Bloody Sunday: The Long Wait

This programme contains some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting

'Unjustified and unjustifiable -

the conclusion of a long-awaited inquiry into Northern Ireland's Bloody Sunday killings.

FRENCH BROADCAST

The city knew it was a major day, Ireland knew it was a major day, the world knew it was a major day.

The United Kingdom had some truth and reconciliation of its own today

as Prime Minister David Cameron apologised for Bloody Sunday.

On behalf of the government, indeed on behalf of our country,

I am deeply sorry.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I see the events of the 15th of June as a healing,

as a major healing exercise.

Saville's report was very, very long on innocence

and very short on guilt.

We have overcome!

Bloody Sunday affected both Protestant and Catholic.

And it was the lie of Bloody Sunday that affected...this country.

# Lover, when you don't lay with me

# I'm a huntress for a husband lost at sea... #

The discrimination was palpable in our town, you know.

So obviously we were very keen

into civil rights.

A family that was very aware politically, I would say.

But on that morning,

we did the usual thing in Derry,

as a family, we went to mass, 10 o'clock mass in the Long Tower.

# Calling moon and moon... #

Michael himself was a young boy

that was an easy come, easy go person, you know?

His friends were on the march and he wanted to join them.

But eventually, my mother relented, because myself and others

persuaded her to allow him to go.

I spoke to Michael before the march

and that's the last time I saw him alive.

My father had just finished a night shift

and he left word that none of us were to go on the march

because there was talk that there was going to be trouble.

So my father was worried about us.

But as all teenagers do, you never listen to your father.

# ...on my back Do you understand? #

In my estimation, it was 25,000 plus.

I remember going on that march that day feeling, you know,

content and happy, and in a sense, that vibrancy about it.

As you were walking up to the march, seeing more and more people,

thinking it was a success before the march even started.

We weren't aware as a family

of the military ring that was round the town.

When the inquiry finished, we as families

started taking up the gauntlet really

in terms of anticipating when the report would be made public,

under what conditions and so on.

And probably for about two years or more,

before June the 15th 2010,

we had been in correspondence with the government.

We had negotiated that two family members would have

a pre-read opportunity under lock-in conditions on the day itself.

The solicitors I think had the opportunity to begin at seven o'clock

and then at 10 o'clock, two family members were allowed in.

Then later on, the additional family members

would be allowed into the Guildhall at about one o'clock.

And then at three, they were going to come up

and join us for the Prime Minister's speech.

Extensive arrangements were made in advance about attendance at the Guildhall

and agreed with all the legal representatives

over a period of time.

My memory is that around 7am, or thereabouts, or 7:30am,

we were allowed access to the Guildhall.

There was a palpable, tangible,

you know, not quite tension in the air, expectancy in the air.

Everybody knew that this was the day

and you kind of felt eyes were focused on you,

because you were going to go and get it first

and have the privilege of reading it first

and hopefully receive news

that you could impart with favour and gladness.

The first thing that I noticed would have been the padlocks

on the doors of the Guildhall.

And then, peeping through the glass,

I could see the volumes of the report in cardboard boxes, sealed.

So we were looking in at history.

# I will rise now

# And go about

# The city... #

There was butterflies in your stomach, you know.

It's one of the days that you can remember

because everything was kind of churning around

and there was a lot of what if, what if, what if?

I had a quiet confidence about Saville.

My gut instinct was telling me

that Saville was going to do a good job.

# Went over the sea, what did I find? #

If it hadn't happened, there was no plan B, you know,

so it would have been quite a bad day for everybody,

for people, for governments, for everybody.

It would have been a total disaster.

I felt that all our people

were going to be totally declared innocent

of the terrible allegations made against them in 1972.

I felt pretty confident in that.

But I felt anxious.

Very nervous. Very, very nervous. Full of fear, trepidation.

Not knowing, really not knowing what to expect,

because we didn't have a lot of faith

in British justice, to be fair, you know.

And we had never been given reason to have faith in it.

# Hey-oh... #

When we were told we could open the boxes,

it kind of was like turning your paper in an exam,

but much, much more important.

The room now was completely quiet.

You could have heard a pin drop.

It was tense.

And when I read the shorter document first, my sense of doom returned.

I was not sure about the report at all.

