1 Thursday, 5th December 2002
2 (9.30 a.m)
3 SIR ARTHUR HOCKADAY, sworn
4 Questioned by MS McGAHEY
5 LORD SAVILLE: Sir Arthur, if you look across to your left,
6 you can see who is talking to you. I am the Chairman,
7 I say this to all the witnesses: the questions will come
8 in the main from the barristers, the people in front of
9 me. Could I ask you to try and remember to keep
10 reasonably close to that microphone. You can pull it
11 towards you a little if you like to make it more
12 comfortable, and then we will all be able to hear what
13 you have to say.
14 MS McGAHEY: Sir Arthur, do you have with you, please,
15 a copy of the statement you made to this Inquiry and
16 signed on 18th July 2000?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. You subsequently made a second statement that you signed
19 on 26th November 2002; is that right?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. And in that second statement you made a number of
22 corrections to the first?
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. Subject to those corrections, are the contents of these
25 two statements true to the best of your knowledge and
1 belief?
2 A. Yes. There is one passage where, in the light of
3 something I have seen since, I think I might want
4 slightly to vary from yours. Would it be better to
5 leave that in case the point comes up?
6 Q. Would you like to identify it for me now?
7 A. It is paragraph 104 in the second statement.
8 Q. Could I have on the screen, please, KH9.95.
9 A. Yes. In paragraph 104, I say that:
10 "As far as I recall, I think I would have known that
11 1 Para were being moved to Derry to take part in the
12 operation ..."
13 Since then I have seen the brief that Lord Trend
14 submitted to the Prime Minister for the GEN 47 meeting
15 on 27th January. And in that brief the Prime Minister
16 is invited to ask the Secretary for Defence "What is all
17 this in these press reports about 1 Para being a bit
18 rough?"
19 Now, had I known at that time -- which would have
20 been on the Wednesday before Bloody Sunday -- had
21 I known that 1 Para were going to take part in the march
22 control operation on the Sunday, I am sure I would have
23 referred to that in that particular paragraph of the
24 brief. So I infer from this that, at any rate to the
25 middle of the preceding week, I did not know that 1 Para
1 were taking part in it. Indeed, in that brief there is
2 no mention at all of the Sunday march.
3 Q. Do we gather from your statement it is likely that you
4 would have done at least the first draft of that brief,
5 which would have been forwarded by Sir Burke Trend to
6 the Prime Minister?
7 A. Having now read it I would say that I am sure I drafted
8 parts of it. I do not believe that I wrote the whole of
9 it.
10 Q. Subject to that correction, the contents of both
11 statements are true?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. You have made very detailed statements, particularly in
14 the case of your second one, and have been referred to
15 a large number of documents. We have all had an
16 opportunity to read both your statements and all those
17 documents, and I propose to refer you to very few of
18 them and only to small parts of your statements.
19 The first matter I would like to ask you about is
20 one concerning organisation in general. Could we have
21 on the screen, please, KH9.73, paragraph 26. This is
22 taken from your second statement. You refer there to
23 a group of officials that met frequently, you believe
24 daily, under the chairmanship of Sir James Dunnett. The
25 group took the form of morning prayers, had been started
1 some time after the introduction of internment,
2 predominantly made up of MoD officials and
3 representatives of the General Staff, but
4 representatives from other departments attended as well.
5 Could that be put on the left-hand side of the page,
6 please. On the right could we have INQ1.380. This is
7 the frontispiece of the minutes of the seventh meeting
8 of GEN 47 in 1971. It took place on 29th October.
9 Could we have the next page of that, please, page 381,
10 and the first paragraph.
11 There is a reference to:
12 "... regular daily information would be available
13 from the meetings on operational matters held in the
14 Ministry of Defence under Sir James Dunnett's
15 chairmanship."
16 Is that a reference, do you think, to the morning
17 prayer meetings that you had?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. Mr Anthony Stephens has also referred in his
20 supplementary statement to the Inquiry to these morning
21 meetings. Could we remove the right-hand side of the
22 screen and have instead, please, KS3.98. It may be it
23 has not yet been scanned on to the system.
24 A. I do not have it, no.
25 Q. I shall tell you in outline what Mr Stephens says in his
1 supplementary statement. He says that the outcome of
2 the meetings were recorded by a Mr Gainsborough in the
3 form of instructions to Ministry of Defence
4 participants, points for action arising out of the
5 discussions. We have seen some of those instructions,
6 and you have annexed some of them to your statement.
7 Could we have, as an example, INQ1.634. This is by
8 way of example only.
9 My question, is this: in addition to these action
10 notes, the points of action made by Mr Gainsborough,
11 were formal minutes also kept of these meetings?
12 A. No. They were the sort of meeting that would simply
13 lead to a decision sheet.
14 Q. I would like to move on to the events of
15 late October 1971. Could we have on the whole screen,
16 please, KH9.19. This is the first page of the minutes
17 of the Northern Ireland policy committee meeting that
18 took place on 25th October 1971. You have told us
19 already that you do not recall the details of this
20 meeting. There is one matter I would like to ask
21 whether you can help us with.
22 Could we have the second page, please. In
23 paragraph 3:
24 "Lord Balniel suggested that in this situation it
25 was worth considering whether the Army ought to be
1 adopting tougher tactics."
2 He suggests what those should be:
3 "He also mentioned the near no-go situation in the
4 Catholic areas of Londonderry; on this point the
5 Secretary of State said he agreed with the GOC's
6 assessment that re-establishing regular patrolling
7 throughout Londonderry was a lower priority than
8 reducing the incidence of bombing and shooting in
9 Belfast ...
10 "4. After a short discussion the Secretary of State
11 said that the question of tougher tactics might be
12 raised at the Prime Minister's meeting later in the
13 morning ..."
14 Do you recall whether ever any tougher tactics in
15 respect of Londonderry in particular were discussed,
16 either at that meeting or at about that time?
17 A. There was always consideration of the tactical approach
18 to be adopted in Derry; because, on the one hand, the
19 no-go areas in particular were regarded as highly
20 satisfactory [sic], and there always tended to be
21 a certain amount of pressure from Stormont: what are you
22 going to do about these? And obviously the Army, and
23 indeed the London Government generally, wished to make
24 clear that some sort of control was still being
25 maintained.
1 On the other hand, the other side of the tension, so
2 to speak, was the recognition that if too tough tactics
3 were adopted, that a substantial proportion of what in
4 those days we used to call "moderate Catholic opinion"
5 would be alienated. And I think you will have noticed
6 quite frequent references in papers by Lord Carver, and
7 occasionally by myself, that part of the essence of
8 defeating a terrorist campaign is to try to separate the
9 terrorists from the community in which they live and
10 work.
11 Q. On a minor matter, the transcript has recorded you as
12 saying that the no-go areas in particular were regarded
13 as "highly satisfactory"; should that read
14 "unsatisfactory"?
15 A. Oh, yes.
16 Q. Can I ask you to look at the minutes of another meeting.
17 This is the minutes of a meeting of 15th November 1972,
18 KH9.23. Could we highlight the second main paragraph,
19 please:
20 "The position in Londonderry remained difficult and
21 was, if anything, deteriorating. The GOC proposed to
22 increase the number and the strength of patrols into the
23 Catholic areas, but not to attempt to re-establish
24 a permanent military presence throughout these areas
25 until the New Year."
1 Do you remember whether there was at that time any
2 specific plan for establishing a permanent military
3 presence in the New Year?
4 A. I do not remember it, but my general impression,
5 reinforced by papers that I have seen in recent weeks,
6 is that the re-establishment of a permanent military
7 presence, while in some ways a desirable objective,
8 would involve the importation into Northern Ireland of
9 such extensive military reinforcements that, given the
10 general overstretch on the Army, it probably was not on.
11 Q. Could we turn now, please, to the GEN 47 meeting,
12 11th January 197,250.7, please. The first page shows
13 you attended as a member of the Cabinet Secretariat.
14 I think that would have been your first meeting as
15 a member of the Cabinet Secretariat; is that right?
16 A. That is right.
17 Q. Could we have the second page, please, the second
18 paragraph. Six lines down this is recorded:
19 "The relatively lower number of violent incidents
20 since Christmas gave rise to the question whether the
21 present level of violence in Belfast was as low as could
22 be reasonably expected there, short of a deliberate
23 decision by the IRA to reduce drastically or to call off
24 its campaign. If this was so it gave additional point
25 to the desirability of a political initiative before on
1 the one hand the 'Official' IRA increased their
2 influence among the Roman Catholic population, or on the
3 other hand Protestant opinion hardened as a consequence
4 of the march mounted on 2nd January by the
5 Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, for which
6 some prosecutions have been decided upon, and the
7 continuing inability of the security forces to enforce
8 law and order in the Bogside and Creggan area of
9 Londonderry.
10 "The present ban on marches was due to expire on
11 8th February. The Northern Ireland Prime Minister was
12 understood to favour its extension until at least the
13 end of the year. As to Londonderry, a military
14 operation to reimpose law and order would require seven
15 battalions and would probably involve the commitment for
16 a long time of four battalions in the city. It would be
17 a major operation, necessarily involving numerous
18 civilian casualties, and thereby hardening even further
19 the attitude of the Roman Catholic population."
20 Could we go over the page, please, to the
21 conclusion:
22 The Prime Minister, in summing-up, said:
23 "A military operation to reimpose law and order in
24 Londonderry might in time become inevitable, but should
25 not be undertaken while there still remained some
1 prospect of a successful political initiative."
2 It is clear from that summary that emphasis was
3 being laid on the need for a political initiative, and
4 that is something you stressed in your statements to
5 this Inquiry. It is also clear from that that
6 a military operation on a large-scale was something that
7 was not contemplated at that stage.
8 As far as you recall was there still a need to deal
9 with the problem of marches mentioned on the previous
10 page, to prevent Protestant opinion from hardening any
11 further?
12 A. The ban on marches had been introduced, to some extent,
13 as a quid pro quo for internment in 1971. Since there
14 were many more Orange Order marches, and so on, than
15 there were marches on the nationalist side, the ban on
16 marches was going to bite harder on the Orange element,
17 if I may so describe them. And so it was not really
18 popular with many people in the majority in
19 Northern Ireland.
20 This meant that the majority were all the keener
21 that, if there was a minority march, that that march
22 should be banned or, if started, stopped, so that it
23 should not appear that one group were being treated
24 differently from the other.
25 This was a continuing general problem, but I do not
1 recall that at this stage there was any particular
2 examples that people had in mind.
3 Q. I would like to go back now to your first statement to
4 the Inquiry, and to the aftermath of Bloody Sunday.
5 Could we have KH9.2, please, paragraph 9. You say there
6 that you now have no recollection of events leading up
7 to the march, or of intelligence reports relating to it.
8 You remember hearing the news and being horrified at the
9 thought that so many people had been killed. You go on.
10 "... one of my immediate jobs in the Cabinet Office
11 was to ensure that the Ministry of Defence gave the
12 Prime Minister as much information as possible."
13 Do you recall being given any information by the
14 Ministry of Defence after the events about the
15 intelligence that they had had before the events?
16 A. No.
17 Q. Do you recall a suggestion ever being made that
18 a soldier had lost a magazine and, to conceal that fact,
19 had dishonestly claimed that he had fired 22 shots
20 through a window?
21 A. No. I have seen references to this in some of the
22 papers, and I have no recollection of it.
23 Q. You then go on:
24 "I think that the week following Bloody Sunday
25 involved me in advising the Secretary of the Cabinet on
1 how he might brief the Prime Minister on the most
2 sensible approach and the right issues to raise."
3 What was the sensible approach that you advised the
4 Prime Minister to take?
5 A. To do everything possible to discover what the actual
6 facts were of what had occurred on Bloody Sunday. I do
7 not recall whether I had a specific view on whether
8 there should be an inquiry of the type that Lord Widgery
9 undertook, but I would guess that that probably all
10 formed part of it.
11 Q. What were, in your view, the right issues to raise?
12 A. What happened and why did it happen.
13 Q. Could we go on to the next paragraph, please. You:
14 "... remember being told immediately after
15 Bloody Sunday that the soldiers had been fired on in the
16 Bogside and had responded to that fire."
17 You continue:
18 "I thought to myself privately that it was certain
19 that the soldiers thought they had been fired on, and
20 very likely that they were actually fired on."
21 What was the basis of the view that you held?
22 A. Basically it was against the remarks I made towards the
23 end of my second statement, about the prevailing
24 climate. Basically it was my belief that the soldiers
25 would not have opened fired, certainly unless they
1 thought they had been; they had been fired upon.
2 MR TOOHEY: Sir Arthur, in ensuring that the Ministry of
3 Defence gave the Prime Minister as much information as
4 possible about Bloody Sunday, did you liaise with
5 a particular person or number of persons?
6 A. I would probably have liaised with the Secretary of
7 State's private office. I might have liaised with my
8 successor, Derek Stephens, or with Tony Stephens, his
9 immediate assistant. I think I would have tried to
10 avoid making use of my interior knowledge of the system,
11 and would have tried to deal with the private office.
12 MS McGAHEY: You say at the end of paragraph 10.
13 "My reflection on the killings at the time was that
14 some of those killed probably fired on the troops, but
15 that some probably had not."
16 Was that view based on information you had received
17 from the Ministry of Defence?
18 A. No. It was based -- it was based partly, I suppose, on
19 the information that we were getting from the Ministry
20 of Defence; but partly on newspaper reports that one had
21 read and the insistence in a number of quarters in Derry
22 that some at least of those who had been killed had been
23 "innocent bystanders".
24 Q. In paragraph 11 you continue:
25 "Any thoughts of a political initiative to bring the
1 nationalists into the political picture in 1972
2 disappeared following Bloody Sunday [because] It was
3 impossible for even [those of moderate views] to accept
4 any overture from the British Government."
5 You carry on:
6 "It is clear to me, however, that the operation in
7 Londonderry on Bloody Sunday was not a conspiracy
8 against the people of Londonderry or even the IRA. The
9 military operation was there to deal with the civil
10 rights march. Any ideas that the Government might have
11 had about a change in military policy would have
12 involved changes at a province-wide level, not at the
13 level of a one-off incident in Londonderry."
14 Going back to the beginning of that paragraph, do
15 you recall any suggestion ever being made within the
16 Ministry of Defence that it might be easier for the UK
17 Government to take the lead in a political initiative if
18 it had had a substantial military success?
19 A. There was certainly a feeling that if the military
20 situation greatly improved that might make a political
21 initiative all the easier, but that was seen in terms of
22 the sort of thing to which you referred earlier, remarks
23 on the improvement in the situation in Belfast, and it
24 was conceived in terms of the gradual attrition of the
25 IRA campaign rather than some major military event.
1 Q. Was this a view that was held at the Ministry of
2 Defence?
3 A. I was not in the Ministry of Defence at the time.
4 Q. In the period up to 10th January?
5 A. Yes, that -- it was certainly the view of the Chief of
6 the General Staff.
7 Q. In the Cabinet Office?
8 A. Yes. I do not recall the point being specifically
9 discussed, but I would think that the general view in
10 the Cabinet Office was very much the same.
11 Q. Was there ever a suggestion at the Ministry of Defence
12 that it would be a good thing to demonstrate to
13 terrorists that they could not win against British
14 military force and so, by some military event, drive
15 them to the negotiating table?
16 A. I think you have probably got to distinguish here
17 between what certain individuals in the Ministry of
18 Defence might have thought and what the view -- the
19 corporate view of the Ministry was. And certainly
20 I come back again to the Chief of the General Staff, who
21 was absolutely cardinal in this. The view of the Chief
22 of the General Staff, and for that matter of Sir James
23 Dunnett, was that it was most unlikely that the
24 Northern Ireland problem would be solved by military
25 means alone.
1 Q. Can you assist on the views of the politicians within
2 the Ministry of Defence, particularly Lord Carrington?
3 A. So far as I know his view was the same.
4 Q. Was there, within the Ministry of Defence, up until
5 10th January 1972, a view that a military success was
6 needed to reduce pressure from the Unionists on
7 Mr Faulkner?
8 A. I think I come back to the sort of point that I think
9 I have made several times. That is that, on the one,
10 hand it was almost self-evident that a military success
11 would, in this particular case, ease the situation
12 vis-a-vis the more extreme Unionists. But it was
13 recognised that the military realities were such that
14 the sort of operation that might be described as
15 a "spectacular military success" was not practicable.
16 Q. Could we go on in your statement, please, to
17 paragraph 12, which is on the screen. You tell us you
18 had no involvement in the Widgery Tribunal. Then, over
19 the page to paragraph 13, you say there:
20 "The Government machine, of which I was part,
21 certainly hoped that there would be no conclusion by
22 Lord Widgery that the soldiers were guilty of
23 indiscriminate murder. I remember thinking that
24 Lord Widgery's military background would help him
25 understand some of the issues of being a soldier in
1 difficult circumstances."
2 Was there any belief within the "Government
3 machine", to use your expression, that Lord Widgery's
4 military background might help him favour the soldiers,
5 the military case, unduly?
6 A. No. I used the word "understand" deliberately.
7 Q. I would like to ask you now about a number of separate
8 and unrelated matters. Could we have on the screen,
9 please, G82.512. This is the covering note written by
10 Colonel Dalzell-Payne to accompany a paper he wrote on
11 27th January 1972 about marches. I know you have seen
12 this document recently. Is it a document you would have
13 seen, bearing in mind you had gone to the Cabinet
14 Office, at the time?
15 A. No.
16 Q. I will ask you no further questions about it. Could we
17 go back to your second statement, please, KH9.92,
18 paragraph 90. In that paragraph you have referred to
19 the memorandum compiled by Mr Clarke, Counsel to the
20 Inquiry, in particular to reports of the suggestion from
21 Lord Hailsham to the effect that anyone who obstructed
22 the armed forces was the Queen's enemy and could be
23 shot. You say you have no recollection of having heard
24 Lord Hailsham express this view, though it is possible
25 that Lord Carver might have mentioned it at some forum
1 at which you were present. Do you have any recollection
2 of Lord Carver ever having mentioned this?
3 A. No, I do not.
4 Q. Finally could we go to a separate document, KM6.75, on
5 an entirely different topic. This is a letter you wrote
6 on 30th July 1971 to Sir Stewart Crawford, at the
7 Foreign Office, dealing with the appointment of an IRD,
8 Information Research Department Officer, to Belfast.
9 Could we have paragraph 2. You refer to the
10 designation that has been given to the representative,
11 Mr Mooney, of Information Advisor to the GOC. You say:
12 "... Chief of Public Relations thinks, and I agree,
13 that this is an unfortunate choice of cover. The title
14 is bound to associate him immediately with Army Public
15 Relations. We believe that this not only places the
16 present Command Public Relations Officer in a false
17 position but also, in view of the work that the IRD
18 officer will in fact be doing, risks damaging the
19 credibility of Army PR."
20 First of all, why, as far as you were aware, did the
21 IRD representative need cover?
22 A. Well, I knew a little bit about IRD from experience in
23 various appointments, and I knew that the mission of IRD
24 was perhaps what would nowadays be called "spin", that
25 it was their business, while dealing in facts, to make
1 jolly sure that those facts were presented -- and in
2 documents that were disseminated round and about in
3 various ways -- in such a way, as some people would have
4 put it, to expose the Warsaw pact for what it was, and
5 generally speaking to show the Warsaw pact in the worst
6 possible light.
7 Now, the idea was generated that in the so-called
8 "propaganda war" against the IRA that it would be useful
9 to have an IRD input. But, to the extent that it was
10 known what IRD was and what it did, they did not want
11 him to appear as IRD advisor to the UK Representative,
12 or whatever it may be. And, therefore, they wanted to
13 give him some sort of cover. And this was the idea that
14 they had.
15 Q. Was it because IRD activities in general, in "spinning",
16 if you like, were known, that you believed he risked
17 damaging the credibility of Army PR?
18 A. Yes, it was.
19 Q. Thank you very much, those are all my questions.
20 Questioned by MR TREACY
21 MR TREACY: Sir Arthur, my name is Seamus Treacy, and
22 I appear on behalf of some of the families. Could
23 I indicate to you what I think is the thrust of what you
24 are saying in your statements to the Inquiry, and if
25 I do not accurately or fairly summarise what I believe
1 you have said, please indicate.
2 The basic premise that emerges from your statements
3 is that Bloody Sunday had not been "approved", as you
4 put it, by default or otherwise, by the British Cabinet;
5 because you perceived that, or you would have perceived
6 that to have frustrated the pending political
7 initiative.
8 LORD SAVILLE: I do not quite know what you mean, Mr Treacy,
9 by Bloody Sunday not being "approved". Could you make
10 that a bit clearer?
11 MR TREACY: Yes. That is a reference to a paragraph in his
12 statement where Mr Hockaday indicated he rejects any
13 suggestion that GEN 47, as he puts it "approved by
14 default or otherwise any plans alleged to have been
15 authorised by the JSC".
16 Do you remember saying that in your statement.
17 A. Which paragraph is it?
18 Q. It is paragraph 73 of your statement. It is at KH9.87,
19 at the end of paragraph 73. Essentially what you appear
20 to have been saying in your statement is that, having
21 perused the documents at the time, the inference that
22 you have come to is that Bloody Sunday would in fact
23 have frustrated the political initiatives which the
24 British Government then had in contemplation, probably
25 in or about February 1972.
1 LORD SAVILLE: Again I am not sure, Mr Treacy -- it is no
2 doubt my fault -- what you mean by the expression
3 "Bloody Sunday". Are you saying the events as they
4 occurred on that day, or giving that expression some
5 different meaning in this context?
6 MR TREACY: What I am suggesting is that you have also
7 indicated in another portion of your statement -- if
8 I could ask you to look at this as well so you can
9 understand where I am coming from -- this is at
10 paragraph 84, KH9.90, the last four lines. If I read
11 the whole of paragraph 84:
12 "Any thoughts of a political initiative to bring the
13 nationalists into the political picture in 1972
14 disappeared following Bloody Sunday."
15 I do not think I need read the next sentence. The
16 final sentence:
17 "The military operation was there to deal with the
18 civil rights march. Any ideas that the Government might
19 have had about a change in military policy would have
20 involved changes at a province-wide level, not at the
21 level of a one-off incident in Londonderry."
22 What you appear to be saying in your statement
23 really is that the operation, whatever it was, on
24 Bloody Sunday was really just a very straightforward
25 security operation to police the civil rights march, and
1 it did not indicate any change in military policy. Is
2 that essentially what you are saying?
3 A. Yes. It was -- insofar as there was any change
4 involved, it was perhaps a determination to make
5 clearer -- or even clearer than it had been before --
6 that while there was, in practical terms, no question of
7 reoccupying the no-go areas, nevertheless control was to
8 be exercised on any general activities outside them.
9 Q. As I understand it, your suggestion that the operation
10 on Bloody Sunday did not signify any change -- you use
11 the expression, you refer to a "change in military
12 policy"; had you any understanding that it may have
13 signified a change in political policy?
14 A. I am sorry, sir, that what may have signified
15 a change --
16 Q. In paragraph 84 of your statement we have on the screen,
17 you refer:
18 "Any ideas that the Government might have had about
19 a change in military policy would have involved
20 changes ..." et cetera.
21 What you seem to be saying in your statement is
22 that, as far as you were concerned, Bloody Sunday did
23 not involve any change in military policy. And I am
24 asking you: do you extend that to cover political policy
25 as well?
1 A. Oh, yes. Again -- I am afraid I share the Chairman's
2 difficulty in understanding exactly what you mean by the
3 words "Bloody Sunday." But, as I think is clear from
4 the minutes of the GEN 47 meeting on the 27th, this was
5 seen as an operation essentially to deal with the civil
6 rights march, and it was not seen as an event that would
7 have any effect at all upon what indeed was the main
8 subject discussed at that GEN 47 meeting, namely
9 a possible political initiative.
10 Q. Therefore, according to what you say in your statements
11 and in your evidence to the Inquiry today, really the
12 operation that was planned for 30th January did not
13 signify any change of policy at all?
14 A. Correct.
15 Q. And the essential reason you give for saying that it did
16 not signify any change of policy is because there was,
17 as we can see from the papers before the Inquiry, some
18 kind of political initiative which was planned, probably
19 for implementation in or around February 1972?
20 A. Yes. At that stage "planned" might be putting it
21 a little too strongly; but was being thought about.
22 Q. The conclusion that you have reached is in part
23 influenced by the consideration that, as you say --
24 I think it is paragraph 111 of your statement -- there
25 was a prevailing culture of respect for the law and the
1 doctrine of minimum force?
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. Although it is right to say that the conclusions or
4 inferences which you draw yourself, are based largely,
5 perhaps exclusively, on an analysis of the documents
6 that you have now been provided with, together with your
7 understanding of what the prevailing culture was?
8 A. That is correct.
9 Q. Could I take you briefly at first to the meeting on
10 27th January 1972. Of course by that stage you had
11 moved over from the MoD and you were part of the Cabinet
12 Secretariat. You have looked at the minutes of that
13 meeting?
14 A. I am just turning them up, sir.
15 Q. That is the GEN 47 meeting.
16 A. On 27th January, yes.
17 Q. If at any stage you want me to put a document on the
18 screen, indicate and I will do so. You are familiar
19 with the contents of that, and the Inquiry has seen it
20 on numerous occasions.
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. There is no indication, on the face of that minute or in
23 the Prime Minister's summary, that there was any
24 discussion at all about recourse to lethal force on
25 30th January.
1 A. That is correct.
2 Q. Was there any discussion about the use of lethal force
3 at that meeting?
4 A. I do not recall it and, had there been any significant
5 discussion of lethal force, it would have been recorded
6 in the minutes which I wrote.
7 Q. You say "any significant discussion." If there had been
8 any discussion about the use of lethal force at all,
9 would it have been recorded in the minute? Or is it
10 possible that it could have been discussed but was not
11 minuted?
12 A. If it had been discussed it would have been minuted. If
13 it had been mentioned en passant, it might not have
14 been.
15 Q. Are you equally certain that there was not any
16 discussion about steps, any steps which could have been
17 taken to minimise, to the greatest extent possible,
18 recourse to lethal force?
19 A. No, there was not. In the first place, as I say, I am
20 quite clear that the use of lethal force was not
21 discussed, and I doubt whether it was even mentioned.
22 Secondly, it was part of what I have elsewhere
23 called the "prevailing culture", and part of the given
24 against which the whole discussion was proceeding, that
25 minimum force would be applied.
1 Q. I think it is right to say that in your own statement to
2 the Inquiry you did indicate, in paragraph 106 of your
3 statement, KH9.96:
4 "It is overstating matters to suggest that bloodshed
5 was 'anticipated'. I would accept that the possibility
6 that shooting might break out was feared. But I do not
7 consider that was particularly unusual. The possibility
8 of shooting (and thus inevitably some risk of entirely
9 innocent casualties and fatalities) was an unfortunate
10 reality in many, if not most troop deployments at the
11 time in Northern Ireland."
12 Does that indicate that the possibility that there
13 might be shooting was in fact considered, and that
14 entirely innocent casualties and fatalities might ensue?
15 A. It was not, as far as I recall, specifically considered
16 at the meeting, but it was always part of the general
17 background; not in the sense that the use of lethal
18 force would be introduced by the Security Forces, but
19 that shooting -- to use that term broadly -- that
20 shooting might be initiated by the other side, and that
21 circumstances might arise in which the return of fire by
22 the Security Forces became inevitable. And once -- if
23 you got to that situation where the shooting from the
24 other side was such as to provoke the return of fire by
25 the Security Forces, there was of course then always the
1 danger, simply as a matter of practical fact, that
2 "innocent bystanders" might be hit.
3 Q. Of course, this march was going to be quite different
4 from any of the previous marches.
5 A. I do not recall that specifically, but if it was so I do
6 not dissent.
7 Q. In terms of its size, for example.
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. The predictions were this was going to be an absolutely
10 enormous march.
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. What you are saying, therefore, is that --
13 notwithstanding the appreciation of the risk of the use
14 of firearms and the risk that "innocent bystanders", as
15 you put it, entirely innocent casualties and fatalities
16 might occur -- it does not appear there was any
17 consideration whatsoever to putting in place any
18 safeguards to prevent that happening in the context of
19 an extremely large march?
20 A. This was regarded -- and I think if you return to the
21 GEN 47 meetings again, if you look at the Prime
22 Minister's summing-up -- may I ask you to turn back to
23 that meeting?
24 Q. Maybe we should put this on the screen, please.
25 A. I have it as G79.487. You will see that the Prime
1 Minister, in the first sentence of his summing-up, he
2 uses the phrase "comparatively peaceful marches." This
3 was seen as a comparatively peaceful march which would
4 be stopped at the point where the marchers would be
5 coming out of the Bogside and Creggan, and meaning to
6 head towards the Guildhall. It would be stopped at that
7 point by essentially non-violent means.
8 However, it could never be excluded -- and although
9 this was specifically discussed -- not discussed, it was
10 part of everybody's mental furniture, you might say --
11 there was always the possibility, however peaceful the
12 march as such, that some elements -- possibly quite
13 unconnected with the march -- might behave in such
14 a way -- essentially opening fire themselves in such
15 a way that the Armed Forces might have to return fire.
16 If the Armed Forces were returning fire, their doing
17 so would be governed by the general doctrine of minimum
18 force, and by the provisions of the Yellow Card, and
19 making every possible effort to ensure that, if fire was
20 returned, the people who were hit were those who had
21 initiated the fire in the first place.
22 Q. Two things arise from the answer you have given there.
23 The first is this: if it was, as you put it, that this
24 was part of everybody's mental furniture, i.e. the
25 possibility of the use of lethal force, the use of
1 firearms, and this was going to be a particularly
2 special march involving huge numbers of people, is it
3 not all the more surprising in those circumstances that
4 there was absolutely no discussion, apparently,
5 whatsoever of any steps taken to safeguard the lives of
6 those who were going to take part in the march?
7 A. No, I do not think it was. I mean, this was an
8 essentially peaceful march, as you say, with a larger
9 number of participants than ever before. And I suppose
10 I am conjecturing here rather than recalling, but
11 I would guess that the general feeling among those
12 present at GEN 47 was that the very nature and size of
13 this peaceful march made it the less likely that
14 anything would happen on the fringes of it which might
15 conceivably lead to an exchange of fire, but you could
16 never rule that possibility out.
17 Q. The second matter I wanted to ask you about, you see on
18 the screen:
19 "The Prime Minister, summing-up a brief discussion,
20 said that the meeting appreciated the difficulties which
21 the Army faced ..."
22 I have looked at the minutes of this meeting and
23 I have not been able to find anywhere in the minutes
24 a reference to any discussion at all about the
25 difficulties which the Army faced. Do you know what the
1 Prime Minister was referring to there, when he says this
2 in relation to that?
3 A. Yes. In a minute of this type it would not necessarily
4 be the case that every point made was -- is repeated
5 twice, so to speak, both in the account of the
6 discussion and in the Prime Minister's summing-up. The
7 purpose of the -- of Cabinet and Cabinet Committee
8 meetings essentially is to inform the people in
9 Whitehall, who have to act upon the decisions, what
10 those decisions were, and what were the essential
11 considerations underlying them. Because the minutes
12 reflect the corporate decisions of ministers for which
13 all ministers are corporately responsible, they do not
14 contain much, if any, attribution to individual
15 ministers.
16 Q. You agree with me, therefore, that the minute itself,
17 that is on the previous page, does not refer at all to
18 any discussion about the difficulties which the Army may
19 face when dealing with the marchers?
20 A. The first page is a statement by the Chief of the
21 General Staff, and he is outlining the plan for stopping
22 the march of, as he described it, 8,000 to 12,000
23 persons.
24 There was then a brief discussion in which a number
25 of points were made, which no doubt included some
1 reference to the difficulties which the Army faced when
2 dealing with the comparatively peaceful marches. And
3 rather than attempting to give a narrative account of
4 the discussion, the points that were made are summed up
5 in this paragraph attributed to the Prime Minister.
6 Q. What were the difficulties that he was referring to?
7 A. In this case it would be the sheer size of the march,
8 which was something larger than the Army -- probably
9 larger than the Army had ever had to deal with before;
10 certainly they seldom had. I think perhaps it is
11 illustrated by -- let me turn back to --
12 Q. Before you do that -- I do not want to interrupt you,
13 Mr Hockaday -- what you said there is not quite right,
14 because the statement to the Prime Minister is not
15 a statement to this particular march; it is actually
16 a general statement. It says:
17 "... the difficulties which the Army faced when
18 dealing with comparatively peaceful marches".
19 So it was not specific to this march.
20 A. No, but I think it is illustrated by the statement by
21 the Chief of the General Staff that 20 companies of
22 troops would be deployed, which is a large deployment.
23 And the essential difficulty, which applied as much to
24 other peaceful marches as to the march in Derry on
25 30th January, the essential difficulty was that if you
1 were aiming, as the policy was, to stop a march of, let
2 us say, the order of 10,000 people, that was a difficult
3 task.
4 Q. If we remove that from the screen, I may return to it in
5 another context later, but I want to make this
6 suggestion to you: contrary to what you have told the
7 Inquiry and what you have said in your statement, I am
8 suggesting to you that, prior to Bloody Sunday, the
9 British Government were prepared to countenance --
10 uniquely, in one part of the United Kingdom, in
11 Northern Ireland -- organised, premeditated and
12 systematic breaches of peoples' fundamental human
13 rights. Do you agree with that?
14 A. No.
15 Q. And in fact were prepared to give essential a blank
16 cheque to those who were asked to carry out such
17 measures.
18 A. No.
19 Q. Indeed, were prepared to countenance legal indemnities
20 to ensure that those who were guilty of gross violations
21 of human rights would not be subject to prosecution, or
22 not successful prosecution.
23 A. There may occasionally have been particular incidents
24 that fell in the category that you are describing; and,
25 for example, a soldier might, if fired upon by person A,
1 have fired back and have hit person B; that is just one
2 example. But the fact that the Government sought to
3 support members of the Armed Forces who were acting in
4 good faith does certainly not imply that the Government
5 countenanced generalised attack, if you like, upon
6 people's fundamental human rights.
7 Q. I am actually referring to not just isolated incidents,
8 but a practice of violating human rights which was
9 authorised at the level of the British Cabinet,
10 a practice which was subsequently condemned in the
11 European Court in the inter-state case brought by
12 Ireland against the UK, in which it was held that,
13 around the time we are talking about, towards the end of
14 1971, the British Government, at Cabinet level, had
15 authorised a practice of inhuman and degrading treatment
16 of those people who had been interned and subjected to
17 what was known as "deep interrogation". Is that right?
18 A. At that time, when ministers approved the application of
19 deep interrogation to a small proportion of the people
20 interned, they had not appreciated -- rightly or wrongly
21 they had not appreciated that this would, in the event,
22 be found -- by a minority, I think I recall, but
23 nevertheless be found by a minority in the Court of
24 Human Rights to have been a breach of people's
25 fundamental human rights. And then of course, despite
1 the fact that -- again, if I remember rightly -- it was
2 a majority of that Court that held that view, the
3 Government then, in October or whenever it was, accepted
4 that proposition.
5 Q. I do not want to test your memory about the details of
6 the case, but the British Government itself did not seek
7 to challenge the contention in Europe that the deep
8 interrogation of the internees amounted to inhuman and
9 degrading treatment.
10 A. I do not recall the specifics of the case that the
11 British Government put to the Court.
12 Q. You were in the MoD at the time?
13 A. I was indeed, but I do not recall it.
14 Q. Were you not actually part of the machine which was
15 involved in the training of RUC officers and the
16 introduction of the deep interrogation techniques into
17 Northern Ireland?
18 A. I was. I was involved in the machine at the time, and
19 I was involved in the decisions that led to internment
20 and deep interrogation, yes. Of course, the ministers
21 had in mind that these techniques were techniques that
22 we were applying to our own soldiers as part of their
23 training.
24 Q. I have been over this with the previous witness, but the
25 soldiers were being trained to --
1 LORD SAVILLE: Mr Treacy, I wonder if you could help us as
2 to the relevance of this line of questioning?
3 MR TREACY: It is to deal with this witness's suggestion,
4 which underpins a substantial portion of his evidence,
5 that there was a prevailing culture within the
6 establishment of respect for the law and also the
7 doctrine of minimum force. I want to demonstrate to the
8 witness --
9 LORD SAVILLE: Your point, as I understand it, is that you
10 challenge the suggestion that the prevailing climate was
11 one of using minimum force. I am bound to say I read
12 the statements as indicating that the minimum force we
13 were talking about was minimum force by the Security
14 Services in relation to such events as civil rights
15 marches.
16 What you are now exploring is a different and, as
17 you suggest, illegal use of means that would, on one
18 view at least, run contrary to the Convention on Human
19 Rights.
20 Are you suggesting that because deep interrogation
21 was sanctioned by the British Government, therefore they
22 must also have sanctioned the use of lethal force on
23 such occasions as the Bloody Sunday march? Is that the
24 point you are making?
25 MR TREACY: No, not quite, sir.
1 LORD SAVILLE: Could you explain it for us?
2 MR TREACY: The question I asked the witness at the
3 beginning of this part of the cross-examination was
4 whether or not the British Government were prepared to
5 countenance, in Northern Ireland, premeditated and
6 systematic breaches of people's fundamental human
7 rights; to which he said "No". And I think at an
8 earlier stage I asked him: was the case that he was
9 making that the terms of the policy in Northern Ireland
10 demonstrated a respect for the general law; and he said
11 "Yes".
12 It is in order to deal with his answer to those
13 questions, and also to attempt to persuade the Inquiry
14 that, at this particular time in the history of
15 Northern Ireland, the British Government were prepared
16 to contemplate measures which did involve the violation
17 of people's human rights.
18 LORD SAVILLE: Yes. But, if I may put it slightly rudely,
19 Mr Treacy, so what; unless it has to do with lethal
20 violence being used in the form of firearms and the like
21 on an occasion such as Bloody Sunday?
22 MR TREACY: If I may, I will move directly to the question
23 of the use of lethal force, because I am going to
24 suggest to the witness that --
25 LORD SAVILLE: Do. But can we come back to what I asked
1 you: are you suggesting that, because the British
2 Government countenanced the use of deep interrogation
3 techniques, they therefore must have contemplated and
4 sanctioned the use of lethal violence on the streets of
5 the city in relation to such matters as the march on
6 Bloody Sunday?
7 If you are not suggesting that, at the moment I fail
8 to follow the relevance of going into what was
9 undoubtedly a difficult and complicated point which,
10 certainly on one view at least -- and indeed the view of
11 the European Court eventually -- involved the use of
12 inhumane treatment.
13 We have to keep our minds strictly on the job in
14 hand --
15 MR TREACY: Maybe if I could answer your question, sir.
16 First of all, it is relevant because of the evidence
17 that he has given about the prevailing culture; secondly
18 it is relevant, in our respectful submission, because it
19 does show, on the part of the British Government,
20 a propensity, at the material time, to use measures
21 which violated people's fundamental human rights.
22 LORD SAVILLE: Yes, but then you are saying "Yes" in answer
23 to my question, whereas a few minutes ago you said "No".
24 I asked you whether your point was: because the British
25 Government was prepared to sanction deep interrogation,
1 therefore by the same token it was prepared to sanction
2 the use of lethal force on the streets of Derry. You
3 said "No" to that, but you now appear to be saying
4 "Yes".
5 MR TREACY: I am saying, sir -- if I did not make it clear,
6 I hope I have now -- that it is relevant to those two
7 issues, both the prevailing culture and the issue of
8 propensity.
9 Also, sir, in the course of your question to me, you
10 described it, on the issue of deep interrogation,
11 "undoubtedly a difficult and complicated point". It is
12 quite clear from the minute which the Inquiry saw the
13 day before yesterday, in relation to Mr White, there was
14 a meeting in October 1971. And it was quite clear, even
15 by October 1971, the Government were well aware that
16 these measures were illegal and would probably be found
17 to contravene the Convention.
18 LORD SAVILLE: In that context, then, it could be said you
19 made your point by showing the documents to Mr White.
20 I will tell you what concerns me, Mr Treacy: if we
21 get into the question of deep interrogation in any
22 detail I have no doubt that there are any amount of
23 documents dealing with it; it was a very important and
24 serious matter.
