THERE's an important British army log recorded at around 4p.m. on Bloody Sunday and mentioned in the Widgery Report. It carries the official instruction that 1 Para were "not to conduct (a) running battle down Rossville Street".

But a one-way running battle is what they did conduct on that fateful Sunday, January 30th, 1972. The result was 14 dead, 13 wounded and a legacy of deep injustice only compounded by the report of the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Widgery.

It was a 15-minute bloodbath during which the paratroopers streamed down Rossville Street, contrary to the recorded order, killing nine people in the area of Rossville Flats, and then charged into nearby Glenfada Park, killing four more civilians. The 14th victim died later.

This happened shortly after 4 p.m. when a civil rights march against internment was drawing to a conclusion and when rioting, focused around William Street involving a breakaway group of about 200 protesters, was petering out.

Taken at face value, it would indicate that the first battalion of the Parachute Regiment (1 Para) disobeyed the order to carry out a "scoop-up" arrest of rioters close to the vicinity of a British army cordon around William Street, but some distance from Rossville Street.

The British Lord Chief Justice, Lord Widgery, chose to ignore this official record. Instead, he conveniently found that the instruction not to enter Rossville Street was "mistakenly" recorded.

It was just one of several instances where Lord Widgery made great leaps of faith in favour of the paratroopers and those who instructed them.

Contrary to the evidence of the former paratrooper who has featured in recent media reports, he found there was not a shred of, evidence to suggest that there was a top-level plan that the people of the Bogside should be taught a lesson for having the IRA in their midst.

A couple of months after Bloody Sunday, Lord Widgery had a choice to make. He could accept the testimony of hundreds of people - civil rights leaders, Bogsiders, priests, international journalists, camera crews, photographers - or the word of paratroopers responsible for the killings.

It seems it wasn't a difficult choice for Britain's most senior judicial figure. After all, as the then Prime Minister, Mr Ted Heath, told him before he embarked on his inquiry it had to be remembered that the British army was in Northern Ireland fighting not only a military war but a propaganda war".

THE Widgery Report was a limited propaganda success for the British government. But Bloody Sunday and the report which essentially exonerated 1 Para 25 years ago still haunts the people of Derry, the people of Northern Ireland, the people of Ireland. For good or ill, it's rooted in the Irish psyche like the Famine.

And now emerges the former paratrooper who challenges the account of Bloody Sunday as portrayed by Lord Widgery. An account that also challenges that of his former soldier colleagues.

He first contacted the Bath Chronicle, and subsequently the unionist-leaning News Letter in Belfast after they published an editorial calling on a British government apology for Bloody Sunday, and then BBC Radio Ulster, and Channel Four. His testimony was that the soldiers were psyched up on the eve of Bloody Sunday.

Testimony - almost certainly from the same soldier - obtained by the Sunday Business Post and now in the hands of the Government was more specific, - alleging that the night before the operation, one of 1 Para's officers said: "Let's teach these buggers a lesson. We want some kills tomorrow.

He further claims that during the main period of shooting there was an absence of command and control. In other words, effectively 1 Para was allowed to run amok for "15 minutes when the bulk of the shooting occurred".

Of equal if not greater significance, the former paratrooper alleged that a statement he was due to make to the Widgery inquiry was taken from him by officials and altered to suit the 1 Para version of Bloody Sunday. His conviction was that anyone who did not take the favoured line "tended to be ignored". In the end, although an important witness, he was not called to give evidence.

Curiously, it also emerged this week that evidence given by the respected BBC journalist, David Capper, was altered to suggest that he saw a civilian gunman firing a shot just before the paratroopers started killing people. In fact Mr Capper told the inquiry that the shot "which was more a gesture of defiance than anything else" was fired more than two hours before the civil rights march.

Furthermore, evidence he gave of witnessing paratroopers firing their rifles openly from waste crowd and of a soldier brutally assaulting an innocent civilian was disregarded in Widgery's report.