It wasn't that I was completely negative about it,

but I wasn't totally positive about it either.

I wasn't sure what way to interpret it.

The lawyers were already in the Guildhall

and they already had access to the report.

So they knew what was in it.

But it was us trying to get to the Guildhall

and find out for ourselves what was within it.

I was quite calm to begin with.

When we went to the monument, my brother was with me

and we didn't attend marches as children or grown ups,

so when we went to the monument

there was a mini march, I suppose,

and I turned to Kevin and I said,

"Do we have to go on this?"

You know, walk and carry a photograph of my father

and, you know, I didn't like being out in the front.

I didn't like cameras.

The day it began to change significantly

from a legal point of view

was that one of my colleagues, Paddy MacDermott,

said the soldiers fired first

and that's in the shorter document.

And I had missed that,

and went back and checked it and asked him what page is it on,

"Where's the paragraph, where is it?"

Once Paddy had said that, I began to feel more positive

about the way the report was going to go.

# Set the sails I feel the winds a-stirring... #

It was a sort of increasing excitement,

you could just feel it growing...

"Yes, OK. So we can relax a bit."

When they walk through the door in what, oh, only 20 minutes to go,

at least, what do we do when they come in?

Are we all, or are we pretending that we don't know? What do you do?

It's a very difficult situation. It's an unreal situation.

You know the answer, they don't.

And the first sign they're going to get

is when they come into the room

and they're expecting you to do something.

# Fighting for a system built to fail... #

What jumped out at me was the part where the barricade was,

and that sort of got to me, you know?

We're walking past this part,

this part of the road where the march was stopped.

And I said to myself, "From that part there

to the Guildhall cost all those lives."

If the march had been allowed to travel to the Guildhall, my brother would still be alive

and I wouldn't have to be doing this.

# The lords of war just profit from decay... #

FAINT APPLAUSE

At the very last moment, when I was walking into the Guildhall

and I was hopping with excitement, I have to say,

and telling every one inside the Guildhall,

"Don't worry, this is our moment, this is our moment,

"this is going to be wonderful."

And every now and again, just a little split second

flash of alarm in my mind, like, "I hope I'm right, I hope I'm right."

John, a very quick word?

How are you feeling, John?

Nervous, very nervous, but looking forward to it.

It's nearly hard to explain, you know.

It's nearly like a dream when you're in the middle of...

This is what we campaigned for.

Up until the 20th anniversary when we started the campaign,

Bloody Sunday was mentioned once a year.

There would have been a wee service at the memorial.

I remember when there were only 20, 30 people there, no clergy, no priest, no politicians.

I myself would have led a decade of the rosary.

We'd assemble there, say a prayer for the dead

and the injured and for all those that lost their lives

and those in prison as a result of what happened on Bloody Sunday.

But then over the years, the march got bigger.

The families, like it or not,

were tarnished by the Widgery report,

because it was a duplicitous report.

They had the label attached to them over all these years that maybe

they were either terrorists or associates of terrorists.

And, of course, that was not true.

So you have this shadow, this burden that you carry through.

And it's not easy for those of us who haven't got the same one

to realise that it's there with you, day in day out, every morning,

every night when you go to sleep, when you wake up, there it is,

you carry it around the streets, and it's not one you want to carry around.

It's symbolic of the fact that the original march was supposed to get to the Guildhall.

And we believe if it had reached its rightful destination

on the day, there would have been no deaths in Derry on the day itself.

We set out on that campaign in 1992 not knowing where we were going,

not knowing what we were going to do.

We did petitions, we went to London, we went to America,

knocked on everybody's door.

We got the door slammed in our face, went back and knocked again.

I mean, this was done on a wing and a prayer.

I always say we done most of it, you know.

The peace declaration is great if it comes off,

but if Bloody Sunday hadn't happened 22 years ago,

you might not have been standing here

talking about the peace declaration.

Bloody Sunday had a lot to do with the Troubles.

People in our own areas told us that we were mad.

"Did we know what we were doing?"

We were taking on the British establishment,

the British government, and that we were mad to even think about it.

But, as I always say...

..it's great to be mad.

We didn't know what we were doing at the time.

If we had thought about what we were doing at the time,

we mightn't have done what we've done.

