Research finds cautious support for 'truth commission'

There is strong support among both nationalists and unionists for a truth commission to delve into Northern Ireland’s years of conflict, according to University of Ulster research published this week.

Support is strongest among young people, although the vast majority of respondents of all ages accepted that such a commission might not necessarily uncover the truth.

Both communities felt a truth commission should be set up and run by an international organisation like the United Nations with all the major ‘actors’ in the conflict and subsequent peace process – the British and Irish Governments, the Northern Ireland Assembly, republican and loyalist groups – being viewed with deep suspicion by virtually everyone.

Dr Patricia Lundy, a lecturer in sociology at UU, who carried out the research with Dr Mark McGovern of Edge Hill College as part of the NI Life and Times Survey, said that around 30 truth commissions have been held in various parts of the world, most famously in South Africa, to deal with the issues arising from a period of conflict.

“Their popularity is based on the claim they can promote healing, closure and reconciliation and can redress the wrongs of the past.

“Ireland increasingly looks like the exception that proves the rule, given the absence of such an official truth-telling process here. What has marked us out from the international norm has been the piecemeal approach to dealing with the past. This has largely been the result of the constructive ambiguity of the peace process placing a premium on not dealing with the past. Consequently victims’ issues have become a site of struggle and division.”

The authors said there have been largely unsubstantiated claims that there is no appetite for such a process in Ireland and that, in particular, the unionist community is totally opposed to it. They argued that their findings challenge such assumptions.

(GB/KMcA)