FRFI 216 August/September 2010

Bloody Sunday – another whitewash

On 15 June, Lord Saville finally published his report into the events of Bloody Sunday, 30 January 1972, when British paratroopers shot 26 Irish nationalists at a mass demonstration in Derry against internment, murdering 14 of them. The report took 12 years to complete, cost £195 million and runs to over 5,000 pages. Press coverage concentrated on two things: Prime Minister Cameron’s apology and the cost to the British taxpayer. What was more important, however, was that Saville, like Widgery before him, exonerated the British government – this time the blame was placed on individual soldiers. The outcome is what the British imperialist state wanted – it is free to do the same again when necessary.

Background

In August 1969 the Labour government sent British troops to the Six Counties, ostensibly in a peacekeeping role, but in reality to quell the civil rights struggle and the nationalist uprising against British rule. Over the next two years, the Army’s presence worsened the crisis. On 9 August 1971, the introduction of internment without trial saw 342 men detained. Chief-of-Staff of the British Army, Brigadier Marston Tickell, claimed that 70% of the IRA leadership had been captured and that the IRA was ‘virtually defeated’ – all of which proved to be nonsense. The overwhelming majority of internees were not involved in any armed campaign. The purpose of internment was to destroy leading Republicans and terrorise the nationalist community. Across the north, Loyalist mobs attacked nationalist areas; in the four days after the start of internment, 22 people were killed, 19 of them civilians. The result of internment was not pacification but an intensification of the uprising.

The internees suffered a planned regime of physical torture and sophisticated psychological ill treatment. Evidence of sensory deprivation, hooding, electric shock treatment, systematic beatings, stress positions and being blind-folded and thrown out of hovering helicopters soon emerged.[1] In response to media reports from internees and their families, the Home Office hastily commissioned an inquiry chaired by Sir Edmund Compton. Compton quickly exonerated the RUC and British Army, and could only find instances of ‘unintended hardship’. The Compton Report concluded that internees were put in stress positions and made to run obstacle courses ‘to keep them warm’. Prime Minister Heath announced that the Report was hopelessly deficient in not defending the reputation of the British Army well enough. The mood in the Republican communities became, rightly, incandescent.

While at its outbreak the struggle was united around the issue of civil rights, internment concentrated the anger of the mass of the nationalist working class against British rule. In the hope of preventing more civil disorder, the Stormont government imposed a ban on all demonstrations for a year after internment. Divisions over the direction of the civil rights campaign began to open up between constitutional nationalists and revolutionary nationalists, as the civil rights campaign threatened to become a mass uprising against British rule. This is the context in which the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, in order to maintain its leadership on the ground, called the demonstration against internment in Derry on 30 January 1972.

The events of that day are well documented. The 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, fresh from suppressing opposition to British rule in Aden, opened fire on unarmed demonstrators, some of whom were running for cover. The bloodbath was televised across the world. Just as the Soweto uprising in South Africa became a watershed in the struggle against apartheid, the aftermath of the massacre on Bloody Sunday saw support for the revolutionary national struggle led by the Provisional IRA grow as thousands were drawn into the struggle.

For Republicans, Bloody Sunday was further evidence of the nature of British imperialist rule in Ireland. As former IRA volunteer Tommy McKearney put it: ‘the state was beyond being reformed and there could not be a peaceful solution’.[2] Another former IRA volunteer, Eammon McDermott, stated: ‘In the immediate aftermath I was clear that it was a planned systematic operation by the British. It was not a situation that went out of control … The paratroopers were entirely disciplined and de liberate. The firing was controlled, ordered and under control at all times …’ On the question of responsibility, he continued: ‘Evidence would tend to indicate that the British Cabinet was involved. Maudling, Home Secretary, had a special briefing at Lisburn in the days leading up to the march and Foreign Secretary Douglas-Home drafted a memo to the British Cabinet before Bloody Sunday on how to handle the public relations situation internationally as a result of British operations against the march. It was planned.’

