Former British Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath today denied that he tried to browbeat the chairman of the original Bloody Sunday Inquiry into exonerating the British soldiers who carried out the killings.
Former British Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath today denied he tried to browbeat the chairman of the original Bloody Sunday Inquiry into exonerating the British soldiers who carried out the killings.
Sir Edward (86) said there was nothing sinister in his warning to Lord Widgery, who chaired the original inquiry, that Britain was locked in a propaganda as well as a military war in 1972.
He told the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, sitting in central London, that Lord Widgery, then the Lord Chief Justice, understood that he was under no pressure to take sides. "He made plain the difference between what our people are doing and what his task was," Sir Edward said.
He rejected the suggestion from Mr Michael Lavery QC, representing the families of many of the bereaved and injured, that the conversation was a signal to him that "England expects every man to do his duty".
Mr Lavery continued: "This was a very dangerous period for the British Army because a serious propaganda defeat would aid the IRA."
The Widgery Inquiry largely exonerated the soldiers, saying they fired in self-defence after coming under attack. Lord Widgery's findings were received abroad as a whitewash.
Sir Edward claimed that: "Impartiality was vital to Lord Widgery's appointment." He continued: "The people who were involved in the appointment wanted it to be absolutely plain that there was no pressure on whoever did it to reach a particular conclusion.
"They all knew that was the last thing that I would tolerate.
"To suggest that Lord Widgery, of all men, would be browbeaten into finding conclusions which he did not think were genuine is malicious and it is completely unjustified."
PA