‘We’re going to help Troubles survivors have a better understanding of what happened to their loved ones’

Every time Peter Sheridan walks up the steps at Ulster University’s Magee campus in Derry, he looks over at the same spot.

“This is where the car was parked,” he says, pointing to a green verge at the front of the building. In March 1987, Sheridan was the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officer on duty when Leslie Jarvis, a 61-year-old psychology student and a lecturer at Magilligan prison, was shot as he sat in his car. “I opened the door . . . he was clearly dead, and I saw his briefcase.

Two detectives arrived, Austin Wilson and John Bennison; Sheridan sealed off the area. “I was literally walking away when the car exploded.

“I remember seeing other police officers being blown off their feet, and the bodies of the two detectives on the grass.”

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The IRA had substituted Jarvis’s briefcase for another containing a bomb, designed to kill the responding police officers. Sheridan suffered ear injuries; he remembers attending the funerals, and “the profound sadness . . . the utter senselessness of it.

“They all had families, and children and apart from [by] their families they’re largely forgotten about, just another number in the city of people who died in these things, on all sides, and the waste of human life around it.”

In the geography of Sheridan’s experience, there are many such landmarks. “I remember the murder of Paddy Shanaghan down in Castlederg. I drive that way to Fermanagh, and every time I pass the spot on the road, I could tell you exactly where the car was when he was shot dead.”

All the deaths convinced him of the need to work towards reconciliation; it is this, coupled with a tendency to “do the opposite of what everybody thought” that has driven him throughout his almost 50-year career.

In 1976, he was the first pupil from his school, St Michael’s College in Enniskillen, to join the RUC, eventually becoming assistant chief constable and the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s most senior Catholic officer.

[ A Troubles childhood: Fifty years on, I think of how I am victim and ‘perpetrator’ at the same time ]

He left the force in 2008 and became chief executive of the all-island peacebuilding charity Co-operation Ireland, which was closely involved in the state visit of Queen Elizabeth to Ireland in 2011 – and the reciprocal visit by President Michael D Higgins to the UK – and was instrumental in the historic handshake between the queen and Martin McGuinness in Belfast in 2012.

In December, 63-year-old Sheridan will begin a new job, as commissioner for investigations at the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR), the new body set up as a result of the UK government’s controversial legislation to deal with the legacy of the North’s Troubles.

Sheridan gestures again towards the spot where Jarvis, Wilson and Bennison died. “This, and Paddy Shanaghan, and all of those . . . however challenging and difficult this is going to be, it’s our responsibility in this generation to deal with it.

“Having lived through all of that, I still think that I have a contribution to make. Can we heal this, can we resolve this for people that we genuinely don’t have to leave it to another generation behind us?”

The Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act – which became law last month – is a radical change to how Troubles-era cases are dealt with in Northern Ireland, replacing existing methods of inquiry – criminal investigations, civil cases and inquests – with the work of the ICRIR.

Its stated focus is on reconciliation and information recovery; it will carry out reviews of deaths and other “harmful conduct” caused by the Troubles and, potentially, refer cases to prosecutors.

The legislation has been deeply controversial – most of all, the provision that will offer conditional amnesties for perpetrators – and has been widely opposed, not least by the families of victims, who say it closes off avenues to truth and justice and is perpetrator- rather than victim-centred.

Repeated concerns have been raised, including by the Irish Government, European Commission and the United Nations, that the new law is not compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.

It is already subject to legal challenge, with a judicial review hearing due in the High Court in Belfast next month and a decision by the Government on an inter-state case against the UK is expected soon.

Sheridan is clear that, if the courts find the legislation is in breach of the convention, it must be amended, or he will quit.

“If the courts have said it’s not compliant then I don’t see how we could do anything other than walk away from it.

“I certainly wouldn’t be part of carrying through something that the courts have said is not compatible with human rights standards.”

He declines to take a view on its compliance or otherwise: “Whether it’s [human rights] compliant or not, it’s currently the law of the land, and if the court decides that it’s not compliant in certain aspects . . . well it’s a matter for government what they do about it.”

