Saville report leaves stain on the army

[soloman]

So reads the headline on the BBC news website reporting on the outcome of a 12 year enquiry into the events of 'Bloody Sunday'. I am sure the statement is true, but I feel sure that people much better qualified than me, will question whether any enquiry conducted nearly 40 years after the event can be sure that they have reached the correct verdict. I question whether anyone's memory nearly 40 years later is capable of accurately recalling the precise events that occurred on that dreadful day. We will never know the truth I suspect. Read the report yourself:-

BBC News - Saville report leaves stain on the army

I am not intending to re-open the enquiry with this posting, merely echoing the sentiment of the troops involved:-

Gen Sir Mike Jackson, who witnessed the events as a captain in the Parachute Regiment, wants the public to remember the context.

He says the majority of the soldiers who served in Northern Ireland behaved admirably, often in the face of severe provocation.
There are similar sentiments from Col Stuart Tootle - the former Commander of 3 Para in Afghanistan.
He says that no-one should forget the contribution the British Army made to bringing peace to Northern Ireland, nor the atrocities it suffered at the hands of the IRA.
Certainly the people of Northern Ireland feel vindicated today as a result of this report. That is perhaps the price we must accept to move on from this tragic incident.

I am personally very pleased that I was not one of the troops trying to deal with the unrest in NI at that time as dealing with aggression against a force which wears the same clothes as you do is difficult to impossible at the best of times.

[Barry]

Many murderers have been released as a result of the Good Friday agreement and subsequent peace process.
I do not think that now is the time to start attempting to prosecute the troops from an incident 38 years ago.

[Rizla]

I listened to a dramatization of some of the hearings on Radio 4. What struck me was how well the command and control structure of the British army had adapted to the needs of mobile warfare... this is back in 1972, to put that into context, it is often the complaint about the US military that they STILL haven't adapted. So I'm pleased about that.

I don't think this is a stain on the troops reputation. Obviously somebody has to take the blame, and the obvious choice is the IRA. It is virtually unheard of to have martial law and armed troops on the streets of British cities, the only reason they were there is because of the IRA. The reason we don't have armed troops on our streets, or even armed police for that matter, is that mistakes will be made, and when guns are involved that's likely to get messy.

Maybe the IRA didn't fire the first shots, but we know damn well that they were there with their guns a short time later. They were not far away, the Paras knew this, which explains why they were on edge. I seem to remember that around this time, whole areas of Ulster were no-go areas for the police and army and that at the time the IRA were engaged in guerrilla warfare where gun battles on the streets were as likely than terrorist bombings.


As Barry said, we have had the good Friday agreement. Time to put this to bed.

[Major Sinic]

Three wise posts.

My own view is that the soldiers concerned should not be prosecuted, and that there should be no compensation payments, simply because compensation almost forty years after the event is a total irrelevancy.

The record has been set straight and history will know what was done on that terrible day. History will also know the obscene acts carried out by the IRA. That is sufficient.

I was a very young subaltern stationed in Londonderry at the time. It was not a happy time for anyone.

[AMGINGLES]

The soldiers on bloody sunday were wrongly equiped for the job , you cant defend against stones and petrol bombs with SLR rifles. The army and police in NI have learnt this lesson. The hoods however have not yet learnt not to throw stuff at the police. It is important to remember that it was a confusing smoky loud situation and soldiers had been shot previously. I blame the establishment for inturning people and not sending the right response to the resulting riots.

[Borderscot]

Only the BBC would make such a statement. Unfortunately, our media are driven by looking for easy and cheap headlines. I notice today in the Telegraph that the BBC have decided to show no restraint interms of pay rises this year. Clearly, the BBC has farr too much money to spend. I think it will be only a matter of time before the government takes a much firmer line with this organisation because it continues to show the nation that it is a law unto itself.

[DC]

The idea of charging, or even naming, the soldiers involved and releasing the IRA terrorists strikes me as absurd.

[soloman]

The idea of charging, or even naming, the soldiers involved and releasing the IRA terrorists strikes me as absurd.

Not quite absurd DC!

If a miscarriage of justice has taken place then release may be appropriate. Charging or particularly naming soldiers should be a non-starter too. I am cynical enough to believe that this enquiry's findings are designed to pacify the NI community and hopefully to believe in democratic government from now on with all sides taking part. We certainly cannot go on as we have been ever since at least Bloody Sunday. Peculiarly the inhabitants of Ireland have unbelievably long memories, which means disputes can rankle years after everybody else has moved on?

[badnewstravelsfaster]

So the Bloody Sunday killings were “unjustified and unjustifiable” in the words of the Prime Minister David Cameron, a mere 38 years after the event and only 37 years after the publication of the original Widgery Report into the killings, now clearly a whitewash of monumental proportions, into the killings of 14 unarmed people on a civil rights march in Londonderry. This is now accepted following the publication of the vastly expensive and long-winded Saville Report. “Unjustified” is the word repeatedly used by Saville to describe the actions of the Parachute Regiment.

Is there a certain period when it becomes acceptable for governments to accept responsibility for outrages committed in the name of the state? Governments, for example, have no problem in accepting that the cruelties and abuses of the slave trade were totally unacceptable (or even unjustified), but no one involved in those injustices is now still alive. However, a large number of people involved in the Bloody Sunday incident are still alive. So, maybe just enough time has passed for the authorities to accept responsibility.

This is unlike their discussion of the invasion of Iraq. Ostensibly the war was because of the alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Whenever challenged as to why these weapons were never found (in-fact they almost certainly never existed), government ministers would respond with: “Would you want Saddam Hussein back in power?” As if that were the issue. Maybe a few decades will change that perspective, too.

[Rizla]

This is unlike their discussion of the invasion of Iraq. Ostensibly the war was because of the alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Whenever challenged as to why these weapons were never found (in-fact they almost certainly never existed), government ministers would respond with: “Would you want Saddam Hussein back in power?” As if that were the issue. Maybe a few decades will change that perspective, too.

This is more like the incidents in Iraq where innocent wedding parties get bombed, or where you have friendly fire incidents... only on bloody Sunday, only one side was armed.

Where there is a difference is that in the above, the armed forces set out to kill and kill the wrong target. On Bloody Sunday, they set out to make arrests, thought they were under attack and retaliated... these things happen when you put armed soldiers amoung civilian populations... we know that now, hence the the objections to interventions in Iraq.

This wasn't an outrage committed in the name of the state as you suggest, not by any definition. It was carried out in self defense -- whether the threat was real or perceived is neither here nor there... soldiers are trained to respond to attack with instant and aggressive action. They did what they were trained to do.

At the time they were ill equipped and ill trained for the job. But for the previous couple of years paramilitaries on both sides had been waving guns around, and the British Army were the only response we had.
When people start playing with guns, people get hurt. As I said, ultimately the IRA are the cause of Bloody Sunday, there is no need to look elsewhere for someone to blame.

[manrow]

Good post Rizla, sums up the whole subject nicely.

So, can anyone explain the answers to the following posed in the Guardian:-

The estimated expenditure of nearly £200m on the Bloody Sunday inquiry, which has taken 12 years to report, need never have happened. If only Lord Saville and his two judicial colleagues had at the outset in early 1998 appropriately addressed their terms of reference under the 1921 legislation and taken full account of the reliability of witnesses (or rather their predictable unreliability) 30 years after an event that had been extensively covered by the media present en masse, the inquiry could have been disposed of in 18 months.

Bloody Sunday inquiry: too much, too late | Louis Blom-Cooper | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk