THE Saville Report, published this week, will be damning of both the British Army and the British Government.
That much we already know.
We also know that Bloody Sunday was a unique event in the North.
It didn’t cause the most casualties — sadly there were many worse atrocities in terms of numbers.
But several things set that Sunday in Derry 38 years ago outside the main tranche of events.
Firstly it wasn’t an act of violence perpetrated by members of one community on another.
The killers on that January day in 1972 were uniformed representatives of the British state.
In effect, the British Government decided to act as a terrorist organisation, and open fire on its unarmed citizens in a city within British jurisdiction.
The situation was made all the bleaker because, not only were the killings not declared illegal or morally wrong, British government sources proceeded to blacken the names of the dead.
Several rumours were put about, including one that prominent community activists had ferried several ‘IRA casualties’ across the border to ‘field hospitals’ in Donegal.
The absurdity of these suggestions was only matched by their mendaciousness.
Subsequently, senior officers in the British Army have admitted they made up large swathes of their evidence to various investigations.
They lied to the Widgery Tribunal, the Saville Enquiry and to the military police who initially investigated the killings.
Middle-ranking officers did the same, as well as the troops who fired at the unarmed civil rights marchers.
Most made it clear they resented being called to give evidence to Saville — showing contempt for the continuing investigations, or claiming they couldn’t remember anything of the events of that day.
Bloody Sunday was different, too, in that the killings were carried out in full public view, by uniformed servants of the State, purportedly there to protect the innocent, and to keep the peace.
Bloody Sunday helped trigger the Troubles, with devastating effects not just for the North of Ireland, but for many in the Republic and the Irish community in Britain.
If unlawful killings have taken place, and the identity of the perpetrators known, then prosecutions must follow.
That can be the only conclusion, the only way forward.
Any other course would be a travesty of justice.
Awards needs re-examining
LAST week, just days before the publication of the Saville report, several Irish people were awarded honours from the queen.
Some might argue that this is a further sign of the ever-strengthening friendship between our two countries.
However The Irish Post’s view is that it is an antiquated system, with disturbing resonances of the British Empire.
In her entire reign Queen Elizabeth has never seen fit to visit Ireland, but seems content to ‘award’ a bauble or two to those deemed suitable in her eyes — a jockey here, a poet there.
Perhaps the real problem is that Ireland has no official honours system.
Maybe if we had a fair, well thought out system we might not need to accept trinkets from what is, in actuality, a foreign power — albeit an increasingly friendly one.