Indeed, the civilian, clerical and media witnesses who gave evidence to the Widgery tribunal in the spring of 1972 must have mixed feelings about the attention now being accorded to the expara. They must welcome the fact that, finally, 25 years on, a soldier has emerged who effectively endorses what they told Widgery.

But it must also add to the resentment of those Derry people, priests and media representatives whose testimony was discounted or ignored with such breath-taking selectivity by Lord Widgery. The story the former para tells - if his account is accurate, and so far no one has come forward to rebut it - merely confirms what they told the inquiry.

THERE is great craftsmanship in the Widgery Report. Reading it freshly, one can imagine the Sir Humphreys of the 1970s devising how they could create the illusion of fair play against a background of deceit. Indeed, there is important fresh evidence of such a specious approach.

There were thousands of people in Derry 25 years ago. Lord Widgery estimates the figure at between 3,900 and 5,000. The organisers said 30,000. From media comments and viewing old film and photographs, over 15,000 might seem a more reasonable estimate of the size of the illegal march.

Lord Widgery rejected out of hand claims made to his inquiry that 1 Para was specifically brought from Belfast in a psyched up state to either "flush out... and destroy" the IRA in the Bogside or to "give the residents a rough handling and discourage them from making or supporting further attacks on the troops".

The former soldier who has now emerged says that even after a ceasefire command was given at a time when nine civilians would have been killed at Rossville Flats - paratroopers continued into the area of Glenfada Park, where they shot dead four people and injured three.

He confirms frightening accounts given by witnesses such as Joseph Mahon, who was wounded in Glenfada Park, of how the four were gunned down in Glenfada. (Oddly, Lord Widgery decided it would be of no advantage to the inquiry to hear evidence from the wounded.)

The former soldier's description supports the witness accounts of James Wray being almost casually shot dead as he lay on the ground wounded; of Gerard McKinney with his hands in the air pleading for mercy being shot dead; of Gerard Donaghy shot while running away; of William McKinney shot in the back. It also supports claims that at least one of the soldiers was firing his rifle from the hip.

Lord Widgery had some difficulty with Glenfada Park, where he acknowledged that firing "bordered on the reckless" and that at least one soldier lied in saying he fired up to 22 shots at an alleged IRA gunman at a window.

He heard evidence to the contrary from people like the future Bishop of Derry, then Father Edward Daly, who said that apart from noticing one person with a revolver he saw no weapon other than those in British army hands.

He heard the evidence of Mr Derrick Tucker, an Englishman who served in the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force and who lived in Rossville Flats. No shots were fired at the soldiers, he told the inquiry. He said he "felt sickened and degraded by the action of the British army against unarmed civilians".

He heard the evidence of Guardian journalist Simon Winchester who, according to" Widgery, "came away from the Bogside that day with the impression that he had seen soldiers fire needlessly into a huge crowd".

Lord Widgery, if he had wished, could have cited similar testimony from over 500 witnesses evidence, as Don Mullan's book Eye-witness: Bloody Sunday records, that was submitted to the inquiry but largely ignored.

There are several other inconsistencies apparent from a reading of the report Lord Widgery was at pains to say he was not calling people like the future Bishop Daly and Simon Winchester, and all the others, liars or incompetent and subjective observers of events. But that was the effect of his findings.

The report was wonderfully specious. It may have satisfied the British establishment, but all it left in Derry and the rest of Ireland was a sense of grave injustice. Conscience, though, seems to have got to at least one soldier and that sense of guilt may widen.

Even without the former paratrooper's evidence there are compelling reasons for having Widgery's Report quashed on the grounds of bias and selectivity alone.

The fresh examination of eyewitness accounts, the official papers discovered by the families' solicitors, the evidence of soldiers from the Royal Anglian Regiment firing from Derry's walls - possibly leading 1 Para to mistakenly believe they were under fire from the IRA - and the evidence of the paratroopers' original accounts being changed to suit the official version of events further strengthen the case of the families, which is supported by the Irish Government.

And with the soldier's evidence it would seem contrary to natural justice that the British government would not now initiate a new truly independent inquiry into what happened on Bloody Sunday - or at least offer an admission of guilt through a proper apology.