Series of public inquiries on Troubles incidents ‘not the way forward'
Campaigners outside Belfast High Court during a challenge to the Legacy Act (Brian Lawless/PA)
The body led by Sir Declan Morgan, a former lord chief justice for Northern Ireland, was set up by the former government's Legacy Act after scores of legacy inquests and other court cases relating to the Troubles were halted.
The Kingsmill massacre and the Guildford pub bombings are among cases it is currently looking at.
Mr Benn told MPs they are working to change disclosure arrangements and to make it compliant with Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
'In the end, we're not going to deal with legacy with a whole series of public inquiries,' he said.
'We're doing all this work to try and create a body which is capable of delivering justice for all, information for all, answers for all.
'That is what I am trying to do at the moment because of the incompatibilities identified.'
He was asked about his decision not to call a public inquiry into the circumstances around the murder of GAA official Sean Brown in 1997.
In May the UK Government confirmed it will seek a Supreme Court appeal over a court ruling that ordered it to hold a public inquiry into Mr Brown's murder.
Supporters of the family of GAA official Sean Brown, with widow Bridie Brown (centre), daughter Clare Loughran (left) and daughter Siobhan Brown (right) (Liam McBurney/PA)
The 61-year-old then-chairman of Wolfe Tones GAA Club in the Co Londonderry town of Bellaghy was ambushed, kidnapped and murdered by loyalist paramilitaries as he locked the gates of the club in May 1997.
No-one has ever been convicted of his killing.
Preliminary inquest proceedings last year heard that in excess of 25 people had been linked by intelligence to the murder, including several state agents.
It was also alleged in court that surveillance of a suspect in the murder was temporarily stopped on the evening of the killing, only to resume again the following morning.
Asked about Mr Brown's case, Mr Benn told MPs: 'It's an awful, awful case.
'The murder of Sean Brown was shocking, deeply violent, and this has caused immense suffering to the family, to his widow Bridie and to the wider community, including the GAA family, because of the role that he undertook.
'But I came to the conclusion that the commission reformed would be capable of looking into it, and there's an issue of principle here in respect to the court ruling.
'Up until this moment, the courts accepted that it is for governments to decide whether public inquiries are ordered, not for the courts.
'What the courts have tended to say is, this is the test that has to be met, the way in which the government chooses to meet that test is a matter for governments to decide.
'There is a margin of appreciation that is made available.
'In this particular case, the court has decided to order a public inquiry.
'We're seeking leave to appeal to the Supreme Court because of that fundamental principle, which is, courts do not order public inquiries, governments do, and that is very important because of the nature of the mandatory order I am not able to do anything else other than order a public inquiry, which I made it clear that the Government is not going to do, because I believe there's another means of dealing with this case.'
Mr Benn said there are five other cases that are in the same position.
'People say the Sean Brown case is unique. All murders are unique and uniquely painful for the family, but it is not a unique case,' he said.
'This is not a unique case, and I would also say we are not going to deal with legacy by having a whole series of public inquiries.
'That is not a way forward. That is why we have to make the reform of the commission to win public confidence.
'To make it ECHR compliant is so important because then you have a mechanism that you can use to deal with all of them and all of us, the committee, the whole team, everybody needs to be concerned about justice for everyone.'
He added: 'It is open to the Brown family to go to the commission today, the commission will start work on investigating.'
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The Guardian
11 hours ago
- The Guardian
The Miami Showband massacre: what led to the killing of the ‘Irish Beatles'?
