Lawfare, Accountability and the Conservative Governments of 2010 - 2024

This paper will consider how the Conservative Governments of 2010 - 2024 deployed methods of ‘anti-accountability’ so as to avoid or limit state-level accountability for military crimes and violations. Through recourse to examples from Iraq, Afghanistan and historic allegations from Northern Ireland, three phases of official responses to attempts to hold the state to account can be observed: obfuscation, where the condemners are condemned and the veracity of the allegations are called to question; ‘corporate memory loss’, where no-one is responsible and the blame rests with an unknown collective; and, obstruction, where applicability of legal frameworks are contested, where litigation is delayed by failures to disclose critical information or where the mechanisms for accountability are removed. The paper will demonstrate how the Conservative governments of 2010-2024 particularly adopted this final phase, with proactive legislative changes to restrict accountability, most notably the Overseas Operations Act 2021 and the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023.