I always thought what kept our family going, I called it the TLC,

was truth, love and commitment, and we had that towards Jim.

That was never going to leave.

But I certainly thought it would have been sorted out after,

you know, a couple of years campaigning whatever.

But as the years went on. then it didn't matter,

it didn't matter if it took from now to eternity

because your commitment was there and you weren't going to be beat.

This was a campaign which was based upon the determination

and the fixity of purpose of the Bloody Sunday families.

It wouldn't have happened without the Bloody Sunday families

marching and marching and marching

and going on deputation after deputation,

going to the United States, going to Europe,

going endlessly to Dublin to plead and demand and persuade.

This was people power in action.

We had nothing to lose.

We had to become their voices.

I really would have wanted to be in Derry on the 15th of June,

but in all the discussions

that I had had with the families, it was fully agreed

that where I needed to be that day was in the House of Commons.

I went over to Downing Street

and we met David Cameron with a senior team.

There was Nick Clegg, Liam Fox,

Dominic Grieve, the Attorney General,

David Richards, head of the Armed Forces,

Ed Llewellyn, and it was quite a dramatic moment.

David was sitting there in his shirt sleeves,

no tie, like he used to be in opposition.

He had been in Afghanistan the weekend before

and, quite remarkably, he had read this twice

and he just chucked it on the table and said,

"This is the worst thing I've ever read.

"It's quite clear what we've got to say."

Owen Paterson did mention to me that

"David is conscious of the conversation he had with you last week."

And I said, "David?" He said, "the Prime Minister."

And of course what the Prime Minister had said to me

on that occasion was that he would say what needed to be said.

I saw stones chip off the wall, which, I realised then, was live ammunition.

And within that short period of time -

and it's hard to describe how it happens - your whole sense,

it's your senses tell you that there's something bad happening here,

that it's very dangerous.

I saw the Army coming in.

I saw the APCs

and the big TK Bedford and the ferry car.

And I remember looking at them

and momentarily thinking, "This is different."

I thought, you know, "This has never happened before."

I had never seen them coming in like this before.

And I remember just getting into Saint Colm's

and into my aunt's house, and all hell broke loose.

People were running, roaring and screaming.

I got behind a small red brick wall in the back of the high flats,

and I crawled along that wee wall.

Something always stuck in my mind.

I mind seeing a body lying in the square.

I didn't know at the time,

but afterwards, when I learned about it,

that was Jackie lying out in the square.

So... And...

Somebody told me, "Run", from where I was behind the wall,

you know, to get out through the exit.

And it always stood with me.

Was it a good thing I didn't know it was Jackie lying in the square?

Would I have tried to get out to him?

What would have happened to me?

It's just wee things that you keep asking yourself.

SHOUTING AND GUNFIRE

SCREAMING

Go on, you mad bastards, you!

The place I dived in behind is where the monument now sits.

And I lay there, listening to the shooting...

..but I couldn't see where the shooting was coming from.

I knew who was shooting, I knew it was the Army,

because of the weapons that they were using,

the 7.62 high-velocity SLR rifles.

But I didn't know where it was going.

So I was lying there listening to the shooting

while people were dying.

And I would say I would have been about 30 yards away

from where Michael was shot dead, but I didn't see it.

The shooting had quietened down and people were exiting the house

and making their own way home, and I went upstairs,

I'll never forget, for a moment of peace

and went into one of the small bedrooms

and knelt down to say a prayer.

And there was a Sacred Heart picture on the wall, you know,

and I don't know why, but the moment I went to say the prayer,

just - whoosh - floods of tears and fear.

# God will rest my soul... #

BELL TOLLS

I think I was actually a bit scared coming up the stairs, actually.

Very, very nervous,

and you could sort of sense the tension from other people as well.

This was a big moment.

This was the moment we'd been waiting for, for nearly 40 years.

And we made the stairs OK! We had to do it, and that was it.

There was an excitement,

but it was kind of like a nervous excitement, you know?

And it was good and bad,

because you were apprehensive

and you were enthralled,

and you were excited about...finally,

but them knots were still there.

Yeah.

I was thinking, walking up the stairs today, how different it was.

I think it was a lot lighter. The stairs weren't as steep!

Because you didn't know what they were going to say, you know?

After the Widgery...

