The Chilcot inquiry is in the safe hands of vested political interests. It is set to avoid questioning the legality of the war, writes FIONNUALA O CONNOR
IT MAKES a change to watch, from Northern Ireland, an inquiry into British official behaviour that happened in Britain. The scent of whitewash is as strong as in some of the least impressive Northern efforts.
Though it may confound expectations, of course, and defy its own composition, the Chilcot inquiry into the decision to go to war in Iraq has just begun public hearings. But it has already had months of supposed access to government papers, and comes blinking into the light burdened with suspicion that it is a timid creature, hand-picked to do as little as possible.
Concern was undimmed by the statement from chairman Sir John Chilcot that, while his committee could make no findings of guilt or innocence, they would not flinch from criticising individuals or systems, if warranted. This would have sounded better if the committee was not a group appointed by Gordon Brown’s government, to investigate the most controversial decision of his predecessor, Tony Blair. Pushed to set up an inquiry, Brown, in his selection of appointees, reinforced the sense that this would be at best a sop to the nation – a nod towards admission that the Iraq venture might have been ill-conceived, without questioning its legality. Perhaps if the inquiry team had included a single senior legal figure it might have looked a little better: though there was still that Chilcot effort to reduce expectations.
Sir John’s last major position was at the head of the civil service side of the Northern Ireland Office. His senior postings of latter years had a second strand, as link to the security and intelligence services: the “secret” services. Few were surprised when no revelations emerged from a Chilcot inquiry into the moment on St Patrick’s Day, 2002, when persons unknown made their way, without confrontation, into the inner sanctum of the special branch at Castlereagh, east Belfast. Sparking wild surmise of dirty work from the inside, a fix with the IRA, they apparently walked off with details of branch informants. No prosecutions followed.
Because the troops have left Iraq and Tony Blair is yesterday’s prime minister, a swathe of leading British opinion has pointed fingers at the new inquiry and questioned its effectiveness in advance. Pressure for inquiries in the North by contrast has always faced automatic denigration from Conservative voices in politics and the media, echoing the routine unionist opposition to all but the few investigations unionists have wanted.
The Bloody Sunday Inquiry chaired by Lord Saville, with its 11 years of hearing, report-writing, delayed printing and £200 million cost has been the perfect sitting duck. No discussion of the merits of further Northern inquiries reaches a third paragraph without denunciation of the overblown Saville. Ministry of defence legal challenges and obstruction – sabotage, some say – consumed time and money with refusal to produce weapons, failure to find them, belated discovery that indeed some had been destroyed although identified as essential evidence. But those are facts that the opponents of inquiries into official behaviour neglect to recall.
That Blair took his country to war on a false prospectus is fiercely denied by the man himself and his remaining supporters, but widely believed across Britain and far beyond. British national pride somehow blurs that realisation when Blair appears on a wider stage. How else to explain the dogged attention to the proposition that he should be the first president of the European Council? Brown, who pushed for him, was not the only slow-learner. In British discussion of Blair’s chances of taking the job, there was more than a hint of failure to register how his Iraq policy has tainted him in Europe.
Some will always find it puzzling that a man with such ability to set preconceptions aside when it came to dealing with Northern Ireland could become so fixed on the invasion of Iraq. It is less puzzling, but still remarkable, that his successor should imagine an inquiry minus legal heavyweights could credibly tackle the central question of the legal justification for war.
Those disposed to see it as an insider job, limited and cynical, will have relished one exchange in particular during the first day’s hearing, when the ambassador to Saudi Arabia suavely responded to a question from Sir Roderic Lyne, member of the inquiry, as to Russia’s prewar position on Iraq. Sir Roderic probably knew more about that than he did, said Sir William Patey, “as you were ambassador there at the time”.
Half-measures and worse only produce more demand for openness, in Ireland as elsewhere. Delayed publication of the Dublin archdiocese report, however justified, has caused more damage. This week’s report from Human Rights Watch on British connivance at torture of detainees in Pakistan will not be brushed aside with impunity.
Cover-ups warp officialdom – it’s hardly rocket science.