25 I know you say you are not going to get that deep
1 into it. But, by the same token, those who might wish
2 to give an explanation are, as a matter of fairness,
3 entitled then to investigate the matter and provide
4 their answers. And off we go on a bit of what at the
5 moment, I afraid, to me appears to be ancillary,
6 satellite matters, rather than keeping our eye on the
7 object of this Inquiry.
8 If you are going to suggest to Sir Arthur Hockaday
9 that, because the British Government sanctioned the use
10 of deep interrogation, therefore by the same token they
11 sanctioned or turned a blind eye to the use of lethal
12 force on Bloody Sunday, put the suggestion to Sir Arthur
13 and we will see what he has to say.
14 But going into any form of detail on the question of
15 deep interrogation seems to us to be a path that is
16 likely to lead to a lot of delay, and to extend
17 unnecessarily the time taken by this Tribunal.
18 MR TREACY: I do not intend to pursue the matter any
19 further, other than to say that of course the matter in
20 many ways is beyond argument because, first of all, of
21 the acknowledgment in the minute of 29th October that
22 these measures almost certainly contravened domestic and
23 international law; and, secondly, the finding of the
24 European Court itself, which speaks for itself.
25 I am quite content, sir. I think I have made the --
1 LORD SAVILLE: What I propose to do is to ask Sir Arthur the
2 question I suggested should be asked.
3 Did you understand what I was saying the suggestion
4 may be? The British Government sanctioned the use of
5 deep interrogation that was held to be inhumane and
6 degrading treatment, contrary to the European Convention
7 on Human Rights. The suggestion is that, by the same
8 token, the British Government was prepared to sanction,
9 or at least to turn a blind eye to the use of lethal
10 force, in the form of firearms, on occasions such as the
11 march on Bloody Sunday.
12 A. No, sir, I do not accept that. Mr Treacy has referred
13 correctly to the minutes of considerations within
14 Government in October. But in August, when the decision
15 was taken to move to internment and deep interrogation,
16 the Government, rightly or wrongly, did not realise that
17 this was likely to be found, by at least a minority of
18 the European Court of Human Rights, to be a "violation
19 of rights", in the phrase that Mr Treacy has used.
20 This did not imply at all that ministers were
21 prepared to turn a blind eye, in the generality of
22 operations in Northern Ireland, perhaps particularly
23 including control of marches and so on; that they were
24 not prepared to turn a blind eye to breaches of the
25 general principles of the use of minimum force and
1 respect for the law.
2 LORD SAVILLE: Mr Treacy, if that is a convenient moment, we
3 will take a short break this morning.
4 MR TREACY: I point out for the record, of course it was not
5 a minority of the European Court. It was a decision --
6 LORD SAVILLE: I think that is now rapidly becoming a matter
7 of submission. We will take a ten-minute break at this
8 time.
9 (10.45 a.m)
10 (A short break)
11 (11.00 a.m)
12 MR TREACY: Sir Arthur, could I ask you to look again at
13 paragraph 111 of your statement, please, KH9.97. That
14 is the paragraph where you make it clear that "the
15 prevailing culture" was the adherence to the principle
16 of minimum force. Does it follow from that that, if
17 there had been any suggestion that that doctrine would
18 be violated, one would expect that to be stamped on and
19 ruled out fairly quickly?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. I take it you agree with me that shooting at unarmed
22 civilians would be the clearest possible breach of the
23 doctrine of minimum force?
24 A. If it was shooting at unarmed civilians, yes.
25 Q. Could I ask you to look, please, at a document which the
1 Inquiry has provided us with. It starts at G40.259.
2 Have you seen this document before?
3 A. I saw it within the last 48 hours, maybe in the last 24.
4 Q. This is a reference of the Home Secretary, Mr Maudling's
5 discussion with the GOC and other military officers at
6 Lisburn on 14th December 1971; do you follow me?
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. It is a very detailed document. If we go to the next
9 page, G40.260, at the bottom of that page, under the
10 heading "Londonderry":
11 "The GOC said that the Army's priorities were:
12 first, Belfast; second, the border; and third,
13 Londonderry."
14 Over the page:
15 "[The position] had reached a point where a choice
16 had to be made between accepting that Creggan and
17 Bogside were areas where the Army were not able to go,
18 except on specific information, or to mount a major
19 operation, which would take ten days and require seven
20 battalions and which would involve, at some stage,
21 shooting at unarmed civilians."
22 He goes on to say:
23 "It became clear that the Army preferred the first
24 course but wanted to make it clear that it entailed
25 accepting criticism of allowing 'no-go' areas. The Home
1 Secretary said that he had no doubt that the military
2 judgment was right and that it would be wrong to provoke
3 a major confrontation at this stage."
4 There is no indication in that paragraph at all that
5 either Mr Maudling, or the GOC, or any of senior
6 officers who were present at that meeting balked or
7 disapproved of the suggestion that unarmed civilians
8 should be shot at.
9 A. Sorry, what is your question, sir?
10 Q. I am pointing out to you that, in this document,
11 in December 1971 --
12 LORD SAVILLE: Mr Treacy, by all means point out documents,
13 but the object of asking Sir Arthur to come here and
14 give evidence is that he should be asked questions
15 relevant to the events with which we are concerned.
16 What is your question?
17 MR TREACY: I am pointing out first of all that they were
18 contemplating shooting at unarmed civilians in this
19 document, and there does not appear to have been any
20 disapproval expressed by anybody at that meeting of that
21 possibility.
22 LORD SAVILLE: But what is your question?
23 MR TREACY: My question is therefore: in the light of that
24 document, and indeed the other material that I was
25 asking you about earlier, do you not accept that there
1 exists a compelling body of evidence that the prevailing
2 political and military culture in Northern Ireland was
3 prepared to countenance operations and measures in which
4 no -- or inadequate -- weight was given to the rights of
5 the citizens of Northern Ireland, including the right to
6 life?
7 A. Insofar as I can work that out as a question, of course
8 this meeting in effect dismissed the alternative that
9 you are talking about, Mr Treacy.
10 Q. That is not right because, if you look at the arrow, it
11 says:
12 "The Home Secretary said that he had no doubt that
13 the military judgment was right and that it would be
14 wrong to provoke a major confrontation at this stage."
15 There is not the slightest suggestion in that
16 document that the Home Secretary or any of those present
17 at the meeting disapproved of the suggestion of shooting
18 at unarmed civilians.
19 A. When I said that the meeting -- or, if you like, the
20 Home Secretary -- approved the other alternative, I read
21 the Home Secretary as accepting the Army's preference to
22 the first course, that is to say to accept that the
23 Creggan and the Bogside were in effect no-go areas.
24 As to the particular phrase to which you have drawn
25 attention, this is one of those very rare cases where
1 I would very much have liked to see a verbatim account
2 of the discussion rather than a summary in what are,
3 necessarily and conveniently, brief minutes. I would be
4 very interested to know exactly what were the words
5 which led to the inclusion of those four words in the
6 minutes.
7 MR ELIAS: I rise, if I may, as a matter of fairness to the
8 witness. He is being asked to comment upon documents of
9 which he is not the author; meetings which he did not
10 attend. And, as he said a moment or so ago, "I would
11 need to know more; I would need to know what was said
12 before I can legitimately and fairly comment".
13 I do ask, the witness is plainly able to answer the
14 questions that he is being asked, but whether in fact
15 they take the Tribunal anywhere, commentary upon
16 documents that are not his, meetings which he did not
17 attend.
18 LORD SAVILLE: I follow that, Mr Elias. The question, as
19 Mr Treacy finally managed to formulate it, was a fair
20 question because he is pointing out a contemporary
21 document which on its face does seem to envisage, in
22 some circumstances, shooting at unarmed civilians. And
23 the suggestion to Sir Arthur Hockaday, which I think
24 really was directed rather more to his general knowledge
25 of events at the time rather than this particular
1 document, is: does he not agree that this is just one
2 example, among many, that there was a mindset which
3 contemplated the possibility of shooting at unarmed
4 civilians.
5 I think Sir Arthur Hockaday has given his answer to
6 that, and we can probably move on. But I think the
7 question was a fair one.
8 MR ELIAS: The proposition, if I may say, was a fair one.
9 The reference to documents and the meetings may be
10 another matter.
11 LORD SAVILLE: Yes, Mr Treacy.
12 MR TREACY: Contrary to the impression and the evidence that
13 you have given as to what you say is the prevailing
14 culture, I am suggesting to you, and I am asking you --
15 this is just one of a number of documents -- are you
16 prepared to agree that there is actually a body of
17 evidence, in this case written evidence, which suggests
18 there was a culture which would have considered the use
19 of unlawful lethal force?
20 LORD SAVILLE: I do not think it is really fair to ask the
21 witness to accept that there is a body of evidence
22 without going through it in detail.
23 What I think is perfectly fair, Mr Treacy, is to
24 suggest to this witness that, contrary to what he has
25 said or indicated, the fact of the matter was that there
1 was, at least in part, in high Government circles,
2 a mindset or climate of opinion which tolerated or would
3 be prepared to tolerate shooting at unarmed civilians.
4 That, I think, would be a fair way of putting it, rather
5 than asking him to agree about evidence which he has not
6 seen and, at the end of the day, which we will have to
7 assess.
8 What will be the answer to the suggestion in the way
9 I put it, Sir Arthur?
10 A. Thank you, sir. Again, I am obviously at a disadvantage
11 in having no personal knowledge of this meeting and not
12 knowing what actual words were said. But the
13 possibility that one officer at, shall we say,
14 middle-ranking level, expressed himself rather
15 unfortunately, I do not think that that in any way
16 vitiates what I have said about the prevailing culture.
17 And it certainly does not suggest that there was in
18 Government a mindset that it was all right to shoot at
19 unarmed civilians.
20 MR TREACY: Would you have regarded Mr Tuzo as a middle
21 ranking officer?
22 A. This was not Mr Tuzo -- General Tuzo; it was the Chief
23 of Staff, if I read this correctly.
24 Q. If you go to the bottom of G40.260, the GOC in the
25 paragraph appears to be recording the exchange between
1 the GOC and the Home Secretary.
2 A. Yes. Can we go on to the next page, 261. Yes, I beg
3 your pardon. I was thinking I remembered an earlier
4 paragraph which referred to the Chief of Staff.
5 Q. Do you regard the GOC as a middle-ranking officer?
6 A. The GOC is a senior officer in Army terms. In terms of
7 the Government machine, from the Prime Minister
8 downwards, I would say that, if you like up a little,
9 but a middle-ranking officer.
10 Q. Who reported to General Carver?
11 A. Correct.
12 Q. Who in turn reported to Lord Carrington?
13 A. Yes. So we have several layers above General Tuzo.
14 Q. If I could take that from the screen, please. Do you
15 accept that there was a vital distinction to be drawn
16 between NICRA members on the one hand and the IRA on the
17 other?
18 A. In general, yes.
19 Q. Indeed, even between rioters and the IRA?
20 A. Yes, there certainly was a distinction to be drawn.
21 Exactly where it should be drawn may not always have
22 been clear.
23 Q. Do you accept that any failure to appreciate and
24 reinforce the distinction between NICRA marchers on the
25 one hand and the IRA on the other could have quite
1 dangerous consequences?
2 A. If there was an erroneous -- or a failure to appreciate
3 the distinction, yes, I would.
4 Q. Was the prevailing culture at the time that NICRA was,
5 in effect, the active ally of the IRA?
6 A. In the sense that it had the same ultimate objectives,
7 yes. But in the sense that it was in any way associated
8 with methods of operation, no.
9 Q. Could I ask you to look at G70.437. Have you seen this
10 document before? This is a minute of a visit of the
11 Chief of the Defence Staff, who had visited
12 Northern Ireland on 24th January 1972, so it is less
13 than a week before Bloody Sunday.
14 A. I have seen the document recently. I did not see it at
15 the time.
16 Q. The last two or three lines of paragraph 2:
17 "This hostility is tending to spread upwards through
18 the middle class, encouraged particularly by some Roman
19 Catholic priests, and behind it all stands NICRA,
20 the active ally of the IRA."
21 That was the view generally held at that time in the
22 highest echelons?
23 A. I do not believe that that view was widely shared in
24 Government circles generally.
25 Q. Does that mean that is another document, then, that for
1 some reason or other fails to manifest the prevailing
2 culture which you have described?
3 A. With respect, Mr Treacy, the prevailing culture was that
4 minimum force and the Rule of Law should prevail. It
5 seems to me that how closely NICRA may or may not have
6 been allied to the IRA is a quite different question.
7 Q. You said you do not believe that that view was widely
8 shared in Government circles generally?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. Do you agree that, if that view was being articulated,
11 it would be very, very important for people to
12 discourage that view or culture and to make sure there
13 was a clear distinction drawn between the IRA on the one
14 hand and NICRA on the other?
15 LORD SAVILLE: Mr Treacy, I think that is not entirely fair,
16 because you said you do not believe that view was widely
17 shared in Government views generally, but what Sir
18 Arthur said was ... if I may find it. You asked the
19 question:
20 "Was the prevailing culture at the time that NICRA
21 was, in effect, the active ally of the IRA?"
22 The answer sir Arthur gave:
23 "In the sense that it had the same ultimate
24 objectives, yes. But in the sense it was in any way
25 associated with methods of operation, no".
1 So it was a rather more detailed answer than the one
2 I think you are beginning to suggest that Sir Arthur
3 actually gave.
4 MR TREACY: You have told us, Sir Arthur, the view that
5 appears in the document which is on the screen, that
6 that was not the generally-held view. Do you agree with
7 me that, if that was a view which was being expressed,
8 at whatever level, that it is something which should
9 have been disapproved of because it was dangerous to
10 conflate NICRA and the IRA?