He blackened it,

and you just weren't sure what was going to come out

and, as Jean says, your stomach was in knots.

My stomach was in knots

and my head was thumping.

I could feel me whole system shaking.

It was really, really, really tense and nervous.

All our family reps walked in the door just behind you here,

up in the right-hand corner,

and I think there was about 20 of these tables in different places,

you know, evenly put across the hall.

All this far side here was all computers,

computer screens,

and we walked in and we saw all our counsel

and our solicitors, all our representative solicitors,

and all the family reps went and sat at their particular table.

I could see the solicitors.

And I seen my man, Peter Madden.

And I walk in, and he comes over to me and he says, "John..."

"Well, Peter, what's happened?" "Everybody's innocent."

I say, "Incredible!"

Brilliant altogether, you know?

It was an incredible moment in my life, you know?

38-and-a-half years' of hard work

in accumulation of that day,

you know, that someone came up to me, in a couple of words

and said to me, "They were innocent."

That meant a massive amount to me.

We just sat down and they told us.

He says,

"Your father is vindicated."

They didn't fire in fear or panic.

They were under no threat of their life.

And that kind of wording...

It's... It's chilling, actually, you know?

You could feel something in your spine.

It was three paragraphs.

And the three paragraphs basically said

that Jim was doing nothing that threatened anybody,

whether civilian or military.

That any soldier couldn't be mistaken that he wasn't a threat,

that he was deliberately targeted and he was deliberately shot.

When the McGuigans came and sat with Des,

Mrs McGuigan sat down opposite him on this table,

and I sat to one side...

It was the most remarkable moment...

..because he was so emotionally charged.

I didn't know whether he was actually beginning to cry

or whether he was just completely choked,

but he couldn't say anything...

..and that said it all.

Mrs McGuigan realised at that one moment...

These weren't... There were tears of joy, sorrow,

everything was there in the one moment.

She knew that was it. That's all she wanted to know.

I tried to recall, myself, and as I speak now, I'm still not sure,

but I've asked Michael, Michael Mansfield,

well, what made it emotional?

Or what was it that I said, you know, to Mrs McGuigan?

I think his response to me in one conversation was,

"It's not what you said. It's what you didn't say."

You were anxious to know what was happening with other families,

so you were looking up and seeing smiles,

and you kind of knew it was good,

but you didn't really sort of know everything, and that.

And you were anxious that you could get to a point

where you could start talking to people and see what they felt.

I remember asking, "What's the chance of prosecution?"

and I was told, "This is going to be a hard one."

And I felt angry.

Angry because of the thought that whoever shot my brother,

whoever killed my brother,

might get away with this.

There was always a major question mark

in relation to how Saville was going to deal with Gerald Donaghey.

The evidence is there that proves that Gerald Donaghey was totally innocent.

He wasn't carrying any nail bombs whatsoever.

I looked for my solicitor,

and I knew by her face right away, so I did.

My first words to Patricia was,

"What about the nail bombs?"

And she said, "No, Geraldine."

And I just basically broke down...

She said, "But, Geraldine, he's got his declaration of innocence."

And I said, "Right." And I was just numb.

I thought, "How am I going to tell me mummy?"

And when all the rest of the families came in,

I was standing outside them two doors

waiting for me mum to come up,

and she came up and she looked at me

and she knew, so she did,

and she said, "It's not good."

I said, "It's good and bad."

I said, "He's got his declaration of innocence,"

and she said, "What about the nails bombs?"

and I said "No, Mummy. He wouldn't give us that."

Me, I think Saville's language says it anyway,

because he didn't say he didn't have them, but he said "probably".

I mean, he could just so easily have said "probably not", you know?

It was a complete cop-out, just his choice of language,

and I think if you just read into the language, Saville says it anyway.

They were taking photographs of him lying in the car

with the nail bombs on him, like.

Everything was there to show that the nail bombs were planted,

but, like, I'm proud and honoured, me and me mother, for what we got,

and for the rest of the loved ones too,

that it got us...

That he was exonerated that way,

but there's still that headline over him.

Nail bomber. Probably.

The suspicion developed, and it developed, to me, very quickly

that perhaps the explanation for the finding about Gerry Donaghey

is that the tribunal felt that they had to throw something

to the British, so to speak, side,

and the case of Gerry Donaghey provided sort of an opportunity to do that.

