Somehow the weather knew what the Saville report contained. Early in the morning, I stood on the walls looking over Derry's Bogside, gazing on the shooting ground of Bloody Sunday, immortalized in the murals looking up at me, wondering what the day would bring. Never before had the city looked so sparkling, the sunlight so dancing, or the air felt so clear. Later I stood downstairs in the Guildhall as the families, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, children, grandchildren went upstairs to the chamber where Saville had sat to hear his judgment. We heard a collective primal shriek of emotion and for me that was the moment when Saville's truth was revealed. It rushed down the stairs like a wind. Justice for injustice. Right for wrong. Truth for lies. Thirty eight years later, yet still not too late. Costing two hundred million pounds, yet still not too costly. Instinctive, primal, touching straight to the core. Law was never before like this.
The beauty of Saville's report lay in its clarity and brevity. In around 60 pages double spaced, it cut through the testimony of thousands of witnesses, the passage of time, the pages of contradictory evidence and arguments, the maps, photographs, and secret agents. A strange mirror to Widgery in length, structure, and its placing of 'responsibility' centre stage, the summary document reflected back a completely opposite finding:
Widgery: there is a strong suspicion that some [of the deceased and wounded] had been firing weapons of handling bombs in the course of the afternoon and that yet others had been closely supporting them. . . . There was no general breakdown in discipline. For the most part the soldiers acted as they did because they thought their orders required it . . .
Saville: The firing by soldiers of 1 PARA on Bloody Sunday caused the deaths of 13 people and injury to a similar number, none of whom was posing a threat of causing death or serious injury. What happened on 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.
The difference in the truth delivered to families about their loved ones was also dramatic and worth illustrating:
Widgery: dealing with the deaths of John Young, William Nash and Michael McDaid:
Young was undoubtedly associated with the youths who were throwing missiles at the soldiers from the barricade and the track of the bullet suggests that he was facing the soldiers at the time. . . It is not possible to identify the particular soldier who shot Young. . . The paraffin test disclosed lead particles on the web, back and palm of the left hand which were consistent with exposure to discharge gases from firearms. . . the distribution of the particles seems to me to be more consistent with Young having discharged a firearm. When his case is considered in conjunction with those of Nash and McDaid and regard is had to the soldiers' evidence about civilians firing from the barricade a very strong suspicion is raised that one or more of Young, Nash and McDaid was using a firearm.
Saville: para 3.102 dealing with the same deaths:
As to the . . . shooting . . . which caused the deaths of William Nash, John Young and Michael McDaid, Corporal P claimed that he fired at a man with a pistol; Lance Corporal J claimed that he fired at a nail bomber; and Corporal E claimed that he fired at a man with a pistol in the Rossville Flats. We reject each of these claims as knowingly untrue. We are sure that these soldiers fired either in the belief that no-one in the areas towards which they respectively fired was posing a threat of causing death or serious injury, or not caring whether or not anyone there was posing such a threat. In their cases we consider that they did not fire in a state of fear or panic.
In fact, in the body of Saville's report, the story of John Young that emerges is not one of an armed gunman facing the soldiers, but a story of an unarmed 17 year old boy crawling away from soldiers to the aid of the dying William Nash. This reversal is repeated with all of the victims.
The report deals not just with the individual responsibility of soldiers and victims, but with the question of how high up the chain of military and political command responsibility lay. Saville makes a clear finding that there was no political and military plan to kill on Bloody Sunday.
Yet as regards military responsibility of the chain of command, there is an oblique 'kind-of' criticism of General Ford at the top of the chain of command, for taking the decision to deploy 1 PARA that day. In a strangely worded paragraph Saville finds:
"In the light of the situation that obtained in Londonderry in early 1972 . . . we do not criticise General Ford for deciding to deploy soldiers to arrest rioters". However, he then notes that "in our view his decision to use 1 PARA as the arrest force is open to criticism, on the ground that 1 PARA was a force with a reputation for using excessive physical violence, which thus ran the risk of exacerbating the tensions between the Army and nationalists in Londonderry" (emphasis added).
Ultimately, however, Saville finds that Ford is not responsible for the soldier's actions because (and the distinction while appearing technical is significant), they did not use excessive justified force but unjustified force.
Saville directs a much clearer criticism at Lieutenant Colonel Derek Wilford, the on-the-ground troop commander for having sent the soldiers into the Bogside, where use of lethal force was a likely outcome. He finds that he took this decision in violation of orders from his immediate superior Brigadier MacLellan – a finding that alleviates the responsibility of MacLellan. However, here too Saville absolves Wilford from responsibility for the deaths, finding that even Wilford cannot be held responsible for 'unjustifiable' shooting which the soldiers engaged in.
