Bloody Sunday report - The truth never loses its power

EARLY yesterday morning relatives and supporters of the 14 civil rights protestors murdered in Derry on Bloody Sunday marched from Rossville Street, the British army paratroopers’ 1972 killing ground, to the city’s Guildhall, symbolically ending the banned march that was so savagely suppressed nearly four decades ago.

Just like justice they would not be denied, but they, even in their most optimistic moments, could not have expected that the Saville Inquiry would so emphatically, so clearly and without qualification, reject the lies published by Widgery just 11 weeks after the outrage.

They could not have expected that the evil cover up, a primary root for the violence that cost thousands of lives over the following decades, would be so forcefully, so completely removed from the record.

Their hopes that their reality – that their bothers, sons and neighbours were calculatedly shot dead by a professional army that existed only to protect them – would be recognised were realised.

Though it should not have taken 38 years to reach this point, the power of yesterday’s affirmation is undiminished by the passage of time; it may even be strengthened by the long, arduous process needed to secure it. The passage of time was probably essential too because the relationship between the British establishment, unionism and the army was so deep, so unshakeable 40 years ago, that for the murders to be recognised as such would have, to use a phrase contrived for a similar difficulty, represented “an appalling vista” for those responsible and their political masters.

The publication of the €200 million, 5,000-page report – 12 years in the making – may be the last, great set-piece in the unfinished business of those dark, destructive and ultimately pointless years of terror. It may be the cathartic gesture needed to turn an unresolved and terribly painful tragedy into the kind of acknowledgement of the truth that liberates and empowers all successful societies.

Speaking in the House of Commons yesterday afternoon Prime Minister David Cameron was as direct as anyone who has held that office in recent generations when he declared that the actions of British soldiers was “both unjustified and unjustifiable”. “There is no doubt. There’s nothing equivocal, there are no ambiguities,” he admitted. “What happened... was wrong.”

“On behalf of the country I am deeply sorry,” he said.

As Steven King points out elsewhere on this page there are many layers to this tragedy and its legacy. It is not just an issue for the Nationalist community.

Some will see it as an opening point for prosecutions, others will be happy that the truth has prevailed. Still more will see it as a challenge to others involved in that awful conflict to be as forthright about atrocities committed by paramilitaries. It may be too that now the great wrong has been recognised, it may lose some of its power to rally those who persist in ignoring the democratic wishes of the majority of this island’s population.

The report has the capacity to divide and cause further conflict but let us hope that it is recognised for what it is and that the response honours the peaceful intentions of those who were so brutally murdered.

The truth has prevailed and even if it took 38 years, that is enough for one day.