Saville: Paras' tough line 'was to show example'
The members of the Parachute Regiment involved in the Bloody Sunday killings may have taken a tough line to try and restore law and order because they wanted to show their colleagues “how the job should be done“, it was suggested today.
Other soldiers in 8 Brigade, which covered Derry in January 1972, believed the paras were deployed because they always took a strong line, the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, sitting in central London, was told.
British paratroopers killed 13 unarmed men on a Derry civil rights march on 30 January 1972.
Major INQ 1025 was an Assistant Adjutant on Bloody Sunday acting as the administrator for the Commanding Officer of 22nd Light Air Defence Regiment (LADR), Colonel Jimmy Ferguson. His company was commanding all the barriers on Bloody Sunday.
A diary note, dated 18 March 1972, from a LADR Lieutenant records a conversation the pair had a few weeks after Bloody Sunday.
The diary entry reads: “INQ 1025 was later told later that the whole affair was not so much to teach the Bogsiders a lesson but to show 8 Brigade and its units how it should be done by the so-called experts.”
Bilal Rawat, for the inquiry, said this suggested that the paras had been brought in to show local units in Derry “how the job should be done“.
Major INQ 1025 said this had been a “pretty commonly” held opinion among local soldiers of the paras but there was nothing official to back it up.
“It was held by some people,” he told the hearing adding that he could not remember the conversation with the Lieutenant.
“I could not tell you whether every officer believed that, but there certainly was a view to that effect.”
He always felt General Robert Ford, the Commander of the Land Forces, had been crucial in the timing of the decision to ordered the paras into the Bogside, he added.
In his statement Major INQ 1025 said: “My impression was that 8 Brigade only ordered 1 Para in because Ford ordered them to, but I have no evidence of this.”
Gen Ford has always maintained that he was on the ground that day only as an observer.
After a 7 January 1972 visit to Derry Gen Ford had left Col Ferguson with the impression that the current way of dealing with troublemakers was “too soft a line“, he said.
The paras would not have entered the Bogside unless they were ordered to, Major 1025 added.
He said: “The paras could not possibly have gone in without orders. This is the army when all is said and done.
“I had no idea whatsoever if Gen Ford had a high opinion of 1 Para.
“It is fair to say that the paras are a different breed from other soldiers and and if anyone thought they were a law unto themselves, I could understand that.”
Major 1025 drafted the 22 LADR’s annual historical report for 1971/1972 which deals with its tour of Derry beginning in November 1971.
It was built up from recorded facts, his own knowledge and some information gleaned from other officers. It was written some months after Bloody Sunday and without reference to the Brigade Log.
Major INQ 1025 denied the report contained “intentional inaccuracies” adding that it “was not an attempt to toe the party line“.
He said: “There would have been no question of a cover up because, as far as we were concerned, there was nothing to cover up.”
He did not know why certain times in the Brigade Log do not match his historical report.
