Uncivilised Tribes

The warnings of Patrick Mercer about the Bloody Sunday inquiry appear to be coming true. The Saville report exonerated the general in charge of any blame for deploying the trigger-happy thugs of the Parachute Regiment against a demonstration over civil rights, and concluded that the general "neither knew nor had reason to know at any stage that his decision would or was likely to result in soldiers firing unjustifiably on that day". As so often happens when our brave boys are subjected to the indignity of having to account for their actions, some unsporting persons are now crying cover-up. A few months before Bloody Sunday, the same unit of paratroopers was among the soldiers deployed in the west Belfast estate of Ballymurphy, where eleven civilians were shot dead in August 1971. One man was shot fourteen times, mostly in the back to avoid unnecessary violence. The local priest was shot trying to help somebody else, a precaution bravely foregone by the Paras in Derry. Nevertheless, relatives of the detrimented are calling for yet another investigation. Daveybloke has, of course, anticipated the social upheaval his government intends to cause by calling for the military to be placed front and centre of our national Britishness; but this is unlikely to be quite what he had in mind.