More Enquiries

Predictably the Unionist side and their sympathisers are calling for enquiries into various atrosities from the years of strife to be investigated to balance Saville. Although there may be a case for some sort of  Truth and Reconciliation  commission on the South African model, the call for more enquiries is misplaced.

Nobody argues the suffering and grief the years of bloodshed brought, nor that the IRA did terrible things, nor the ruination of lives from loss that follows the death of loved ones or the terrible maiming and disabling of those who survive. But in the end it was known that the IRA in its various forms and the Unionist paramilitaries were in a state of armed conflict where the tactic was terrorist attack upon civilians or assassination at gunpoint of so called enemies. They saw themselves as fighting for a cause. They were seen by the country as terrorists, which classification denotes criminals not warriors.

Bloody Sunday was quite different. Here the British Army, in support of the Civil power and acting as armed police to protect the innocent from terrorist attack, was wrongly deployed under the wrong orders and as a consequence lost discipline and ended gunning down unarmed civilians without proper cause and when itself not under lethal threat. This was a catastrophic failure not of a known terrorist organisation, but of an essential pillar of the State which has a Constitutional duty to to uphold the rule of law and protect from assault the population of the United Kingdom,  of which Londonderry is an historic constituent City.

To fire indiscrimiantly upon its own citizens causing death and injury is the greatest crime an army can commit. It is for this reason the Saville Enquiry stands alone. This is why David Cameron, to his very great credit, yesterday uttered on behalf of us all his very deep sorrow for the unjustified and unjustifiabe events of that dreadful day.