11 A. To the extent that there may have been a blurring of the
12 distinction that I made in my previous answer, which the
13 Chairman has just quoted, may be so. But I do not
14 know -- I have no knowledge whatever as to whether
15 somebody may have expressed disapproval of this and may
16 have passed the word down that "This is not quite
17 right".
18 But I do think that the phrase would certainly not
19 have been part of the prevailing mindset in culture --
20 mindset in Government in an overall sense. But there
21 was this distinction that clearly NICRA and the IRA had
22 the same objectives.
23 Q. In fact, was it not your experience, Sir Arthur, that
24 Northern Ireland, although formerly part of the
25 United Kingdom, was in fact regarded as really another
1 colony?
2 A. No.
3 Q. I think it is referred to in one report or video that
4 the Inquiry has received as "the last colony".
5 A. That phrase has been used, I know, but that was
6 certainly not the view of the Government.
7 Q. So much so that measures which would have been
8 considered appropriate by the Government for the
9 colonies but not for the UK itself were deployed in
10 Northern Ireland?
11 A. No. The Government was quite clear that
12 Northern Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, and
13 that the operations of the Armed Forces in
14 Northern Ireland were subject to the basic elements of
15 minimum force and respect for the law.
16 Q. Were you familiar with the Convention in the UK
17 Parliament that the affairs of Northern Ireland were not
18 to be discussed on the floor of the house? In other
19 words, you could talk about any part of the
20 Commonwealth, or any part of the areas where the British
21 Government would have influence, but the one area you
22 were not to talk about in the House of Commons was
23 Northern Ireland?
24 A. I am afraid I do not quite understand this question,
25 because I have --
1 Q. I am asking you: were you aware of that?
2 A. What I was going to say, sir, was that I have attended
3 numerous occasions in the House of Commons when
4 Northern Ireland and various aspects of Northern Ireland
5 were being discussed. So, in short, I was not aware of
6 a possible convention of the kind that you describe.
7 Q. I will come back to it, because there is a document;
8 I am going to put it on the screen when I get the
9 reference for it. Tell me this: had you ever heard the
10 expression -- which was current, I suggest to you, at
11 the time, in 1971 and 1972 -- where people in
12 Northern Ireland were referred to as "bogwogs"? Had you
13 ever had heard that expression before?
14 A. No.
15 Q. Have you ever heard that?
16 A. No.
17 Q. You have already looked at this document before; it is
18 the Ford memo.
19 A. Oh, yes.
20 Q. I wonder if I could have that on the screen, please.
21 It is G48.299; the second page, please. You know
22 the paragraph I am referring to, Sir Arthur?
23 A. Paragraph 6 you said, sir, yes.
24 Q. You know this is a paragraph in which the view is
25 expressed by General Ford that he was coming to the
1 conclusion that it might be necessary to shoot selected
2 ringleaders of the Derry Young Hooligans. It is clear
3 that that document also contemplated the use of unlawful
4 lethal force by shooting unarmed civilians; is that so?
5 A. I do not think it is for me to try to explain what
6 General Ford may have had in mind when he wrote this
7 paper. I believe that the Tribunal has taken evidence
8 from General Ford, and no doubt he explained that
9 himself.
10 The point which, in view of your earlier questions,
11 I think it is fair for me to make, is that the
12 suggestions that may be inferred from this report by
13 General Ford were -- formed no part of Government
14 policy, and were not accepted at any higher
15 governmental -- at any high level within Government.
16 Q. I wonder if that can be right, Sir Arthur, because the
17 terms in which he expressed himself are quite consistent
18 with the earlier document which I showed you, where the
19 GOC was advising the Home Secretary of the possibility
20 of shooting at unarmed civilians. There is not very
21 much difference between the views that were being
22 expressed by the GOC in the December document which
23 I showed you and the views that are being expressed by
24 General Ford in the January document.
25 MR TOOHEY: Mr Treacy, we are going down the same path we
1 went the other day with Mr White. It seems to me it is
2 taking on the aspect of a debate: putting questions
3 which involve, in this case, the construction of one
4 document, maybe against the construction of another
5 document. To my mind, it is really quite unprofitable.
6 If there are questions to be asked of Sir Arthur,
7 then they ought to be asked in terms of either his
8 personal knowledge, or of his understanding of the
9 situation so far as that is within his ken. But this
10 sort of exchange of proposition, I just feel it is
11 getting us nowhere.
12 LORD SAVILLE: I agree with Mr Toohey. You have, perfectly
13 properly, put to sir Arthur that these suggestions of
14 the use of lethal force against unarmed civilians was in
15 fact contemplated as a possibility, or even stronger, by
16 those in Government. Sir Arthur has said that is not
17 the case.
18 Whether or not at the end of the day we accept that
19 answer or reach another answer is, I think, a matter of
20 debate. I think you have asked the question of Sir
21 Arthur, you have the answer, and I am not sure it is
22 going to be useful to pursue it, for the reasons
23 Mr Toohey has given.
24 MR TREACY: If that can be removed from the screen.
25 The views that were expressed in those documents,
1 could I ask you to go to paragraph 90 of your statement,
2 KH9.92 --
3 A. If you excuse me, I am finding this in hardback, as it
4 were. Yes, I am with you.
5 Q. You are familiar with the contents of that paragraph?
6 A. I am indeed.
7 Q. The views that were being expressed in the two documents
8 you have been shown were not a million miles away from
9 the advice, apparently, that the Lord Chancellor at the
10 time, Lord Hailsham, had provided to Mr Heath; you are
11 familiar with what I am referring to?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. That is what you had in mind when you were drafting your
14 paragraph 90?
15 A. Yes. It seems that Lord Hailsham did express this view.
16 It seems also that Lord Carver, who was directly
17 responsible for the conduct of the Armed Forces, did not
18 accept WS Gilbert's proposition that the Lord Chancellor
19 embodies the law; and, as Lord Carver has himself
20 stated, either on the television programme or in his
21 autobiography -- I forget which -- as Lord Carver has
22 himself stated, so far as he was concerned the law was
23 determined by the courts, and he was not prepared to
24 authorise or to countenance action by the Armed Forces
25 which would run contrary to the law as the courts would
1 interpret it.
2 Q. The Lord Chancellor is a member of the Cabinet; he is
3 also the most senior legal figure in the UK; is that
4 right?
5 A. I believe so.
6 Q. He apparently had expressed the view to Carver that it
7 would be legal for the Army to shoot at somebody,
8 whether or not they thought that they were being shot
9 at. I know you make the point that Lord Carver did not
10 agree with it, but you also say in paragraph 90 of your
11 statement, in the last line:
12 " ... I do not believe that the view attributed to
13 Lord Hailsham would have carried influence".
14 And you also refer to him as "a loose cannon".
15 What is it that makes you say that the views that
16 were attributed to Lord Hailsham would not have carried
17 influence?
18 A. I never -- well, I did not hear Lord Hailsham express
19 these views. I am going on various pieces of hearsay
20 here that he did say them, but I have not seen evidence
21 that anyone else of -- shall I say "of comparable
22 standing", was voicing similar views.
23 Q. There is material before the Inquiry that apparently the
24 Prime Minister, Mr Heath, actually shared the view and
25 accepted the view that had been expressed to him by the
1 Lord Chancellor.
2 A. I am not aware of that evidence, sir.
3 Q. Whether or not you believed that the view expressed by
4 Lord Hailsham carried any influence, if what I have just
5 suggested to you be right, it would appear that it was
6 sufficiently influential, as far as Mr Heath was
7 concerned.
8 LORD SAVILLE: I think that is a typical debating point, of
9 the type that Mr Toohey has suggested, and which
10 I wholly agree, is not really helpful.
11 MR TREACY: If I could take you to paragraph 84 of your
12 statement, KH9.90. This is where you reject the
13 suggestion that there had been any change in policy
14 signified by what had transpired on 30th January.
15 If I ask you to look as well at paragraph 104, which
16 you touched on at the beginning of your evidence, in
17 paragraph 104 you say:
18 "As far as I recall, I think I would have known that
19 1 Para were being moved to Derry to take part in the
20 operation ..."
21 As I understand it, notwithstanding the
22 qualification that you made at the beginning of your
23 evidence, it is still the case that your recollection is
24 that, prior to Bloody Sunday, you were aware that 1 Para
25 were going to Derry to take part in the operation.
1 A. No. When I speak of my recollection, I think of
2 thinking back. And when, in the course of the
3 preparation of the statement, this point came up and
4 I was asked "Did you know that 1 Para were being moved
5 to Derry?", when I say "as far as I recall," that is to
6 say my recollection of the sort of information that used
7 to come to me made me think. And I say "I think I would
8 have known" that I probably would.
9 Subsequently I have seen the brief submitted by Lord
10 Trend to the Prime Minister for the GEN 47 meeting on
11 27th January and, for the reasons I gave earlier,
12 I infer from those minutes that I did not know -- at any
13 rate on the Wednesday or Thursday of the week before
14 I did not know that 1 Para were being moved to Derry.
15 Q. You are quite right. This is at the bottom of page 2,
16 the top of page 3, in particular page 3. You said --
17 LORD SAVILLE: Of what, Mr Treacy?
18 MR TREACY: I beg your pardon, of the transcript.
19 You said:
20 "I infer from this that, at any rate to the middle
21 of the preceding week, I did not know that 1 Para were
22 taking part in it."
23 I rather had understood you to be saying that up
24 until that point in time you may not have known, but
25 thereafter you may well have known; and that your
1 recollection is that 1 Para were to be used in Derry,
2 and that you were aware of that prior to Bloody Sunday?
3 A. No, I am not saying that at all. There was -- neither
4 in Lord Trend's brief nor in the discussion which
5 I recorded of the meeting itself, including the
6 statement by the Chief of the General Staff, nowhere was
7 there mention there that 1 Para were being moved to
8 Derry.
9 I cannot remember whether, between the Thursday and
10 the Sunday, I knew that 1 Para were being moved to
11 Derry. But, as I have said in paragraph 104, had
12 I received that information I would have viewed this
13 simply as what the Army calls "an arms plot move". It
14 was the use, if I remember rightly, of the province
15 reserve. And I am aware that, in his statement of
16 evidence, General Ford explained the arms plot reasons
17 why he selected 1 Para as the unit to go to Derry.
18 Q. In fact, the information that the Paras were to be
19 deployed in Derry, was that not the kind of information
20 that used to come to you in the course of your duties?
21 A. Not in the Cabinet Office.
22 Q. What about in the MoD?
23 A. When I was AUS(GS), I would probably have heard that
24 1 Para were going to Derry.
25 Q. Just to stop you: are we to take it from that, then, if
1 you had remained in your department and had not been
2 transferred over for cabinet responsibilities, you would
3 have expected to have discovered that 1 Para were to be
4 deployed in Derry?
5 A. Had I been in MoD, yes.
6 Q. That would mean, therefore, that your successor,
7 presumably, Mr Stephen, he would have been similarly
8 kept abreast of such a development?
9 A. I would think it likely, but I cannot speak for him.
10 Q. If you had been there in Mr Stephen's shoes at the
11 relevant time and you had received that information,
12 that 1 Para were to be used in Derry, what would you
13 have done with it?
14 A. It is possible, against the background of the press
15 reports -- again to which reference has been made
16 earlier, and to which reference is made in Lord Trend's
17 brief -- I might then have said to one of my military
18 colleagues "Do you think this is a good idea".
19 Q. Exactly, because it was well-known, at least by the time
20 of Lord Trend's brief, that there was a particular
21 problem, which had gained fairly widespread publicity,
22 that there was a difficulty about the
23 Paratroop Regiment, about the perception of the
24 Paratroop Regiment.
25 A. Yes. I cannot be sure whether the difference was so
1 great that I would have thought this an overriding
2 consideration, but I think I probably would have said to
3 somebody "Is this a good idea?".
4 Q. Of course, Lord Carrington would have been aware of
5 those press reports, and he would have been alive to
6 these problems.
7 A. I cannot say whether he was aware of them.
8 Q. In all probability?
9 A. Yes, in all probability.
10 Q. Could I ask you to look at a statement from Lieutenant
11 Colonel Roy Jackson. This appears at CJ2.8.
12 A. I beg your pardon, sir, who was Lieutenant Colonel Roy
13 Jackson?
14 Q. He was the Commanding Officer of the Royal Anglians,
15 based in Derry. At paragraph 37 he says:
16 "I was surprised that 1 Para had been nominated ...
17 1 Para did not know the area ... Everyone was aware
18 that the Paras had a reputation for tough action."
19 I take it you agree with all those sentiments, do
20 you?
21 A. (Pause). This is a document which I do not believe
22 I have seen before, and I guess it relates to some
23 meeting at which I was not present, and --
24 Q. You do not have to be in any meeting to have a view as
25 to whether or not you agree with the sentiments that are
1 expressed by Mr Jackson in that statement.
2 LORD SAVILLE: I think, to be more exact, if we look at the
3 third sentence, I think that is where you are starting,
4 Mr Treacy:
5 "Everyone was aware that the Paras had a reputation
6 for tough action ..."
7 That was something of which you were aware, Sir
8 Arthur?
9 A. Yes.
10 LORD SAVILLE: " ... and the citizens and hooligans of
11 Londonderry would be greatly surprised if Belfast arrest
12 procedures were carried out on them."
13 Was that a view which you would have shared at the
14 time?
15 A. I think I would have shared it. But, of course, are we
16 assuming that Belfast arrest procedures were or were
17 intended to be imposed upon the citizens of Londonderry?