Paradoxically, Saville's reasoning means that the more murderous and terrible their intent and actions of the soldiers, the more those superior to them are alleviated from responsibility. Importantly, however, the question of whether Bloody Sunday was enabled by a wider political and military culture is specifically left open. Saville points out that he would have had to examine deaths before and after Bloody Sunday to reach a finding on this front – a task well beyond his mandate. For all that Saville closes questions of direct conspiracy, he leaves open the broader question of whether state killing was enabled by a culture of impunity – a question that still requires to be addressed.
In addition to these central issues Saville had to deal with conflicts of evidence which, while not relevant to the central question of responsibility, nevertheless were hotly disputed during the Tribunal hearings. With regard to some conflicts of evidence he makes attempts throughout the report to resolve such conflicts. Sometimes he can do so clearly – for example he finds that there were no buried additional 'gunmen' as the soldiers had claimed. In other cases he cannot resolve conflicts and turns to language such as 'probable' and 'possible', for example as to whether Martin McGuiness had a gun at any stage of the day it is 'probable' that he had. The language of probability opens him up to controversy but also indicates a faithfulness to his role as fact-finder. Importantly, Saville is clear as to which findings are categorical and which are speculative. He also takes care to point out that wider evidentiary 'probable' facts do not impinge on his central ruling that the deaths were unjustified and unjustifiable.
The body of the report deserves a fuller readership than it seems likely to get. It is a compelling read – the precision of Saville's calm consideration of the evidence accentuates rather than diminishes the horror of how the day unfolded. His documentation of detail conveys the terribleness of what people found themselves caught up in, more in ways than films and documentaries: people frantically administering amateur medical intervention to wounds that cannot be stenched, or desperately carrying dying boys to places of safety, cars that wouldn't start, or that couldn't make it through road blocks to hospital.
So where does Saville's report leave us? First and foremost it leaves us with greater clarity and truth with regard to Bloody Sunday. This cannot be dismissed as a simple acknowledgment of what 'everyone already knew'. Saville has 'narrowed the range of permissible lies' which can be told about what happened that day. Saville's report matters because he was a judge, because his process was legally rigorous, because the soldiers had a fair chance to put their case, and (paradoxically) – because it had capacity to reach a result other than the one he gave. No matter how much public opinion claimed to recant from Widgery (and recanting became the norm as Saville's release day closed in), Widgery stood as the official version of Bloody Sunday's rights and wrongs and as such continued to set its baseline truth. To associate with the families' truth, was not merely to assert a truth but was to be 'political', and perhaps 'partisan', 'nationalist' or 'republican'. The Unionist/Protestant community in particular were left in a position that to acknowledge a great wrong required one to break step with the official version and the armed forces that the official narrative sought to protect. But the families' search for truth was for many, many years an even lonelier search with many more detractors, who only gradually fell away.
Saville changed all this forever. From the hour his verdict was published, public discussion of Bloody Sunday and the families changed. The families' central truth is now also the truth of the British government, the British army, church leaders, and politicians of all shades. The central truth of innocence that the families fought for is the truth that will find its way into the history of our children's school books.
Saville's report importantly also leaves us with Cameron's statement and apology. The generosity with which Cameron embraced the report and its conclusions and articulated that embrace as a necessary part of democracy has huge significance for the political landscape in Northern Ireland, Ireland, Britain and elsewhere. It cannot be dismissed as purely 'smart politics' or something he had to do politically. British governments have seldom been smart with regard to Northern Ireland or felt they had to do the right thing on the human rights front. Cameron's statement operated as a broad acknowledgment of state wrong-doing and its role in accelerating the conflict. However it also stands as ongoing challenge to those others responsible for the violence of that conflict that will also continue to ring in his own ears.By defining generosity in admission of wrongs as part of democratic practice a new moral baseline has been set. We should never underestimate the power of concepts such as democracy and justice to continue to burst out of the vessels that attempt to limit and constrain them, demanding action.
Finally, Saville's report, in its truths, its open verdicts, and even its limitations brings us as a society to an important cross-roads. Should we attempt to address our past in search of the liberation brought by a measure of justice? Or is the best we can manage to limp along trying to control the bits and pieces of the past that insist in pushing up through the graves. As we make our decision, it is worth pointing out that a default position of 'doing nothing' quite simply does not exist. Pretending that it does will neither prevent further legal process nor make the past go away.
In Saville the Bloody Sunday families took a risk on a process they did not entirely believe in, had to live with the fearful uncertainty of its outcome, and won a measure of truth, justice and liberation. Perhaps the time has come to learn from their lesson. Perhaps we should grab onto fear and ambivalence as the appropriate protective cloak for moving forward in search of justice, rather than reasons for standing always scared and half-committed to the politics of peace that ensues when justice is understood as too difficult.
Christine Bell is Professor of Public International Law at the Transitional Justice Institute, Magee Campus, University of Ulster.
