I hope there will be no more Enniskillens and I am deeply sorry about what happened in Enniskillen"-Gerry Adams speaking on Remembrance Sunday 1997 about the 11 people who died ten years ago while attending a memorial service at the town cenotaph. Previous expressions of regret include: "I make the point very consciously that what the IRA did was wrong." Adams will not be drawn into speaking for the IRA, and the etiquette of the distinction between the two faces of the republican movement precludes an apology from Sinn Fein. The IRA, however, is capable of speaking for itself and, very early on, put out a terse statement acknowledging that Enniskillen was a mistake. In view of the damage done to the republican cause this was more a statement of fact than an apology.
At international level, the business of apologies is a murky one. At the moment, the Northern Ireland Office is considering a dossier of new evidence on the 1972 Bloody Sunday killings, presented to it last year by the Irish government. Mo Mowlam is understood to have said privately that there will be movement on this issue before the anniversary on 30th January. Whether there is or not, the Irish government will publish the dossier early this year. The pressure is building.
It is now 26 years since a banned civil rights march against the practice of internment, proceeding through a "no-go" area of the city of Derry in Northern Ireland, ended in 13 civilians being shot dead by the British Army. None had been armed. Of the 13, eight were less than 20 years old; seven were minors. A 14th man, who was already unwell, died later as a result of his injuries. Twelve others sustained gun-shot wounds. Large numbers of protestors were beaten and roughly handled during arrest and interrogation. No soldier was harmed even superficially. The 1st Parachute regiment earned an enduring reputation for brutality that day. Images of Bernard McGuigan lying dead, of Father Daly waving a blood-stained white handkerchief at the soldiers, of the 13 coffins laid out in St Mary's church in the Creggan district of Derry, seared themselves into the consciousness of a generation.
Outrage, international and nationalist, was immense. In the House of Commons, Bernadette Devlin (mother of Roisin McAliskey) slapped Home Secretary Reginald Maudling in the face and pulled his hair. Ireland recalled its ambassador. In Dublin the British Embassy was burnt down. A wave of violence swept across Northern Ireland. In the next six months, more people were killed than in the previous three years of the Troubles; 1972 was the bloodiest year the conflict has ever had. Three months after the events of Bloody Sunday, Stormont fell. Northern Ireland entered a phase of the conflict from which it is only now, perhaps, starting to free itself. The Rossville flats, where many of the killings took place, have been torn down, but the legacy of what happened there is still with us all-British, Irish and Unionist alike.
Bloody Sunday really was a turning point, unlike so many horrific incidents of which the same is said. It was a seminal moment in the development of British security policy in Northern Ireland. It dealt a severe blow to internment and was at the centre of subsequent British thinking about how to end the no-go areas in Belfast and Derry-areas which constituted a flagrant breach of the rule of (British) law, with IRA checkpoints on the roads, open IRA patrols and the unabashed touting of illegal guns in the streets. But Bloody Sunday was the prime example of how not to put a stop to this. When the British army tried again, at the end of July of the same year, in Operation Motorman, it was almost entirely successful. Only two lives were lost.
From the nationalist point of view, Bloody Sunday has had an even more pivotal role. It killed off the civil rights movement and initiated the nationalist population into harsh new political realities. Nationalist alienation soared. It mattered very much indeed that the British army was involved in the killing. It mattered even more that the soldiers got away with it. The Widgery tribunal, set up by Prime Minister Edward Heath, concluded that although in some cases army firing "bordered on the reckless," the organisers of the march were to blame for having "created a highly dangerous situation."
