Bloody Sunday Inquiry

Lord Macdonald of River Glaven Excerpts

Wednesday 13th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Macdonald of River Glaven]

My Lords, it is a great honour and a privilege to address your Lordships’ House for the first time. I do so with a sense of trepidation, in that I am following so many powerful speeches, and with a sense of privilege to be taking part in such an important debate. I am delighted to start by thanking all the staff in this building for the great kindness and patience they have shown towards me in the past few weeks. They have certainly needed their patience; I am conscious that I have asked the same questions many times over, usually regarding the directions to some place which I have already been to. Police and doorkeepers have made these rather strange first few days a great deal easier than they would otherwise have been.

Like my fellow new Members, I have been welcomed with great warmth and generosity by noble Lords from all sides of the House, and from all parties and none. Speaking of different parties, my supporters came, perhaps slightly unusually, from two: my noble friend Lady Scott of Needham Market, the president of the Liberal Democrats, acted as introducer and supporter to a number of new Liberal Democrat Peers, and in spite of heavy burdens elsewhere she did the same for me. The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, is not a Liberal Democrat but she was my pupil-mistress. Indeed, I was her first pupil when I was called first to the Bar. The noble Baroness will not thank me for mentioning that that was over 30 years ago. She has, however, remained an inspiration to me throughout my career in the law. I thank them both for their great kindness.

The spirit of this place is deeply impressive and I am delighted to be here. When the Deputy Prime Minister, as he then was not, first spoke to me last October about the possibility of my becoming a Liberal Democrat Peer, I naturally imagined that he was proposing that I should join a small, independently minded band of committed troublemakers. Instead, and much to my surprise, I find myself sitting on the government Benches. We shall see how much difference that makes to my noble friends—or, I suppose, in the end, to me.

The events that occurred on 30 January 1972 in the Bogside were of startling import to the United Kingdom. Twenty-six unarmed, mainly British, citizens were shot by soldiers of the British Army on the streets of a British city. Thirteen of those mainly British citizens, seven of whom were teenagers, died immediately or soon after, while another man died four and a half months later. At least five British soldiers fired shots at people they knew posed no threat at all, and five members of the public were wounded with shots to the back. Each killing, each wounding, was unjustified. Each was unjustifiable. No single victim had posed any threat of death or serious injury to any soldier.

The British Government have held two investigations into these momentous events. The Widgery tribunal was established in the immediate aftermath of the event. It largely cleared the soldiers and the British authorities of any blame, going no further than to describe the behaviour of some of the military as “bordering on the reckless”. That report was published in circumstances of great controversy at home and abroad, but its conclusions were accepted without hesitation by the then British Government. It seems to me that it is partly because it became so widely believed, not just throughout the United Kingdom but around the world, that Widgery had failed abjectly to uncover the truth of that day that the establishment of a second inquiry became inescapable.

No great country can knowingly allow a great injustice to lie. This is all the more so when that injustice involves the state’s own responsibility for the deaths of its innocent citizens, and particularly when that responsibility has previously been obscured by a failed inquiry headed by a then serving Lord Chief Justice. The wrong had to be righted.

This is not at all to say that the Saville inquiry was capable of righting all injustices in Northern Ireland. Of course it was not, and never could be; no one believed that to be its purpose. In particular, it has left quite untouched the terrible injustices that terrorism has wreaked upon the unionist communities over too many years. In the face of great cruelty, the resilience of the people of Northern Ireland has become a matter of historical record. Likewise, the courage of the overwhelming majority of British soldiers is overwhelmingly recognised and I pay tribute to it.

I spent five years of my life as Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales, much of which time was spent prosecuting terrorists of all hues and bringing them to justice. I therefore understand what terrorism represents and the great evil that it creates. I understand the misery that it brings, and the importance of destroying it utterly. But it is important to recognise the difference between illegal violence perpetrated by terrorist gangs on the one hand and illegal violence perpetrated by the state on the other. The state’s response to each category will necessarily differ. In the first case, the state has the duty to put it down; in the second, the state has an additional duty to put it right. This, I think, was the intention of Saville and, in so far as it ever could be, this intention has been realised. The inquiry took far too long and cost far too much but, when the report came, in its central findings it was exemplary. It is meticulous, it is scrupulous and, above all, it is fair.

It is said that when the Prime Minister received a first-draft response to Saville composed by his officials, he tore it up, sat down and wrote what he intended to say in his own hand. Well, good for him. Everyone wants justice; the thirst for justice is a critical marker of the human spirit, and I believe that we are all born with it. Through Saville, and through the Prime Minister’s eloquence in commending its ringing conclusions to Parliament last June, the British state has at long last delivered at least a measure of justice to all the victims of Bloody Sunday. I believe that in doing so, the state has strengthened itself.