Bloody Sunday Inquiry (Report)

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

The events of 30 January 1972 are a hideous stain on the British Army’s reputation. It was a bloody day and a catastrophe. No soldiers were killed but 14 civilians were. Let us be quite clear that it was a total failure of leadership by 1st Battalion, the Parachute Regiment. I fully endorse the Prime Minister’s profound apology and the Secretary of State’s apology earlier today for what happened on Bloody Sunday. I was serving in the British Army at the time—as, I suspect, were a few other Members of the House—and I shall try to explain what we felt then. We in the British Army knew that a great wrong had been done; we did not need any Widgery or Saville to know that.

I was a young officer then. I joined my battalion, 1st Battalion the Cheshire Regiment, in January 1970 and the first thing I was told was that I was going to Northern Ireland on operations—my own country. That came as a huge shock. I had been brought up by my father and gone to boarding school, with my father fundamentally serving his country abroad on operations. I had spent most of my time in the middle east, so hon. Members can imagine my shock when I was warned that I was going to Londonderry within a couple of weeks of arriving in my battalion.

We started our training immediately, but we did not know what to do. We watched parts 1 and 2 of the film, “Keeping the Peace,” which was made by my battalion in the 1950s. We were being trained to go into Northern Ireland as though we were going into somewhere like Singapore, Palestine or Amritsar. It was dreadful. We did not know what we were doing. We practised dealing with riots at Weeton camp in Lancashire using formations that the British Army had so often used in the past. In the formation, we had snipers, cameramen, diarists and banner-men, and the banner that I was issued said, on one side “Anyone crossing the white line is liable to be shot” and on the other, “Disperse or we fire”. We took that banner to Londonderry, but what was farcical was that the second language on it was Arabic. We sought guidance from an officer with 1st Battalion, the Gloucestershire Regiment, Lieutenant Vince Hazlewood, and he suggested that we practise dispersing crowds by pushing concertina wire down the road. He said that this would work. It did not.

We deployed by car ferry to Belfast from Liverpool. I could not believe that. We were there with school trips and cars; it was just astonishing. When we got to Londonderry, we went to a place called HMS Sea Eagle, now Ebrington barracks, and from there we deployed into the city. We did small patrols of two men—I often went out with two or three people—and we made absolutely certain that our rifles were pointing skywards. The idea of us opening fire at our own people was just out of line. Out of line.

When the riots came, we were totally surprised. We went down Rossville street and William street in a sort of box formation à la Malaya or Aden. Immediately, we realised that we had made a mistake. About one third of my platoon were hurt, either with broken legs or with burns from petrol bombs. Do you know what? My goodness, we were frightened. I have been under fire quite a lot since then, but I want to tell the House how fearful it was being on the streets in those days and not having an answer as to how to behave. People were banging planks against walls to make it sound like we were under fire.

We did not use CS gas, we certainly did not open fire and we were not even allowed to draw our batons. We took to putting newspaper down the front of our trousers in wads to try to stop our legs being broken by the incoming bricks. I was in 6 Platoon, and my fellow platoon commander, Nigel Hine, in 4 Platoon, was caught by the crowd and had his jaw broken in three places. He bandaged it up and kept going through the night. He was the first officer to receive the MBE for gallantry in Northern Ireland. We were grossly inadequately prepared, and I suspect that that continued all the way through the early ’70s. We did our best, and the last thing that we wanted to do was to open fire. We had the yellow card, and we understood the rules of the yellow card absolutely.

The day of 30 January 1972 was a disgrace. It was also an aberration. One bad event can destroy thousands of good ones, and that was a bad event. Huge numbers of soldiers went through Northern Ireland. The House has already heard that 250,000 did so, and I pay great tribute to those who acted properly, did their duty and cared about the people of Northern Ireland. I remember them today, because more than 700 of them lost their lives—some of them, trying to protect people.

I end by simply saying, as so many Government and Opposition Members know, and as we knew at the time, that 30 January 1972 was an aberration. It should never have happened. It was a total failure of leadership, from battalion command down, and my goodness I hope that it never happens again. But I ask hon. Members, please to remember how well the British Army, the Royal Ulster Constabulary and all those concerned about what happened in Northern Ireland behaved right the way through the 38 years of the troubles.