The Megrahi forum
An ugly, expedient decision
I reluctantly concur in the MacAskill decision because it has avoided two even worse situations. Expediency and compassion were on the same side. If the medical evidence is sound, we would soon have been facing ‘martyrdom’ (and more conspiracy theories) after Megrahi died on our hands. And if his second appeal had gone ahead, it might just have succeeded, despite the balance of probability, on some point of law. Our volatile media would then have proclaimed him ‘innocent’.
His release is a very unsatisfactory outcome but so was his conviction – not because the connection with the crime was unproven but because so many ‘persons unknown’ involved in planning and organising the bombing remained untouched.
How much better could the justice secretary have handled his dilemma? I think the mixture of pomposity and unctuousness which marked his statement was really a cover for embarrassment and anxiety. He should simply have said: ‘I hate doing this, but it had better be done.’ But I have one political criticism and an even more serious moral one.
The political one is that this was a case demanding diplomatic finesse in dealing with the USA and solidarity between the devolved Scottish administration and the British Government. The ‘quasi-judicial’ decision could not be separated from political and international implications, but the case was allowed to show flaws in Labour’s devolution scheme and not, as should have been attempted, how problems and party divisions could be overcome in a crisis. How much of that failure is attributable to Brown and Miliband I don’t know, but they were wrong to distance themselves from the dilemma.
The moral criticism is that Mr MacAskill seemed to have a wrong notion of divine consolation in his difficult decision when setting compassion for Megrahi’s condition against the horror of the crime. How far talk of ‘a sentence imposed by a higher authority’ was mere out-of-place rhetoric and how far conviction I don’t know. I think him mistaken if that is his conviction, rooted though it is in much religious instinct and experience. But see John’s Gospel, chapter nine, for a rejection by Jesus of this linking of human suffering to divine punishment.
I would have gone along with Mr MacAskill if he had spoken only of a ‘higher authority’, for our inadequate metaphors reach out for eternal truths. Many of us would despair if we did not believe truth and love must ultimately prevail over sin and hate. We may wonder how to reconcile a sense of amazing grace with the vision of the great day of judgment. But a worthwhile faith responds both to divine calls for repentance and human needs to be forgiven (which have the corollary, ‘as we forgive our debtors’).
I’m not a good enough Christian unfeignedly to forgive the Lockerbie bombers and their like and I would feel myself a hypocrite joining those who take pride in the ‘compassion’ of this ugly, expedient decision. But I’ll concur in it.
R D Kernohan is a Conservative thinker and former editor of the Church of Scotland’s magazine Life and Work
[click here] for Bruce Gardner
26.08.09
Issue no 130
THE
CHANGING
MOOD
Kenneth Roy
assesses the shift in Scottish opinion since Megrahi’s release
[click here]
FACES
OF
SCOTLAND
I.
A painting by Frank McNab symbolic of Scottish thought
[click here]
II.
A photo-essay by Islay McLeod symbolic of Scottish emotion
[click here]
THE
MEGRAHI
FORUM
A collection of pieces on the ethics and politics
of Megrahi’s release
Click below for:
Walter Humes
Tessa Ransford
Rose Galt
Andrew Hook
Jill Stephenson
R D Kernohan
Bruce Gardner
Sheila Hetherington
Catherine Czerkawska
Alison Prince