'It was absolutely despicable,' says Des Lee, his voice trembling with emotion, 'to think that those people who were supposed to be protecting us had planned our murder …' I've never heard a story as astonishing as Lee's. His memoir, My Saxophone Saved My Life, recounts the events of half a century ago, in which his much-loved pop group, the Miami Showband, were ambushed by loyalist paramilitaries operating a fake army checkpoint, with half his bandmates murdered as he lay still, playing dead to stay alive. Though the attack carries strangely little traction in Britain, the Miami Showband massacre of 1975 is deeply etched into Irish cultural memory. Even amid the context of the Troubles, whose bleak statistics – more than 3,600 dead, more than 47,500 injured – made slaughter almost normalised, the killing of three members of the Miami Showband left Ireland in shock. Fifty years after the atrocity, Lee, 79, tells me about a tangled plot with its roots in the uniquely Irish phenomenon of showbands. In their heyday in the 1950s to 70s, showbands – besuited troupes, closer to cabaret than rock'n'roll, performing contemporary hits with slick routines choreographed down to the last synchronised leg kick – fulfilled a need for glamour and escapism at a time when overseas stars seldom visited Ireland. Showbands, who typically took the stage around midnight, provided a crucial context in which young people from the Catholic and Protestant communities could forget their troubles (and the Troubles), and let their hair down. 'As far as we were concerned,' Lee recalls, 'a punter was a punter, no matter what religion, creed or colour. They would mingle, and you could have a Protestant meeting a Catholic and getting married. It was incredible.' Born John Desmond McAlea on 29 July 1946, Lee grew up in the Catholic suburb of Andersonstown, West Belfast, in a relatively comfortable working-class family. He would supplement his pocket money in audacious ways. On 12 July, AKA The Twelfth or Orangemen's Day, the Protestant community would hold rallies at which the likes of Reverend Ian Paisley would vehemently denounce Republicans and Catholics. Lee would go along and blend with the crowd, collecting bottles discarded by the Loyalist throng and claiming the penny deposits. Lee found a job at a plumbing supplier but his head was soon turned by rock'n'roll, and he quit to follow in the footsteps of his nightclub musician father. He served his apprenticeship on a thriving Belfast scene centred around Cymbals instrument shop, where he rubbed shoulders with a teenage Van Morrison ('A strange guy,' says Lee, 'but an exceptional talent') and future members of Thin Lizzy. In 1967, the circuit's leading act, the Miami Showband, underwent one of its periodic reshuffles and drafted in Lee on sax, along with a handsome, charismatic singer-pianist called Fran O'Toole. Fronted by Dickie Rock, who had represented Ireland at Eurovision, the Miami were as big as it got. When Des calls them 'The Irish Beatles' with a twinkle, it's only slight hyperbole: they topped the Irish singles chart seven times. 'When I got the deal to join,' says Lee, 'I thought, 'My God, all my birthdays are coming together.' I jumped at it.' 'Girls were screaming,' he says. 'We would have 2,500 people inside watching us, and 2,500 outside trying to get in. I couldn't go to the shop without people wanting my autograph. It was stardom with a capital S.' Lee developed a close friendship and songwriting partnership with O'Toole, who later replaced Rock as frontman. Lee became the bandleader. His responsibilities included repertoire and finances, and ensuring everyone looked immaculate (70s footage shows them in dazzling-white suits with glittering lapels). He also instilled discipline. 'My job was to make sure everybody was squeaky clean,' he says. 'No going on the piss before a gig. We weren't saints or angels, make no mistake. What goes on afterwards, behind closed doors, nobody knows. But we had to put on a professional show.' The Miami Showband entered the summer of 1975 in an optimistic mood. The band had scored major hits with Charlie Rich's country standard There Won't Be Anymore and Bonnie St Claire's bubblegum-glam nugget Clap Your Hands and Stamp Your Feet. O'Toole was being groomed for solo stardom, and had been booked to play Las Vegas to launch his Lee-penned single Love Is, with the intention of positioning him as the next David Cassidy. But that show never took place. On Wednesday 30 July 1975, the Miami played the Castle Ballroom in Banbridge, County Down, about 10 miles north of the border. 'It was just a normal night, nothing untoward. We came off stage and did the usual thing: signed autographs, chatted to the fans, then we had a cup of tea and a sandwich, and got ready to do the journey back to Dublin.' Road manager Brian Maguire went ahead in the equipment van. Drummer Ray Millar drove separately to visit family in Antrim. The rest of the band – O'Toole, Lee, Brian McCoy, bassist Stephen Travers and guitarist Tony Geraghty – climbed into the Volkswagen minibus and headed south. Eight miles into the journey, at 2.30am on Thursday 31 July, they were flagged down by the red torch of an army checkpoint, a commonplace occurrence in the North. 'You would be asked the same questions: 'Where are you going, where are you coming from?'' says Lee. 