“It politicised me,” he says, “in the sense that I was of the conclusion that this could now only be dealt with by getting the two killing machines – the British army and the IRA, as they became after Bloody Sunday – into a room and talking to each other. There was no other way through it.”If Bloody Sunday changed Bradley; so too did the discredited Widgery report, which exonerated the soldiers and was widely regarded by nationalists as a whitewash.
Mark Saville’s inquiry opened in Derry in 1998. His report, published in 2010, found that none of the victims posed a threat when they were shot. In the centre of Derry, a crowd of thousands cheered the then UK prime minister, David Cameron, as he apologised. The deaths had been “unjustified and unjustifiable”, he said. “I am deeply sorry.”He had left the priesthood years before.
Bradley at the Talbot Street commemorative event to mark the 43rd anniversary of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, in 2017. Photograph Nick Bradshaw “The difficulty with the past and the reason we’re still suffering is that the two governments have not gone there.”Most controversial is the issue of prosecution of British soldiers. Last week the North’s Secretary of State, Karen Bradley, apologised amid calls for her resignation, after she said in the House of Commons that killings by soldiers during the Troubles were not crimes.