IF the hope was that our latest Secretary of State, Hilary Benn, would bring some of his father Tony’s passion for social justice to Stormont Castle, it must be said that most nationalists gave up on that hope some time ago. But the success of Mr Benn today [Wednesday] in ensuring that the truth about the controversial death of Paul ‘Topper’ Thompson in April 1994 remains hidden will have rendered disappointment and disgust virtually unanimous.
Paul was murdered by UDA gunmen who took advantage of a hole in a peaceline to fire at him while he sat in the front seat of a taxi in Springfield Park.
Why the killers were able to take advantage of the breach remains unknown, as does the nature and extent of the role played in the brutal killing by agents of the British state.
In March last year Coroner Louisa Fee ruled that summaries of the intelligence held by the UK on the murder should be made public. Mr Benn immediately intervened to stop the release, citing the familiar British fallbacks of “national security” and “the public interest”. The Supreme Court has ruled that the coroner’s order for the release of the intelligence be overturned.
It may be that Mr Benn feels vindicated; we’ll not go so far as to see he may feel pleasure at the ruling, since it is our hope that somewhere in his heart lies the humanity and decency that animated his father’s words and deeds during his life in politics. So we’ll say rather that Mr Benn and the state he represents will be relieved. But while the Secretary of State breathes that sigh of relief, he must know that his court victory comes at a price. And that price is that he joins the lumpen mass of political nobodies, would-bes and never-weres who passed through these six counties having done nothing of note other than say and do what they were told to say and do. He will leave not with the thanks of the people he was meant to serve but with their indifference or contempt.
And while his High Court victory will mean that the bones and blood of the past are once more swept and mopped back into the locked room marked ‘Britain’s Dirty War’, it will also mean that the deep conviction of this community and others beyond that the British state was complicit in the murder of Paul Thompson turns into a raging certainty. Mr Benn is clearly not concerned that such a vast swathe of the population here consider him and the government he serves as more loyal to gangs of killer agents and handlers than to honest, decent, foully wronged families. But if he’s able to look in the mirror by telling himself he’s serving the greater good, then we heartily recommend that he reflect on this ruling and the Kenova Report on whose heels it hotly comes, and ask himself what the greater good is. His father knew, and he spent decades in the House of Commons speaking up for the greater good and the people it’s supposed to exist for.
This Labour government has spent 18 months betraying the people who placed their trust in it and the sense of hurt is everywhere. But this betrayal of justice is nothing new to us, Mr Benn. It’s what you and people like you have been doing for decades. For centuries.
