`The whole episode now seems quite bizarre and wholly inexplicable," wrote legal correspondent Marcel Berlins in Tuesday's Guardian. He was referring to the fact that less than 20 years ago, the Lord Chief Justice of England, Lord Widgery, "went quietly demented while still in office and no one did anything about it. On the contrary, his state (I assume it was a form of Alzheimer's) was covered up at high level . . . I cannot understand how he was able to stay on the bench for so long while clearly incapable."
Berlins writes that the mental decline started a few years after Bloody Sunday. The lord chancellors knew, as did all his fellow judges and much of the Bar, but no one said or did anything. "At first, he still delivered the occasional judgment, mumbling almost inaudibly. As he got worse, his colleagues used to write his judgments for him and read them out, pretending they were his." The only explanation for the silence and inaction Berlins offers is that times were different then.