David Cameron spoke for me when he said he was ‘deeply sorry’ for the ‘unjustified and unjustifiable’ killing of unarmed civilians by the British army on Bloody Sunday in Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland, on 30 January 1972. Anyone who has talked with people in the Bogside area of the city where it took place will know the profound sense of injustice that inhabits them.
Such was my cynicism that I never expected to hear these words from a British Prime Minister in Parliament. Such also was my cynicism that I didn’t expect such a clear verdict from the Saville Enquiry which had just been published. But with this outcome, 12 years and nearly £200 million have been worth it.
It seems that David Cameron consulted very few people before arriving at the conclusion that a wholehearted apology was the only adequate response. It may have been best that way. For once, political calculation was informed by an impulse of the heart, and the relief and joy of the people of Derry/Londonderry was confirmation that it was the right step.
So often in conflicts, particular incidents become iconic illustrations of the characteristics of the oppressor. Bloody Sunday joined a long litany of such incidents including Cromwell’s massacres in Drogeda and Wexford, and the cold-heartedness of the British government in the face of the potato famine in the 1840s. For such memories to be laid to rest, there is no alternative but for the wrongdoer to acknowledge the wrong, and be ready to make whatever restitution is appropriate.
The very name ‘Bogside’ indicates the kind of living conditions that the Catholics in Derry/Londonderry inhabited. Pictures of the housing in the area in the 1960s show levels of squalor that would not have been tolerated on the British mainland. This was a result of political corruption, (drawing Ward boundaries to ensure a Protestant majority on the Council in a city that had a two-thirds majority of Catholics) and anti-Catholic discrimination in housing and employment. These practices also would not have been allowed on the mainland. In the decades since Bloody Sunday, the laws holding this situation in place have been revised. Now if you walk through the Bogside, the housing has been modernised or rebuilt, and you can immediately see that a major source of grievance has been addressed.
The discrimination was enacted by the Protestant population of Northern Ireland, but it was part of a much longer-term policy of domination and containment of the Irish by British governments over centuries. Protestants may have been willing accomplices to this policy, but they were in reality instruments of British policy. This is where we in Britain have to look at our responsibility for creating the conflict. In pursuit of a political objective, we sustained Protestants in viewing and treating their fellow Catholic citizens as inferiors, and in preserving their economic and political inferiority by means foul as well as fair. We were only willing to review that policy after civil war and huge destruction of lives and livelihoods.
When British policy changed with the statement in November 1990 by Peter Brooke, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, that Britain had no "selfish strategic or economic interest" in Northern Ireland and would accept the unification of Ireland by consent, Protestants understandably felt betrayed. Overnight they, who had fought and died in British wars and loyally defended British interests, became an embarrassment and obstacle to the new policy.
After these experiences, it will take a long time for trust to be re-established between Protestants and the British, and the English in particular. Catholics have won their emancipation, but Protestants are having to reassess their future, and to review all the attitudes and assumptions on which their identity and presence in Ireland has been built. This is not a comfortable process. We have to acknowledge that many Protestants feel we have used and then discarded them.
The apology of David Cameron was for a particular event where a clear-cut judgement could be made. But though there may be future processes for establishing truth about what has taken place, so much will remain unclear. His apology was genuine and timely and may give rise to other such apologies. But in many cases apology is totally inadequate – the harm has been done and cannot be undone. All the perpetrator can do is face it honestly and demonstrate that in whatever way is appropriate. Those who have suffered at your hands need to know that you have understood the cost of what you did.
Perhaps the basic acknowledgement the English can make is that, on these islands where we form the huge majority of the population, the smaller nations have had to struggle to get a fair deal, and we have at times acted with considerable brutality in pursuing interests which were ours but not those of the smaller nation.
I have a friend in Belfast who suffered at the hands of Protestants and was not protected by the British army. But he bears no grudge, and his mantra - that I share - is ‘English and Irish, together, for God, for the world’. Let us by all means expand that to include Scots, Welsh, Cornish - and now a huge variety of ethnic communities - and seek together ways of bringing that vision to fruition. If the Queen visits Dublin possibly next year, the first by a British monarch to the Republic of Ireland since independence, this is perhaps a vision that she might be willing to commend.
The author has worked with Initiatives of Change since 1974, focussing mainly on how a common commitment to IofC's values can be the basis for trust-building between those of Muslim and other faith traditions.
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