A waste of 'Bloody' money

Friday, November 7th, 2008

Back in 1972, British troops opened fire on an illegal street march in Londonderry, Northern Ireland killing 14 innocent Roman Catholic civilians and injuring others. The victims were unarmed and there is little or no evidence to suppose that any of the marchers were armed. Indeed, several of the dead were shot in the back as they fled so they were unlikely to be firing back or lobbing nail bombs. Yes, I appreciate that you can do that over your shoulder but it is very imprecise.

This event quickly became know as 'Bloody Sunday'. An inquiry, shortly afterwards deemed that neither the British government nor the soldiers were to blame. Understandably, the outcome was condemned as a 'whitewash' by the other side. Me, I just think it was yet another 'cock up' - a bunch of young inexperienced soldiers confronted by several thousand (some say up to 20k) protesters , some of whom were lobbing rocks, so the soldiers panicked and opened fire. And I really believe that's all there is to it.

The news today is that the findings of the second official inquiry (set up in 1998, no less) will be delayed until next year. The cost to date is £181 million and, unsurprisingly, half of that has gone on lawyer's fees. One lawyer alone has picked £4 million and another described it as a financial godsend. And all this for what? Nothing, I suspect except a few points of detail we may have missed the first time around.

Nothing is going to bring those dead people back. Better that we should have given the grieving families some compensation quickly and said 'sorry'. It was obviously a complete 'fuck up' just as the shooting down of the Iranian Airbus and the Korean 747 and many other incidents were. Such a gesture might even have calmed things down a bit.

Martin McGuinness was the leader of the Provisional IRA in Londonderry at the time and there's a man with much blood on his hands, either directly or by default. He said recently that an inquiry was unnecessary and that an apology from the British Government would have sufficed. Now he may have a hidden agenda for it has been said that he was there and fired the first shot - we shall never know.

I never ever thought that I would agree with Martin McGuinness on anything. Today, I do.