Bloody Sunday
Whilst I do not see how the cost of this enquiry can be justified, I have no doubt at all that it is one of, perhaps the, most conclusive and healing outcomes to any enquiry in our history. It confirms what most always suspected, that the Army had gone badly wrong on that fateful day. Unarmed teenagers being shot in the back never squared with the Army’s assertions of responding to life threatening attacks.
There is a powerful lesson in this for both the Establishment and the Army leadership. I have to confess I have never been impressed with the leadership of the British Army down through the pages of history. There have been a few giants, Marlborough, Wellington, Montgomery among those, but the regular run of the mill leadership has been poor and the record mixed. The Navy and the RAF are much less in the news but much better organised with generally better minds.
Both the Army itself and the Establishment must, or certainly should, have known what had happened in Londonderry within days of this calamity. It should have conducted a proper inquiry which would have come to similar conclusions to Saville and should then have brought those whose conduct appeared to fall short before a court marshal, including and especially relevant officers. Civil proceedings may also have been appropriate.
Failure to do this, allowing the families of the victims, from the disadvantaged Catholic community of those days, to continue to live for decades under the cloud that their loved ones were guilty of conduct deserving of summary violent death, did more than any other thing to fester and inflame IRA hatred and boost recruitment. Countless numbers of innocent people died in the violent years that followed.
For leading Generals to come on the airwaves now and say we must remember how well all the other troops have behaved since, is beside the point. Of course our troops behave or we would disband the Army and start again. But on that fateful Sunday they did not and their leadership was flawed. The cowardice of the military authorities and their craven establishment backers over Bloody Sunday is a stain upon the record of the British Army. It is an indictment of the belief that a cover up is the route to follow in difficulty. Like the glow of our great historic victories, the shadow of this sorry episode will remain. So it should.
Wow! What a concept! Beautiful .. Amazing