At about 11.45 a.m. on the morning of Monday, June 16th, last year, a member of the IRA walked up to two police officers in Church Lane, just off the main street in Lurgan, Co Armagh, and fired eight bullets into their heads and bodies. The two police officers died instantly. They were John Graham and David Johnston.
On the coffin of John Graham two days later was placed a card, which read: "To Dad, I love you. I will never know someone as kind and gentle as you," and signed by his then two-year-old daughter, Katie. The pastor officiating at his funeral said he obviously loved his family. "He was an upright man, a good man, a decent man, a man that would have not one shred of sectarian hatred in his heart, a man that would not know what it would be to do someone a wrong turn."
His wife, Rosemary, and his three young daughters, Rebecca, Abigail and Katie survived John Graham. David Johnston was survived by his wife Angie and sons Louie (then aged 7) and Joshua (then aged 3) and his human qualities were also widely praised.
The North Armagh Brigade of the IRA, in a message, accompanied by a recognised code word, acknowledged responsibility for the murders. The murders took place just as tension was mounting over the imminent Orange march at nearby Drumcree. The then Taoiseach, John Bruton, said: "No effort must be spared to ensure that the murderers are brought to justice." The multiple murder of policemen in Northern Ireland had been a well-established IRA tactic. On December 7th, 1985, Constable George Gilliland and Constable William Clements were shot dead at close quarters at Ballygawley RUC base in Co Tyrone.
On July 26th, 1986, Constable Karl Blackbourne, Constable Peter Kilpatrick and Constable Charles Allen were shot dead at close range in Market Street, Newry. In April 1997 Constable Robert McLean and Constable Frederick Armstrong were shot dead at close range in Portrush. In the course of the Northern war from 1969 to 1997, the IRA murdered a total of 287 policemen: six of these were members of British police forces and 14 were former members of the RUC. The other 267 were serving members of the RUC.
The agreement reached at Stormont on Good Friday last, requires the British and Irish governments "to put in place mechanisms to provide for an accelerated programme for the release of (qualified) prisoners." It goes on to express the intention that all such prisoners will be released "should the circumstances allow it" within two years of the programme coming into effect.
Assuming that the perpetrators of all these awful murders of RUC officers, including those of John Graham and David Johnston on June 16th of last year, remain members of the IRA and that the IRA ceasefire holds, not one of such perpetrators will be in jail in a little over two years' time.
But more than that. After such two years, all such perpetrators, even if caught and convicted, cannot thereafter be imprisoned under the terms of the agreement. The agreement represents an effective amnesty for all the perpetrators of these appalling depredations.
This was a necessary price to pay for an agreement, which has the potential to end sectarian conflict and political violence on this island and a price worth paying. Nobody seriously could have believed that the republican movement could be roped into an agreement while members of that organisation remained in jail indefinitely. The political establishment here is enthusiastically in favour of the agreement and very much hopes that the vast majority of both communities in Northern Ireland approves of it on May 22nd, that agreement that specifically precludes the murderers of David Johnston and John Graham being "brought to justice".
But why should we ask people in Northern Ireland, particularly the relatives and friends of David Johnston and John Graham and the other murdered policemen to support the agreement in its entirety if we are not prepared to do the same ourselves? The question arises in the context of the backsliding there has been here over the murderers of Det Garda Jerry McCabe, who was shot dead in Adare, Co Limerick, on June 7th, 1996, a little over a year earlier than the murders of David Johnston and John Graham. How could the murderers (whoever they are) of Jerry McCabe be any less qualified to avail of the amnesty than the murders of the two Lurgan policemen? The murder of Jerry McCabe was a heinous crime and the grief caused to his wife Anne, and his children John, Mark, Ian, Stacey and Ross was no less than the grief caused to the families of the murdered RUC officers.
But there is no reason to believe that the IRA members who murdered Jerry McCabe set out that morning to kill him or to kill anybody - certainly they were prepared to do so if necessary but that appears not to have been their primary intention.
This contrasts with the cold-bloodedness of the murderers of John Graham and David Johnston, who clearly intended to kill them or at least to kill police officers and with the premeditated and well-practised strategy of the double murder.
And there is a further contrast. The murder of Jerry McCabe was clearly the cause of great embarrassment to the IRA. The murders of John Graham and David Johnston appear to have been the cause of celebration.
Isn't there implicit in the attitude that Jerry McCabe's murder was "different", an assumption that somehow the lives of David Johnston and John Graham were of less value or that their murders were of less turpitude? And if not that, then why should the people of Northern Ireland vote for this agreement which provides an amnesty for the perpetrators of murders, even more awful than that of Jerry McCabe?
We undermine the case for the agreement by demurring about the applicability of the release provisions for the murderers of Jerry McCabe.
Yes, an amnesty applies to all the perpetrators (subject to a few qualifications, which are likely to be irrelevant in most cases) of all the awful crimes over the last three decades in Northern Ireland, for the perpetrators of Enniskillen, Le Mon, Teebane Cross, Bloody Sunday, McGurk's Bar, the Miami showband massacre and the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of May 17th, 1974. And, yes, it is a price worth paying for peace.
And yes, too, the price of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness being in the new Northern Ireland executive, without the IRA decommissioning a single weapon is also worth paying. That, too, is an intrinsic part of the agreement. Nowhere is there a coupling of decommissioning with eligibility for inclusion in the new executive. Tony Blair and David Trimble are simply misrepresenting the agreement by suggesting otherwise and by doing so weakening again the case for it.