Widgery Report
Richard Bourke
A document released by the British government reveals that the Widgery Report on the events of Bloody Sunday had been subjected to potent legal criticism a week before its official publication.
The Report was found thoroughly lacking in an assessment sent by the former Governor of Northern Ireland, Mr Ralph Grey, to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, William Whitelaw, on April 13th, 1972.
It is now generally accepted that Lord Widgery's Report was equal in its impact to the shootings themselves in deepening disaffection among Northern Irish Catholics in the early 1970s.
Widgery's performance was at once meandering, narrow and confused, in Grey's assessment. As evidenced by his report, Lord Widgery's legal reasoning compared unfavourably to the "clear, crisp and comprehensive" Report of Lord Scarman on the events of August 1969 in Northern Ireland, published two weeks earlier.
According to Grey, Lord Widgery failed to do justice to the case against the British Army. In particular, the report's "Summary" did not tally with the findings contained in the main body of the text where the Army is shown to have been more at fault than it is made to appear in Widgery's "Summary" conclusions.
Inconsistencies of this kind abounded in the report, in Grey's estimation.
So too did an unconvincing presentation of the facts. The allocation of responsibility for opening fire first was key to Widgery's attribution of blame for the tragedy.
Yet, in Grey's opinion, the Report's finding in favour of the Army on the prejudicial basis that a conspiracy of lying among the soldiers simply could not have withstood the rigours of cross-examination would prove incredible to a doubting public.
Lord Grey, who began his career as a barrister and solicitor in New Zealand, entered the British Colonial Service mid-century. He had been Governor of British Guiana (1959-64) and Governor of the Bahamas (1964-68) before becoming the last Governor of Northern Ireland in 1968. The post of Governor was abolished under the Northern Ireland Constitution Act of 1973.