Meeting of the Parliament 28 June 2023
We all need to be very careful in how we talk about and consider this issue. I want to make the following point.
On 20 July 1982, four soldiers from my regiment who were riding horses down the south carriageway at Hyde park were blown up by a man who had planted a bomb surrounded by nails in a car next to their route. Mr Downey was accused and found guilty of that but has never been brought to justice, because he has a way of avoiding it.
At the same time, just two years ago, one of my colleagues, Dennis Hutchings, was charged in Northern Ireland for murder—in 1974, he shot somebody. The argument about whether that is correct is neither here nor there. He was dragged to Northern Ireland, where he was prosecuted. He subsequently died during the trial.
I put to Russell Findlay a question that I would like the Government to reflect on: will the commission bring peace to those people who are left behind? We need to do that.