THE BLOODY SUNDAY INQUIRY/Day 276: Bloody Sunday was a "fairly disastrous" military operation, former Defence Secretary Lord Carrington told the Bloody Sunday inquiry in London yesterday.
This was Downing Street's opinion in the immediate aftermath of British paratroopers killing 13 Catholic men on a Derry civil rights march on January 30th, 1972, he said. "A lot of people got killed and that was the last thing we wanted to see," Lord Carrington (83) told the inquiry.
He refused to blame the army for the bloodshed in the Bogside, saying that would be something for the inquiry to decide on the evidence. As the political head of the British armed forces in 1972, Lord Carrington is the most senior politician to have appeared.
He spoke in a decisive and unfaltering voice during five hours of questioning at London's Westminster Central Hall, watched by relatives of the dead men. He sought to dispel beliefs that there was a government-sanctioned plot to shoot civilians on that day.
Lord Gifford QC, representing the family of victim James Wray, told Lord Carrington the government had endangered Catholic lives in order to appease Protestant opinion.
Lord Carrington replied angrily: "I think that is a disgraceful accusation." Suggestions that there was a plot to shoot innocent civilians are "ridiculous", Lord Carrington said, adding, "People find plots in everything."
There was "never any question" of the British army firing on innocent people in Derry."I can state quite categorically that it was never policy to shoot unless a target had been identified as a threat," he told the inquiry.
"I suspect the army was frustrated with the situation in Northern Ireland at the time, but to suggest that there was a deliberate policy to shoot civilians is ludicrous and something that no politician would ever agree to."
Lord Carrington said he was not aware of a secret memorandum written by Gen Robert Ford, the British army's second most senior officer in Northern Ireland at the time, suggesting shooting selected "hooligan" ringleaders would be the best way to restore law and order.
The memo was written three weeks before Bloody Sunday.
No such plan existed, Lord Carrington said.
The hearing was adjourned until January 14th.