ACCORDING to Socrates, “Life is full of questions. Idiots are full of answers.”

Considering many people look at British Prime Minister Boris Johnson as a bit of a buffoon, you might think that his government’s plan to “draw a line” under The Troubles with an amnesty is an idiot’s misguided answer to the legacy question.

Don’t be fooled, though. Johnson knows exactly what he is doing – at least in this instance – as indicated by the Daily Mail front page headline, “At last, Justice for our troops”.

Whatever the posturing of the embarrassing Brandon Lewis in outlining the “proposal”, the fact is that there is absolutely no credibility in any claim that it is anything other than simply about getting British soldiers off the hook for any wrongdoing in Northern Ireland.

All lives matter, yes? It would seem some lives are more important than others to this government.

The idea that this is part of some process to get into a truth recovery process is just an insult.

So, no wonder all other stakeholders are opposed to this immoral plan – all the main politicial parties here, all parties in the South, including their government, as well as victims’s groups on either side of the divide, and even some British Army veterans.

Aside from the moral question of shutting down any access to investigations and inquiries, and out with all the political considerations, there is one major factor which mitigates against drawing a line under the past: it simply will not work.

Burying the trauma of individual victims and their families doesn’t do any favours to a society dealing with past conflict, because it will only rise to the surface again as the hurt is passed on through generations.

Because of the mistrust and division in Northern Ireland, the narrative around deaths can often cloud the fact that at the heart of it all are real, raw and long-lasting human emotions; those emotions should be at the centre of our thinking.

To understand some of the emotions and issues, briefly moving away from Troubles killings this week proved a point for me which showed that the mixture of grief, anger, and a sense of injustice leading to a lack of closure is universal in other cases involving loss.

There has, for example, been a lot of attention recently about the case in West Cork 25 years ago of the murder of French woman, Sophie Toscan du Plantier.

Aged 38, she’d bought a house as a retreat; it was about as different to bustling Paris as you could get in a rugged and isolated area on the Atlantic coast beyond Schull, and she was much-loved by her neighbours.

But in 1996, Sophie’s body was found, battered to death by a concrete block.

An Englishman, Ian Bailey, became the prime suspect, with gardai convinced he’d done it, but he was never charged due to a lack of evidence.

Bailey maintained his innocence, even after details emerged that he’d viciously beaten his partner on at least three occasions.

It’s a remarkable story, with many aspects to it which filled three hours on a Netflix documentary series and a further five hours on Sky Crime.

What struck me was the lengthy campaign by Sophie’s family, including her son, now aged 40.

Watching him and other relatives campaign to pursue justice, and the pain of Sophie’s parents, now in their 90s, reminded me of how the trauma of injustice can hurt families deeply for so long. It never goes away.

Indeed, the case reminded some people of the injustice of monsters engaged in domestic violence getting away with their brutality.

In the 25 years since Sophie was murdered, for example, 240 women have died violently in the Republic. An analysis by Women’s Aid shows that at least 40 of those cases remain unresolved.

Try ‘drawing a line’ under these and many other cases.

I also read this week of the story of wonderful Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, about the lockdown preventing her from returning home to say goodbye to her dying father.

Not getting to say goodbye is heartbreaking for many families. When she did get back for the funeral, she found herself taking part in a ritual from her country of swaying to music and dancing as she chanted how great her father was. She was surprised how wonderful she found it.

In this country, we often use humour to cope; at funerals or wakes, we pay tribute to the loved one who passed by fondly recalling stories about them which make us laugh.

There was, however, no dancing or laughing after the thousands of victims were ripped violently away from their families in our Troubles.

No saying goodbye. Often no closure. Or no justice, or even the truth of what happened.

Psychologists tell us there are five stages of grief, starting with denial, then anger, and eventually ending up with acceptance.

But for many of the bereaved here, they don’t get beyond anger.

Why do I digress into these other cases? Simply to illustrate that grief and anger linger when there is no closure and are aggravated by a sense that there has been no justice.

In the thousands of unresolved cases of Northern Ireland’s Troubles, there is a further aggravating factor brought about by the circumstances of political division over the causes of conflict.

But there should be no hierarchy of death – all life is sacred.

As John Donne’s poem says, “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.”

In the cases of Ballymurphy and Bloody Sunday, the search for the truth went on for half a century, while for the victims of Enniskillen, after 34 years they feel abandoned by society as they say nothing is being done for them, and many questions remain unanswered.

Another case to gain publicity this week was that of Tom Oliver, a farmer shot dead by the IRA in County Louth in 1991, and dumped in Armagh.

After 30 years, a detective says he’s found new DNA evidence and has a good understanding of what happened and who was involved.

Under the new proposal, this investigation will be stopped in its tracks.

Everybody realizes that with the passage of time, prosecutions will become more and more difficult. But there is something inherently wrong in saying that in Troubles cases, that avenue is closed.

Truth recovery would be a vital way of healing some of the hurt, but even that pathway will be difficult with a lack of faith that the two governments and all the paramilitaries will give up their secrets of their part in a dirty war.

There are two extremes when considering the past. One is to not deal with it.

I recall reading an article by David Rieff, who reported on the Bosnian conflict.

In 1993, he visited the camp in Belgrade of a leader fighting Milosevic, and as the journalist was leaving, a young aide pressed a piece of paper into his hand.

It was blank except for a date: 1453, the year that Orthodox Constantinople fell to Muslim Ottomans.

So a participant in a 20th Century conflict was inspired by an event more than 500 years previously.

Do we really want to keep passing on to succeeding generations the burden of remembering the hurt and grief?

The other extreme is to try to draw a line under it, but the clumsy and wicked way this immoral government is going about that is simply wrong.

There must be an answer in between to healing the hurt of the past, because I always maintain that the best way to honour the many victims is to make sure that future generations never again have to go through such bloody conflict.

We shouldn’t forget that we have made a lot of progress as a society and are moving forward in so many ways.

There is no doubt that we do need some sort of process to deal with the legacy issue because it remains a blot on our land.

Johnson’s plan just isn’t it.