George Kerevan: Bloody Sunday report is latest step towards a united Ireland

Published on Wednesday 16 June 2010 21:36

IN 1966, Derry, in Northern Ireland, had 14,325 Catholic voters and 9,235 Protestant ones. Yet by "gerrymandering" all the Catholics into one local ward, the unionist ultras retained a permanent majority on the city council. Welcome to the Bantustan of Northern Ireland as was.

In 1965, Sen Lemass, Irish taoiseach and a veteran of the 1916 Easter Rising, sought to normalise relations with the North; that is, accept it existed and put dreams of reunification aside. Surprisingly, the then unionist prime minister, an otherworldly aristocrat called Terence O'Neill, took Lemass at his word and invited him to Stormont.

Catholics and liberal Protestants in the North saw this as the signal for reform and began marching, expecting a romantic replay of the civil rights movement in the United States. Unionist Neanderthals, led by a demagogue called Ian Paisley, accused O'Neill of betraying the Protestant cause and began bashing the heads of the youthful protesters. It was not long before Catholics were being murdered and ethnically cleansed from mixed neighbourhoods in Belfast. In direct response, the Provisional IRA emerged and a fight for civil rights turned into gory civil war.

London sent in the British Army to protect the Catholics and restore order. That might have worked had the breathing space been used to impose reform on the unionists. But both Harold Wilson's Labour administration and then Ted Heath's Tory government fumbled the opportunity. Too often, the London political elites treat the aspirations and problems of the constituent parts of the British state as either an unwelcome diversion, or an irrelevance.

Worse, the British Army was fresh from two decades of colonial action, fighting bloody rearguard actions covering the retreat from Empire in Palestine, Kenya, Malaya, Cyprus and Aden. Bloody Sunday – 30 January, 1972, in Derry – was a massacre just waiting to happen.

All it took was for "Lieutenant N" to ignore orders and fire an automatic burst over the heads of some teenagers in Derry's Bogside, presumably in order to frighten them. Paratroopers exiting from two armoured personnel carriers saw this officer apparently in a firefight and heard the sound of bullets echoing round Derry's narrow streets. Unthinkingly, they went into attack mode and mowed down 13 unarmed civilians.

Why Bloody Sunday deserves to stand out in the miasma of violence that engulfed Northern Ireland between 1969 and 1998 is simple. First, it confirmed the view in the nationalist community that the Brits were the allies of the unionist ultras. After that, Britain was part of the problem, not the solution. It would take a quarter of a century to change that.

Second, a hurried "inquiry" led by (Brigadier) Lord Widgery gave official credence to the obvious lies of the soldiers involved that the massacred Bogsiders had been carrying weapons. Widgery closed off any chance of a peaceful settlement for a generation. The lengthy and hideously expensive Saville inquiry was required to purge that historical wrong from the record book. It was worth the cost.

None of this is to condone the many other acts of savage violence that took place on all sides during the Troubles. But unless we exercise cool political judgment and see Bloody Sunday for the pivotal yet wholly avoidable disaster it was, we are doomed to repeat such episodes. The Paras who did the killing and lied about it are guilty. So, too, are the politicians and army officers who put them there.

For that reason, I am not in favour of prosecuting the soldiers responsible for Bloody Sunday, though clearly they perjured themselves during the Saville inquiry. Northern Ireland has moved on and any attempt to look backward will only renew bitterness best forgotten. (Though it would help if the Parachute Regiment made known its own contrition.)

On Tuesday, Prime Minister David Cameron made an impressive apology for Bloody Sunday. However, it is imperative that the government does not think it can sweep Northern Ireland under the political carpet after Saville. The imperial British state has been creaking at the edges since the end of Empire, and that has not altered one jot. The current settlement in Northern Ireland is no more than an interregnum – not a return to the status quo.

The Good Friday agreement contains a mechanism for progressing Irish unity – a clause necessary to win over the republicans. The British and Irish governments may decide to hold a referendum on the North's constitutional status. Once they trigger this process, further referendums on unification have to take place every seven years thereafter. That ensures the unionists can't win a quick poll while in the majority and use that as an excuse not to hold another for a generation – a point Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond should note.

A recent poll conducted for the Belfast Telegraph showed only a bare majority (55 per cent) of Northern Ireland voters want the province to remain within the UK.

More significantly, when asked if Northern Ireland would still be part of the UK by 2021, voters split evenly, 42 per cent agreeing against 42 per cent disagreeing. One in four Protestants think there will be a united Ireland.

The same poll also showed only 39 per cent of Northern Ireland voters now describe themselves as "British", with a further 18 per cent (mostly young Protestants) saying they are "Northern Irish". But 42 per cent – a sizeable plurality – consider themselves plain Irish, the vast majority of these (83 per cent) being Catholic.

The Northern Ireland minister for regional development, Sinn Fein MP and legislative assembly member Conor Murphy, is touting a referendum for 2016, the centenary of the Easter Rising in Dublin. Murphy is a rising star in republican circles.

Probably, 2016 is too early, but there will be a referendum eventually and Northern Ireland will slip out of the United Kingdom. That will be the final legacy of Bloody Sunday.