Dead Cheap: The treatment of John Pat Cunningham and Dennis Hutchings shows who British papers consider worth mourning and who they believe deserves justice...
Most of the British media doesn't even give John Pat Cunningham's family the justice of a fair hearing.
John Pat Cunningham was 27 years old when he died. He was shot and killed in a field in County Tyrone on 15 June 1974. He was struck by three bullets fired by a British Army patrol. The soldier accused of killing him — Dennis Hutchings — died on Monday, aged 80, as his belated trial for attempted murder was nearing its conclusion.
The Sun covers Hutchings’ death with the headline, Trouble Trials Tragedy: Veteran who died from Covid while on trial over 1974 Troubles shooting was ‘hounded to his grave’, with copy that leads with the fact that he was a “great-granddad”, offers the one-sided statement that “there was no evidence to prove the former Life Guard shot dead John Pat Cunningham” and neglects to note that Cunningham was a man with special educational needs.
A statement from John Pat Cunningham’s family — which is as available to The Sun as it is to me — acknowledges, with commendable grace, “that it is a difficult time for [Hutchings’] family” and that “they should be given time to grieve”. It also lays out a number of undisputed facts “to correct the false and factually inaccurate claims that have been made in the media”.
The facts are that Cunningham was killed by three bullets fired by a British Army patrol on 15 June 1974, which passed through his back, shoulder and right hand.
Cunningham was described by a doctor at the time as having been born “with an incomplete development of the mind” and was “declared to be a person requiring special care”. His family says, “In today’s society he would perhaps be described as a vulnerable adult”. They continue:
He was said to have had the mind of a 7-year-old. He was known to be anxious and fearful around men in uniforms and was known to have run from the army, police and priests.
That’s what happened when Cunningham encountered the British Army patrol, led by Dennis Hutchings, on that day in 1974: He ran. And Hutchings pursued him into the field, leaving his vehicle to do so.
John Pat Cunningham was shot in the back from a distance of 90 metres.
In 2019, the late Lord Kerr — former Chief Justice of Northern Ireland and then a Justice of the UK Supreme Court — laid out the details of the case as he dismissed Hutchings’ attempt to have a jury trial rather than Diplock trial heard only by a judge, as is common for cases related to the Troubles. He said:
On Saturday, June 15, 1974, in the late morning, an army patrol consisting of two military vehicles was travelling towards Benburb, Co Tyrone.
The vehicles contained members of the Life Guards regiment. The lead vehicle had six men on board. The commander of the patrol, who was travelling in that vehicle, was Dennis Hutchings...
As the patrol rounded a left-hand bend near a village called Eglish on what was a winding road, a young man came into view, standing on the left-hand side of the road. He appeared to be looking into the hedge at the side of the road. His name was John Paul Cunningham.
Mr Cunningham appeared startled and confused. He ran across the road in front of the lead vehicle and climbed a gate into a neighbouring field. He then ran towards a metal fence which bordered the field.
The patrol came to a halt on [Mr Hutchings’] command. Most of the soldiers dismounted from the vehicles and took up defensive positions.
Three members of the patrol, [Mr Hutchings] and two others who have been referred to as B and E, pursued Mr Cunningham. Mr Hutchings and soldier E went towards the same gate that Mr Cunningham had climbed over.
Soldier B went to a gateway further down the road. A number of shouted commands to Mr Cunningham to stop went unheeded.
It later transpired that he had limited intellectual capacity. His mental age was judged to be between six and 10 years. In a report by the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) it was said that he ‘was easily confused and may have had an inherent fear of men in uniform and armoured vehicles’.
The case made by the prosecution is that when Mr Cunningham failed to stop, shots were discharged by [Mr Hutchings] and the soldier referred to as B.
“Mr Cunningham was hit and died at the scene. At the time that he fell, he was close to the metal fence. It has been established that he was running towards his home.
The HET concluded after investigation that he was unarmed; that he was shot while running away from the soldiers, and that there was no evidence that he presented a threat to them or to anyone else.
When the Royal Military Police attended the scene, they seized the weapons of the soldiers who had fired them. It was determined that Dennis Hutchings had fired 3 shots and another soldier, Soldier B, had fired twice.
The Sun does not quote the words of Lord Kerr or the statement from John Pat Cunningham’s family. It only quotes the words of Hutchings’ supporters, notably the former Veterans Minister and avid reader of the Plymouth Herald comments section1, Johnny Mercer, and “veterans campaigner” and former Royal Anglian Regiment corporal Pete Rayner. It’s also notable that the paper refers to Hutchings as “Dennis” throughout.
The Times (The Sun with a more expensive thesaurus and an even more inflated opinion of itself) also includes only quotes from supporters of Hutchings in its coverage (Dennis Hutchings: Death of accused Troubles veteran prompts demand to review trials). It quotes extensively from a statement by Hutchings’ solicitor, Philip Barden, who claims…
Dennis did not shoot John Patrick Cunningham or shoot at him. Dennis fired aimed air shots, which was a practice to warn people.
… that another soldier fired the fatal shots and that Hutchings tried to save Cunningham’s life by applying field dressings. The voice of John Pat Cunningham’s family is not represented.
