Britain has cleared the Derry air. Now it’s someone else’s turn to sing

SO has justice finally been delivered? Years late and at great financial cost, the Bloody Sunday inquiry has finally reported.

In one sense, even 5,000 pages couldn’t tell us very much we haven’t known for a very long time. The British state, after all, has long since accepted those who died that day should be regarded as innocent.

So what was the inquiry’s true purpose? Officially, it was to get at the truth, but whose? Could any inquiry focused on one event ever really capture the surrounding mayhem and the mounting number of dead soldiers? For many in Derry, though, of course, Saville was about righting the wrong done by Lord Widgery. Cynics suggest it was a form of communal therapy.