18 MR TREACY: The point I was going to come to was the last
19 sentence in paragraph 37, where he says:
20 "I just wondered who had thought out this
21 deployment. It reflected a change of policy -- and
22 emphasis -- on future operations in Londonderry."
23 In other words, the Commanding Officer of the
24 Royal Anglians recognised that the use of the Paras
25 reflected a change in policy. Is that a sentiment as
1 well that you would have agreed with?
2 A. No, we are getting, here, into conjecture as to what
3 this person thought and that person thought and so on.
4 I do not know exactly what the Commanding Officer of
5 Royal Anglian was intending to say here, or exactly what
6 he had in mind.
7 My view of the transfer of 1 Para to Derry was, as
8 I said in my statement, that it was an arms plot move.
9 And I think we are aware, from General Ford's written
10 statement, that there were good arms plot reasons for
11 choosing 1 Para for this deployment.
12 What I was saying in effect, two or three minutes
13 ago, was that, had I known about it, I might have raised
14 the question: "Okay, I understand this is the arms plot
15 deployment, but for these other reasons, is it a good
16 idea?".
17 Q. You say that we are into conjecture as to what this
18 person thought, but in fact the sentiment he is
19 expressing in paragraph 37 is fairly self-evident. As
20 far as he was concerned, he recognised -- whether you
21 accept it or not is another matter -- that the
22 deployment of the paratroopers reflected a change in
23 policy.
24 LORD SAVILLE: Again, I think we have really asked
25 Sir Arthur this. Whatever view Colonel Jackson holds,
1 as I understand it Sir Arthur holds a different view:
2 that it did not, to his mind at the time, reflect
3 a change of policy.
4 A. That is correct, sir.
5 MR TREACY: And that in fact a decision to deploy the
6 paratroopers -- particularly because of the views that
7 had been expressed about them publicly, and in their
8 behaviour at Magilligan Strand in the week prior to
9 Bloody Sunday -- that it was appreciated within the
10 Ministry of Defence, it is likely to have been
11 appreciated all the way to up Lord Carrington and those
12 who surrounded him. Is that right?
13 A. But the fact that a unit which had attracted a certain
14 amount of flak was selected for arms plot reasons is not
15 evidence of a change of policy.
16 Q. It is right to say -- without going into it in detail --
17 the British Government in Northern Ireland had a vast
18 array of departments and committees et cetera which were
19 monitoring virtually everything that happened in
20 Northern Ireland? Is that right? And that was being
21 fed back into the political machine so that decisions
22 could be made as to what should or should not happen on
23 the ground; is that fair enough?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. And of course there were particular sensitivities that
1 concerned Derry?
2 A. Yes. I am not quite sure what you are implying,
3 Mr Treacy. If you are implying that ministers approved
4 the deployment of 1 Para to Derry, regarding it as
5 a change of policy, I would regard that proposition as
6 very questionable. In the first place I do not know
7 whether Lord Carrington was aware, before Bloody Sunday,
8 that 1 Para were going to Derry; only he can answer
9 that. Secondly, as I have said earlier, in reply to the
10 Chairman, I do not believe that the selection of 1 Para
11 was -- reflected a change of policy.
12 Q. If it was known within the MoD, and would have been
13 known to you if you had stayed within the MoD, that the
14 Paras were going to be used in Derry, obviously that
15 would have been the subject of discussion within the
16 MoD. And it is really inconceivable that the person in
17 political charge of the defence would not have been
18 aware of this.
19 A. I cannot speak to what was being discussed or what was
20 being passed around within MoD in this period in the
21 last week of January. I do know that the deployment of
22 this unit rather than that unit was regarded as
23 essentially a decision for the military, based on arms
24 plot considerations.
25 I mean, only if there had been some overriding
1 political consideration might ministers have taken
2 a view.
3 Q. Whether or not the ministers would have perceived it as
4 a change of policy, they would almost certainly have had
5 to have been informed that the paratroopers were to be
6 used; is that so?
7 A. I do not know.
8 Q. Whether you know it or not, is it not an almost
9 inescapable inference that that must have been so
10 because of the particular sensitivities about
11 Northern Ireland, and Derry in particular?
12 A. If this was regarded within military circles as
13 essentially an arms plot move, I do not think it would
14 necessarily have been reported to ministers.
15 Q. Even having regard to the particular concerns that had
16 been raised at a very, very high level concerning the
17 paratroopers and their behaviour?
18 A. I am sorry, Mr Treacy, I cannot answer a question on
19 whether this information reached Lord Carrington within
20 his department, a department which I had left some three
21 or four weeks previously.
22 Q. Let us say you had remained in the department; you would
23 have raised it, would you not?
24 A. What I said a few minutes ago --
25 Q. Just answer the question, please --
1 LORD SAVILLE: I think Sir Arthur was about to answer the
2 question.
3 A. What I said a few minutes ago was: I would probably have
4 said to somebody "Is this a good idea?"
5 Q. Who would you have said it to?
6 A. I would probably have said it to one of my military
7 colleagues.
8 Q. Who are we talking about?
9 A. In the first instance it might have been Colonel
10 Dalzell-Payne.
11 Q. And then?
12 A. What happened from then on would have depended on the
13 nature of the -- my conversation with him, and the
14 answers that I received, and how far I regarded them as
15 satisfactory. It is possible that I might have said "My
16 word, I think ministers ought to know about this". But
17 we are so much in the realm of hypothesis here that I do
18 not think I can answer the question further.
19 Q. Can I ask you to look again, please, at the GEN 47
20 meeting of 27th January. It is at G79.486.
21 Again you are obviously very familiar with this
22 minute now. What I want to ask you is this: was there
23 anything said at that meeting, that you can recall, that
24 contemplated violence on an unprecedented scale at the
25 forthcoming civil rights march?
1 A. No.
2 Q. Was there anything said at the meeting which
3 contemplated violence on such a scale that special
4 arrangements were going to have to be made to prepare
5 the public in advance for it?
6 A. I do not recall in detail, but I do not believe that
7 there was any specific discussion of the possibility
8 that the march might somehow escalate. There was always
9 the possibility that any event in Northern Ireland might
10 escalate to an unexpected extent, and everybody knew
11 that, but I do not recall -- and I think had it been
12 raised in the discussion I think it would have found its
13 way into the minutes -- I do not recall that there was
14 any suggestion that this particular NICRA march was
15 especially vulnerable in that regard.
16 Q. Can I ask you to look at KW3 .22, please. Have you seen
17 this document before?
18 A. Within the last few days, yes.
19 Q. We understand from Mr White that this is a document
20 which emanated from the press office in No. 10.
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. What involvement, if any, would you have had in the
23 preparation of that telegram?
24 A. So far as I recall, none.
25 Q. Could I ask you to look at paragraph 3(a), if that could
1 be put on the screen, please. Can you tell us who would
2 have been responsible for preparing this document?
3 A. Essentially Sir Donald Maitland, who was the Press
4 Secretary to the Prime Minister.
5 Q. Of course, presumably a document of this kind would have
6 to have been issued on instructions.
7 A. No doubt.
8 Q. From whom?
9 A. It is issued -- since it is coming from No. 10
10 Downing Street, it is issued on behalf of or in the name
11 of the Prime Minister. Whether it would have been
12 expressly on Sir Edward's instructions or on somebody
13 else's, I do not know.
14 Q. It purports to be issued in the name of the Foreign
15 Secretary, Douglas Hume. You can see that at the bottom
16 of the page.
17 A. Yes. The screen does not run down that far, but
18 I accept what you say.
19 Q. You can see it there?
20 A. Excuse me. I am sorry, where is this reference --
21 I see. No, no. The fact that it is signed "Douglas
22 Hume" means it must have been transmitted through FCO
23 channels. Every signal that goes out from the FCO to
24 anywhere in the world, to whom or at whatever level, is
25 signed "Douglas Hume".
1 Q. What you are really saying is the ultimate source of
2 this telegram would have been the Prime Minister?
3 A. No, I am saying it was issued in the name of the Prime
4 Minister. Exactly who was responsible for its release,
5 I do not know.
6 Q. It would have been someone within the Cabinet?
7 LORD SAVILLE: You say "issued in the name of the Prime
8 Minister". The first page simply starts off by saying
9 "Ministers", does it not, Mr Treacy?
10 MR TREACY: Yes, sir, it does.
11 LORD SAVILLE: Perhaps you could just look at the first
12 page.
13 A. When I said "in the name of the Prime Minister", I was
14 thinking of the "for Hill from Maitland". Sir Donald
15 was the Prime Minister's press secretary.
16 LORD SAVILLE: Indeed, yes. I was just drawing your
17 attention that it starts "Ministers would like", which
18 seemed to my mind to indicate perhaps including the
19 Prime Minister, but not exclusively the Prime Minister.
20 A. That would be right, yes.
21 MR TREACY: If you highlight 3(a) and 3(b), you see in
22 3(a) -- this is really a suggestion by ministers to
23 Mr Faulkner that a special statement should be issued
24 which was going to have a number of ingredients. One of
25 them is set out at 3(a):
1 "To prepare public opinion here and in
2 Northern Ireland for violent scenes on TV following the
3 march ..."
4 If I understood your evidence correctly, there was
5 nothing that you can recall that was said at the GEN 47
6 meeting on the 27th which would have required a press
7 release of this kind to prepare public opinion in the
8 United Kingdom -- in the mainland and in
9 Northern Ireland -- for violent scenes on TV following
10 the march of the 30th; is that right?
11 A. In the Prime Minister's summing-up at GEN 47 he does
12 say, or is recorded as saying that incidents of
13 confrontation between the Army and the civil population
14 were inevitable. And what I think he had in mind there
15 was that, when you stopped the march and began to turn
16 the marchers away and so on, there would almost
17 certainly be some people who would be throwing stones
18 and generally "confronting" -- was the word -- the Armed
19 Forces.
20 I was --
21 Q. But nothing, surely, on the scale that this press
22 release would appear to indicate?
23 A. I have to say that, when I saw this telegram just a few
24 days ago, I was rather surprised, because it did not
25 correspond with anything that I remembered. But it
1 rather sounded to me like somebody perhaps picking up
2 the Prime Minister's comment that some confrontation was
3 inevitable and taking a worst case view on it. What is
4 in this telegram, of course, still falls a very long way
5 short of shooting at unarmed civilians, which is a point
6 that you have raised earlier.
7 Q. Of course such a telegram, in the terms in which it is
8 phrased, is quite consistent, is it not, with preparing
9 the public for large scale death and injury?
10 A. You could construe it that way, but you could construe
11 it quite differently.
12 Q. There had been other large civil rights marches, and
13 there had never been any such telegram or any such need
14 to prepare public opinion in advance of the march. So
15 on this occasion exceptional measures appear to have
16 been taken in order to prepare public opinion; is that
17 not so?
18 A. You could read it in that sense. But of course, as
19 I have said a moment ago --
20 Q. Can you suggest any other sense in which it can be read?
21 A. That there would be some sort of confrontation with
22 a certain amount of violence. But that falls a very
23 long way short of shooting unarmed civilians.
24 If I may just complete what I was going to say, Sir
25 Donald Maitland, who is ostensibly at least the author
1 of this telegram, has said in his written statement of
2 evidence that he was sufficiently relaxed about this
3 weekend that he and his wife went off to their country
4 cottage.
5 Q. You had indicated, I think, that the indications were
6 that the march was going to be comparatively peaceful;
7 that was the general tenor of the meeting on the 27th;
8 is that right?
9 A. Yes. When I say "comparatively peaceful," I think that
10 everyone would have recognised that it was inevitable
11 that there would be a certain amount of stone-throwing
12 and messing around. But, if I may finish, it was
13 certainly not envisaged that the situation would get as
14 out of hand as to lead to exchanges of fire and so on.
15 Although, as I have also said earlier, one always had at
16 the back of one's mind that this was a possibility.
17 Q. This direction which was being given by Cabinet
18 ministers in the UK to Mr Faulkner in Northern Ireland,
19 that these press statements should go out, does not
20 really sit very easily with your description of what
21 actually transpired on the 27th, and what kind of march
22 was contemplated by those who were present at that
23 Cabinet meeting; do you accept that?
24 A. I accept that this is perhaps a rather extreme
25 interpretation of the Prime Minister's phrase about
1 incidents of confrontation between the Army and the
2 civil population were inevitable. But, to the extent
3 that it might be regarded as extreme, I would say that
4 it was a worst case view.
5 Q. There was nothing unusual about confrontations in
6 Northern Ireland, and did not require these
7 extraordinary steps to be taken; is that so?
8 A. I can only repeat that I was myself a little bit
9 surprised a few days ago when I saw this telegram.
10 I can only assume that it was a worst case
11 interpretation. But as I had -- as far as I recall no
12 knowledge of it at the time and no responsibility for
13 it, I do not think I can answer further on it.
14 Q. And of course the Inquiry knows that the worst case,
15 what the public was actually being prepared for in this
16 document, actually materialised.
17 A. No, I do not agree. This was --
18 LORD SAVILLE: I do not know what you mean by the Inquiry
19 knowing that, Mr Treacy.
20 MR TREACY: "the events that occurred" perhaps is what
21 I should have said.
22 LORD SAVILLE: Your suggestion to Sir Arthur -- and
23 I strongly suspect he will not be able to give more than
24 the answer he has given already -- is to suggest that
25 this telegram was sent in order to prepare public
1 opinion as best could be for what, in the event,
2 actually happened. I think really you have more or less
3 put that to Sir Arthur, and he has already given his
4 answer to it.