We now know that Lord Widgery bore in mind Heath's warning that, "We (are) in Northern Ireland fighting not only a military war but a propaganda war." The Widgery tribunal has not stood the test of time. Hastily convened, narrow in its remit, rushed in its deliberations and slip-shod in its execution, its verdict was delivered just three months after the deaths. According to Jane Winter, director of British Irish Rights Watch, it "contained many internal inconsistencies; it failed to resolve the conflicting evidence and to give the evidence its due and proper weight; it failed to recognise the complete unreliability of the forensic evidence; it incorrectly applied the law on lethal force; and it failed to reach conclusions that were justified by the facts." Widgery swallowed the soldiers' unsubstantiated stories about the "intense" fire they had come under. Sound recordings made at the time discredit the army version. There is no question that the IRA was not present in any numbers; in fact, it had agreed to stay away, at the request of the march organisers. No one in the British army, at any level, was even reprimanded for the slaughter. Lt. Col. Derek Wilford, the officer in command on the ground with 1st Para that day, was awarded the OBE in the 1973 New Year's Honours List.
Central to the dossier of new evidence is Don Mullan's book Eyewitness Bloody Sunday. According to Dick Spring, the former Irish foreign minister, this book is one of the most important ever written on Irish politics. Its main purpose is to publish for the first time a selection of the 526 eyewitness statements-taken by volunteers in the immediate aftermath of the killings and ignored almost entirely by Lord Widgery. These are compelling documents in themselves, but they also contain one essential piece of the jigsaw puzzle which has been missing until now.
One in ten of the witnesses makes reference to the British army firing from the "walls." These heavily fortified ramparts (part of the old city of Derry) and their adjacent buildings overlook the area in which the march was due to wind down. From these, soldiers would have had a clear view, for instance, of the small barricade of rubble and barbed wire strewn across Rossville Street-part of the policy of establishing the no-go or "free" areas-at which six people were killed. That there were soldiers on the walls is beyond doubt (possibly, even, at least one Para). But Widgery was content to describe the location of some of the Paras on that day in dismayingly vague terms, saying that they were situated "elsewhere" in the city. What is more, he did not account for a single round fired from the walls. But the trajectories of the bullets which killed at least three of the barricade victims strongly suggest that they were fired from there by a single sniper.
The significance of the shooting from the walls is that it undermines the attempt to portray Bloody Sunday as a "snatch" operation-a routine arrest of demonstrators which got out of hand. It is now clear that the operation was an ambush; and ambushes are planned. This evidence alone is sufficient grounds for a new and proper inquiry.
Such an inquiry would need to provide definitive answers to a lot of questions. Who was really in charge of the Paras that day? What was the role of General Ford, Commander Land Forces in Northern Ireland? Of Brigadier MacLellan, Commander 8 Infantry Brigade? What was said on the secure radio link between the Paras on the ground (and on the walls) and whoever was in command? Why were two people wounded fully ten to 15 minutes before the others? Was this an attempt to draw IRA members into the ambush-with the intention of overwhelming them in a running street battle? Was this a "flush 'em out" operation with the aim of reclaiming the no-go area? Who was privy to this plan? How high up did it go at Stormont? At Westminster? Why did Widgery not address the issue of firing from the walls?
It is no exaggeration to say that the current peace talks could depend on the British government's reaction to this issue. It is the test of whether the politicians have the will to break with the past and to wrench control of British policy out of the hands of the security establishment, many of whom feel threatened by the prospect of a new enquiry. If British politicians are not willing to confront their own demons there is little hope, in this generation, of eliminating the spectre of the angry Irishman from our national life-we will be saddled with the status quo.
Britain has a fine tradition of democracy. It also has a less attractive tradition of secrecy and arrogance at the very top. If we are truly to be an open society we must not shrink from some of the uglier secrets of British behaviour. Ireland has always been our blind spot; our hereditary weakness (for the best and worst long-standing historical reasons); the most unflattering of mirrors to our national character.
No time could be more apt than the present to institute a new inquiry. If we are to have reconciliation we must first have truth. This is also the main demand of the victims' families. Apologies may come later. What we need now is no more than the brittle acknowledgement that the British army made a "mistake" that day, and a commitment to investigate fully and fairly and put it right. That may not be an apology but-like the IRA over Enniskillen-it would be a start.
Eyewitness Bloody Sunday
Don Mullan (editor)
Wolfhound Press 1997, ?8.99