'We would be sitting in the van with a bottle of brandy or whiskey, and we'd occasionally offer a drop to the soldier who stopped us.' They were asked to step out of the van – again, not entirely unusual – and made to line up facing the roadside ditch. At first, the soldiers chatted casually, but their demeanour changed when someone with an English accent joined them and began giving orders. McCoy found this reassuring, telling Travers that they were dealing with the British army rather than the less predictable, locally recruited Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR). Before the search, Lee asked permission to fetch his saxophone to show it wasn't a weapon, laying it on the road a few feet away. Suddenly, an almighty explosion tore through the van, throwing all five musicians across the ditch into the undergrowth. The soldiers had not been soldiers at all – at least, not on duty. The fake army patrol were members of the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), although at least four of them were also serving with the UDR. Their intention was to plant a briefcase bomb under the driver's seat, timed to explode further down the road. The timer malfunctioned, instantly killing two members of the UVF's Mid-Ulster Brigade, Harris Boyle and Wesley Somerville. In the chaos, an order was given to shoot the fleeing musicians to eliminate witnesses. Lee lay still with his face in the grass, slowing his breathing and pretending to be dead – a trick he had learned from watching Vietnam movies – as he heard the murder of his friends taking place around him. First to die was McCoy, 32, shot in the back with a Luger pistol. Travers, 24, hit by a dumdum bullet, was seriously wounded. As Geraghty, 24, and O'Toole, 28, attempted to drag him to safety, they were caught by gunmen, pleading for their lives before being executed with Sterling submachine guns. O'Toole was shot 22 times, his long-haired head so badly mutilated that a doctor would later ask Lee if there was a girl in the band. Travers lay next to the body of McCoy and, like Lee, played dead. Once the attackers had apparently left the scene, Lee cautiously went to fetch help. 'The main road was the most horrific scene I've ever seen in my life,' he remembers. 'There were bits of bodies lying all over the place. It was horrendous.' The first passing vehicle, a truck, refused to give Lee a lift. Eventually, a young couple agreed to drive him to nearby Newry, where he alerted police. 'My hand was on the door handle just in case, ready to jump out, because I didn't trust anybody at that stage.' The killings stunned Ireland, and thousands lined the streets for the funerals of the murdered musicians. The Miami Showband had represented hope. Not only did their shows unite communities, but their membership was mixed: McCoy and Millar were Protestants, the rest were Catholics. Is it fanciful to suggest that they were targeted because someone, somewhere, resented this pan-sectarian fraternisation? Lee doesn't think that was the motive. 'We were the No 1 band, and this gang wanted maximum publicity. If that bomb had exploded when they intended, the Miami Showband would have been accused of carrying weapons for the IRA.' (Indeed, within 12 hours, the UVF accused the band of being bomb-traffickers, describing their killing as 'justifiable homicide'.) Lee agreed to testify at the trial in Belfast on condition he was helicoptered to and from the Irish border, with 24-hour protection. His life was threatened by relatives of the accused; he has, he says, been looking over his shoulder ever since. Lance corporal Thomas Crozier and Sgt James McDowell, both of the UDR, were sentenced to life in the Maze prison, as was John Somerville, brother of the deceased Wesley and a former soldier. (They were released under the Good Friday agreement.) Everything pointed towards collusion: covert collaboration between paramilitaries and the organs of the British state. Travers, Lee and Millar relaunched the Miami Showband with new members before the year was out, to familiar scenes of hysteria – but their hearts weren't in it. Travers felt they had become a circus, and that audiences had come to stare rather than dance; he left the band the following year. For Lee, now lead singer, it could never be the same without his lost band members. 'I looked around and there was no Fran, no Brian and no Tony, and I didn't enjoy that.' In 1982, tired of feeling that he and his family were in danger, Lee started a new life in South Africa, performing as a saxophonist and band leader on the Holiday Inn circuit. He remained there for two decades, only returning after his wife, Brenda, died. Travers, meanwhile, went on a tenacious, meticulous search for the truth, engaging with numerous investigations and initiatives. A 2019 Netflix documentary, Remastered: The Miami Showband Massacre, is centred around his dogged efforts. Through the years, the finger of suspicion has repeatedly pointed at two men: Capt Robert Nairac of the Grenadier guards (later executed by Republicans), and Robin 'The Jackal' Jackson, a former soldier from County Down and a key figure in the notorious Glenanne Gang, were believed to have planned the ambush. Both were named by British intelligence whistleblowers, and Ken Livingstone named Nairac as a conspirator in his maiden speech as an MP. In December 2017, 80 documents were released including a 1987 letter from the UVF to the then-taoiseach Charles Haughey on headed notepaper, which openly admitted collusion with MI5 in the attack. The evidence was now overwhelming. The historic activities of the Glenanne Gang, including the Miami Showband Massacre, fall under the purview of Operation Denton, due to report this year. The massacre hasn't faded from Irish memory. A sculpture commemorating the dead musicians, unveiled in 2007 by former taoiseach Bertie Ahern, stands on Parnell Square in Dublin. One person who apparently didn't remember, however, was Bono, who described the 2015 shootings at the Eagles of Death Metal show in Paris as 'the first direct attack on music'. He later apologised, and U2 incorporated a slide of the Miami Showband into their show. The survivors don't have the luxury of forgetting. The trauma has left an indelible mark. Travers was diagnosed, in later life, with enduring personality change. Lee has, he tells me, experienced profound survivor's guilt. In 2021, Lee was awarded £325,000 compensation, in a package he says was presented to survivors and families as a take-it-or-leave-it deal. He considers the sum to be 'peanuts, for 50 years of anger and pain'. More than financial recompense, he says what he hopes for, with up to five perpetrators still officially unaccounted for, is closure: 'Just tell the world the truth.' My Saxophone Saved My Life by Des Lee with Ken Murray is out now (Red Stripe Press)
