Saville Inquiry - Report Published, 3:30pm 15/6/2010

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mathepac

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I can remember exactly where I was and who I was with when the news broke 38 years ago and I remember buying every single morning paper the day after. The Guardian's reporters were outraged as I recall and excoriated the British Army's actions on the day.

Despite the 'leaks" leading up to the publication at 3:30 today I have to admit to being shocked at the summary findings as published on the telly to-date (BBC NI mainly). The language seems simple and direct and condemnatory.

"Unjustified", "wrong" and "unjustifiable" is Saville's conclusion about the actions of British Army soldiers (1st Parachute Regiment) on the day. Cameron seemed sincere in his unequivocal apology and the families and their supporters were dignified in vocalising their relief and reactions to the findings.

The word "innocent" seemed very appropriate. I'd forgotten how many of the dead and injured were only in their teens.
 
Finally.

In contrast, when you read some of language and phrases used by the British army COs in the immediate aftermath and well into the 80s, the brazen dismissive tones, it was jawdropping.
 
Murdering 1st Para scum , whose actions precipitated the whole tragedy that was " The Troubles "
 
I meant to post some more, but I saw part of the interview with Ken McGinnis and had to go out punch seven kinds of stuff out of my timber fence, scaring the daylights out of my neighbour.

McGinnis IMHO is the worst kind of dinosaur, matched only by his military counterpart Mike Jackson (former Captain 1st Batallion, 1 Para, former head of UK Land Forces), interviewed on ITV. Black is White, the people of Stroke City owe a debt to the British Army and "What about Poor Me?" Sorry I must stop or I'll lose it again.
 
I don't remember Bloody Sunday (too young) and I'm part of that generation who grew up with the Troubles as "the norm", something that were always there. I have to say, listening to the reports over the last few nights, it was quite emotional and it's easy to forget how far we have come in recent years.

Did the troubles cause Bloody Sunday or did Bloody Sunday cause the troubles? the reality is that no-one can truthfully answer that. We should never forget that the IRA killed many many innocent people and carried out many an attrocity. I did wonder how the families of those killed in Omagh or Warrington or Aldershot felt listening to all the reporting over the last 24 hours.

However the state has a responsibility to uphold the law and to me, the fact that it's staff didn't and then lied to cover it up makes what happened in Derry all the worse. If it happened in Iraq, people would be shouting about war crimes. In effect, British soldiers, in a British city shot dead British citizens and they should be rightly ashamed of that.

One thing I can't understand is why no one who drove the peace process forward has never won the Nobel Prize for peace. When you compare now with 38 years ago, we owe the likes of Albert Reynolds and John Major a huge thank you
 
Caveat said:
Er...might want to check that out again mpsox
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Fair comment but personnally I don't believe the right people got it, nothing would have happened without the driving force of Reynolds and Major.
 
Mpsox said:
... Did the troubles cause Bloody Sunday or did Bloody Sunday cause the troubles? the reality is that no-one can truthfully answer that. ...
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Saville has tried to answer that question in his conclusions. A relevant extract from one of the links above reads "5.5 ... Bloody Sunday strengthened the Provisional IRA, increased nationalist resentment and hostility towards the Army and exacerbated the violent conflict of the years that followed. Bloody Sunday was a tragedy for the bereaved and the wounded, and a catastrophe for the people of Northern Ireland."

Monsters like Ken Maginnis are still trying to argue that the murders of two police officers (one of them a Catholic) by the IRA in the weeks prior to the march caused Bloody Sunday. No doubt he would also argue that the IRA "border campaign" in the 1950's caused it.

There are those who would argue that the denial by successive British and Northern Irish Governments of basic civil and human rights to a huge section of Northern Irish citizens was the cause, that and the gerrymandering of electoral areas and results that lead to the partitioning of the island.

Saville, as per his charter, takes a shorter-term view and his conclusion is that poor decision-making by the commanders on the day and poor discipline by various patrols (acting independently?) lead to the deaths of the innocent Civil Rights marchers.
Mpsox said:
... One thing I can't understand is why no one who drove the peace process forward has never won the Nobel Prize for peace. ...
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One of them was on an Irish-registered Gaza-bound ship recently, had accusations of being a Hamas-supporter hurled at her and was detained illegally by Israeli pirate terrorists.
Sunny said:
Or Bertie Ahearn ...
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I doubt it - there probably wasn’t enough gombeen-man money in it.
Sunny said:
... and Tony Blair
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… needed an Ace to help him recover from the WMD debacle and being Bush’s go-for boy. He launched the inquiry though, probably with instructions to Saville to hang a few minor army types out to dry.

