three politicians. one is the local Labour politician, another is the locall Tory politician and the third is the local Liberal Democrat politician. They are coming to my school to talk about politics and morality and religion or something like that. They’re also here to win votes for next years election butthey’re keeping quiet on that. Anyway, that’s not the point, the point is this.
Every student taking part has to ask them at least one question. My question regards the Northern Ireland peace agreement and goes something like this:
One of the conditions of the Northern Ireland peace agreements was the release of a couple of hundred IRA and Loyalist terrorists. That was months ago and the government is still fighting the IRA every step of the way for some signs of co-operation. How do you (labour MP) reconcile the release of hundreds of convicted criminals with:
a) Keeping the peace, which after all is the point of the whole thing.
b) The principals of Law and Justice?
When I actually ask my question it’s going to be a little shorter than that but the point I’m trying to make is, Do you think that politics should override the basic principals of the law of the land? I mean the intentions were obviously good in this case but so far it hasn’t worked anywhere near as well as expected. It has also, to my mind, set a preceedent for dealings with the IRA, namely that the Birtish government are a soft touch who will do anything for peace. Neither of these things are good and both could have been prevented if the government had taken a harder line, stuck to the law and left the terrorists where they belong. This is an example of where a government has overturned court rulings, ridden roughshod over the law and basically foresaken the legal process for the sake of political advancement. It has backfired severely. The criminals are back in society and reoffending, a good example is of Johnny “Mad Dog” Adair, a prominent and highly feared Loyalist terrorist who, months after being released, has recently been caught up in gang warfare over cocaine dealing.
What do you think? Do you think that politicians should be able to go above the law to achieve political ends or should decisions regarding criminals be left to the courts and only the courts?
On the one hand certainly criminals should be left in jail and politicians should not be allowed to set them free for political goals.
On the other hand sometimes the price for peace is steep. That it didn’t seem to work in Ireland is besides the point. The people who did this presumably hoped and thought it would.
If Hitler had said 6 months before the end of WWII that he’d stop then and there if he was allowed to survive and German atrocities be forgotten would the Allies have taken him up on it?
Honestly, I don’t think so. At that point I think the Allies were in for nothing less than total destruction of the German war machine (not to mention Hitler). Still, it has to give you pause. Do you stop now, potentially saving several thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of lives at the cost of letting some really horrendous criminals go free?
Honestly I don’t know. In the abstract I would say that a real peace can’t be built on a faulty foundation such as this. In reality, watching friends and sons and daughters dying in the here and now, maybe I’d be more willing to fudge to obtain peace.
Although I cringe at the idea of politicians overruling the legal system, I also don’t believe that everything can be neatly solved through the law. The Troubles in Northern Ireland have been around for decades, and Thatcher’s hard-line approach hardly improved matters. You’re right to point out the risk of appearing a soft touch, and the disquieting sight of prisoners released early.
On the other hand, if nothing else is working, what should a government do? Sticking to the law would have involved continued violence, perhaps even increased, with no possibility of resolution. People are dying now, but it seems to my mind to be more about rival criminal organisations in the North than attacks targetted at the government or the population of Britain as a whole. Terrorism is being replaced by organised crime masquerading as politics.
At the end of the day, peace seems closer in Northern Ireland than it has done in my lifetime, and that has to count for a lot. If it works, I won’t question the process too loudly.
[related note]
Am I the only person to see the irony in the way this has been reported? I’ve seen tabloids complaining about the politics of expediency overruling the politics of principle. Yet these are the same papers who rail against the European Court for investigating the Bulger killers. What was the story there? That former Home Secretary Michael Howard used his political powers to increase the sentence on the killers. If that’s not a politician overruling the law (to boost his poll standings, no doubt), I don’t know what is.
[/related note]
I have very little sympathy for any of Britain’s troubles regarding Ireland or any other group of people who have been been starved, plundered, raped and murdered through Britain’s “colonialism”. Granted we Americans would have a completely different culture if the Spanish or the Dutch had been the predominate “colonizer”. And they of course would have been no better. The problems between Britain and Ireland have endured through not decades but centuries. They will most likely continue regardless of any agreement made now or in the past. Is Britain being soft? Come off of it please! Perhaps they are willing to concede a few things now, but historically they have not been soft on anyone who would oppose them, particularily the Irish.
I see nothing wrong with the British government giving pardons to “political” prisoners. It’s done all the time. You have to remember that what you might consider to be terrorism is considered patriotism by others. Besides we have very few “political” type prisoners here in the US, yet pardons and clemencies are granted here all the time.
Well we had the debate today and the politicians generally took the same line as Jeff and matt which makes sense to me, although I still feel that it’s a massive risk letting these people out of jail. But as matt said it seems to be working so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.