Lord Widgery is just another "British establishment liar", according to Miss Bernadette Devlin. His report "means the end of the Whitelaw mission", according to Mr Eddie McAteer, President of the Nationalist Party. He has been "dishonest" and his report is "a total distortion of the truth" according to Mr Ivan Cooper of the Social Democratic and Labour Party.
Since January 30, the belief has been deep rooted among non-Protestants in Northern Ireland that the events in Londonderry were a bloody massacre, deliberately provoked by the British Army as a punitive measure. Or, alternatively, that the paratroops ran amuck. Lord Widgery's detailed reconstruction of the events does not sustain either version. Hence the resentment of those who believe otherwise. The extremity of their words demonstrates again the way feuds and hatreds in Ireland feed upon themselves - and the apparent hopelessness of any attempt to bring reconciliation between the two communities. If Lord Widgery's findings really were to be "the end of the Whitelaw mission" then all Ireland would be on the way to self-destruction. It would mean that closed minds were bound to prevent any progress. But that cannot be accepted. The search for reconciliation has to continue.
Perhaps it is impossible for anyone, even a Lord Chief Justice, to reach wholly objective conclusions on events such as Londonderry's that day. One of Lord Widgery's implicit points, indeed, is that these events happened because of all the events that had preceded them - and each separate incident from 1968 onwards (or 1690 or much earlier) is interpreted differently by each side. Perhaps it is enough, as a starting point, to say that the shooting of civilians by soldiers in any British city in any circumstances is a painful and horrible event. That, at least, ought to be common ground. The Prime Minister yesterday repeated the Government's deep regret that there were casualties; and, irrespective of blame, nearly everyone will agree with him. Lord Widgery, taking his conclusions chronologically, says that there would have been no deaths that day if the illegal march had not created a highly dangerous situation. One might add that what seemed acceptable in civil rights marches in 1968 had become less acceptable by 1972, because by 1972 the dangers were much more obvious. But Lord Widgery's report is not one-sided. He admits that fatal mistakes were made on the army's side, even if some soldiers were under great strain; and he says that if the army had persisted in a "low key" attitude, the day might have passed off without serious incident.
Again, as so often, one can learn whatever one chooses to learn from such a detailed reconstructions of events. If it is true that a "low key" attitude might have let the day pass quietly, the point is one that Mr Whitelaw and the army commanders have plainly absorbed. Their recent tactics have been deliberately low in key. Even so, one shooting of an admittedly militant IRA leader still leads to intense resentment on the Catholic side, as in Belfast last week-end. And, on the other side, Lord Widgery's qualification of his conclusion about low key operations will be noted. The army, he says, had been subjected to "sever stoning" for upwards of half an hour; and the future threat "posed by the hard core of hooligans" in Londonderry made the arrest of some a legitimate objective. It may be added that to ask anyone to keep a low key attitude if persistently stoned is to ask for superhuman behaviour.
Last weekend, yet again, youths and even children in Londonderry and Belfast were incited to stone soldiers. And from behind the cover of children gunmen fired at the soldiers. Such conduct is arguably more criminal and more callous than anything done on either side in Londonderry on January 30; and it led to the deaths of three soldiers. Because only soldiers were killed, there will be no tribunal to inquire into it. Among some people in Ireland it is excused as "retaliation" for the death of Joseph McCann; and it is condoned by supposedly responsible leaders such as Miss Devlin and Mr McAteer. The repetition of the Irish tragedy, in other words, continues unabated. Is it to be carried to its illogical and terrible conclusion or is the Whitelaw mission to lead to a sane solution?