John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I firmly believe that if we are allowed to follow the thread of state violence, be that on the streets of Derry, Ballymurphy, Gresteel or Loughinisland, or any of the dozens of sites of state murder across the north, we will be able to uncover a direct link to the Cabinet table of the British Government. This the same British Government that is now attempting to introduce an amnesty for the state actors who have murdered in its name. They bring shame on the ideals of justice. The historical experience of British counter-insurgency has been an arc of development beginning with a blunt instrument used to bludgeon native populations into submission and later refined into an instrument of deadly and sophisticated state policy applied with lethal precision. This has been the pattern of state violence in the North from the 1970s right through to the 1990s.

In February 1971, the British appointed Harry Tuzo as general officer commanding, GOC, for the North, a man described by his own superiors as being unfit to hold a senior command in the British army. Tuzo was GOC during the Ballymurphy massacre, Bloody Sunday and internment. He also sought to have the Ulster Defence Association become a formal instrument of British army strategy on the ground in the North. The same loyalist groups formed the basis of the pseudo gangs of Brigadier Frank Kitson’s design, which murdered at the behest of the British Government for decades.

The brutality of the British dirty and secret war was to hit home in my town of Bray, when Bray man Fran O’Toole, along with other members of the Miami Showband, Tony Geraghty and Brian McCoy, were massacred by a loyalist gang accompanied by a British army officer. Today, Stephen Travers and Des Lee still have to live with the horror of that attack and the quest for truth and justice. The Miami Showband attack was intended as a cross-Border bombing. The bomb the British-led gang were attempting to place on the minibus was intended to explode after the band crossed into the South. The Miami Showband massacre can be placed alongside a series of high profile cross-Border attacks, including the bombing of Dublin and Monaghan and the murder of a Sinn Féin elected representative, Eddie Fullerton, in County Donegal.

The British understood the instrumental nature of violence better than anyone, which they used to maximum effect when they bombed Dublin on the eve of the Dáil vote on the introduction of the Offences against the State Act in order to influence public opinion.

Like other acts of state violence committed across the North, they were designed in the language of British counterinsurgency to inflict a moral lesson on the native population, to terrorise the public from supporting the IRA. British state violence was a performance of power designed to its maximum effect on the psyche of the public. Our primary concern must be for the victims of violence. There have been many victims on all sides. Today, we are looking at the impact on the victims of state violence. I pay tribute to all victims, the survivors and their families. I applaud their search for truth and justice. This search must continue with the support of this House. There can be no fitting legacy to the conflict that took place in the North until the full extent of the British state's role in orchestrating violence against the civilian population is laid bare. History and experience inform us that this will be no easy task, but we have no choice. Trust must sit at the very heart of the continuing efforts of truth and reconciliation for there cannot be justice without truth.

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