THE BLOODY SUNDAY INQUIRY /Day 197: The decision to block the Civil Rights march on Bloody Sunday from reaching Derry's city centre was taken at the highest political level in London, it was asserted yesterday by Lord Kilclooney (John Taylor).
He said the Joint Security Committee (JSC) at Stormont, which he chaired around that time, had recommended the march be stopped but the decision was agreed between the Chief of the General Staff (of the army) and British prime minister Mr Edward Heath.
Asked by Lord Anthony Gifford QC, for a number of victims' families, what was to be done if rioting resulted, he replied: "The final decision was taken in London but I would not suggest for one moment that Mr Heath would have agreed to shooting rioters dead."
In reply to Mr Edwin Glasgow QC, for a number of soldiers, Lord Kilclooney said he was sure there was intelligence that terrorists were to take advantage of the march. He had no recollection of the sort of terrorism and had heard no reports relating to Mr Martin McGuinness. However, he added: "I certainly have a recollection that nail bombs were used against the army and I think, in fact, one of those who was shot dead was found with one in his pocket."
Asked about a memo from General Robert Ford, Commander of Land Forces, to his superior officer, General Harry Tuzo, GOC, in which Gen Ford suggested the army should consider using small-calibre weapons to shoot selected ringleaders of rioting crowds, he said, in his experience, the line taken by army commanders was always that unarmed civilians should not be shot.
Lord Kilclooney said the JSC never heard of a suggestion to shoot rioters.
He also asserted that march organiser NICRA (the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association) was not merely a civil rights movement. "It was an organisation infiltrated by Irish republicanism in which it actually went so far as to provide two places on its executive committee for the Official IRA Sinn Féin people and, of course, was used as a cover by terrorists."
The inquiry adjourned for Easter and will resume on April 24th.
A statement, issued on behalf of families and wounded of Bloody Sunday in relation to Lord Kilclooney's evidence on Thursday, said it demonstrated "that the Northern Ireland government was a mere puppet regime and that the political and security administration in Britain had direct and ultimate responsibility for the planning and conduct of the shoot-to-kill operation that was executed on Bloody Sunday".