5 A. I wonder, sir, could I make one comment here: I do not
6 see it as preparing the public for what actually
7 happened. By conjecture -- it can be no more than
8 that -- that those who drafted this telegram had in mind
9 that there were likely to appear on television signs of
10 people throwing stones, throwing metal rods and so on
11 and so forth, and a pretty ugly scene. But I would be
12 very surprised -- again you must ask other people about
13 this -- if anyone envisaged what actually happened.
14 MR TREACY: People did not have to be prepared for that.
15 They were fed up looking at people throwing stones on
16 TV, there was nothing new about that.
17 MR TOOHEY: Mr Treacy, we are really back in this area that
18 you have been reminded of more than once. You are now
19 inviting Sir Arthur to give an interpretation of the
20 document, a document in which he apparently played no
21 part.
22 LORD SAVILLE: I think we can move on.
23 MR TREACY: If we could have G82, please, it is a
24 Dalzell-Payne document, g82.512.
25 LORD SAVILLE: I do not know what questions you are going to
1 ask. Please bear in mind what Mr Toohey said, and
2 please also bear in mind that the witness said the first
3 time he saw this document was recently.
4 MR TREACY: If you had remained in your previous department,
5 this is a paper you would have seen, is it not?
6 A. Yes, it was copied to AUS(GS).
7 Q. Are those Mr Stephen's initials just beside that at the
8 top?
9 A. Yes, they are, that is right. Yes, this was AUS(GS)'s
10 copy. And yes, DS, that is right.
11 Q. It is dated the 27th, which is the same day on which the
12 GEN 47 met. And you will see there that the attached
13 paper has been prepared as:
14 "... background ... and to try to anticipate some of
15 the problems ... Shortage of time has not allowed its
16 clearance with Headquarters Northern Ireland."
17 Do you have any idea as to what the urgency was for
18 this particular document, and the shortage of time that
19 he is referring to there?
20 A. I do not construe this document as written with a view
21 to the march in Derry on the 30th. You notice in that
22 covering note that is on the screen that Colonel
23 Dalzell-Payne is trying to anticipate:
24 "... some of the problems we may face on Monday and
25 if events on Sunday prove our worst fears".
1 Only Colonel Dalzell-Payne can tell you what he
2 meant by that, but I would construe it as probably
3 meaning: if we fail to contain the march, and if,
4 despite our efforts, the march breaks through, et cetera
5 et cetera ... Because what this paper is about -- as
6 I see it, having read it in the last week or so, what
7 this paper is about is the general question of dealing
8 with marches; and a lot of general propositions of
9 dealing with marches.
10 I do not see it as being directly relevant to
11 a particular march, which in fact was only 72 hours or
12 whatever ahead of when the paper was written.
13 LORD SAVILLE: We have got to mid-day, Mr Treacy. If that
14 is a convenient moment, we will stop for lunch. Can we
15 come back, please, at quarter to one.
16 (12.00 pm)
17 (The Short Adjournment)
18 (12.50 pm)
19 MR TREACY: I wonder if I could have on the screen, please,
20 G52.315. One small matter I want to ask you about. Do
21 you see on the right-hand side of the screen there
22 appears to be the distribution list.
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. There is a stamp on it. These are the minutes of the
25 JSC for 13th January?
1 A. Yes.
2 Q. It appears from that stamp that those minutes were sent
3 to a number of -- these were, as you can see from the
4 stamp as well, these were minutes provided by the
5 Ministry of Defence -- these minutes appear to have been
6 forwarded to the AUS(GS)?
7 A. Correct.
8 Q. Again, without putting it on the screen, we see there is
9 a similar stamp, for example on the minutes
10 20th January 1972. Can you confirm that as a matter of
11 course the minutes of the JSC meetings would have been
12 sent to AUS(GS)?
13 A. Yes, these particular minutes were after I had left the
14 post, but from the fact that these went to my successor,
15 I have no doubt that the minutes of previous meetings
16 had come to me as AUS(GS).
17 Q. At the time of this particular minute Mr Derek Stephens
18 would have been your successor?
19 A. That is right.
20 Q. Did you know the UK Rep?
21 A. Howard Smith?
22 Q. Yes?
23 A. Yes, I did.
24 Q. Did you have contact with him?
25 A. When I was in MoD I may have had occasional contact with
1 him, but very little. When I was in the Cabinet Office,
2 for the first part of my time there, when he was still
3 the representative in Belfast, I would have had a little
4 bit more, not a great deal, but some and then, I think
5 it was probably towards the end of 1971, he came to the
6 Cabinet Office and became my boss.
7 Q. When you moved over to the Cabinet Office, I think on
8 7th January, from the period, say from 7th January up to
9 Bloody Sunday, what would the nature of your contacts
10 have been with Mr Smith?
11 A. If he visited London he was likely to have called into
12 the Cabinet Office and I might have seen him then. It
13 is possible that I might occasionally have spoken to him
14 on the telephone, but I did not have many contacts with
15 him.
16 Q. Who would Mr Smith's main point of contact have been in
17 the Cabinet Office?
18 A. His main point of contact in the Cabinet Office would
19 have been either me or Mr Cairncross, but he would have
20 had much more contact with the Home Office than with the
21 Cabinet Office.
22 Q. When you were in the MoD, did you have any contact with
23 General Ford or General Tuzo?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. Would that have been on a frequent basis?
1 A. No. Again, from time to time if they visited London,
2 I would see them. I occasionally visited
3 Northern Ireland myself, and again there might have been
4 the occasional telephone contact.
5 Q. If I could leave that and take you to what I hope is the
6 final matter. I want to ask you something about your
7 understanding of the situation in Northern Ireland on
8 the lead-up to Bloody Sunday. If I could put it to you,
9 in this way: would you agree with me that the British
10 Government in Northern Ireland, in the run-up to
11 Bloody Sunday had essentially a plan (a) and a plan (b).
12 Plan (a) would have involved the introduction of
13 political reforms into Northern Ireland; that was the
14 favoured option; they wanted to keep Faulkner in power,
15 but at the same time they recognised there would have to
16 be some kind of political initiative to deal with the
17 grievances of the Catholic and nationalist population?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. That is what I would call plan (a). It is also right to
20 say that towards the end of 1971, there was fairly
21 advanced contingency planning, to what I suggest was
22 plan (b), namely, the possibility that direct rule might
23 become necessary at some point?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. It is also clear from the documents -- I do not think it
1 is necessary to go through them -- that one thing that
2 the Government wanted to avoid was having to commit more
3 troops to Northern Ireland if it could possibly avoid
4 that situation; is that clear?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. Again, we have seen from the documents that there was
7 a political initiative which was -- they were hoping it
8 was going to take place in or around -- I am not saying
9 this is a fixed date -- in or around February 1972.
10 That political initiative, that was really to put in
11 place what I refer to as plan (a)?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. Of course, it is right to say that whether one was
14 dealing with plan (a) or plan (b), that the success or
15 viability of either of those plans depended on avoiding
16 a Protestant backlash; is that right?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. And essentially of satisfying Protestant opinion. One
19 sees, in the course of many of the documents, this
20 concern that is continuously raised about the concern of
21 a Protestant backlash?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. What was actually happening towards the end of 1971 and
24 the beginning of 1972 was whether, as a result of
25 internment or otherwise, the security situation in
1 Belfast appeared to be improving and it was considered
2 that that was going to make it possible -- it was going
3 to present a brief window of opportunity, probably in
4 February, to introduce the political initiative that the
5 Government had in contemplation?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. It is also right to say that the Protestant community in
8 Northern Ireland, that they were -- I think as you put
9 it in one of your documents -- they were generally
10 restrained when the Security Forces were operating in
11 Catholic areas and were being seen to take a hard line
12 or impose security initiatives on Catholics or the areas
13 where they believed the IRA were operating?
14 A. Um, is your question: were the generality of the
15 Protestant population in favour of tougher military
16 measures?
17 Q. Yes?
18 A. Yes, sir, I would answer that by saying: on the whole,
19 yes, although this is a generalisation about a large
20 group of people, among whom there would be
21 a considerable gradation of opinions.
22 Q. I think the way you put it in your document, I will call
23 it up if need be at a later stage, I think you said in
24 a brief that you had prepared, that the Protestant
25 community were generally restrained when the Security
1 Forces were operating in Catholic areas and I do not
2 understand you to dissent from that?
3 A. Can you tell me which paragraph in my statement this is?
4 Q. Not just immediately?
5 A. Because I do not quite understand this word "restrain,"
6 as I think you quoted.
7 Q. It is KH9.44. This is the brief that you prepared for
8 the Secretary of State and which is, it is also annexed
9 to your statement. You are familiar with the document?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. If you look at paragraph 13, it is the second sentence:
12 "The restraint of the Protestant community has been
13 notable while the Security Forces have been operating
14 mainly in Catholic areas ..."
15 Do you see that?
16 A. Yes, I have -- I am sorry, will you give me one moment,
17 please?
18 Q. I am sorry.
19 A. Yes, I have this. Of course there were three or four
20 documents together here. Which was the page number you
21 quoted, sir?
22 Q. Hopefully it is on your screen as well?
23 A. It is off the bottom.
24 Q. Is paragraph 13 on the screen?
25 A. Yes, I was wondering which document it is.
1 Q. KH9.44?
2 A. I have them with a G number. I will look to see where
3 there is a paragraph 13. I am sorry to keep you
4 waiting. (Pause). I am with you.
5 Q. That was the source of my comment to you where you
6 yourself had said that the restraint of the Protestant
7 community had been notable while the security force --
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. I think it is also clear from your document that there
10 were many political decisions that had been taken by the
11 British Government, primarily to satisfy Protestant
12 opinion; do you accept that?
13 A. No doubt there were some.
14 Q. It was not just "some," I mean, were there not a whole
15 series of British political decisions in relation to
16 Northern Ireland from, as you put it in your paper, from
17 the non-implementation of Home Rule in 1914 through
18 partition in 1921 to internment in 1971?
19 A. Yes. Yes, if you are covering a 60- or 70-year period,
20 yes, you could say "... decisions".
21 Q. This is not again, if I could ask you -- if it could be
22 put on the screen again at KH9.44, it is paragraph 13,
23 you have it in your hard copy there.
24 A. I am with you, sir.
25 Q. This is the point you were making in your brief; this is
1 your brief?
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. Some of those decisions that were taken primarily to
4 satisfy Protestant opinion had devastating consequences
5 in Northern Ireland, for example internment is a good
6 example; is it not?
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. What internment also demonstrated was the influence of
9 Protestant Unionist opinion on political and security
10 initiatives in Northern Ireland; is that right?
11 A. Yes, certainly on political initiatives; to some extent
12 on military.
13 Q. Internment was both?
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. Is that right, internment was a decision which was taken
16 at the highest possible level, at Cabinet level?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. Obviously it was going to involve the commitment and was
19 carried out and executed by a large number of soldiers?
20 A. Yes, yes, that was both a political and a military
21 decision certainly.
22 Q. What it does demonstrate -- of course we are talking
23 about just in the few months before Bloody Sunday, the
24 decision to introduce internment was taken
25 in August 1971, literally months before Bloody Sunday,
1 and although the Army were against internment,
2 nevertheless the Prime Minister at the time, Mr Heath,
3 he was prevailed upon, contrary to the advice he was
4 receiving from the Army, he was prevailed upon, as
5 a result of Mr Faulkner and Protestant/Unionist opinion,
6 he was prevailed upon to accept internment?
7 A. Yes.
8 Q. And, as I think you pointed out earlier, one of the quid
9 pro quos for introducing internment was the introduction
10 of a simultaneous ban on marches, of all marches?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. Because the security situation had started to improve
13 towards the end of 1971 and the beginning of January, it
14 is obvious again -- correct me if I am wrong -- from the
15 documents that the security had improved to such a stage
16 that the British Government had contemplated that it
17 would be possible to introduce a reform package,
18 probably in February because of a security climate?
19 A. Yes, I would not say that the British Government had
20 reached that conclusion. I would say that the British
21 Government saw a possibility and were thinking, planning
22 and working towards it.
23 Q. And the reason they felt able to work towards that was
24 because of the improved security climate?
25 A. Yes.
1 Q. The relevance of the improved security climate was --
2 this at least was clear: Faulkner and the Unionists
3 generally did not want to make significant reforms, but
4 pressure was being put on them to accept significant
5 reforms and the question then was: when was the best
6 time to introduce these reforms, and that was measured
7 against what the Protestant reaction was likely to be so
8 that the security climate had improved significantly and
9 the threat of a Protestant backlash had therefore
10 reduced, that was the time at which to introduce the
11 political reforms?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. That is the way things were shaping up. But of course
14 there were two important events which occurred. The
15 first of those was the NICRA marches which I think
16 recommenced in or about December 1971; is that right?
17 A. Yes, I think so. Probably, yes.
18 Q. And of course there was open defiance of the ban which
19 had been introduced as the quid pro quo for internment
20 and that was enflaming Protestant opinion in
21 Northern Ireland; is that right?
22 A. Yes, to the extent that there was defiance of the ban,
23 yes, there was, that would not have gone down well with
24 Protestant opinion.
25 Q. And the second thing that happened, of course, was that
1 the ban was renewed on 14th January and it was going to
2 be in effect for another --
3 A. That is right.
4 Q. -- sorry, it was actually announced on 18th January,
5 I beg your pardon, that the ban would be introduced for
6 a further 12 months. That, of course, had a very
7 significant impact as well on Protestant thinking
8 because this was going to mean that traditional Orange
9 parades, as they are called, et cetera, that they were
10 not going to be able to have their marches and again
11 Protestant opinion was hardening to a very considerable
12 extent?