Since Mairead Corrigan-Maguire and Betty Williams were awarded their Laureates, the Nobel Peace Prize has had its reputation radically enhanced with Obama winning it for committing an additional 30,000 US troops to Afghanisatn. The purpose of the extra troops is to enable commanders to reach body-count targets sooner, thus shortening the “war” and withdrawing troops sooner, which all adds up to peace-keeping.
 

Not saying that they should win the nobel peace prize, joke that it is. Simply saying that Bertie Ahearn, Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Geroge Mitchell and many others on both the Nationalist and Unionist sides and in both the British and Irish Governments deserve great credit for the Peace Process.
 
Deiseblue said:
Murdering 1st Para scum , whose actions precipitated the whole tragedy that was " The Troubles "
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The troubles were well under way by this time - the IRA was very active before this.

Too much of what happened in NI is due to inaccuracies contained in statements like this, for both the Unionist and Nationalist agendas. It will always be a very emotive topic and will always be prone to people opening old wounds with stuff like this.
 
Markjbloggs said:
The troubles were well under way by this time - the IRA was very active before this. ...
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You evidently have information that wasn't available to the Saville inquiry because the inquiry's conclusions are radically different to what you suggest above. Or are you from the Ken Maginnis school of logic that says the IRA started it so it's all their fault?

I agree about the inaccuracies, some of which are reflected in your post IMHO.
 

Answer these questions?

Did the troubles start in 1969 or not???

Were a couple of hundred people killed before Bloody Sunday?

If you answer yes to both the above, then ask yourself was 1972 (Bloody Sunday) before or after 1969?

One final question - are you old enough to remember the sequence of events as they happened?
 
FWIW, and from memory of about 12 years, the jist of the story from Tim Pat Coogan's book The Troubles (v. good book IMHO) was that there were 3 main events that created "The Troubles":

1. The Civil Rights Movement of 1969, or I suppose more particularly the sectarian reaction of some citizens to it plus the reaction of the apparatus of the State to it (e.g. RUC charging the march in Derry & later the army blocking of marches).

2. Operation Motorman a.k.a. the rape of the falls - basically a fairly blunt thrashing of the place by the army, usual story of no great win for the army but massive dissaffection amongst innocents heretofore uninvolved but now radicalised &

3. Bloody Sunday - queues 3 across to join the IRA in the aftermath.

(maybe Internment was another one, cant remember rightly)

So I dont think Bloody Sunday was the cause as such, but it seems have intensified the problem significantly, gave the IRA the critical mass it needed to sustain the long war. i.e. if there was no Bloody Sunday things might not have been quite so bad, maybe it would have been like the current dissident threat (or more likely a good bit worse but not to the "heights" it actually was).

So no denying it was a major part of the problem, just how significant is for the realm of speculation.
 
Markjbloggs said:
Answer these questions?...
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Your questions are off-topic IMHO, one isn't a question at all and one is none of your business but the answer can be deduced fairly accurately from a previous post.

The thread topic is the Saville Report about Bloody Sunday. Your post follows the Ken Maginnis school of logic, claiming everything that ever happened before Bloody Sunday was the cause of or a factor contributing to the slaughter of innocent people on the streets of Derry that day by British soldiers.

The Saville report's published conclusions are at variance with what you, Maginnis and Jackson choose to believe.
 
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I don't think that is what he is saying at all. Someone posted that Bloody Sunday started the troubles. That is factually incorrect and Lord Saville's conclusions do not support that idea.
 
Mathepac

So you were old enough? You seem to have sunk your teeth in this Ken Maginnis thing - remember we have plenty of dinosaurs down here who will twist facts for their own agendas too.

PS - are you the new Clubman? (that IS a question)
 

Precipitated was probably the wrong word ,the report concluded that Bloody Sunday strengthened the Provos ,increased nationalist resentment and hostility towards the British Army and exacerbated the violent conflict - probably I should have referred to Bloody Sunday as a defining or watershed moment.

Given the contents of the report I consider my description of the 1st Paras as murdering scum to be totally correct.
 
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