Officer ordered Derry march to be stopped

A senior British army officer in Northern Ireland 31 years ago decided that the civil rights march that led to the Bloody Sunday killings should be stopped “at all costs“, it emerged today.

A confidential operation order for January 30, 1972 said that people from the Catholic Creggan and Bogside areas of Derry and others nearby were planning to march illegally to the city centre.

The march was to protest against the policy of internment introduced the previous summer but also to show the “weaknesses of the Security Forces“, the order read.

It added: “CLF (Commander Land Forces in Northern Ireland, Major General Robert Ford) has decreed that the marches must be stopped at all costs.”

Thirteen Catholic men died when British paratroopers opened fire on the protesters.

The soldiers claimed they acted in self-defence after being shot at by snipers and targeted by nail and petrol bombers.

Asked to comment on the order, which he wrote, Maj Gen Ford’s former aide-de-camp described the wording as “a bit strong“.

“I think the only explanation I can give for that wording is probably the exuberance of a young officer writing an operation order for the general staff at the time,” he told the Bloody Sunday Inquiry in central London.

“Looking back at it in hindsight, it is a bit strong. I think what I would say now is that that paragraph should read, ’CLF has decided that the marchers should be stopped. Full stop’.”

The witness, who was a captain at the time, said he remembered a “considerable amount of violence” in the months preceding Bloody Sunday after internment was introduced.

Violence was increasing in many areas of Northern Ireland and Derry was a particularly difficult area to control because the Creggan and Bogside were close to the city centre.

Maj Gen Ford told him a civil rights march was scheduled to take place at the end of January and of his concerns about a “hooligan element” and even gunmen being involved.

He said the officer was concerned about extensive damage being caused, adding: “He stated that the aim would be to prevent the march reaching the city centre.”

The captain accompanied Maj Gen Ford in the area on the day of the march and said he heard between 15 to 20 high velocity shots and one burst of automatic fire as well as “two small explosions” which could have been nail or petrol bombs.

He said he was unsure whether the firing was from the army or civilians but assumed the automatic fire could not have come from the Parachute Regiment because of the rules governing engagement in Northern Ireland at the time.

Under cross-examination by Arthur Harvey QC, representing some of the victims’ families, the aide-de-camp – referred to as INQ 2 – rejected the suggestion that his memory had “superimposed” a considerable amount of detail over the years.

This included allegedly adding references to automatic gunfire in his later statements when the diary of events of January 30 made the following day made no mention of it.