BY now we’re used to the sight of them. Middle-aged and aged men and women, faces bleak with grief, standing outside a courthouse carrying pictures showing a close-up of their lost loved one. These are the people who didn’t go to war during the Troubles but had the war thrust on them, in all likelihood by the state. A solicitor or a younger member of the group steps forward and tries to tell how the murder of the loved one has created a permanent, bleeding wound in the family and how all they’re asking for now is for the state to come clean.

The latest instance is the family of Sean Brown of Bellaghy, who gathered in Belfast to receive the news that there will be, despite Hilary Benn, a public inquiry into Sean Brown’s death.

Maybe it’s because I’ve known so many people from Bellaghy in the course of my life that I feel a particular empathy with the tragedy of this man’s death. At the time he was killed he was a middle-aged man with a family, the chairman of the local GAA club, checking that all the doors and gates at the club were locked for the night. A group of loyalists descended – around five – and overpowered him. Being a Bellaghy man, he fought back and there were clear signs that a struggle had ensued.

The public story is that Sean Brown was killed by the UVF. But there are clear signs that the killing plot goes deeper.

The killers drove past Toomebridge RUC station. I used to drive past Toomebridge RUC station and even then it was equipped with CCTV cameras. The convoy of cars driven by the killers passed this RUC station on the way to Randalstown with their victim. But the CCTV footage from that night has disappeared. Nobody seems to know where it’s gone. Which tells us a lot about the level of efficiency and scrupulousness that went into the investigation of the killing. Ask yourself: who would have had access to this footage? Who would have removed it and why?

The Police Ombudsman’s  2004 report into the killing found several serious flaws in the investigation. Forensic evidence at the time was not handled professionally and thoroughly – things like the DNA that could have been drawn from cigarette butts. There wasn’t proper investigation of vehicles passing through Randalsown at the time of the murder. There was a sloppiness in the efforts made to identify and interview potential witnesses. The unexplained disappearance of essential investigative documents, including the murder investigation policy file and the Bellaghy occurrence book. 

On the night he was abducted, Sean Brown’s wife Bridie took a torch and went to the clubhouse in search of her husband. Later that morning  two police officers appeared at her house and she asked about her husband’s whereabouts, but they were unhelpful and unsympathetic. Bridie’s daughter Clare, hearing the noise, came downstairs in tears. One of the officers looked at her and asked “What’s she crying for?”

That was 1997. Today in 2025 Hilary Benn, the son of Tony Benn, doesn’t want and will challenge the judgement that a public inquiry is now needed. Why? Because the British authorities are intent on evading the spotlight that this case clearly deserves. They don’t care about Sean Brown or his family and community. They care only about dodging what most of us believe is the truth: Sean Brown was murdered by cruel and ruthless men who were supported at every stage by the ‘security forces’.

Maybe next time Michéal Martin calls for reconciliation in the North he could take a look at the anguish of the Brown family and ask why the hands of the authorities as well as the UVF appear to be drenched in Sean Brown’s blood, and that is why Hilary Benn is determined to see that British injustice continues to rule.

Only a fool would talk of reconciliation when such brazen collusion and cover-up go unchecked.