Douglas Murray

We should have nothing but contempt for Peter Hain

• 2 May 2014, 12:00am

• Text settings

  Text size

  • Small
  • Medium
  • Large

  Line Spacing

  • Compact
  • Normal
  • Spacious
• Comments
• Share

  Share

  Douglas Murray

  We should have nothing but contempt for Peter Hain

  

  Copy link

  • Linkedin
  • Messenger
  • Email

Already a subscriber? Log in

This article is for subscribers only

Subscribe today to get 3 months' delivery of the magazine, as well as online and app access, for only £3.

• Weekly delivery of the magazine
• Unlimited access to our website and app
• Enjoy Spectator newsletters and podcasts
• Explore our online archive, going back to 1828

Most popular

Alexander Larman

What happened to the Rishi Sunak I knew at school?

Just last month Hain was just telling everybody who has lost a relative during the Troubles in Northern Ireland and who never saw anyone convicted for the crime that they should just get over it. His line as of last month was that victims of unsolved cases must simply accept that they will never see justice.

But now he seems to have decided that he is not merely a cack-handed peacemaker and advisor to the bereaved, but a judge and jury too. For Hain spoke to Radio Ulster earlier today about the recent arrest and questioning of Gerry Adams in the case of the murder of Jean McConville in 1972. In that interview Hain said:

“Regardless of the particulars of this case, about which I cannot comment except to say that when we were seeking the truth about the Disappeared in the period 2006 to 2007, Gerry Adams was co-operating with me and with the Police Service of Northern Ireland to try and establish the truth about these cases.

I know for a fact, because he told me this that he felt very strongly that these individual cases of the Disappeared were wrong and that he totally identified with the families concerned.

He seemed to me to be genuinely concerned in seeking to get to the bottom of what happened and genuinely mortified about the plight of the families.”

So he cannot comment other than to say that in his view Gerry Adams didn’t do it. Is that not an outrageous intervention and a wholesale undermining of the laws of contempt which are meant to hold at this time?