Nobody wanted to rain on the parade on the day,

and yet there was, there had to be, that little bit of sadness in their hearts

as every other heart was swelling with pride and joy,

and I think that's still difficult, still difficult, for the Donaghey family,

and I'm still very conscious of that.

I'm conscious that we in the Bloody Sunday Trust, and me personally, and everybody,

that we owe it to the Donaghey family, even yet,

to try to set that to rights.

Myself and another colleague decided to make our way to Guildhall Square.

When we went there, it was, you know,

really buoyant.

It was a buoyant but nervous atmosphere

at the same time, I think.

But it was quite incredible.

From someone who grew up in the Protestant community

and grew up hating the city with a passion

because of the sense of intimidation felt as a young person

going to school in city side here

and growing up in a generation that was made very, very unwelcome,

it was quite astounding to be, you know,

a part of that crowd anyway.

Even that in itself was incredible progress.

I went down to the Guildhall at about one o'clock.

Many of the families, I met them and they were all saying they were optimistic,

but just that little bit cautious.

There had been so many disappointments in the past,

so many false hopes, that they were almost afraid to hope.

By that time, you had two per family in the main hall, the Guildhall,

viewing the report,

and the rest of the family members were all downstairs,

and naturally enough, they were all anxious and itching to get in.

CHEERING

It was getting to the point where tempers were frayed,

to say the least.

-A lot of tension, a lot.

-A lot of tension.

They waited for a long time in a very crowded situation,

waiting to get upstairs and join the other members of the families,

who, at that time, were reading the report,

or at least reading the executive summary of the report.

I don't know where I got my strength from, because, at that stage,

you know, I was feeling weak, you know?

I was even... I was hyperventilating a bit,

but I still managed to take them stairs two at a time

and, to this day, I don't know how I did it.

But I think it was, you know, the adrenalin.

People basically laughing and crying and squealing at the same time.

That's what it sounded like to me.

There was just that whole mixture of emotions

as they were met at the top of the stairs, at the foyer,

coming into this room, and it's a great memory that I have,

because I almost... I sort of stopped in me tracks.

It was nearly like a wave of excitement, you know,

because the ones at the top were obviously getting the good news, and it kind of did spread down.

Just waiting to see them coming through that door

and being able to say, "Yes, it's good. It's..."

It was amazing!

It was so emotional.

It's hard to even put it into words, you know?

To rush into the main hall of the Guildhall, that was a great moment.

That was a great moment.

Entering the main hall of the Guildhall, you know,

is something, even at my great age, that I can look back on

and say, "This was one of the key moments of my life."

I felt a buzz going into that main hall in the Guildhall

that I don't think I've ever felt before. Just wonderful.

CHEERING

I was standing there with Paul Doherty and I said to Paul,

"Look at the crowd outside.

"There's thousands outside, so there is."

I said to Paul, "We have to get some kind of way

"of acknowledging that everything's OK."

So me and Paul walked up to the back windows up there

and we just stuck our thumbs out the windows.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I was thinking that we actually got the word out before Cameron,

and that's what beat him there, look, is that there.

That beat him.

So all the security they had in here, it really didn't work.

A dark cloud was lifted from the city that day.

You could almost pinpoint it to that occasion

when the thumbs-up was given.

You could feel the tension lift from the Guildhall Square.

It was, I suppose, the perfect set of emotions

for that type of event.

It was the complete antithesis of Bloody Sunday itself.

That took place in the dead of winter,

people running and panicking and, you know,

people being shot all around them.

# Take your last look around

# Take the fall that is due

# And take your time

# And I'll take mine

# It's the last thing that's left for us to do... #

I remember the way Mammy reacted to the news.

She knew Daddy was dead before anybody come to the house.

The fact that he went out with his hands in the air, and it wasn't just about himself,

there was other people that needed help, then he was a hero.

He had seven children at home and one on the way, you know?

Gerard Donaghey was only 17. He wasn't thinking of just himself.

You couldn't believe this is real, or am I seeing things?

And then I realised very quickly that it was for real.

And there was a little boy, Jackie Duddy, who was just shot beside me.

I crept out in the middle of the gunfire.

I got to him and I tried to speak to him.

There wasn't much response.

He had a huge, big bloodstain here.

