Jun 15, 2010
Guest Contribution: Bloody Sunday Inquiry-The Issues
The Report of the Saville Report into the killing of 14 persons on Bloody Sunday is to be published today at 3pm. Here, Prof Dermot Walsh, Director of the Centre for Criminal Justice in the University of Limerick, and author of Bloody Sunday and the Rule of Law in Northern Ireland (2000, London: MacMillan) outlines the background to the report and the central issues surrounding it.
On Sunday, January 30th 1972, 21 British soldiers of the Parachute Regiment fired at least 108 live bullets in the streets and courtyards of densely populated high rise flats and maisonettes in Derry’s Bogside area. They were supposedly engaged in an arrest operation aimed at rioters on the fringes of an anti-internment protest. Thirteen civilians were killed and 15 more were wounded. One of the wounded later died as a result. The soldiers claimed they were firing at gunmen and bombers but the overwhelming material, civilian and independent eye-witness accounts suggested that the victims were unarmed and posing no threat.
The consequences were immediate and devastating. Nationalist violence against the State erupted on a scale and intensity rarely experienced. The British government tried to regain the initiative quickly with the establishment of a Tribunal of Inquiry to establish the facts under the chairmanship of Lord Chief Justice Widgery.
From the outset the whole exercise was dogged with the appearance of bias. Lord Widgery himself was a former British Army officer, and the inquiry was served by the office of Treasury Solicitor which was composed of government lawyers who would regularly give advice to the Department of Defence in civil actions against British soldiers in Northern Ireland. Even the venue of Coleraine (an Army friendly town 55 kilometres away) seems to have been selected to convenience the soldiers and intimidate the Bogsiders. Nationalist confidence would have been further undermined if they had been aware of the Prime Minister’s ‘reminder’ to Lord Widgery at the outset that they were in Northern Ireland fighting not only a military war, but a propaganda war.
The appearance of bias extended to the treatment of evidence. Critically, the legal team for the victims were kept in the dark about the existence of previous inconsistent statements by the soldiers on their actions that day. This material was in the possession of the Army and Tribunal legal teams, but was not publicly disclosed or used at the Inquiry. Incredibly, Lord Widgery refused formally to admit a very significant body of evidence that would have undermined the veracity of the Army’s version of events. This included 700 civilian witness statements, and intercepted Army and RUC radio messages that suggested that soldiers had fired from Derry’s Walls. Nor did the Tribunal visit or commission reports on the scenes of the shootings. The net effect was that it based its conclusions heavily on the self-serving testimony of the soldiers.
Although the Tribunal accepted that not all of the soldiers may have been telling the truth and that many of the shots fired may not have been justified, its overall conclusion was to the effect that the soldiers only fired in response to threats from gunmen and bombers. It also concluded that while some innocent civilians were hit mistakenly, others may have been firing weapons or holding bombs in the course of the afternoon.
Not surprisingly the Tribunal and its report merely compounded the nationalist sense of grievance and alienation provoked by the shootings themselves. To their credit, the victims and their families responded by embarking upon a dignified and persistent struggle to achieve the truth. It took over 25 years of effort and frustration before the British government, under pressure from the Irish government and within the context of the evolving peace process, finally conceded their demand for a new inquiry in 1998.
Chaired by Lord Saville, the new inquiry’s terms of reference were almost identical to Widgery’s. Its approach, however, has been very different. Where the latter wrapped everything up in 10 weeks, the former has taken over 12 years. Where the latter’s report ran to 36 pages, it seems that the former’s will span 5,000 pages. Where the latter rested heavily on the soldier’s self-serving testimony, the former has searched far and wide and probed deeply for any evidence that may be relevant from whatever source. Where the former was content to rely heavily on an unequal adversarial contest between two sides, the latter has actively pursued the truth itself. Where the former was dogged throughout by the appearance of bias, the latter has striven to maintain the appearance and substance of independence.
There can be little doubt that Saville will deliver very different findings from Widgery on the central issue by declaring what everyone already knows, namely that the dead and wounded were innocent victims. It is also likely that it will make findings on ancillary issues such as: the manner in which arrest operations were conducted and victims treated, and whether nail bombs were planted on one of the victims. A more interesting issue at this stage is whether Saville will also depart from Widgery on the vital matter of who was responsible for the shootings: were they the result of individual soldiers acting rashly to actual or perceived threats; did elements within the Parachute Regiment set out with the intention of dealing with the increasing street violence and agitation in Derry through their own lethal methods; or was there a direction from higher up the security and political chain of command to do just that?
Unfortunately, it would appear that the report of the Saville Inquiry will not address some other vital issues, such as: why did the Widgery Tribunal fail so miserably to establish the full facts of what happened on Bloody Sunday; why has no-one ever been prosecuted in respect of the shooting of 28 unarmed civilians on that day; and what powerful interests have been at play to ensure that the truth has remained hidden for 40 years? Since the primary purpose of a Tribunal of Inquiry is to restore public confidence in the legal and political systems in the wake of events such as Bloody Sunday and its subsequent cover up, it would seem reasonable to expect that the Saville Inquiry would have addressed these matters. The fact that its terms of reference were not sufficiently broad to encompass them, suggests that those powerful interests may still be there.
For anyone interested in reading further about Bloody Sunday, in addition to Prof Walsh’s book and the report to be published today we also recommend viewing the section of CAIN website (Conflict Archive on the INternet) on Bloody Sunday which provides an exceptionally detailed catologues of events, reports and other data.
