August Books 4) The Bloody Sunday Report, Vol X; and my conclusions

[nwhyte]

The tenth and last volume of the Blood Sunday Report is lengthy (541 numbered pages) but doen't really add much substance. The first 36 pages are a two-part appendix, a longish memo about how and to a lesser extent why the Inquiry was set up and then a listing of the lawyers involved; and there then follows another appendix containing Saville's

Comments

[londonkds]

I was always puzzled by the hostility of Private Eye to the Saville Inquiry, and can only put it down to the same knee-jerk hostility to lawyers making money that led them to repeatedly make the bizarre innuendo that the Human Rights Act was some kind of nepotistic plot to make Cherie Booth money.

[smhwpf]

Thanks for posting all this, and for reading the entire Saville Enquiry so that we don't have to!

Fascinating, and often grim reading.

It is, as you say, an extremely positive thing that this has happened, for there finally to be a truthful accounting.

What I wonder, and seriously doubt, is whether anything has changed. That is, is the British or inded any other government capable of proper accountability at the time for the actions of its agents, be they police or armed forces? I think the depressing evidence of cases such as De Menezes, Bahar Moussa and the other victims of British brutality in Iraq, the Wikileaks in Afghanistan, and many other such cases is no, and especially not in a situation of armed conflict.

That is probably not the function of the peculiar wickedness of a particular government or a particular country, but is something essential to the nature of the state.

Truth 38 years late may be the best we can get.

[irishkate]

At the very least the military involved should all be charged with something like perverting the course of justice and for some; perjury. Murder or manslaughter would be hard to pull off with the uncertainty over who shot whom but the cover up afterwards must surely be actionable.

Of course I understand that it probably won't be but the scale and scope of the actions taken after the event and the damage caused to the people and problems of Northern Ireland are considerable.

[anonymous]

A well put together review but from the language you use it is clear where your political opinion was before you read the report - so you would have to admit that seen in that context any review you give of a report which supported your view could be seen as biased? So showing Saville to you would be a bit like preaching to the converted - you were reading what in many ways you wanted to hear & your review would've been much more effective if you could have restrained yourself from using phrasing like "whining of the lawyer for the murderous soldiers" or revealing you are Guardian reader - never a good idea

[nwhyte]

Well, I hope that exercise in reading my mind made you feel better. I note that you have no substantial quibble with the actual findings that British soldiers shot a couple of dozen of their fellow citizens without justification.

I write these reviews for my own satisfaction, not for yours; if anyone else finds some worth in my efforts, that's an added bonus.

[pgmcc]

Isn't it convenient the Troll's name is Anonymous.