Bloody Sunday

On January 30 1972, 14 people on a civil rights march in Derry, Northern Ireland, were gunned down by British Paratroopers. Yesterday, 38 years later, Prime Minister David Cameron apologised unreservedly for the shocking, unprovoked killings.

The Saville Report, released after 12 years at a cost of almost £200 million, finally confirms what the marchers always knew - that the shootings were gratuitous and arbitrary. None of the marchers had done anything to prompt the gunfire.

Relatives and friends were utterly traumatised by the events of that day, and their pain was worsened by the earlier Widgery Report that concluded the marchers had been firing weapons and had provoked answering shots from the soldiers.

For 38 years they have been campaigning for justice, for an official admission that the marchers were blameless when the confused and panic-stricken Paratroopers opened fire randomly at the crowds.

Why did it take so long for the government to admit the truth? Why couldn't they just own up to it straightaway and try to heal the wounds before they turned into such a bitter and deep-rooted sense of grievance? What was to be gained by lying and prevaricating for so many years?

Even now, even after this exhaustive inquiry, those responsible for the carnage are still making excuses, still claiming that those in charge at the time made perfectly sensible and understandable decisions and that the bloody consequences were just an unfortunate tragedy.

I was both astonished and relieved to see the Prime Minister taking the blame fairly and squarely and apologising sincerely for what happened. I can only applaud him for his directness.

Paying for grief

There are still so many unhealed wounds from the trauma and grief of the Troubles that any new proposals for dealing with the victims attract instant controversy.

A report commissioned by the British government suggests a £12,000 payment to each family of the 3,700 people killed, regardless of personal circumstances and regardless of whether the person who died was a terrorist or an innocent victim.

Already there's a heated debate over the proposals, with Unionist politicians angrily demanding that the families of terrorists shouldn't get any payment.

The authors of the report, Lord Robin Eames and Denis Bradley*, point out that whether the dead were terrorists or not, those left behind were equally traumatised and bereft. That's absolutely true, and the Unionists are deliberately missing the point for their own ends.

My own objection is a different one, and that is how any sum of money could possibly compensate for personal grief and loss. In fact it's almost an insult to say a wad of cash is an appropriate response.

Surely the more sensible approach is to offer each family the particular help they need, be it counselling, financial assistance, childcare or whatever. And this sort of help should be available in any case from the public services, so there shouldn't be any need for extra initiatives.

I also have to ask whether it makes sense to give £40 million of public funds to people who may not need it or want it, when the many thousands of people knocked for six by the economic slump need help much more urgently to keep a roof over their heads and feed their families.

Of course we need to recognise the dreadful suffering caused by the Troubles, but this proposal is an odd way of doing it.

* Lord Eames is a former Church of Ireland primate. Denis Bradley is a former vice-chairman of the Northern Ireland policing board.

Photo: the aftermath of the Omagh bombing in 1998