No
harm to Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his fine words of 1762, but whatever
Social Contract that exists between people in Northern Ireland and
the State has just been ripped up and tossed in the bin with the
sentencing of a confessed multiple murderer to 6 years jail-time, in
a deal which sees Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) leader and
‘supergrass’
Gary Haggarty give evidence in one trial, evidence which will only
serve to confirm already existing DNA evidence and eyewitness
testimony.
The
arrest of Freddie Scappaticci, an alleged State agent within the
Irish Republican Army (IRA), may lead to further shredding of the
already well-shredded Social
Contract.
Though
apparently on different sides of a violent conflict, it has emerged
that both men were actually on the same side. Both were working for
the State, receiving various payments, support and a licence to kill,
for information about people and their activities in their respective
organisations.
All
wars are, by design and by nature, dirty, and the activities of the
State in sponsoring Gary Haggarty and Freddie Scappaticci show just
how cruelly heinous the war years in Northern Ireland have been. No
wonder the legacy of hurt is deep and seemingly intractable.
Jean-Jacques
Rousseau would be astounded. His efforts to face the key question of
the State’s relationship with its citizens have been trampled into
the mud of collusion and violence.
I
plan to address this question: With men (sic) as they are and with
laws as they could be, can there be in the civil order any sure and
legitimate rule of administration? In tackling this I shall try
always to unite what right allows with what interest demands, so that
justice and utility don’t at any stage part company.
Justice
and utility have not simply parted company. They
have been torn asunder, with utility (that which works; that which is
useful to the powerful, in a self-serving way) trampling all over
justice.
The
scales of justice, never blind to the follies and connivance of the
State, have tipped firmly in the direction of usefulness. It is a
mean and trite bargain, between Garry Haggarty and his spook and
police handlers. It is a sordid travesty of
justice
for the families of his many victims. Most of the people Gary
Haggarty gave information about will not face charges. Given all the
money, time and licence to kill he received from the State, he has
been bought for a very dear price, as this BBC report shows.
A
loyalist "supergrass" who admitted the murders of five
people among hundreds of offences has had a 35-year jail term reduced
to six-and-a-half years for helping the police. Gary
Haggarty, 45, was a former leader of an Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF)
unit in north Belfast. Haggarty was a paid police informer for 11
years. A judge said the offences were "ones of exceptional
gravity" but that he had provided significant information. After
turning state witness in 2009, Haggarty provided information on 55
loyalist murders and 20 attempted murders in the course of 1,015
police interviews. However, only one man is to be prosecuted, for two
murders, on the back of the evidence. The vast majority of people
named by Haggarty in his police interviews will not face prosecution
amid state concerns about a lack of supporting evidence.
No
representative of the State can speak as a neutral broker on the
tragic legacy of the conflict. This outcome is a form of
de
facto
amnesty for a murderer, enabled by the State. The
argument
that such collusive activities were the only option available to the
police
and justice systems and served as the lesser of many evils, reads
very thin in the light of the Gary Haggarty case.
Various
terms are used by the powerful to denigrate countries, and thus their
citizens, across the world: failed state, rogue state, banana
republic. The latest, and most dreadful, is shithole country.
Northern
Ireland is variously referred to as ‘our wee country;’ and the
‘Six Counties’. New names may emerge following this police and
justice disgrace. What do you call a State which shreds the Social
Contract with its citizens and doesn’t even blush? Where no
questions or debates occur in the Executive at Stormont (now on
extended ‘gardening leave’) or in Westminster, the sovereign
parliament of the State.
For
people
in Northern Ireland, the proper name of the place is ‘home’ and
we do
indeed ask: What social contract?
But
the social order isn’t to be understood in terms of force; it· is
a sacred right on which all other rights are based. But it doesn’t
come from nature, so it must be based on agreements.
In
the everyday sense of the word, a tyrant is a king who governs with
the help of violence and without regard for
justice and the laws.
UVF
'supergrass' Gary Haggarty jailed for six years
The
Social Contract; Jean-Jacques Rousseau; translated by Christopher
Betts; World’s Classics, Oxford; 1994
No comments:
Post a Comment