The issue of the Operation Kenova report has gone on for ten years and at the core of it is the very concept that the British state broke the law and set out to break the law. I was just thinking earlier of Michael Davitt. He used to say the law was little more than another weapon in the government's arsenal to keep the lord in his mansion and the peasant in his place. It is very much the same thing here because the law clearly only applies to certain people and not to those who are the state operators in respect of all of this. The thousands of people who suffered as a consequence of the conflict are all too aware that the law was something that was there only for some - only for the select few. Certainly, for those who suffered so much at the hands of the people who were involved in all of this, not just our sympathies but our commitment has to be that truth can be restored. There has to be a pathway to do that. The withdrawal of the British Government from the Stormont House Agreement and from many of the other agreements that were put in place after the Good Friday Agreement tells us there is a huge reluctance by the British state to actually engage meaningfully when it comes to truth and reconciliation. That is why we have to be very firm when it comes to understanding that both the Irish and British Governments are guarantors of that agreement and both have a role to play in it. When we examine these reports, they lay bare the reality of the collusion of the British state with agents it hired, paid, propagated and moved in and out through different parts of the conflict, always to its own benefit. They were always used to the benefit of the British state. That is why we are in this situation and it continues to cover up that reality. It went to the very core of the British establishment. It went right to Whitehall. It was not some loose arrangement as they tried to push people out there to consider that was the way it happened. It did not happen that way. It went straight to the centre of Whitehall. It was a determination of British Government policy in Ireland to employ people to be able to undermine the legitimate causes that many people had to seek their freedom and their aspirations and to have equality and justice, including social justice, in their country. It undermined that and it propagated conflict and division. The British state has now tried to cover that up. Even when we have an agreement and even when we are in a post-conflict situation, it continues to cover it up. The layers of cover-up are, in themselves, a crime against the many people who have been victims of this conflict. I acknowledge progress is slow. We know that but the problem we have here is that the Irish Government is a guarantor of the agreement and has a role to play in ensuring all the parts of the agreement, including the parts which are about delivering truth and reconciliation to people, are actually delivered.

Sentiment score: 0.18