Cash for closure is the ultimate insult to the concept of truth. The recent news that the families of IRA men shot dead by the British Army in the 1990s have reached settlements for damages isn’t a victory for human rights. It’s a cynical administrative maneuver designed to bury the messy, uncomfortable realities of a conflict that neither side wants to fully litigate.
When we talk about settlements in the context of the Northern Ireland Troubles, the media loves to frame it as "closure." They paint a picture of grieving families finally receiving a shred of acknowledgment from the state. That narrative is lazy. It’s a comfortable lie that hides a much darker reality: the legal system is being used to buy silence and avoid the public scrutiny of a courtroom.
The Settlement Trap
Let’s be precise about what a settlement is. In a civil case, a settlement is an agreement to drop a claim in exchange for money, usually without an admission of liability. In the context of the Troubles, this is the state’s favorite weapon. By paying out undisclosed sums—taxpayer money, let's not forget—the Ministry of Defence and the Northern Ireland Office effectively kill the discovery process.
Witnesses aren’t called. Cross-examinations don’t happen. Documents remain classified under the guise of "national security."
If you think this is about justice, you’re looking at the wrong ledger. Justice requires a verdict. It requires a judge or a jury to look at the evidence and say, "This was lawful," or "This was a crime." A settlement says, "Here is a check; please go away."
I have watched this pattern play out across decades of post-conflict litigation. The state calculates the cost of a payout versus the reputational damage of a public trial. If the risk of a "shoot-to-kill" policy being confirmed in open court is too high, the checkbook comes out. It’s cold, calculated risk management, not a moral reckoning.
The Myth of the Neutral Payout
The "lazy consensus" suggests that these payouts are a sign of the UK government softening its stance or admitting fault. It’s quite the opposite. These settlements are a strategic retreat.
By settling, the government maintains a "neither confirm nor deny" posture. They avoid the legal precedent that a full trial would establish. If a court ruled that the killing of an unarmed combatant—or a civilian mistaken for one—was an unlawful execution, it would open the floodgates for thousands of other cases.
The state isn’t paying because it’s sorry. It’s paying to maintain the status quo.
Why the Legal System is the Wrong Tool
People often ask: "Don't these families deserve compensation?"
It’s the wrong question. Compensation is for personal injury or loss of earnings. What these families actually want, and what they say they want in every interview outside the courthouse, is the truth.
But the civil court system is a terrible mechanism for truth-recovery. It’s an adversarial system built to determine financial liability. When you inject the politics of a thirty-year sectarian war into a civil courtroom, the result is a distorted, expensive, and ultimately hollow exercise.
Imagine a scenario where every single death in the Troubles—over 3,500 of them—was litigated in a civil court. The legal fees alone would bankrupt the devolved government, and we would be no closer to a shared understanding of our history. We are trying to solve a deep-seated political and historical trauma with the same tools we use for a slip-and-fall in a grocery store. It’s absurd.
The Professional Victimhood Economy
We have to talk about the industry that has grown around these cases. There is a massive ecosystem of solicitors, consultants, and NGOs that thrive on the "legacy" litigation cycle. For some, the goal isn't an end to the process; the process is the goal.
As long as there are cases to be settled, there is funding to be secured. This isn't to say the grief of the families isn't real—it is. But that grief is being harnessed by a legal machine that prioritizes the settlement over the solution.
True transitional justice looks like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. It looks like people standing up, admitting what they did, and being granted amnesty in exchange for the full, unvarnished story. But in Northern Ireland, everyone is too afraid of what they might hear. The Republicans don’t want to admit the squalor of their "armed struggle," and the State doesn’t want to admit the depths of its collusion and extra-judicial actions.
So, they settle.
The Data of Disparity
Look at the numbers that are rarely reported. Since the Good Friday Agreement, millions have been spent on legal aid for legacy cases. Yet, the percentage of these cases that result in a definitive "guilty" or "unlawful" verdict is microscopically small.
If this were a business, you would fire the CEO. The Return on Investment (ROI) for "justice" is nearly zero. We are spending a fortune to keep people in a state of perpetual litigation, rehashing the traumas of 1991 and 1992 without ever reaching a point of historical consensus.
The Danger of Ignoring the Counter-Intuitive
The counter-intuitive truth is this: the more we settle, the less we know.
Every time a family accepts a settlement, a chapter of history is effectively redacted. The public record is left with a gap. We know someone died, we know the state paid, but we don't know why or how in a way that is legally binding.
This creates a vacuum that is filled by propaganda. Without a clear judicial record, both sides are free to invent their own mythology. To the Republican movement, every man killed was a martyr. To the State, every soldier was a hero doing a difficult job. The settlement allows both these lies to coexist because the evidence was never tested.
Stop Asking for Damages, Start Demanding Disclosure
If we actually cared about the future of a post-conflict society, we would stop writing checks and start opening archives.
The current "Legacy Act" in the UK has been widely criticized for shutting down pathways to justice, and rightly so. But the alternative shouldn't be an endless string of civil settlements that benefit no one but the lawyers.
We need to dismantle the premise that a monetary value can be placed on a life taken in a conflict. When the state pays "damages" for an IRA man shot by the SAS, what are they actually paying for? The loss of a son? Or the right to keep the SAS operator's name out of the papers?
If it's the latter, it’s not a settlement. It’s a bribe.
The Harsh Reality of Post-Conflict Peace
The uncomfortable truth that no one wants to admit is that you cannot have both total peace and total justice. They are often in direct opposition. Total justice would involve thousands of aging veterans and former paramilitaries behind bars—a move that would likely reignite the very conflict we’re trying to move past.
By opting for settlements, we are choosing a middle path that satisfies no one. It gives the families enough to feel "seen" but not enough to feel "vindicated." It gives the state enough cover to maintain its dignity but not enough to be truly held to account.
It is a messy, expensive, and intellectually dishonest compromise.
Stop pretending these settlements are a breakthrough. They are a funeral for the truth, paid for by the public, and attended by lawyers who are the only ones truly winning. If you want justice, stop looking for it in a settlement agreement. You won't find it there. You'll only find a receipt.
The check has been cleared, the case is closed, and the truth remains buried exactly where the authorities want it.
Done.
