The former head of the British army, General Sir Mike Jackson, today denied accusations he had been responsible for concocting a false account of what happened on Bloody Sunday and said he hoped the Saville report would finally “lance the boil” of the Troubles.
Gen Jackson, who was in Derry serving as a captain in the Paras on Bloody Sunday, said that Lord Saville’s “forensic dissection” of the day’s events had left him with a “sense of shock”.
He said that his actions had been exonerated by the inquiry. “I don’t lie. I gave evidence on oath to Lord Saville. I am afraid rather more has been made of the mechanical compilation, the first attempt to put together a sequence of firing on that dreadful afternoon has resulted in this allegation,” he said.
“The purpose of what I did - which was actually copying out somebody else’s list, I was a scribe not an author - was not some sort of cover-up at all. I am sorry if anybody senses a conspiracy. There was not.”
Gen Jackson, adjutant to first battalion of the parachute regiment on Bloody Sunday, said that he hoped that the clarity of the report’s findings would enable people in the North to move on.
"If a line can be drawn, if now this report has lanced not only the boil of Bloody Sunday but the bigger boil that the whole conflict in Northern Ireland represented, if that can happen, then I for one would be very pleased indeed," he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
He refused to be drawn on the criticisms in the report of Lieut Col Derek Wilford, the commanding officer of 1 Para, who ordered his men into the Bogside.
“Lord Saville has made his judgment there. Some, I gather, are already saying it is a harsh judgment. It is very important to study not only the report itself but the supporting evidence before coming to some considered conclusion about this or that aspect,” he said.
Gen Jackson said that the actions of a handful of soldiers on Bloody Sunday should not be allowed to obscure what the British Army achieved during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
“It is worth, I think, reflecting that hundreds of thousands of British soldiers served in Northern Ireland in order to buy time for the peace process to achieve the conditions for the Good Friday Agreement and a settlement which I hope, having served six years in the province and have it close to my heart, will give the basis for a lasting and durable and far better future,” he said.
PA