I gave him the last rites

and then tried to get him out of the area, ultimately.

# ..So when I have lost all my control

# God will rest my soul... #

The fact that Bishop Daly was with Jackie and give him the last rites...

I think the fact that he was there with him

was a great source of comfort, eventually, to us.

It's Jackie's last moments, whether he was dead or not at the time,

when they were bringing him along Chamberlain Street and up the hill, that's Jackie's last moments.

So, even though they're hurting, they're still nice to have.

I often think about him,

and I often think that if he were alive today, he'd be 56 years old,

but he's eternally young in my mind

and I think in the minds of his family, too.

And, um, he has this strange...

Somebody that you just meet casually in a situation like that,

who's with you for the rest of your life.

It's a strange relationship, but I feel very close to him.

# ..Oh, you can't throw something out there

# Without watching it fall

# Only thing that's scarier than dying

# Is not dying at all

# So when I've lost all my control

# God will rest my soul... #

On the day of Bloody Sunday, I lived in Canada.

I was married with a three-year-old child.

We were out skating and we came home and the news was on, you know,

the national news, on the TV,

and there was gunmen and bombers shot in Derry.

It's bad enough what they did - they murdered Kevin,

they assassinated his character.

They checked Michael, and I remember him looking up at me

and saying, "I'm sorry, he's dead."

And I remember saying, "Go and check him again, just to make sure."

And he checked him again and he said, "I'm sorry, Michael's dead."

And I do remember him asking me his age, and I says 16.

Then I just remembered he'd just turned 17, you know?

So Michael was actually the youngest to die on Bloody Sunday.

# ..Oh, you can't throw something out there

# Without watching it fall

# Only thing that's scarier than dying

# Is not dying at all

# So when I've lost all my control

# God will rest my soul... #

Jim was 22 years of age when he died.

That 22 years of age

was filled with love and joy to many a degree,

and sometimes hardship.

I remember, when I seen Jim's body,

I just couldn't believe he was dead.

Couldn't believe that somebody that was so vibrant, you know...

It was hard to take in.

Maybe I was 18, maybe it was the first time I'd seen a dead body,

maybe it was because my brother,

I thought, "How could somebody do that?"

I thought to myself, "I could never do that."

But a few days later, I thought I could do it.

We went into the chamber,

and as the question time in advance of us was winding up,

there was just a big sense of expectation

that something of moment was going to happen.

Statement, the Prime Minister.

With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement.

Today, my Right Honourable friend, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland,

is publishing the report of the Saville inquiry.

I mean, this was a new Parliament with a new Government,

a new Prime Minister, quite a new membership of the Parliament,

so this was, in many ways, you know,

the first big set piece of this Parliament.

We have acted in good faith by publishing the tribunal's findings

as quickly as possible after the General Election.

There was real tension in the chamber.

You obviously had those from Northern Ireland

who had strong views both ways,

but you had quite a lot of Conservative MPs, of course, behind,

who were staunch supporters of the Armed Forces.

I never want to call into question the behaviour of our soldiers

and our Army, who I believe to be the finest in the world.

Right across the chamber, there was a real sense

of the sort of gravity of the occasion.

Quite remarkable, really.

With everyone's eyes fixed on this huge screen up there

in the room we're in,

he gets to his feet.

Nobody, least of all me, was aware of what he was going to say

or how he was going to communicate it.

And, I've made no bones about it,

I think what he did on that day was remarkable.

What happened on Bloody Sunday was both unjustified and unjustifiable.

It was wrong.

He delivered a definitive statement,

which was needed to bring the curtain down on this episode,

terrible episode,

of English history as well as Irish history.

Lord Saville concludes that the soldiers of the Support Company who went into the Bogside

did so as a result of an order which should not have been given by their commander.

He finds that, on balance, the first shot in the vicinity of the march

was fired by the British Army.

He finds that none of the casualties

shot by the soldiers of Support Company

was armed with a firearm.

He finds that there was some firing by republican paramilitaries

but none of this firing provided any justification for the shooting of civilian casualties.

And then he said the word... Very few...

I'm not sure we'd have had this from a Labour Prime Minister,

or anyone else, I'm afraid, but we got it from him...