The Daily Telegraph goes further. It carries a news report (Dennis Hutchings dies: Troubles veteran on trial over 1974 shooting loses Covid battle), a leader column (The hounding of Dennis Hutchings was a disgrace) and an op-ed from Johnny Mercer (My friend Dennis Hutchings died because our leaders are too cowardly to end witch-hunt trials2) all in defence of Hutchings. No voice other than that of his supporters is quoted or acknowledged.
Mercer, who flew with Hutchings to Belfast to attend his trial, sneers that his “contempt for those who make a living off the back of the grievance industry in Northern Ireland knows no bounds”. Does the family of John Pat Cunningham not deserve answers? Do they not deserve justice?
Well, Mercer has something to say about “justice” too:
Justice? We all want justice. But no one is quite brave enough to frame what justice might actually look like to the families some 50 years later…
… Some complain that I call them cowards for not standing up for people like Dennis. But that is exactly what they have displayed — a political cowardice that cowers in the face of a bullying narrative that we should be ashamed of our veterans in this country. I simply will not accept it.
Are we meant to be proud that British soldiers shot a frightened man — who was running away — in the back?
The Telegraph View — its unsigned leader column — opens like this:
The death of Dennis Hutchings, the British army veteran, while on trial in Belfast for an alleged offence committed 47 years ago, is a truly shocking end to an episode that shames British justice. Mr Hutchings, 80, was suffering from kidney disease and undergoing dialysis treatment when he was required to answer charges relating to the death of a man in 1974.
A former staff sergeant in the Life Guards, the final years of his life were ruined by the prospect of this prosecution, not least because his health was declining rapidly and he knew he did not have long left. He was pursued through the courts for something that happened so long ago there was little prospect of a credible case being constructed against him given the passage of time and the paucity of evidence.
It doesn’t even say John Patrick Cunningham’s name. The implication is that the killing, having occurred in 1974, is nothing but a historical footnote now. That he could have been alive now — he would have been 74 — or that his family are still living with his loss doesn’t seem to matter.
The Telegraph leader writers talk of “something that happened so long ago”. If that’s their attitude then I hope — to borrow from Bill Hicks — they’ll make sure that their columnists including Thought For The Day mainstay Tim Stanley stop going on about Jesus. After all, he died a very long time ago and there’s no chance that Pilate will release the files now.
The Daily Mail’s news story quotes Mercer’s Telegraph op-ed along with a wide range of unionist politicians from the (relatively) mainstream to the fringes without a word from Cunningham’s family. It’s notable that it places a picture of a young Hutchings in his dress uniform beside a blurry image of John Pat Cunningham; the implications and insinuations can be done with pictures too.
The Mail also runs an account of an interview with Hutchings’ conducted “hours before his death” — stay classy, vultures — in which it focuses on the former soldier’s “smart suit” and castigates the prosecution for an attempt — ongoing at the time of Hutchings’ death — to enter details of his conviction for assault as a teenager. If that information was about someone the Mail wasn’t supporting you can be sure it would be considered damning.
Elsewhere in The Daily Mail, Harry McCallion3, a former Para and SAS soldier who did seven tours in Northern Ireland, contributes a propaganda piece in which he claims — in defiance of vast piles of evidence — that the British Army “followed the strictest rules of engagement and obeyed them”. He goes on to write:
Mr Hutchings, a former soldier with the Life Guards, was charged with the attempted murder of John Pat Cunningham in County Tyrone in 1974. Mr Cunningham was shot during a chase by an Army patrol, after he was seen acting suspiciously. Mr Hutchings has always insisted he did not fire the fatal shot, but fired three warnings.
This is a distorted and disingenuous telling of the events that happened in that field in County Tyrone 47 years ago. McCallion ends his piece by howling that the prosecutions of Hutchings and others “make scapegoats of men who served with the greatest honour.”
I opened my copy of the OED to check on the definition of “honour” and it makes no mention of shooting a frightened young man in the back. Perhaps the edition McCallion owns is more comprehensive than mine.
While McCallion claims that Cunningham was “acting suspiciously”, a 2013 statement on behalf of the family, Alan Brecknell4 of the Pat Finucane Centre said:
A year before the shooting, his GP came upon John Pat taking refuge in a ditch from British soldiers who were poised to arrest him. The GP made representations to the British Army and the RUC locally at the time about John Pat’s fear of men in uniforms.
One of the oldest of old clichés is that there are two sides to every story and a fine variant is that there are three sides: My side, your side, and the truth.
But in telling the story of John Pat Cunningham’s death, the British press has decided that there is only one side to tell: Whatever version exonerates Dennis Hutchings and makes John Patrick Cunningham a footnote to be forgotten.
He and his family deserve better. And I’ll leave the last word to them:
… much of the negative reaction to this case within unionism and in sections of the British press has been determined by the fact that John Pat Cunningham, who posed no threat whatsoever, was an Irish Catholic.
It is the status of the victim that has framed the reaction not the details of the case. Shame on them.
That tweet is still up by the way.
I notice that the “related topics” tags beside Mercer’s piece include “Irish Republican Army”. There was no IRA connection to Cunningham’s killing.
Who once told The Independent how much he loved killing.
Brecknell’s father, Trevor, was killed along with two other people in December 1975 in a gun and bomb attack on a bar in Silverbridge, Co. Armagh by the UVF.