Bloody Sunday Inquiry (Report)

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

Forty-eight hours after Bloody Sunday, I was on the ground in Derry with a team of lawyers from the then National Council for Civil Liberties, of which I became chairman. I have never been in a city so silent, traumatised by the death of its fathers, brothers and sons. The following Sunday, with 200,000 others, I marched in Newry. The march was characterised by total silence. Yet four years earlier in Northern Ireland, there were high hopes that a broad-based civil rights movement would end the second-class status of Catholics, and there were high hopes of tackling the problems of high unemployment and deprivation across the sectarian divide. If there was high unemployment on the Falls road and in Strabane, Newry and Derry, so too was there high unemployment on the Shankill road, and in north and east Belfast. I remember the optimism of that time, but it tragically gave way. It was broken at Burntollet and shattered by the burning of 400 homes in the summer of 1969, which also saw the emergence of the Provisional IRA. A fire that was fuelled by the mistakes of successive British Governments put the British Army in an impossible situation.

I want to make this absolutely clear: I was, often including in the most difficult circumstances, an implacable opponent of the Provisional IRA. The Provisional IRA murdered hon. Members of this House, such as the admirable Airey Neave, a war hero who escaped from Colditz and who died a terrible death but yards from the Chamber, and Ian Gow. It also murdered workers from my union. The victims at Kingsmill, to whom others have referred, were members of the Transport and General Workers Union. Let me tell the House what happened. Their bus was stopped when they were going home after a late shift. They were ordered out. Hooded gunmen asked, “Is there a Catholic among you?” and the Protestant workers gathered around the Catholic to protect him—they would not surrender him. In the end, he stepped forward and was told to go down the road, and the provo gunmen mowed down those innocent Protestant workers.

I am a profound opponent of violence by the Provisional IRA. Let us not confuse that with the Saville inquiry. What happened on Bloody Sunday was a uniquely awful crime in the history of the troubles of Northern Ireland. The murder was made worse by a cover-up—a shameful whitewash—that caused bitterness for a generation. Only now, as a consequence of the Saville report, can Northern Ireland finally move on.

Profound lessons need to be learned, first by the Government. Our first duty is the security of our country, and there can be no truck with terrorism—there is no excuse for the bomb or the bullet. I think of the global situation. There was an intelligent exchange today between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, who said the solution to the problem of Yemen being used as a base for terrorism was in part economic development. There are also lessons to be learned from our own country. We must always seek properly to strike the balance between security and liberty.

The second lesson is for the Army. We have today heard outstanding, moving testaments of all that is best in the British armed forces from the hon. Members for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) and for Keighley (Kris Hopkins). I know that from my own experience, because for 15 years, I was chairman of the defence trade unions. Three times a year, I would address seminars of senior representatives of the armed forces at Greenwich defence college. I was deeply impressed by the sophistication of the modern armed forces and their leadership, and by those who said time and again that they had learned terrible lessons from what happened in Northern Ireland, particularly from Bloody Sunday. It is to the great credit of the Army that it has done that. Rightly, it now deserves its worldwide reputation as the finest peacekeeping force on the globe, which it earned from Kosovo to Sierra Leone.

The third lesson that we can draw is that the cover-up makes the crime worse. Widgery caused enduring bitterness in Northern Ireland. I have to pay tribute to the Prime Minister. His statement in the summer was brave and right. He did not equivocate for a moment, which led to the deeply moving sight of the families in Derry saying that their sons, brothers and fathers were innocent. What happened that day was this House at its best, and it was a landmark contribution to the peace process in Northern Ireland.

If painful lessons have been learned, it is also right that today we should celebrate remarkable achievements, including the triumph of the peace process and the historic accommodation of the two great traditions of Unionism and nationalism in Northern Ireland. I know from personal experience how tough that can be. Yes, there was remorse from people such as Gusty Spence from the Ulster Volunteer Force, and I remember talking to a shop steward from the old TGWU, a provo gunman who had served 14 years for killing two innocent Protestants and who was racked with remorse for what he had done. However, there are also enduring problems of division and the consequences of the troubles, both economic and social. We also face the threat of renewed terrorism in Northern Ireland, to which every Member of this House will stand in opposition.

The final lesson to learn is the need to stand by the people of Northern Ireland. The House is entitled to say to our friends from all political parties in Northern Ireland that there can be no looking back and no going back. The peace process is a remarkable achievement for the good of the people of Northern Ireland that successive Governments, Conservative and Labour, have worked hard to cement. Contributions from all political parties in Northern Ireland have made the point about the need for continuing public investment, and I strongly agree.

Ireland is truly the emerald isle. However, for two centuries it was racked by division and ruined by poverty. Generations of people left Ireland for economic exile. My father came here from County Cork to dig roads in 1939, and he was followed by my mother in 1940, who came to work in a hospital in London. My father and his brothers then joined the British Army to fight in the great war against fascism. Following those two centuries of division and poverty, we now have—if we can look beyond the immediate problems that confront the island of Ireland and Northern Ireland in particular—the prospect of the next generation finally seeing this great island move on to enduring peace and prosperity. That is an immense prize, and I like to believe that Saville and how it has been handled by this Parliament, will be a landmark in that process.