The Widgery Tribunal

In the immediate aftermath, the British launched another inquiry led by Lord Chief Justice Widgery who, 11 weeks later, exonerated the Parachute Regiment and British government completely. The whitewash was a further insult to the people of Derry. Widgery did not even mention internment and referred to the demonstrators throughout as ‘hooligans’, claiming that they had been involved in mindless violence. This is how the British Army, the RUC and the British government portray the Republican movement: not as people with a political cause, but as violent thugs. This tactic continues to this day; the state and the media persistently refer to the nationalist protestors opposed to Orange marches as ‘criminals’ and ‘hooligans’. It is no coincidence. The British have always tried to depoliticise the Irish struggle as part of a conscious and deliberate process of isolating it from support from the British working class as a whole.

As a result of the Widgery Report, no disciplinary action was ever taken against the soldiers involved. Lieutenant-Colonel Derek Wilford, commanding officer, was decorated for his ‘gallant services’.

The Saville Inquiry

For many years the families fought for a fresh inquiry into Bloody Sunday in order to prove the victims’ innocence. In 1998 Prime Minister Blair announced a judicial inquiry to be led by Law Lord Mark Saville. After 12 years the report was finally published in June, but nowhere do the words ‘unlawful killing’ or ‘murder’ appear. Saville explicitly denies any high level political involvement in the massacre, stating: ‘The immediate responsibility for the deaths and injuries on Bloody Sunday lies with those members of Support Company whose unjustifiable firing was the cause of those deaths and injuries.’

The report was immediately, un equivocally endorsed by Prime Minister Cameron, speaking to the House of Commons and broadcast live on large television screens in Derry’s Guildhall Square. He said: ‘What happened should never, ever have happened – some members of our armed forces acted wrongly. On behalf of our government and our country I am deeply sorry’. But this afternoon theatre cannot absolve the British government of responsibility for its continued war against the Irish people. The British state has, throughout the conflict, tried to isolate and destroy its opponents in Ireland by whatever means necessary. Witness the targeted assassination of Republicans: Miriam Daly on 26 June 1980; civil rights lawyer Pat Finucane on 12 February 1989 by British agents; human rights lawyer Rosemary Nelson outside her home on 15 March 1999. Witness the murders by the use of shoot-to-kill. Witness also the recent incarceration of Sean Hoey, and the continued detention of Colin Duffy along with scores of other political prisoners.

The Saville Inquiry can only be understood in the context of the peace process. The Bloody Sunday Inquiry is part of the political process which aims to reconcile the nationalist community to continued British rule. The acceptance of the new policing and judicial system by the Republican movement is a key part of giving legitimacy to the British state in Ireland. It was only in the context of peace talks that an inquiry was offered to nationalists as some sort of bargaining chip. While much has been made of the costs and duration of the Inquiry, it will be a small price to pay for the British state if it helps to legitimise its rule in Ireland.

We are clear. The responsibility for Bloody Sunday lies squarely with British imperialism. We are neither prepared to forgive nor forget the actions of the British state on Bloody Sunday or throughout its rule in Ireland. We reject this latest attempt by British imperialism to cover up its continued occupation and policy of torture and terror in the north of Ireland. There is no validity in issuing an apology for this massacre when it is quite clear that the British government and its Army will massacre, torture and violently suppress its opponents again whenever and wherever it feels it is necessary. The nature of the British occupation may have changed since the outbreak of the conflict, but British imperialism remains in Ireland and its war against its political opponents is far from over. Thirty-eight years on from Bloody Sunday, it is time to build a movement to destroy British imperialism.

Paul Mallon

1 See Torture: The Record of British Brutality in Ireland, Northern Aid and Association for Legal Justice, 1971; also Report of the inquiry into allegations against the security forces of physical brutality in Northern Ireland arising out of the events on the 9th August, 1971 (Compton Report), HMSO, November 1971. See also http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/intern/ source.htm for source material. As a consequence of the experience in Ireland, the use of torture and inhumane treatment by the British state and its military was stepped up and refined. All the main methods of torture used today in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay were first used and continue to be used against the nationalist community.

2 Quoted in K Bean, M Hayes, Republican Voices, Seesyu Press, Monaghan, 2001, p40.