ITV News
2 days ago
- ITV News
Union flags and poppy wreaths among items burned on blazing bonfire in Londonderry on Friday
Union flags and poppy wreaths were among items burned on a blazing bonfire in Londonderry on Northern Ireland's First Minister said there was no place for the burning of flags or emblems in the O'Neill said the overwhelming majority of people in Northern Ireland want a 'better future for their children and grandchildren, free from sectarianism and hate'.Her comments, on social media, came ahead of the burning of the two bonfires in the Bogside and Creggan areas of towering pyres were adorned with Union flags, Israel flags, poppy wreaths and other the Meenan Square bonfire in the Bogside, organisers also placed a Parachute Regiment flag, as well as flags with the images of the King and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin began to gather as Friday evening progressed, ahead of the expected ignition at about are traditionally lit in some nationalist areas of Derry in August, historically associated with the anniversary of the introduction of internment without trial during the Troubles and other significant follows the lighting of hundreds of bonfires during festivities in loyalist areas of Northern Ireland in July, which also saw the burning of flags, symbols and O'Neill, who is the leader of Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland's Executive, said: 'There is no place for illegal, unregulated bonfires or the burning of flags and emblems, whether that's today in Derry or what we witnessed across the North in July.'She added: 'Derry is a city undergoing significant transformation, with the largest investment in its history agreed, totalling £300m.'This investment will create new jobs, transform community facilities, build more homes, support local businesses and deliver the expansion of Magee University.'Derry is moving forward. Our island is moving forward.'And I will continue to do everything I can to keep us moving forward to a future where every person and every community can thrive free from sectarianism.'Those behind the bonfires were condemned by Alliance deputy leader Eoin Tennyson, who called for regulation to 'end these hateful displays'.He said: 'Each year, we witness a repeated cycle of sectarianism, hate, and bigotry during bonfire season.'The placing of flags and offensive materials on bonfires is utterly unacceptable. Those responsible only seek to intimidate and sow division in our communities.'
ITV News
2 days ago
- ITV News
Former RAF officer says Chinook crashed on Mull of Kintyre on 'show flight'
A former RAF officer has claimed a military helicopter which crashed during a flight from Northern Ireland to Scotland was on a "show flight" to prove its airworthiness. Twenty-nine people - four crew and 25 high ranking members of the security forces - were killed when the Chinook hit a hillside over the Mull of Kintyre in 1994. UTV can reveal that former squadron leader Robert Burke tried to have his concerns about the disaster raised in Parliament nearly 30 years ago. The family of Desmond Conroy, a senior RUC officer who was killed, is demanding that the Government reverse a decision not to hold a public inquiry. "To us, he was dad," his daughter Patricia Conroy told UTV. "He was a true family man. He was the center of our lives." Chinooks were the Army's workhorses during the Troubles. The helicopter used for this flight was a Mark 2 version, but it emerged there had been serious safety concerns surrounding the aircraft. A former RAF officer believes it was chosen to prove to the Army that the Mark 2 was safe following an upgrade. Robert Burke, who had been a test pilot at the time, said: "There were obviously major faults with that aircraft, however the Mark 2 was sent to Northern Ireland as a gesture by the RAF to show that everything was sorted." Patricia Conroy said: "If my dad had have known, any of those individuals had been told look, this helicopter hasn't got a good track record, none of them would have got on it." Recently it emerged files relating to the disaster have been sealed for 100 years. Robert Burke saw some documents before they were locked away. Now UTV has discovered he made a failed attempt to have his concerns raised in the House of Commons back in 1998. Patricia Conroy said: "This revelation from Mr Burke is truly shocking, it's devastating." The allegations have boosted calls for a public inquiry, but in a statement, the Ministry of Defense said: "The accident has already been the subject of six inquiries and investigations ... it's unlikely that a public inquiry would identify any new evidence or reach new conclusions." The statement also says: "Neither the RAF or the MOD recognise the term 'show flight' and have no information to support such a theory." Patricia Conroy said: "It's heart wrenching, you know, it's really difficult to think that we've been kept in the dark, and even now, all this information is coming to light and people can still say no." The crash happened in foggy conditions, but it's clarity surrounding the full circumstances that victims' families are demanding.
