The key to the Bloody Sunday inquiry was to establish who had sent the paratroopers onto the streets of Derry that day and what orders they had been given, Mr John Hume MP said yesterday.
The former SDLP leader asserted in evidence to the inquiry that the then Northern Ireland government at Stormont, in fact, had control of the British army in the North in January, 1972, and was dictating policy on the deployment of troops.
Mr Hume confirmed that he had counselled against the anti-internment Civil Rights demonstration planned for January 30th, 1972, and had stayed at home on the day. He said that as the huge march passed his house, he thought, in despair, "that no-one was listening to me anymore and that this would be the end of me, in political terms".
In reply to Mr Christopher Clarke QC, counsel to the tribunal, Mr Hume described how he had been astonished and alarmed by the extremely aggressive behaviour of paratroopers towards peaceful anti-internment protesters on Magilligan beach in Co Derry on the weekend before Bloody Sunday.
The level of aggression displayed to the marchers was frightening, and as a direct result he had decided not to support the Civil Rights march planned for January 30th. "If a peaceful march proceeding in a non-built-up area on a beach with no stones resulted in a violent confrontation, I shuddered to think what would happen in the built-up streets of Derry," he said.
Mr Hume said he did not get involved in the organisation of the march and he had no lines of communication with the IRA about its intentions. He had not received any anonymous telephone calls prior to the march giving him an indication as to what might happen. He added: "Whereas I had an idea that the army would be tough on the day and would behave wrongly, I had no idea that the army would start shooting at the marchers."
He told the inquiry that at the Magilligan beach confrontation he had asked an officer commanding the soldiers why they were acting as they were, and the officer had said: "Your government sent us here."
Mr Hume said that he took this to mean that the Northern Ireland government had sent them and told them what to do.
He told the inquiry it was crucial and important to find out what orders, if any, were given on Bloody Sunday to the British army by the then Stormont government.
Mr Hume recalled that, prior to Bloody Sunday, he had been involved in a landmark court case when he had refused to pay a £20 fine imposed after he was arrested by soldiers during a confrontation in Derry.
His lawyer had contended that the Northern Ireland Special Powers Act did not give the army the power to arrest, and he had won this case in the British High Court. It was decided that it was illegal and unconstitutional for the British army to act under the laws of Northern Ireland and that they should be acting under the laws of the British parliament.
"As a result of that decision the British parliament had to sit up all night passing a law and then getting it to the House of Lords that legalised retrospectively all the British army had done previously, including Bloody Sunday," he said.
The development of the Civil Rights Movement was in response to serious discrimination. The introduction of internment without trial had increased the anger of the people enormously and led to the protest marches, Mr Hume said.