subject: Is There A Chance Of New Compensation Claims In The Wake Of The Claudy Bomb Investigation? [print this page] In the most violent year of Northern Ireland's Troubles, 1972, over 500 people lost their lives as part of the senseless, unwinnable campaign between loyalists and republicans to assert their authority over the six counties in Ireland's north-east.
On January 30th, Bloody Sunday, the British army shot dead thirteen civil rights protestors, predominantly Catholic, in Derry's Bogside, an event which still reverberates around the UK, Ireland, and beyond, to this day.
In July, three car bombs exploded in the Londonderry village of Claudy, killing nine people, including three children, and injuring dozens of others. Nobody was ever convicted of the killing, but new revelations have come to light in the past week, pointing the finger for the attacks on Catholic priest Fr James Chesney, or at least saying that he was heavily involved.
The investigation into Bloody Sunday followed several false starts, and was not concluded until this year, 38 years after the atrocity happened. In the event, the victims, who the paratroopers that fired on them claimed were armed republicans, were all declared innocent.
As with the Bloody Sunday inquiry, the Police Ombudsman's report has also taken the best part of four decades to conclude that the IRA were behind the Claudy attack on a Monday morning, 31st July 1972, and that Fr Chesney was heavily involved with the three car bombs.
Relatives of the victims say they already knew this. Mark Eakin, whose sister Kathryn was only nine when she died, says Chesney's involvement was an open secret in the village.
'It was common knowledge in Claudy among the older people... it was sort of sheltered from the younger population," he says.
He also told Channel 4 that the compensation the government offered his family was an 'insult':
"My mother and father were insulted with a cheque for 56 pounds for the loss of Kathryn... which effectively didn't bury her. My father was going to return it to the government."
What is even more damning in the context of this statement is that the report concludes that the government at the time, as well as the police, knew that not only was Fr Chesney involved in this bombing, he was also the IRA's director of operations in South Derry and is likely to have been responsible for other attacks at the time.
The Royal Ulster Constabulary recognised that arresting a Catholic priest in the 'poisoned' atmosphere of the country at the time would more than likely cause more trouble than it would solve, with reactionary loyalist attacks on clergy more likely, and so conspired with the Catholic church to have Fr Chesney relocated. He ended up being moved just over the border, to County Donegal, where he would escape the UK's jurisdiction.
So, in 2010 there have been two admissions from the British government that they did not act sufficiently appropriately in Northern Ireland in 1972. Their confession in the Ombudsman's report opens the question of renewed compensation claims from victim's families.
Even though the events happened almost 40 years ago, this new evidence could possibly, and should arguably, override any time limitation. However, the matter cannot reasonably be taken any further than this new conclusion: Fr Chesney died in 1980 and all the key politicians and members of the security forces involved in the original investigations have also passed away.
On the other hand, having been reminded of the details of that dreadful day all over again, the families will just want to get on with their lives and keep looking forward.