But he emphasises that if a court rules against the UK government, “it’ll have to be amended, because if it’s not amended [the Chief Commissioner] Sir Declan Morgan and myself are not going to be part of a piece of legislation that the courts have said is not compliant with human rights standards.”

As to prosecutions, there should be a “thorough investigation” for those cases where it is a possibility, and a file sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions, says Sheridan.

[ Podcast: Northern Ireland legacy Bill: can it ‘draw a line’ under the Troubles? ]

While the Act “in my view doesn’t close down the possibility that there could be prosecutions at the end of it, but we want to be honest and say that those are diminishing and vanishing quickly”.

Part of his role, therefore, will be “teasing that out to see if there are possibilities of prosecution, that the investigations will be compliant with human rights standards”.

The prospect of conditional immunity – which would prevent a perpetrator who is deemed to have co-operated with the ICRIR’s inquiries from facing prosecution – is a matter for the courts, says Sheridan.

“I don’t see the commission being able to take that decision about immunity until that’s resolved in the court . . . we’re very conscious at the minute that there are legal cases under way so it would not seem to make sense for the commission to be making decisions about conditional immunity that could eventually be overturned in the court.”

As commissioner for investigations, Sheridan will have operational control over the conduct of cases the commission is working on. He has faced criticism for both joining the body, and because of his former career in the police.

The Pat Finucane Centre said that having a former RUC officer “oversee the investigation of historic cases of state violence and collusion simply beggars belief”, adding that “if the appointment of this particular candidate is intended as a nod to the supposed ‘reconciliation’ element of this legacy legislation, it has signally failed”.

“First of all,” says Sheridan, “People who know me know that’s not the way I’ve done my work over this last 40, 45 years”.

“I don’t have any difficulty investigating police officers who have done wrong or soldiers who have done wrong, I have absolutely no difficulty, because that’s where my values come from.

“Now, I know there’s a perception issue, I get the perception issue, but secondly, I wasn’t involved in any of these incidents. I was in the police, but you can’t stigmatise a whole police service over the wrongs that may have been done by some in it.

“And the other point for me is that under the Good Friday Agreement, we all signed up to parity of esteem . . . [which] meant for me that I embraced that Martin McGuinness could become education minister, that he could become deputy first minister, I embraced the fact that Gerry Kelly can sit on the Policing Board and pick the next chief constable.

“Am I not entitled to that parity of esteem that says I can be a commissioner, or does that parity of esteem only go so far?”

Initially, Sheridan did not apply, “because I wasn’t sure about the independence of it”; it was only after the appointment of Declan Morgan – the North’s former lord chief justice – that he thought “maybe this can be independent, and maybe we could, and I recognised that he would also need support”.

“If we don’t step up to these things then we can’t complain about them.”

Explaining why he applied for the job, he goes back to his own experience, personality and moral code. “People would ask, why is he doing this? Has he lost the run of himself?

“It’s not about me or my reputation. As much as we all like to be loved, it’s not about that for me, but it is a belief that I have a contribution to make.

“I understand all the risks, all the challenges around it, but I’m confident in my own mind I’m doing it for the right reasons.”

In some ways, he says, it is about “separating . . . out the legislation which is still contentious and still challenging and the people who have said, we will do our best, because whatever happens after the result of the courts, our [investigations] will be compliant with the law”.

[ NI body for victims and survivors finds 10% of people in Republic may be a casualty of the Troubles ]

Sheridan is not naive; he is well aware of those challenges, and that the most difficult will be to win the trust of victims’ families – without which, the ICRIR cannot do its work.

He is equally well aware of the arguments made against the Legacy Act. The Irish Times puts to Sheridan a line from just one interview of many with relatives since the legislation was first mooted in 2020, with Emmett McConomy, whose 11-year-old brother Stephen was fatally injured when he was hit in the head by a plastic bullet fired by a British soldier in Derry in 1982.

