Second section of third chapter:

3.2 The chapter opens by describing our engagement with the family as the case has progressed. It also outlines the family’s reasons for contacting the Commission and provides an overview of the questions they asked us to answer.

I haven’t been following closely the twists and turns of the various legislation and institutions set up to deal with the legacy of the Troubles, but this report, released last month, caught my attention and I found it a quick if disturbing read. Rory O’Kelly, aged 59 (the same age that I am now) was shot dead by the IRA one day in 1977 while enjoying a drink with two old friends in Coalisland, Co. Tyrone. He had grown up there, but had moved to Bangor, Co. Down, in 1973 when he started working for the Director of Public Prosecutions. He was the only member of staff of the DPP’s office to be killed during the entire run of the Troubles.

He left a widow and five children. They were not informed about the inquest held into his death in November 1977. When the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) picked up the case in 2011, its efforts to contact the family failed. The new Independent Commission for Reconciliation & Information Recovery picked up the case at the request of one of Rory O’Kelly’s sons, and was able to brief him verbally on its findings before he died last year.

The findings are not spectacular. This was one more murder among dozens. The police investigation quickly ran into the sand. The gunman, clearly seen by the barman and by O’Kelly’s friends, was not masked, presumably because he was not local. Two men were arrested on the day, but both were released without charge and the Commission thinks it unlikely that they were involved in any way, so does not identify them. The gun was used in several other shooting incidents, and was found by the British Army in 1984 (in the possession of an IRA man they had just killed).

And that’s about it. You can get the full report here. But it’s more than the O’Kelly family got at the time, or for almost half a century afterwards, and the capstone is a moving personal statement from Rory O’Kelly’s daughter. She describes the moment when the Commission briefed her and her brother on their findings:

I had no idea of what was in store for us when the two-hour meeting started. I soon became aware that something sacred and transformative was happening. Everyone present was transported fifty years back to the hour and place of our father’s death, had become a spectator of that momentous event. By the end, [we] had moved into a space of serenity and light, all anger taken away. 

…

Truth takes precedence and nothing short of the Truth in full will work. Truth is the foundation for real forgiveness and a lasting reconciliation. 

There are too many families like the O’Kellys who are still waiting for truth.

I have to pick up on one historical point. The report states that:

1.9 In the early 1960s Rory sought election to Westminster, before becoming the successful election agent of his friend, Austin Currie. Later, Rory and Sarah [his wife], committed believers in constitutional change, became founding members of Austin’s Social Democratic [and] Labour Party (SDLP).

The first sentence cannot be fully accurate. The first Westminster election in the 1960s was on 15 October 1964, and Rory O’Kelly was not a candidate; and it took place after the 30 May 1964 East Tyrone by-election for the Northern Ireland House of Commons (ie Stormont), which Austin Currie won. On top of that I have seen newspaper reports that Rory O’Kelly was actually at one point a rival to Austin Currie for the Nationalist nomination for the 1964 East Tyrone by-election.

This of course isn’t at all inconsistent with his being a friend of Currie’s, let alone with his throwing his weight behind Currie once the nomination had been decided. Perhaps O’Kelly had also put his hat informally in the ring for a Westminster nomination, for either Fermanagh and South Tyrone or Mid Ulster, without the media becoming aware of it. The Commission’s reporting here is based on the sixty-years-later recollections of O’Kelly’s daughter, and she can be forgiven for not keeping precise track.