By Bernie McAdam
The British Government has spent £4.3 million in defending Soldier F, an ex-British paratrooper, who has been acquitted of the Bloody Sunday murders of two men and the attempted murder of five others in Belfast Crown Court. In fact the entire period of 53 years since Bloody Sunday has been an elaborate exercise in protection and cover up by successive British Governments.
On January 30 1972 the British Parachute Regiment shot dead 13 unarmed Civil Rights protesters in Derry (another died shortly afterwards) and injured 15 others. The first cover up was from the Widgery Tribunal, convened later that year, which cleared the Paras of any wrongdoing and repeated the army’s claim that they had come under fire. The British state clung to this widely discredited version for 38 years.
The relatives of the murdered then waged a long and determined campaign to expose the truth and bring to justice all those guilty of their crimes. In 2010 it seemed their efforts had paid off to uncover the truth as the Saville Report after 12 years of inquiry had concluded that the killings had been ‘unjustified and unjustifiable’. Tory prime minister David Cameron even apologized in the House of Commons. But bringing the guilty to justice was an entirely different matter.
The Saville Report states that soldiers gave no warning they were about to fire and ‘Despite the contrary evidence given by the soldiers we have concluded that none of them fired in response to attacks or threatened attacks by nail or petrol bombers.’ The order to fire should not have been given. Some of the victims had been running away from the soldiers and were shot in the back. Some were even helping other injured victims and none of them were armed. The report also said that soldiers had ‘knowingly put forward false accounts’ during the investigation.
Saville was ‘sure’ that Soldier F had shot and murdered three men. However, the prosecution in the Belfast trial focused on two other murdered and five injured protesters relying on statements from Soldiers G and H. The judge found both soldiers ‘serially untruthful’ and that evidence was ‘well short’ of the standard required in a criminal court. Soldier G had died; soldier H did not give evidence and neither did soldier F before or during the trial.
The judge also suggested the long delay in bringing the trial meant that the veracity and accuracy of hearsay statements from G and H could not be tested. The British state has been past masters at cover ups and deliberate delays in accountability. The fact that only one soldier has been brought to trial in 54 years and then unsuccessfully prosecuted is shameful but typical.
The Saville Report exonerated the innocent although it did not draw the obvious conclusion that this was unlawful killing or murder. It absolved the British state, finding no conspiracy in either the government or the army to use lethal force against demonstrators in Derry. Lt Colonel Wilford – in charge of the Paras that entered the Bogside – was criticised for going beyond his orders and for losing control of a small number of his men. So for Saville it all boils down to a few bad eggs!
This conveniently diverts attention from the role senior figures in the army and government played on Bloody Sunday and indeed throughout the north of Ireland in this period. The Report heard how Major General Ford, commander of land forces in the north, wrote a memo to General Tuzo three weeks before Bloody Sunday. ‘I am coming to the conclusion that the minimum force needed to achieve the restoration of law and order is to shoot selected ringleaders among the Derry young hooligans, after clear warnings have been given.’
Bloody Sunday was not a one off incident but part of a policy of British repression designed to smash the resistance to the sectarian state of ‘Northern Ireland’. A state that had been created and propped up by Britain and was a veritable prison house for the Catholic minority since 1921. Bloody Sunday was an attempt to drive civil rights protests off the streets and marked Britain’s worst atrocity. No doubt the families of the dead will continue to fight for justice and that justice will surely be realised when British imperialism is driven out of Ireland for good.
