THERE were tears in the British parliament yesterday, and fears.
But we saw true leadership from Prime Minister David Cameron, who talked of the Bloody Sunday report with stark simplicity, abandoning any attempt at sophistication.
His words, he told us, were painful to say. For many, they were painful to hear.
“I am deeply patriotic,” Mr Cameron began, his suit black, his back ramrod straight. “I never want to believe anything bad about our country.” Then he said “But . . .” and the ranks of MPs grew utterly still, another rare occurrence in the chamber.
“What happened on Bloody Sunday was unjustified and unjustifiable,” the Prime Minister said. “It was wrong.”
There was a clarity that no one could misinterpret. His apology, when it came, seemed the only thing he could do. And it rang out like a bell. Everyone’s eyes were on him, including those of the Reverend Ian Paisley in the gallery, his gravel voice mute for once.
For some in the gallery, the words of Mark Durkan of the SDLP were too much to bear. He read out the names and ages of the 13 who died on the day, his voice breaking. He gave us the words of the great Seamus Heaney in his poem The Road to Derry:
“My heart besieged by anger, my mind a gap of danger, I walked among their old haunts, the home ground where they bled;
And in the dirt lay justice, like an acorn in the winter, Till its oak would sprout in Derry where the 13 men lay dead.”
But, Durkan said, the most poignant words were not those of a poet or a prime minister, but those of relatives who could now stand at the graves and talk to their loved ones. “When they do so, they can invoke the civil rights anthem: We have overcome, we have overcome this day . . .” He choked.
Behind him sat members of the DUP, fearful, angry and grieving for those who died at the hands of terrorists but who had no expensive inquiries. The Reverend William McCrea said there was no “hierarchy of victimhood”. He told us of his cousin Derek, gunned down in April 1991: “His child was left to put the fingers into the holes where the blood was coming out”. Two other cousins were killed in 1976 – one was 16, the other, 21, had died on her engagement day. “How do we get closure?” he asked. “How do we get the truth?”
Cameron, no stranger to grief, having lost his young son last year, maintained a careful tone of understanding. At the end, Tory MP Kris Hopkins, who had served as a soldier in Northern Ireland, said how difficult it had been to listen to the statement. Only now did Cameron get more personal. “It is a difficult statement to listen to because it’s got some very uncomfortable truths for people who, like me, are deeply patriotic, who love the British army, who love what it stands for, who revere what they have done down the ages. It’s incredibly painful to say it. But we don’t serve them if we don’t say it.”
When it was over, there was relief, as if a long funeral had ended.
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