Tories 'may drop Troubles report'

Denis Bradley was addressing the PUP conference in Belfast

A report addressing the legacy of the Troubles could be discarded if the Conservatives win the general election, one of its authors has warned.

Denis Bradley of the Consultative Group on the Past said failure to address problems risked old hatreds spilling over into future generations.

"If what I am hearing is correct, the Conservatives will bin this report.

"In its place they will suggest a memorial hospital and a moving on, leaving the past behind," he said.

Mr Bradley added: "It will not be as crude as that but it will amount to leaving the past to be dealt with by the passage of time and the death of those who feel most affected by the effects of the Troubles."

He was speaking in east Belfast at the Progressive Unionist Party's first conference since the decommissioning of weapons by the loyalist UVF, a paramilitary group to which it is linked.

Mr Bradley acknowledged many people were tired of hearing about the Troubles and continuing disputes.

However, he added: "As those who carry the scars of the past know, and as the divisions in our society continue to illustrate, the past cannot be forgotten.

'Animosity'

"Buried memories fester in the unconscious minds of communities in conflict only to emerge later in even more distorted and virulent forms to poison minds and relationships.

"The animosity between the communities continue, as is clear not least in the politics of the Stormont Assembly.

"When future generations ask 'why?' they will, if reasons are not considered and recorded, make-up their own minds about what happened, based on age-old beliefs of the communities they come from."

Mr Bradley is part of the Consultative Group on the Past, an independent group set up to deal with the legacy of Northern Ireland's Troubles, during which more than 3,000 people died.

He co-authored with Lord Eames a 190-page report containing more than 30 recommendations.

Its most controversial recommendation of a £12,000 payment to all families bereaved as a result of the Troubles - paramilitary victims, members of the security forces and civilians - was ruled out by Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward.

PUP leader Dawn Purvis told delegates that loyalism "must move to the next stage in the evolution of the peace process".

"The tendency at the minute is to hang all the ills of this society on the people who had the masks and the guns. It's this notion that 'Northern Ireland would have been a lovely place if only all the bad people had gone away'," she said.

"People are not born bad, nor did paramilitaries parachute in or land in a rocket from another planet, but if you listen to some in the media and some political parties you get no sense of the social, political or economic context in which the conflict took place.

"You get no sense of the poverty, the slums that passed for houses, the sectarian rants and rabble-rousing politicians threatening to fight to the last drop of everyone else's blood.

"We cannot allow a one-sided narrative to explain the causes of the conflict in Northern Ireland and we need to get to the point where we recognise and acknowledge the diversity of experiences from the last 30 or more years."