The Saville Report

As we all know from the wall to wall media coverage, Lord Saville’s report into Bloody Sunday has reached the only possible conclusion, establishing definitively the innocence of all those marchers murderered and wounded by the Paratroopers, and burying once and for all the travesty that was the Widgery report. Its 5,000 pages run to ten volumes, so few people will ever sit and read the whole thing. Chapters 1-5 of volume 1 give its principal conclusions and overall assessment. The superb Guardian Bloody Sunday mini-site also has them in an easier to read format. One of the interesting, and I suppose inevitable, things about the report is that even though it reaches firm conclusions about what happened, and is very clear that the soldiers’ firing was “unjustified and unjustifiable”, it remains much more tentative about whether the soldiers were justified or rational in thinking themselves under attack.

We have concluded that the explanation for such firing by Support Company soldiers after they had gone into the Bogside was in most cases probably the mistaken belief among them that republican paramilitaries were responding in force to their arrival in the Bogside. This belief was initiated by the first shots fired by Lieutenant N and reinforced by the further shots that followed soon after.

There are other areas of confusion and uncertainty as well, due to the contradictory nature of the evidence presented. For example, some people thought there was one Fianna in Derry, and others two. Given the number of witnesses and the number of issues such as these that the Inquiry had to come to a view on, it’s no wonder the report is so long.

The basic conclusions of the report have been summarised by the BBC. As far as I can see, they are as follows. The first and most important conclusion is obviously that none of the victims on the day was doing anything that justified their being shot.

None of the casualties was posing a threat of causing death or serious injury, or indeed was doing anything else that could on any view justify their shooting.

Given that the soldiers had from the day itself sought to justify their actions by saying that they had been fired on first, and that Widgery had concluded that many of those killed had been involved in handling weapons on the day, the question of who fired first was a crucial one. There were a small number of shots fired at the British army, although the number of incidents is unclear, as is the identity of those responsible for all of the putative incidents. It seems around 8 shots were fired by the Official IRA. The Inquiry has concluded that all shots fired at the British Army were fired after the British Army had begun shooting.

The question of who fired first centred on a shot fired from a .303 rifle by a member of the Official IRA from Columbcille Court towards soldiers at a Presbyterian church near William Street. The first people shot that day were Damien Donaghey and John Johnston, who were shot in waste ground beside William Street by these soldiers. The Inquiry has accepted that it was the soldiers who fired first. Even if that hadn’t been the case, as the Inquiry points out, the shots that were fired at the British army both then and later in no way justified the actions of the troops on the day.

Saville’s account of this incident, and attitude towards the evidence given by soldiers and others, is indicative of something within the report that seems to me to have gone largely unremarked. While heavily criticising the soldiers, it at the same time supports elements of the version of events presented by the army subsequently, or that are unfavourable towards the army’s opponents. In this case, the report does not accept that the OIRA members were in Columbcille Court to move the rifle as claimed, but rather that they were there to snipe at the army when the opportunity presented itself. Most people will have seen Martin McGuinness on the TV responding angrily to the report’s conclusion that he was carrying a Thompson sub-machine gun on the day of the march, but that there is insufficient evidence to state that he fired it. This seems to me to be another area where the Inquiry is making some effort to accomodate the military’s version of events. Similarly with the case of Gerald Donaghey, whose body was famously photographed with nailbombs in his pockets. I think it’s fair to say that most people in Derry believe these were planted afterwards to provide some evidence for the British Army’s version of events. Personally, the idea that civilians would drive someone to hospital with nailbombs so obviously sticking out of his pockets does seem unlikely. The Inquiry however has accepted that he was carrying the nailbombs, when saying there was no reason to believe that he had tried to use them, especially given the fact that he was not even the target of the shot that killed him, passing as it did through another victim before hitting him. More generally, the Inquiry finds it likely that witnesses who were members of both the Officials and the Provisionas were evasive and dishonest about the weapons and explosives available to them. So I think that the Inquiry did more to accomodate the military’s version than has been brought out so far.

The military reaction to the report has been interesting as well. While the likes of Mike Jackson has added his voice to the apology, he has also predictably stated that it should be remembered that this was an isolated event, very few soldiers fired that day etc. One of the lawyers for the troops (and particularly fascinating is the submission to the Inquiry of one of the lawyers for the soldiers called Lawton, for the way in which it seeks to build a case for the likelihood of both the Officials and Provisionals opening fire that day) Stephen Pollard has accused Saville of only picking the evidence that suited him, while claiming that the evidence presented supported the opposite conclusions. Of more concern for the intellectual dishonesty involved and its contemporary implications is the statement from Colonel Stuart Tootal, former commander of 3 Para in Afghanistan.

Of the day itself, he says: “It was a shooting war, individual soldiers were under enormous pressure, having to make split second decisions.”

Except, of course, it wasn’t a shooting war, at least not that day. The paras were firing at unarmed civilians, and doing so in the most callous and targeted way possible. A few shots were fired from a revolver in response to the main shootings, but the man responsible believes that the paras did not even notice him doing so. It is an insidious and dishonest argument being made.

The report found that the commander of the troops who went into the Bogside, Derek Wilford, had exceeded his orders in sending the paras in there while marchers were mixed with rioters, but apart from that and other mild criticisms, the upper reaches of the military and the political leadership at Stormont and in London got off very lightly. Niall Ó Dochartaigh analyses this question in detail in The Guardian, but here is what Saville says.

It was also submitted that in dealing with the security situation in Northern Ireland generally, the authorities (the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland Governments and the Army) tolerated if not encouraged the use of unjustified lethal force; and that this was the cause or a contributory cause of what happened on Bloody Sunday. We found no evidence of such toleration or encouragement.

One other point that I think is worth mentioning is the reports statement on NICRA. It is not uncommon to hear unionists argue that given that the march was illegal, a great deal of responsibility lies with those who organised the march and those who attended it. Anyone listening to Talkback, for example, over the last few days will have heard this line of argument from callers. Saville addressed it directly in a chapter on responsibility for the deaths.

4.33 In our view the organisers of the civil rights march bear no responsibility for the deaths and injuries on Bloody Sunday. Although those who organised the march must have realised that there was probably going to be trouble from rioters, they had no reason to believe and did not believe that this was likely to result in death or injury from unjustified firing by soldiers.

There has been some talk that the report represents the closing moment of the Troubles. Reading Jim Allister’s comment, that seems unlikely.

“My primary thoughts today are with the thousands of innocent victims of the IRA who have never had justice, nor benefitted from any inquiry into why their loved one’s died. Thus today’s jamboree over the Saville Report throws into very sharp relief the unacceptable and perverse hierarchy of victims which the preferential treatment of ‘Bloody Sunday’ has created.
“The finding that Martin McGuinness was armed with a sub machine gun, and that he didn’t tell the truth about it, does not surprise me, rather it confirms my view of his perpetual unfitness for government.”

Still, there is no doubt that the report is a major landmark. Although the question of prosecutions, private or state, is unresolved, I think it’s fair to say looking at the scenes in Derry yesterday that for many people a turning point has been reached. The victims have been exonerated after just about the most extensive investigation humanly possible, and the British government’s acceptance of the report and renewed apology has removed the stain of Widgery once and for all. It was certainly worth every penny and every day it took.

ADDS: Interview with Wilford the day after Bloody Sunday. Lies.