WIDGERY

For a few years at the end of his career, John Widgery QC, Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, refused to absent himself from the bench, even though he was barking, falling asleep, talking to himself, was, in fact, suffering from dementia. He wouldn't be told, Judge knows best.

Lord Chief Justice Whitewash, QC, PC

Keynote examples of his judgements were his rejection of the first appeal by the so-called Birmingham Six  - who eventually served sixteen years in prison, although innocent - and his preparation of the Widgery Tribunal Report into the events of Bloody Sunday, in Londonderry, on which the Saville Inquiry, also, has just reported, overturning his conclusions.

The dogs in the street, the pigs in the pen, knew, in the early seventies, that the Parachute Regiment had all but run amok in Londonderry but in appointing Widgery to chair the inquiry, the UK government achieved the false exoneration  it sought, even though international bodies, such as the United Nations, derided both that report and the widespread use of torture by security forces in  Belfast's Castlereagh Road police station. Widgery's disgraceful kow-towing to the Military/Security establishment was perhaps the most significant event in the entire Troubles, enraging decent public opinion in the Province and internationally and validating, for some, enough, the increasingly violent, quid-pro-quo strategy of Mr Gerry Adams and Mr Marty Kneecaps, transforming what had been, before Bloody Sunday,  a perfectly legitimate, if unruly civil rights movement, into a dreadful thirty-years war, billions of pounds, oceans of blood, rivers of tears. Widgery's report, a cynical whitewash, would reverberate for decades, long after his rotten, learned self was roasting in Hell.

A more just approach by this horrible bastard,  to either the Birmingham Six Appeal or to the Bloody Sunday Inquiry would have had huge ramifications for the culture of bent coppers and rogue trigger-happy soldiers.  Despite the state brutality they suffered and despite the rigged evidence no-one has ever been punished  for the crimes against the Birmingham Six, eminent jurists - aren't they all? - maintain smugly, to this day, that they must be guilty of something,  a bit guilty; Paddies, Republicans, nuff said. And those same lawless voices mutter today that those killed in Londonderry nearly forty years ago had it coming, teenagers, demonstrating on the streets and everything.

Should soldier F be charged? Well, why not? There is no statute of limitations here, he shot and killed  four people.  And doesn't Old Bill almost jump for joy  out of his lambskin apron when DNA research cracks any other sort of cold case? Doesn't matter that Marty Kneecaps killed, bombed, maimed, tortured and burned hundreds, thousands, maybe;  the elected government of the United Kingdom decided that he was beyond prosecution, immune,  so great was his contribution to the Peace Proh-cess.  Maybe Soldier F should be indemnified similarly and we be left with a justice system as flexible, elastic as need be.  Law enforcement, the cops and soldiers, well, if they murder someone, that's ok. 

But maybe if soldier F had been tried way back, in the day, that poor Iraqi hotel worker wouldn't have been battered to death by a platoon of the Queen's Own Nancyboys.

Mr Mousa before and after his encounter with British troops.

And maybe, if an honest judge had bent his mind to the turkeyshoot in Londonderry, we may have avoided all that shit - Birmingham, Warrington, Canary Wharf, Hyde Park, Eniskillen, Warrenpoint, Brighton and  so on and so on, down all the days.

The worst thing about Widgery, though, is not Bloody Sunday, it is the Hutton Report, its inevitable, logical successor.

First thing, kill all the lawyers.