Just as politicians seem ready to abandon Northern Ireland (along with its governance, the backstop and the Good Friday agreement) to the vagaries of fate, seeing it as a troublesome impediment to reaching a Brexit conclusion, so too the full details of what happened during the Troubles look likely to be consigned to history.
It is shocking to hear that the media have shown little, if any, interest in the evidence of some soldiers’ shocking misbehaviour during the Troubles, currently being recounted by members of the military at the inquest being held in the Belfast high court (The lack of coverage of the Ballymurphy inquest is a scandal, 27 May).
At least the Guardian has printed this report by Roy Greenslade (to whom much acknowledgment is due) in the Media section, but why no daily reports, and why no comment?
Is this pervasive information blackout, just like the one that cloaks much of our colonial history, the reason why too many people are unwilling to recognise that soldiers, like all of us, are fallible human beings and sometimes, especially when they are young and their senior officers fail to give a moral lead, can commit crimes of great cruelty?
Gillian Dalley
London
• Roy Greenslade asserts that “every daily national newspaper ignored” the “astonishing evidence” given at the ongoing inquest into the 1971 “Ballymurphy massacre” by former paratrooper Henry Gow, who told the coroner that another soldier recovered a part of the skull of one of the regiment’s victims and used it as an ashtray. In fact Phil Miller and Steve Sweeney have been providing regular updates on the trial, including Gow’s testimony, in the Morning Star, which was a “daily national newspaper” the last time I checked.
Ian Sinclair
London
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