The Government is ultimately responsible for the conduct of the Armed Forces,

and for that, on behalf of the Government,

indeed on behalf of our country, I am deeply sorry.

..sorry.

It was a remarkable moment, and I must say something...

It's the moment on that day that's indelibly etched on my memory,

the moment when their attention switched from one another...

They were all chatting and waiting to get out.

Suddenly, the moment of silence, when they all locked onto what was happening.

And there was dead silence listening, and then suddenly...

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

..he said the words. And there was a huge outburst of emotion -

joy, relief, tears, everything.

It was just one of those remarkable moments that one has in a lifetime.

-DAVID CAMERON:

-What happened on Bloody Sunday was both unjustified and unjustifiable.

Those words - "unjustified", "unjustifiable" -

were...

That five minutes of the speech was what the day was all about.

'On behalf of the Government, indeed on behalf of our country,

'I am deeply sorry.'

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I remember looking up on the screen and going,

"He's actually saying what we always wanted to hear," you know?

I was proud of him, if I want to say it that way.

I would have been proud of the fact that, as a Prime Minister,

to say what he said, that no-one else could say,

I thought quite a lot of him that day, you know?

And I won't take that away from him,

and I won't apologise for how I feel about that.

I was proud of the fact that he was able to apologise.

Now, again, we didn't need an apology,

but I think for the British Government,

even to show the British people, I think he set an example that day.

I'll tell you what I knew when I heard the roar greeting Cameron.

I knew on the spot, this is going to be reported

as the people of Derry cheering David Cameron.

I said, "That's not the people of Derry cheering David Cameron.

"That's the people of Derry cheering themselves

"for having forced this statement from the British Prime Minister."

That's what was going on there.

Now, it was the opportunity for the nationalist community

to respect the British culture and the British Prime Minister,

so I was a wee bit... I suppose, there was a bit of trepidation there

as to how he may be received,

but, I mean, you could have heard a pin drop during the address.

It was incredible.

This day wasn't about triumphalism.

It was about justice,

it was about drawing a line under an atrocity,

and it was about the time,

it was about the city now starting to look ahead.

Very rare for a politician, in public,

to say sorry over an issue in Ireland?

I don't think so.

There was...

I mean, the people in there weren't expecting him to say sorry.

And actually, often that's all that's needed is one...

"We got it terribly wrong. Not just wrong, but it was a deliberate wrong.

"And we're sorry."

The families of those who died should not have had to live with the pain and the hurt of that day,

and with a lifetime of loss.

This was a guy who was new,

hadn't been Prime Minister for more than a month or so,

seen very much as a public relations man,

bit of a smoothy chops,

toff, old Etonian.

It actually made him in a way that almost nothing else could have done.

People thought, "Here's a guy, who is actually, when the chips are down, is going to tell us like it is."

Bloody Sunday was a tragedy for the bereaved and wounded,

and a catastrophe for the people of Northern Ireland.

Those are words we cannot and must not ignore.

The world is going to see David Cameron speaking.

That's what the world's seen.

The same as the night of Bloody Sunday,

they heard a British Government spokesman standing up

and saying they killed gunmen and bombers.

The world saw David Cameron standing up and saying they were innocent.

So, I mean, he couldn't have done it obviously without Saville's report,

but they're never going to see Saville's report.

"Unjustified and unjustifiable."

That was the United Kingdom's

Prime Minister's comment on the long-awaited report

on the events of Bloody Sunday.

David Cameron has apologised for the events of Bloody Sunday

after the Saville report found that 13 innocent people

were shot dead by British paratroopers in Londonderry,

back in 1972.

Reading the speech, you could see the changes,

you could see the underlines to make more powerful the word that he was going to say, and so on,

and what I can say about that is, what was written for him,

he wasn't, to a degree, still on the day,

prepared to accept every word of it, what was written for him,

and that jumped out at me.

That this guy was prepared to acknowledge what happened,

and he did it within that speech.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

People think, you campaign for 39 years, it's easy.

It's not easy going. You get a lot of insult.

You get a lot of abuse over them years, you know,

and all that comes to that moment in time

when the British Prime Minister says it was wrong.

We got downstairs

and we moved towards the front door of the Guildhall,

and I remember myself and John standing,

and I think it might have been John McKinney, as well,

and we were standing,

and none of us wanted to go out the door.

