Simon Winchester, who was there on Bloody Sunday, shows why the Saville report was worth the time and money:
Minutes later, in perhaps the most hauntingly memorable of all of Britain’s post-imperial moments, the prime minister got to his feet in the Commons and publicly apologised for what his country’s soldiers had done, all those years ago. It was impossible to defend the indefensible, he said.
Men of the support company of the 1st Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, had shot without justification. Victims had been shot in the back, or while they crawling away, Soldiers had lied under oath. The episode would never be forgotten, could never be forgotten.
There was a roar of cheering at the high points of Cameron’s speech – and barely no jeering, even during the obligatory utterances of praise, destined for the shires, for other soldiers in other places. But when it was over, the square was filled with a vast silence. It was as though they could scarcely believe what they had just heard, a British prime minister, a Tory at that, offering a formal and sincerely-meant apology for what his soldiers had done nearly four decades ago to men and women who were guilty only of protesting at the excesses and longevity of British colonial rule of Ireland. It was a speech unprecedented in its tone, its scope and its content.
It doesn’t really matter whether or not any of the soldiers will be prosecuted; what matters was that the victims were exonerated, finally officially declared innocent, no longer smeared as having brought their murders upon themselves. That and that alone more than justifies the Saville report; if not for that it would be pointless. In the end it’s about the best you can expect from a colonial power investigating its own crimes.
What’s interesting is that despite Cameron’s full and unqualified apology and taking of responsibility, there still was a backlash against the findings as soon as they became public, with Stephen Pollard talking big on PM about conclusions drawn not supported by evidence — assholes remain assholes on any topic. Yet it is probably true that the soldiers named and blamed in the report are not completely responsible for the massacre, as it seems pretty clear that Bloody Sunday was the outcome of a deliberate policy to crush the civil rights/freedom struggle in Northern Ireland with violence, similar to how the British army had handled other colonial disturbances. The only difference was that it happened closer to home and in the sight of news cameras.
