Christopher Stanley, Litigation Consultant, KRW LAW LLP, Belfast[1] In 1729, Jonathan Swift published his Juvenalian satirical essay “A Modest Proposal For preventing the Children of Poor People From being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for making them Beneficial to the Publick”. As readers of Village know Swift’s essay suggests that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food to rich gentlemen and ladies.  Swift’s essay created a backlash within the community after its publication. [i] On 14 July 2021 Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the Right Honourable Brandon Lewis MP (a lawyer by trade), made a statement in the House of Commons and his office published a Modest Proposal: “Addressing the Legacy of Northern Ireland’s Past” (CP498). It  is fair to say that Mr Lewis’s Modest Proposal created a backlash within the community after its publication. [ii] This most recent British government proposal to address the out-workings of the Legacy of the Conflict in Northern Ireland (Dealing with the Past) adds only a little flesh to the bones of Mr Lewis’s plans published at the start of pandemic lockdown in 2020. This was by way of a Press Release “UK Government sets out way forward on the legacy of the past in Northern Ireland” (18 March 2020). That statement marked a dramatic change of tack from the “New Decade, New Approach” (January 2020) of the Right Honourable Julian Smith CBE MP, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and Simon Coveney TD, Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, published to restore devolved government in Northern Ireland. The British government agreed that: “16. As part of the Government’s wider legislative agenda, the Government will, within 100 days, publish and introduce legislation in the UK Parliament to implement the Stormont House Agreement, to address Northern Ireland legacy issues. The Government will now start an intensive process with the Northern Ireland parties, and the Irish Government as appropriate, to maintain a broad-based consensus on these issues, recognising that any such UK Parliament legislation should have the consent of the NI Assembly” (page 49) The Irish government made the following commitment: “The Government affirms its commitment to working with the UK Government to support the establishment of the Stormont House Agreement legacy institutions as a matter of urgency, including by introducing necessary implementing legislation in the Oireachtas, to deal with the legacy of the Troubles and support reconciliation, meeting the legitimate needs and expectations of victims and survivors” In under one hundred days Mr Lewis, on behalf of his government, had torn up the “New Decade, New Approach” joint cross-border agreement and in the process abandoned the hard fought for Stormont House Agreement 2014. The Right Honourable Julian Smith CBE MP became, like Syme, in George Orwell’s 1984, an unperson. His fate to be shared, if the Modest Proposal comes to pass, by all relatives of victims and survivors of the Conflict in Northern Ireland [iii] The 18 March 2020 Press Release stated that the UK Government “will now begin an intensive period of engagement with the Northern Ireland political parties, and the Irish government, to discuss these proposals in detail.” It did not. What it did do were behind closed-door briefings, no public consultation, and controversial secret meetings at Lambeth Palace with a select few specially chosen to attend. There is no public record. The restrictions of the lockdown provided perfect cover to ferment policy in private within the deserted village of Whitehall and Westminster. The 18 March 2020  Press Release was both blunt and absent in detail and clearly had an audience in mind: the Tory backbench and those Shire and Red Wall Conservatives who would probably have agreed with Tom Denning’s own Modest proposal in his assessment of The Birmingham Six. “We shouldn’t have had all these campaigns to get them released if they’d been hanged. They’d have been forgotten and the whole community would have been satisfied.” Mr Lewis proposed: A new independent body focused on providing information to families and swift examinations of all unresolved deaths from the Troubles End to the cycle of reinvestigations that has failed victims and veterans for too long Ensuring that Northern Ireland veterans receive equal treatment to their counterparts who served overseas. The focus on veterans signalled a dismantling of the ‘no hierarchy of victims’ as both a political, moral and legal principle (as defined in statute by way of the Victims and Survivors (Northern Ireland) Order 2006 section 3). The focus on veterans  also  opened the way to the contentious issue of a statute of limitation and an amnesty. “We owe a huge debt of gratitude to our Armed Forces for their service in Northern Ireland. That’s why these proposals also put an end to repeated reinvestigations where there is no new compelling evidence and deliver on our promise to protect veterans from vexatious claims.” As was asked at the time of the Press Release: An amnesty for who? Soldiers and ‘Terrorists’ Who are the veterans? Soldiers and other members of the British security forces – spies, agents and informers (from all paramilitary groups). (What vexatious claims?) [iv] The publication of Modest Proposal adds, as I noted, only a little flesh to the bones of the press release but is in the spirit of Swift’s Juvenalian satire in its draconian intent to offer a complete, or final, solution, to the Legacy of the Conflict. “Addressing the Legacy of Northern Ireland’s Past” is an apparently impressive 32-page document. But there is a lot of white space (listen to the void of the white noise) and the type face is large. Of the 32-pages the modest proposal is modestly set out in 24 pages, which is one page longer that the 23 years since the Belfast-Good Friday Agreement 1998. On page two of his Foreword, Mr Lewis calms the Tory back bench and his Cabinet colleagues: “The current system for addressing the events of that dark and difficult period of our national … Continue reading THE LEGACY OF THE CONFLICT: MR LEWIS’S MODEST PROPOSAL