Former SAS soldiers condemn Labour’s new Troubles bill
In a letter to the Financial Times, six veterans say proposed legislation does nothing to end ‘conveyor-belt of inquiries, inquests and civil actions'.
Six veterans responded to a Weekend FT report on the acquittal of the only British soldier to be prosecuted over the killing of civilians on Bloody Sunday in 1972.
They wrote as follows:
Your Weekend FT report, “Soldier F ruling turns spotlight on Troubles legacy bill” (25/26 October), leans on an unnamed assurance that the bill “should reduce the risk of veterans being dragged through the courts for years.” That’s a soothing line, not an honest one.
At best, the bill marginally lowers the chance of fresh criminal prosecutions that were unlikely to result in conviction anyway. It does nothing to stop the lawyers’ conveyor belt of inquiries, inquests and civil actions — costly, prolonged and asymmetrical. Call it what it is: lawfare by other means.
More than 209,000 people have signed Westminster e-petition 725716 calling for protections for Northern Ireland veterans. Their concern is not imaginary.
Your report treats “truth and justice” as a shared horizon. For many campaigners, the real impulse is retribution and narrative control. Sinn Féin and fellow-travellers continue to recast the Provisional IRA as freedom fighters rather than what far too many were: ruthless terrorists and organised criminals who inflicted decades of murder, torture and intimidation on Northern Ireland. Any good-faith reckoning starts there.
On Bloody Sunday, your framing ignores awkward evidence. Several civilian witnesses — including a wounded teenager — told inquiries that youths nearby were carrying nail bombs shortly before the shooting. Martin McGuinness later admitted he had a Thompson submachine gun that day. This context excuses nothing and diminishes no family’s grief, but it punctures the tidy morality play so often presented to the public.
Also absent is any serious treatment of the climate of fear around witness co-operation. The IRA’s Derry Brigade did more than apply “community pressure”; it ran a crude campaign to deter and silence witnesses ahead of the Saville Inquiry. People understood that talking about IRA activity could mean abduction and extra-judicial execution. That courage — and the intimidation that stifled it — rarely features because it complicates the preferred script.
If your anonymous “senior official” believes veterans now face less jeopardy, name the mechanisms that end civil claims, halt coronial churn and stop re-litigation by stealth. There are none. Instead, we will keep feeding a system that rewards those adept at weaponising process, while the great majority of Troubles deaths — caused by paramilitaries — fade into the background.
A paper of record should report families’ grief with respect — and with equal candour about paramilitary culpability, witness intimidation, the legacy industry that keeps wounds open while rewriting history, and what the evolving framework actually does.
Yours faithfully,
David Maddan, Grenadier Guards — Sqn Cmdr 22 SAS (Brig) (1994–96)
Nick Kitson, The Rifles — Sqn Cmdr 22 SAS (Col) (2002–04)
Aldwin Wight, Welsh Guards — CO 22 SAS (Lt Col) (1992–94)
Richard Williams, Parachute Regiment — CO 22 SAS (Lt Col) (2005–07)
Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, Irish Guards — Sqn Cmdr 22 SAS (Maj) (1991–94)
Dr. Bob Parr, Royal Marines — WO1 22 SAS (WO1) (1993–99)
George Simm, Coldstream Guards — RSM 22 SAS (WO1) (1992–94)
Further reporting: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/02/former-sas-soldiers-condemn-labours-new-troubles-bill-ni-6/