Father Edward Daly, waving a blood-stained white handkerchief as he escorts a mortally-wounded protester to safety during the events of Bloody Sunday (1972) in Derry, in the North of Ireland. [Photo: BBC journalist John Bierman]
The Soldier F case is one of many being subjected to every possible delaying action. Others, potentially much more damaging, include the threat of an inquiry into the 1989 murder of human rights lawyer Pat Finucane by a loyalist gunman acting with state collusion, which amounted, in the words of his widow Geraldine's barrister, to an “extra-judicial execution”. Last December, the British government was found in the High Court, and despite a 2019 Supreme Court ruling, to still be in breach of its legal obligation to carry out an investigation into the killing.
15th January, 2023.
Soldier F was granted anonymity by the court although his name is well enough known, having been identified in both the British and Irish parliaments under parliamentary privilege. Saville Inquiry report into Bloody Sunday, published in 2010, found that Soldier F had shot three people and possibly another two.
Soldier F is also suspected of being present at the Ballymurphy Massacre six months previously, having been praised for “gallantry” at the time by his superiors, who included Brigadier Frank Kitson, author of the “Low Intensity Operations” counter insurgency manual.
L.Cpl. David Cleary also known as Soldier-F who is also suspected of being involved in the Ballymurphy Massacre
The case against Soldier F was only launched in 2019. It was halted in 2021 after Northern Ireland's Public Prosecution Service (PPS) questioned the admissibility of statements made to the Royal Military Police in 1972. In March 2022, the Court of Appeal overruled the objections and ordered the PPS to resume proceedings against Soldier F, who in 1972 was a lance corporal.
The delay of more than half a century before a trial, let alone any conviction, testifies to the sustained efforts of the British state and its political appendages to prevent any legal reckoning with the origins and perpetrators of what remains the most infamous mass killings of the “Troubles”.
Bloody Sunday was not some accidental excess but flowed directly from the British government's brutal colonial policy. Thousands of British troops were deployed to the North of Ireland in 1969 by the then Labour government of Harold Wilson, to prevent the collapse of the British controlled Northern statelet under the impact of a mass civil rights movement demanding equal rights for Catholics, part of a worldwide upsurge of class struggle. In August 1971, the then Conservative government of Edward Heath, supported by the North of Ireland premiere Brian Faulkner instigated a policy of mass arrests under the guise of internment of suspected Irish republicians. Hundreds were seized, many of which had no connection whatsoever with the IRA. Their homes were smashed up and many innocent families left traumatised. Many were tortured for days.
Popular opposition to internment culminated in the January 30, 1972 march, by which time over 22,000 troops were active in the North of Ireland, including the notoriously brutal British Parachute Regiment (The Para's) which was deployed to Derry as it had previously been deployed in Ballymurphy, Belfast. 15,000 marchers participated in a largely peaceful march, billed as a family day and which was intended to conclude with speeches.
The Bogside in 1981, overlooking the area where many of the victims were shot. On the right of the picture is the south side of Rossville Flats, and in the middle distance is Glenfada Park. [Photo by Louise Price/CC BY-SA 2.0]
Instead, marchers were subjected to a planned assault by the British Army, authorised and overseen by the Heath government. Heath was prepared to instigate mass arrests and 'even a shooting war', according to the minutes of the NI government's Joint Security Committee in Belfast.
An anonymous soldier placed in a witness protection programme told the Saville Inquiry of paratroopers anticipating “kills”, the day before Bloody Sunday. When they arrived in Derry, one paratrooper leapt out of the armoured vehicle and started firing immediately at some 40 civilians “running in an effort to get away.” Soldier F is one of 21 members of the Parachute Regiment who fired their weapons that day.
Also honoured for Bloody Sunday (listed above) the British paratroopers had the honour of being named in the London Gazette
An initial inquiry which reported April 1972 into the killings by a former British Army brigadier, Lord Widgery, was a blatant cover-up. Widgery said there would have been no deaths if there had not been an “illegal march”, that there was “no reason to suppose that the soldiers would have opened fire if they had not been fired upon first” and that the shootings reflected “differences in the character and temperament of the soldiers concerned”. Widgery falsely claimed there was “a strong suspicion” that some of the victims “had been firing weapons or handling bombs in the course of the afternoon.”
Recently released state papers underscored that maintaining the cover-up remained the policy of both Labour and Tory governments, even as the British establishment concluded a new inquiry would have to be conceded.
In early 1997, in the midst of the “peace process” that ultimately brought the “Troubles” to an end, then Tory Secretary of State for the North of Ireland, Sir Patrick Mayhew, told the Irish deputy premier, Dick Spring that the British government would not apologise for Bloody Sunday and that there was “not much prospect” of Widgery's 1972 findings being overturned. Mayhew hinted that the British government might express “profound regret” but that any apology would be to “accept liability”.
A few months later, under Labour's Tony Blair, Mayhew's replacement as NI Secretary Mo Mowlam was presented with a civil service briefing paper which noted “renewed interest in the prospects of securing some kind of change in the Government's position, either unilaterally or through the medium of a new inquiry.”
Mowlam was inclined to agree, so long as any inquiry was rigged to ensure that no British soldier or official ended up in jail. Mowlam wrote to Labour's Defence Secretary George Robertson to explain, “The overriding limitation would be that no soldier or other Crown servant should be placed in jeopardy of legal action by whatever the reviewer might find or by what might flow from his findings.”
Another paper from a NIO civil servant warned that what “concerns Ministry of Defence officials most” was the possibility of re-opening inquests for the Bloody Sunday victims or any review which might suggest soldiers should be prosecuted. In the event, Blair agreed to a new inquiry as part of a deal to bring Sinn Fein into the power-sharing structures of government in the North of Ireland, set up by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
The Saville Inquiry was finally set up in 1998, heard evidence until 2004 and reported in 2010, when then Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron duly made an apology. While his report amassed a huge amount of testimony, Saville's conclusion was consistent with the demands of his political masters. Saville rejected many of Widgery's lies, exonerating the victims. The report concluded, however, that fire by one soldier resulted in others “losing their self-control and firing themselves, forgetting or ignoring their instructions and training.” The whole affair was, in effect, down to poor training and discipline on behalf of a handful of paratroopers.
While continuing to block an investigation into Finucane's murder, the British government is pressing ahead with its NI Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill, which seeks amnesties on all “Troubles” cases in return for some level of co-operation with a toothless information recovery body. The legislation, intended to prevent any damaging new legal cases, is opposed by the groups who have campaigned for years to expose what happened to their loved ones. It has also been condemned by both the United Nation's (UN) Human Rights Council and the human rights commissioner of the Council of Europe.
With many thanks to: WSWS and Steve James for the original story.
Follow these links to find out more on this story: Mentioned in Despatches. Brigadier Kitson and Soldier F were honoured in the London Gazette for their gallantry in the face of the enemy during the internment swoops of August 1971.
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