Dear Queen Elizabeth,
Your visit tomorrow is a sign of improving relations between our two islands and peoples.
Thirty-seven years ago, on 17th May 1974, a series of no-warning car bombs murdered 34 men, women and babies in Dublin and Monaghan. It was the greatest loss of life in a single day of the Troubles.
We are appealing, through you, to your Prime Minister, David Cameron, to mark the occasion of this historic visit by a genuinely significant gesture of reconciliation.
We urge him to open the files that were withheld from Judge Henry Barron's inquiries into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings and all other cross-border bombings perpetrated in this jurisdiction.
All requests, including a cross-party resolution adopted by Dáil Eireann (the Irish parliament) on 10th July 2008, have so far fallen on deaf ears. Without this move, deeply troublesome questions remain unanswered.
The Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women's Rights, which examined Judge Barron's reports concluded: 'We are dealing with acts of international terrorism that were colluded in by the British security forces.'´
On 15th June 2010, David Cameron made a historic gesture in apologising for Bloody Sunday when he told the House of Commons: 'It is right to pursue the truth with vigour and thoroughness. Openness and frankness about the past, however painful, do not make us weaker, they make us stronger'.
The sky did not fall in. Rather, it led to an unprecedented act of reconciliation by the Protestant churches in Derry.
So on this momentous occasion, our plea to Prime Minister Cameron is: Pursue the truth with vigour - make us all stronger - open up the files.
Yours sincerely
Justice for the Forgotten