Emmett described the Act becoming law as a “traumatic day . . . a sad, sad day for victims and victims’ families, it’s a sad day for justice on these islands.”

Some of the opposition, says Sheridan, comes “because of how the Act originated, and it was seen by many people, particularly here [in Northern Ireland], as about the veterans, it wasn’t about Stephen McConomy, it wasn’t about other victims in Northern Ireland. That has, if you like, contaminated it from the word go.

“I wouldn’t be as arrogant to try to persuade Stephen’s brother Emmett about the rights and wrongs of this, and he will make up his own mind around it.

“I just believe that this has a chance, if collectively people give it a chance.”

This requires, says Sheridan, that all the state agencies “play their part” and reveal what they know, and the same from those who were involved in paramilitary violence.

Is it realistic to expect them to come forward, not least given the widely held belief that the real motivation behind the legislation is to protect British intelligence secrets?

[ PSNI interim chief constable confirmed as Jon Boutcher ]

He cites the example of interim chief constable of the PSNI Jon Boutcher’s Operation Kenova – shortly due to publish its report into the activities of IRA double agent Freddie Scappaticci – and says Boutcher has been able to “lift the lid . . . we have to get people to recognise that lifting the lid is to help the victims and survivors”.

If there is a genuine belief in reconciliation, he says, opening archives and giving as much information as possible “is a way of fixing” the thorny problem of legacy, which Sheridan warns “isn’t going to go away” otherwise.

“Of course, they can turn a blind eye and we can make all sorts of excuses as to why them over there [in the UK government] are doing it to protect the veterans, or because of this, of because MI5 won’t – well let’s test all of that, and the legislation is sufficiently flexible to allow you to do that.”

Twenty-five years ago, there was no mention of “legacy” in the wording of the Belfast Agreement; at that point, the term as it has come to be understood in the Northern context – a catch-all summing up the long shadow of 3,700 deaths for victims, survivors and society in general, which has largely failed to be addressed – simply did not exist.

In the years since, there have been piecemeal attempts to “deal with the past” which have provided answers for some families, while other efforts have failed to get off the ground.

Sheridan puts it a different way: “Our politicians have struggled for 40 years, governments have struggled, so there’s no perfect system, there’s no perfect answer in this, the legislation isn’t perfect.

“What level of imperfection are people willing to accept?”

He argues that “we can all sit now and wait to see what happens in the court” while time ticks past, but in the meantime, for those families who want a review, who want information recovery, “can we not be helping victims and survivors get answers to questions they want answered?”

For the meantime, much remains in flux; while the legal challenges proceed, work is under way to build the ICRIR and design how it will work ahead of its start date of May next year; a new survey asking the public for their views has just opened.

[ Martin Doyle: I have tried to record the toll the Troubles took on my neighbours, the long tail of trauma left behind ]

What makes Sheridan think this new approach can work, when so much before has failed? “At the moment it is complex, because nobody can agree, but actually, it could be much less complex if people decided we’re going to take part, we’re going to help victims and survivors have a better understanding of what happened to their loved ones, and that means collectively, all of us.”

Success for Sheridan means “victims and survivors at the end of this saying, for a lot of them, it has changed things and delivered for the better for them”.

As for himself, “I will do my honourable best and I’ll be happy whatever day I stand down that I’ve done the best that I could do. It might not suit everybody and journalists might write that he’s destroyed his reputation, but I will be content that I did the best that I could do.”

He could have gone and “walked the beaches”, as he put it, “but that’s not particularly helpful to this society”.

Not for the first time in his career, something “gave me a tap on the shoulder”.

“You can be overly religious about it, and I am, but I do think you get guided to these things, here and elsewhere, genuinely, and my own lived experience and professional experience says to me, maybe you can help in it.”

“If he’s born to be shot, he’ll never be drowned,” was Sheridan’s grandmother’s response when he joined the RUC cadets aged 16. “It’s that sort of Irish faith or fatalism, well if it’s meant to be it’s meant to be, like a lot of things that happen most of us in life.

“This is another iteration of it, I think. This is meant to be.”