We were all...

Literally, you could sort of stand at the side of the door

and nobody could see you, but once you came out past the door,

everybody could see you and nobody wanted to go out.

I just turned to John and I says, "John, let's go."

It was like a thousand birthday parties and Christmas days, all in one.

Whoo!

The atmosphere...

Came out...

And they cheered and they smiled.

The sun was shining.

God, what a day in Derry.

# ..Someone told me not to cry... #

I've never seen as much happiness.

And it wasn't... There was no... There was no sense of, "We're right and you're wrong."

It was a sense that, aye, we have been proved right,

the truth's been told.

People have accepted... This is a new day, new dawn.

That was that great sense.

Words can't describe it. You had to be there.

You had to feel it.

Jim was murdered.

Jim was innocent, and to the Derry people,

the Wray family's gratitude can never be expressed in words alone.

Thank you.

It was just as if a big black veil had been lifted over the people of Derry,

and everybody was exonerated, which was absolutely magic.

And I'm standing looking and going, "I don't believe this!"

I am delighted to say Jackie was innocent.

I finished it off with my tuppence-worth at the end, you know, thanking everybody,

and I remember, whenever I came to the end of mine, I had to say it!

We have overcome!

And we did overcome. We overcame the Establishment, we beat the Establishment.

Ordinary people, ordinary people beat the Establishment.

I happened to have in my handbag the original Widgery copy,

and when everybody had gone through their little bit, and that,

I don't know, it was a spur-of-the-moment thing...

'It just seemed the right thing to do, to rip it up.'

CHEERING AND WHISTLING

People power that achieved something which everybody had said at the outset was utterly impossible.

There has never been the like of the Bloody Sunday report,

there's never been the like of the Bloody Sunday campaign,

never been the like of the Bloody Sunday families.

Just terrific people.

A year on now, the reality of the report...

I mean, Saville was very, very, very clever.

His wording throughout,

I mean, the immediate elation of the day and those statements,

but, you know, in reading it,

Saville drew a nearly miraculous line, really!

A brilliant, brilliant...

..waving to...

I think probably keep everybody happy.

It's a very interesting report.

I think that it's vindicated the families very much,

vindicated the victims very much.

I think the Army got off a little lightly in it.

I think the day of the issuing of the report was a day when everybody wanted to be magnanimous,

and everyone was.

I think there are serious flaws in the Saville report.

Now, in the immediate aftermath of the publication of Saville,

it would have been crass

to begin to cavil at some of the inadequacies of the report.

There was no mood, no appetite at all to say,

"Steady on, there are still problems here."

That's understandable and right. I felt that myself.

But as I read through the report, I did think that I...

I think senior British Army officers got off very, very lightly indeed.

People talk about, "What did I get out of this report?"

I got what I wanted -

the first and foremost was the full declaration of innocence for all our people.

I do believe we have the repudiation of Widgery -

it's in the bin, end of story, we tore it up, it's gone.

But the job is not complete until the soldiers are prosecuted

for what they did to our people.

The people of Derry, they got caught up in the moment of David Cameron saying sorry,

declaration of innocence, didn't know all the details, same as us.

The people of Derry didn't know all the details.

Since that, they have learnt more and, you know,

they realise now that, you know,

that just...the whole truth didn't come out.

The man who shot my father stands before God already.

And I don't believe that I can be the judge of him.

I believe in forgiving him.

It's not about sweeping anything under the carpet or saying it wasn't wrong -

it was absolutely wrong and it was absolutely cold-blooded murder -

but I choose to forgive them, you know?

And I choose to forgive them in my father's name as well.

There are times you waken up... I mind wakening up the morning after and thinking,

"Did this really happen?" You know? And it did.

My initial thought was, "I don't have to go campaigning any more," you know?

It was a strange sort of a...

A sense of relief and, as you say,

a bit of pride in there, as well, you know?

-I thought, "Job well done, kid."

-Well done.

If it's used right, and if what goes on from this is positive,

Bloody Sunday can become a great healing force.

We have seen some bits of that already, you know,

and wouldn't that be a great epitaph to those that lost their life that day?

That what was an awful, brutal, you know, assault and tragedy

could be transformed into something

that could be the start of a great healing process.

That's what my wish would be anyway...you know?

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