In his third column of a new series for the Olive Press, ex-Gibraltar Chronicle news editor Franciso Oliva supplies his personal impression of the McGrail inquiry.
GIBRALTAR’s ruling elite has been placed under the merciless spotlight of public scrutiny during what has been a priceless, refreshingly high-brow exposition of the power play between principal state actors.
Behind the marathon sessions of oral evidence heard last year (and a bit this), the admirable discipline and logic of form, the systematic interrogation of core participants, and the mostly sublimated tension between the parties, there have been moments when the composed civility reminiscent of a TV ‘Crown Court’, irremediably cracked.
Three extraordinary moments of natural, unprompted pathos that exuded through the layered decorum of smooth procedures and well-mannered exchanges stand out for me.
These involved the inquiry’s two key figures: the central protagonist Ian McGrail, his antagonist James Levy, and the third man numerically for the purposes of this article – not in the Graham Greene sense, evidently – his successor and now-former commissioner Richard Ullger.
READ MORE: The McGrail report – Making sense of what we saw in ‘Gibraltar confidential’, writes F Oliva
MCGRAIL
Knowing McGrail well, privileged as I was to serve as press officer in New Mole during his aborted tenure as RGP commissioner, stands me in good stead to evaluate some of these pivotal peaks of emotion.
His record as a policeman, progression from bobby on the beat in the 1980s to the top of the pyramid – including strategic command course in the UK’s College of Policing and quite impressively graduating from the FBI academy in Virginia, US – until the events investigated by the inquiry, is outstanding.
Indeed he is a man of action, a priceless policing asset in this dreary age where weakness is perversely presented as virtue, but to say he is less a man of thought, or “a bull in a China shop,” as the Attorney General did, is inaccurate and unfair.
For me McGrail was a larger than life character, the man who best exemplified my idea of what policing should be about: indefatigable and uncompromising repression of crime in all its pernicious forms.
There was something heroic about him since his Drug Squad days, when he was known by petty thieves, dealers and assorted miscreants as “el Ginger”, the cop whom they most definitely knew not to mess around with.
As a journalist, one transits the stairway to heaven as much as the highway to hell for information, it is part of the craft that comes with the profession, and you pick up all you can along the way.
His is the type of DNA that has been sadly filtered out, purged by relentlessly ideologized models of policing that become more and more detached from the public.
It was therefore heartbreaking and sad, also disappointing given the larger than life image I had formed in my mind, to see him break down, on the verge of tears if not outrightly tearful; that a man hardened by 36 years in the frontline of law enforcement should have become so emotional, crushed by the system.
Perhaps understandable from a human perspective, after facing a personal calvary of false allegations of sexual abuse, and the underhand machinations of a handful of shady ex-cops to bring him down, later arrested and charged as recalled in Ullger’s disturbing revelations.
“A pack of wolves hounding me”, as McGrail said, admitting that his mental health had been in severe jeopardy.
Understandable but disappointing none the less. If he is reduced to such a state what hope is there for the rest of us? Of course I fully accept McGrail does not have to live up to my expectations of him.
LEVY, THE RAINMAKER
It was equally poignant when James Levy, head of the legal firm Hassans, arguably the most powerful man in Gibraltar after Picardo, described by the latter as the jurisdiction’s “biggest rainmaker,” and key player in the success of the finance centre, confessed to having been “in a bad place” and feeling mentally distressed after the traumatic experience and embarrassment of the search warrants.
It was a reminder of the precariousness of existence, how anyone’s life can be turned upside down at a moment’s notice or even without it.
His candid testimony was also impacting from the point of view of human empathy.
The two main adversaries in Operation Delhi, giants in their own field came across as vulnerable and overwhelmed, dejected by circumstances beyond their control.
Levy, a man often depicted as the Rock’s kingmaker, also acknowledged that it had been his religious faith that helped him to get on with life, while police investigated his business dealings.
He too appeared on the verge of tears but regained his composure to make a startling accusation that the “fundamentally flawed investigation” had been led by a commercial competitor to 36 North and was not criminal in nature.
ULLGER’S SHOCKING REVELATION
More deep sentiment and shock was to come in this reality TV calpean drama, when the former RGP boss Richard Ullger stated that he had feared for his predecessor’s safety “physical as well,” and that something could happen to him.
It was also gratifying to hear him dando la cara for McGrail, a comrade in arms in the trenches against crime, throughout their policing career, declaring that they were best friends and how distraught everyone at New Mole had been with his sudden departure.
In the daily perils law enforcement officers face, covering your partner’s back is essential and this leads to a bonding, a brotherhood, the type of values that will never appear in any official report.
As with Levy and McGrail, his grim expression, attested to the heavy psychological toll he had paid during this bleak period.
To his credit there is a consistently emerging picture where McGrail whatever his failings, errors of judgement and omissions, that will have to be determined by the inquiry chairman, is always seen as a policeman prioritising the fight against crime at the centre of everything that he did, above sterile HMIC reports and implementation of bureaucratic requirements, while refusing to be distracted by wholly unacceptable internal dissent.
No reasonably minded citizen would reproach him any of that.
READ MORE: EXPLAINER: What is Gibraltar’s McGrail inquiry and why is it important?
JOSEF K?
In Kafka’s novel ‘The Trial’ the protagonist Josef K is arrested one day without warning, and hurled into a dystopian system of justice that is inscrutable and oppressive, where the presumption of guilt is the norm.
The law is depicted as an indecipherable, dehumanizing instrument sustained on an oppressive, self-serving bureaucracy that renders the individual powerless.
But the term Kafkian is usually bandied about with carefree imprecision and it would be far too easy to draw inadequate parallels.
There were moments during the cross-examination of witnesses which evoked some of the language in the book.
The complex, almost esoteric judicial jargon; the circuitous technicalities about process and procedure; the repetitive treading of ground over and over again appearing to bring time to a standstill.
McGrail’s despair that the world was “crumbling” around him is reminiscent of Josef K’s plight, and the Police Authority’s disciplinary process where the former commissioner was not given sight of what he was being disciplined about, or the particularised details of the allegations against him to be able to respond, did have an unpleasant Kafkian overtone.
In Kafka, the law is not a set of rules for the fair resolution of conflicts, quite the contrary, it asphyxiates natural justice.
Josef K never knows what he is charged with, he faces a totalitarian machine that leads to a permanently dark tunnel which offers no reprieve, no possibility of light at the end, only death.
We are fortunate to live in a territory where the rule of law applies, where McGrail has been given a fair hearing and was able to present battle with equality of arms.
There can be no doubt that the inquiry itself is the commendable antithesis of Josef K’s nightmare trial.
Click here to read more Gibraltar News from The Olive Press.
