British prime minister Tony Blair’s decision to set up the Bloody Sunday Saville Inquiry was “a cynical political move”, the head of the British army in Northern Ireland angrily told astonished Irish officials in 1998.
Department of Foreign Affairs officials found the senior military figure’s open criticism of political leaders remarkable, notes reveal.
British Parachute Regiment soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians during a civil rights march in Derry in January 1972, with 13 dying on the day, and one more some months later.
Irish officials in the Anglo-Irish Secretariat in Belfast invited Gen Rupert Smith to dinner in June 1998, near the end of his time as general officer, commanding in Northern Ireland.
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During a conversation about the creation of the Bloody Sunday inquiry, Gen Smith expressed his “trenchant opposition” to what he called a “cynical political move” designed to scapegoat soldiers “yet again”.
Soldiers on the day had been placed in an impossible position on the orders of politicians and he declared “with some passion” that the first investigation into the deaths had “got it about right”.
Conducted quickly after Bloody Sunday, that investigation led by the English Lord Chief Justice, Lord Widgery, blamed the organisers of the march for the violence, largely clearing the soldiers of wrongdoing.
A former paratrooper, though not in Derry on Bloody Sunday, Gen Smith’s attitude may have been partly explained by the fact that he was injured in an IRA explosion in 1978 that left him with serious burns.
Irish officials found Smith “more cerebral” than most British officers and fond of provocative debate, but lacking sensitivity about nationalist concerns and “any real understanding of how the British army” was regarded on the ground.
Once he had calmed down, the Irish officials noted that Smith accepted that Bloody Sunday was “a uniquely appalling event”, and that a new inquiry was part of the price to be paid for a comprehensive settlement.
But his “vehement” opinions clearly reflected a belief that politicians were responsible for the Derry tragedy, and they were now trying to shift the blame on to the military.
It was quite extraordinary, the officials said in a note sent to Foreign Affairs’ Iveagh House headquarters, for such a senior military figure to express such views to representatives of another state.
A year later the Belfast-based officials hosted Smith’s successor, Gen Sir Hew Pike, to dinner, finding him “a quieter and more unassuming type than his predecessor”, but also less cerebral.
Speaking openly to the Irish diplomats, Gen Pike confessed that he found himself “baffled” by Northern Ireland politics since he had arrived and that he was on “a very steep learning curve”.
But again, the Saville Inquiry was a bone of contention – Pike insisted that the army would resist Saville’s efforts to have the anonymity of the soldiers involved lifted.
Ian Hamill, a Ministry of Defence official attached to army headquarters, Northern Ireland, was even more robust, criticising Lord Saville as “an expert on Scottish commercial law and knows very little about Ireland”.
When it finally reported in 2010, the Saville Inquiry was damning of the British army, saying the paratroopers had “lost control” on the day, that none of the victims had posed a threat, and they had lied to cover up their actions.