13 A. Probably.
14 Q. If I could demonstrate the point, that what had actually
15 happened by January is that the Protestants in
16 Northern Ireland were more worried or were more
17 concerned about the ban on the marches and the open
18 defiance by NICRA than they were about the bombing
19 campaign, or the bombs that had been exploded by the
20 IRA.
21 Can I show you one passage, G70.437. Could I flick
22 through the pages and I will stop you when I have found
23 it. Thank you. At the top of page 439 you see here.
24 LORD SAVILLE: What is this, Mr Treacy?
25 MR TREACY: It is a note of the visit of the CDS to
1 Northern Ireland on 24th January 1972 and it is in
2 response to questions from the CDS. You see here it
3 says:
4 "(The Chief of Staff subsequently gave it as his
5 opinion, and the Director of Intelligence agreed, that
6 the Protestants have got used to the Roman Catholic
7 bomber/gunman (whom they do not see) and are more likely
8 to react increasingly aggressively to the sight of NICRA
9 supporters defying the law)."
10 That accurately reflects, I suggest to you, the
11 hardening attitude of the Protestant community
12 particularly in January 1972 because of the marches and
13 the ban?
14 A. This is actually stated as being the opinion of the
15 Chief of the Defence Staff, agreed to by the Director of
16 Intelligence.
17 Q. Yes?
18 A. I am not saying it was not correct, but I am pointing
19 out that it is simply a statement of opinion.
20 Q. Yes, of course. That is the Chief of Staff in
21 Northern Ireland --
22 A. No, no, that is the Chief of the Defence Staff, it is
23 the CDS.
24 Q. I may have confused you --
25 A. You are right, yes, I did not read it clearly on the
1 screen. You are right, yes. This is the Chief of
2 Staff --
3 Q. Brigadier Tickell?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. Of course he would have been very familiar with what was
6 happening on the ground.
7 MR TOOHEY: Mr Treacy, is there a question built into all of
8 this?
9 MR TREACY: There is, sir.
10 MR TOOHEY: Are we coming to it?
11 MR TREACY: Very shortly, sir. I have to lay the groundwork
12 for the point, sir.
13 So the Protestants, I suggest to you, by this stage,
14 were outraged and the conditions which had made the
15 political initiative that the British Government were
16 contemplating in February, the conditions which had made
17 that appear like a realistic possibility, I suggest to
18 you, had been fundamentally altered because of the two
19 matters that I have mentioned, namely, the ban and the
20 marches; the political conditions had significantly
21 changed?
22 A. I do not think that this had significantly altered the
23 situation as the British Government saw it, and
24 certainly had not affected their view of their
25 objectives. But I think that if you -- to get an
1 interpretation of how the British Government saw what
2 you call "Protestant opinion" in Northern Ireland,
3 surely the authority for that at this time must be the
4 meeting between Mr Heath and Mr Faulkner on
5 27th January?
6 Q. Will you go this far with me: are you prepared to accept
7 that in determining whether or not a political
8 initiative was realistic or appropriate, there was
9 always going to have to be a very, very careful
10 assessment by the Government as to the risk of
11 a Protestant backlash and that that was always going to
12 be an essential ingredient in any judgment that the
13 British made in respect of a political initiative in
14 Northern Ireland in 1972?
15 A. That is true. The judgment of the extent to which
16 a Protestant backlash was hardening, if backlashes can
17 harden, that a possible backlash was hardening and was
18 likely materially to affect the political situation,
19 I think the British Government would have been bound to
20 regard Mr Faulkner as the interpreter of this, and it
21 appears to me, from the note, for the record, of the
22 meeting between the two Prime Ministers on 27th January,
23 that whether or not Mr Faulkner was enthusiastic about
24 a political initiative, he was, at any rate, prepared,
25 as he did for the greater part of that meeting, to
1 discuss it and some of its implications.
2 Q. Do you accept as a realistic possibility that the
3 initiative that was possibly planned for February was at
4 risk of being sabotaged by the change in political
5 conditions, that is sabotaged by NICRA and the ban and
6 that those two issues were issues which could frustrate
7 the political initiative because of the risk of
8 a Protestant backlash?
9 A. I would not use words like "sabotage" or "frustrate."
10 I would agree that they were obviously factors that the
11 Government would have to take into account.
12 Q. If it was part of Government thinking that the
13 initiatives planned for February could be frustrated by
14 these changes in political conditions, naturally enough
15 one would expect the Government's attention then to turn
16 to the question of whether or not their planned
17 initiative could be rescued by some means?
18 A. Can I perhaps anticipate you by saying: are you
19 suggesting that the kind of operation which you appear
20 to think was authorised on Bloody Sunday was designed
21 either as an alternative to or as some sort of
22 supplement towards, a political initiative; is that
23 really the point you are trying to make?
24 Q. It really goes back to the point that you yourself made
25 in your paper where you pointed out, if I may say so
1 with historical eloquence, the fact that many British
2 political decisions in Northern Ireland had been taken
3 primarily to satisfy Protestant opinion. Internment was
4 a classic example of it. Internment only happened
5 in August 1971, so there is no reason to suppose that
6 the kinds of influence which would have affected British
7 Government's thinking as it did in August 1971 would not
8 have been operable in January 1972?
9 A. I am not sure that that follows. Again we are bound to
10 be speculating a bit, but it could equally well have
11 been argued by ministers: okay, we took the decision on
12 internment for this reason; internment for various
13 reasons turned out to be a disaster, maybe we should
14 adopt a different approach. You could equally well say
15 that.
16 Q. You could, except we know that the consistent --
17 according to your evidence, contained in your
18 document -- the one consistent theme of British policy
19 in Northern Ireland from 1914 right through to 1971 was
20 that political initiatives had been taken primarily to
21 satisfy Protestant opinion. Unless something had
22 fundamentally changed by January 1972, there is no
23 reason why anyone should suppose those same kind of
24 influences would not have been in operation
25 in January 1972?
1 A. They did not inhibit the decision to go over to direct
2 rule in March or when ever it was.
3 Q. Perhaps, since you raised the question of direct rule,
4 if I could mention that at this stage as well: there was
5 plan (a) and plan (b), as I indicated at the outset, but
6 of course the one thing the British Government did not
7 want to do, they did not want to become permanently
8 embroiled in Northern Ireland, they wanted Faulkner to
9 stay in power, they did not want to commit more troops
10 et cetera.
11 It is also clear from documents the Inquiry has
12 seen, the one thing the British Government feared was
13 that if they had to introduce direct rule, they would
14 end up fighting a war -- as it was put in one of the
15 documents -- on two fronts.
16 In other words, if direct rule was introduced, if
17 the political conditions were not right, when direct
18 rule was introduced the risk was that you would have the
19 biggest Protestant backlash ever, i.e. civil
20 disobedience and insurgency, effectively a civil war;
21 that was something that was very much at the forefront
22 of Government thinking?
23 A. It was a factor in Government thinking, but of course it
24 did not happen and I do not believe it was so major
25 a factor in Government thinking as you are suggesting.
1 Q. Perhaps I could show you the document that I am
2 referring to because it is clear, for example, that
3 Lord Carrington, in documents we have seen, that
4 Lord Carrington was very, very concerned about the risk
5 of civil war in Northern Ireland if direct rule was
6 imposed in certain circumstances.
7 I cannot put my hand on it at the moment. There is
8 a document, when I find it I will bring it up, but it is
9 quite clear they did not want to be fighting a war on
10 two fronts.
11 LORD SAVILLE: Mr Treacy, I think it is time we got to
12 another question; is it not?
13 MR TREACY: Yes, sir.
14 If it was possible for the British Government to
15 rescue the political initiative by satisfying Protestant
16 public opinion and if what was required to satisfy
17 Protestant public opinion involved some kind of major
18 operation in Derry on 30th January against the marchers,
19 then one can see, having regard to the previous history
20 of political initiatives, that that is something that
21 may have influenced Government thinking?
22 A. I think that I suggested in answer to a previous
23 question that if you were suggesting that the British
24 Government at the end of January organised or approved
25 a major aggressive operation in Derry on 30th January
1 because they thought that this had a relationship one
2 way or the other with a prospects for a political
3 initiative, I would refute that totally.
4 Q. What I want to suggest to you is that a major military
5 operation, which would address the twin concerns of the
6 Protestants in January 1972 -- those twin concerns being
7 the marches and the open defiance of the ban -- if there
8 was something that could be done to satisfy Protestant
9 opinion in relation to what was giving them greatest
10 concern at that time and where there was a risk of
11 a Protestant backlash, that is something that the
12 British Government might well have had in contemplation?
13 LORD SAVILLE: I think really, with respect, Mr Treacy,
14 Sir Arthur has already answered that question by saying
15 he refutes it totally. I am not sure much purpose can
16 be served by putting it again in slightly different
17 terms.
18 MR TREACY: If I could ask you this, then: what makes you so
19 emphatic in your refutation of that suggestion, bearing
20 in mind what you yourself had drawn attention to in the
21 document that I have referred you to, that political
22 initiatives in Northern Ireland were taken primarily to
23 satisfy Protestant opinion.
24 A. Many of them had been, but people in Whitehall knew very
25 well that the kind of political initiative we were now
1 considering would not satisfy Protestant opinion --
2 well, satisfy Protestant opinion and might provoke some
3 kind of Protestant backlash, but nevertheless, as you
4 yourself so eloquently put it, that was plan (a) for the
5 British Government.
6 The intention was to press on with plan (a), putting
7 it very crudely, whether the Protestants liked it or
8 not, just as in March the decision was taken to go for
9 direct rule, whether anybody liked it or not.
10 Q. You can see the suggestion I am putting to you, that if
11 they wanted to rescue or maintain this political
12 initiative then --
13 A. I know you are putting this to me, but I am saying, at
14 the danger of repetition, that it was not the case that
15 ministers decided to launch an aggressive military
16 operation in Derry in order to rescue or whatever the
17 political initiative.
18 Q. Let us put it this way: that kind of operation would
19 have been entirely consistent with British political
20 objectives in Northern Ireland, would it not?
21 A. No, it would not, certainly much political activity had
22 been designed to satisfy the Protestant majority, but
23 equally, as all the discussions of a prospective
24 political initiative at this time suggested, there was
25 maybe a much greater determination than over the
1 previous 50 years or so to recognise the concerns of the
2 Catholic minority and an operation which was bound, as
3 in fact it did, to antagonise the Catholic minority
4 would have been the worst possible thing to do when this
5 political initiative was under consideration.
6 I mean, it turned out differently from what was
7 planned, but what I am refuting is, as I have said
8 before, your suggestion that an aggressive military
9 operation was launched to rescue the political
10 initiative.
11 LORD SAVILLE: I really think, Mr Treacy, we have just about
12 exhausted this topic. What view we reach at the end of
13 the day is a matter for us; we may or may not accept
14 what this witness says, just as we may or may not accept
15 what any witness says. I really do not think we are
16 getting any assistance now by pursuing this particular
17 topic.
18 MR TREACY: If I conclude, sir, by reference to demonstrate
19 that a major military operation in Derry on 30th January
20 was quite consistent with British --
21 LORD SAVILLE: To whom were you proposing to demonstrate
22 this?
23 MR TREACY: Both to the witness and to the Inquiry
24 because --
25 LORD SAVILLE: So far as the Inquiry is concerned you can
1 demonstrate that when the time comes to make your final
2 submissions.
3 So far as the witness is concerned, it seems to me
4 that your task is to try and elicit from the witness
5 answers to questions relating to the subject matter of
6 this Inquiry, rather than giving him demonstrations of
7 anything at all.
8 MR TREACY: Could I ask you this, Sir Arthur: you do accept
9 that the British Government did not want to fight a war
10 on two fronts if they had introduced direct rule?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. Just as with plan (a) so also with plan (b) if direct
13 rule was going to be introduced it had to be introduced
14 in circumstances where the risk of Protestant backlash
15 was minimised?
16 A. In circumstances where both the risk of a Protestant
17 backlash was minimised and the risk of a Catholic
18 uplash, or whatever you may like to call it, was
19 minimised also.
20 Q. And the British objective in January 1972 was to keep
21 Mr Faulkner in power because the worst thing to happen
22 for the British Government was for them to become ever
23 more committed to what was happening in
24 Northern Ireland?
25 A. That is broadly correct and that is why plan (a), as you
1 call it, was a -- some changes in the political scene,
2 but still retaining a separate Northern Ireland
3 Government which would very likely still be Mr Faulkner,
4 but we recognised -- as in fact came to pass in two or
5 three months' time -- that the situation might become
6 unworkable in political terms and we had to go over to
7 plan (b).
8 Q. Thank you very much.
9 Questioned by MS McDERMOTT
10 MS McDERMOTT: Sir Arthur, I represent the family of the
11 late Patrick Doherty and I have just some additional
12 questions to ask you about an area that you have already
13 been referred to.
14 When it was suggested to you this morning that
15 a political initiative was planned for February 1972,
16 you said that would be putting it too strongly but that
17 it was being thought about. Was it the position that
18 the Cabinet was going to start discussing a political
19 initiative in February 1972?
20 A. No, it was already being discussed.
21 Q. At what level?
22 A. There was some discussion of the political aspects in
23 the GEN 47 meetings of January and, I think, before
24 then.
25 Q. There had not been any discussion at that stage at
1 Cabinet level about the political initiative?
2 A. There certainly had been at Cabinet Committee level.
3 I cannot remember whether there had been discussion at
4 full Cabinet level.
5 Q. Would it be fair to say in January 1972 Northern Ireland
6 was being governed in a political vacuum?
7 LORD SAVILLE: I am not quite sure I understand that
8 question, it may be Sir Arthur does, in which case he
9 may answer it, but I do not think I understand the
10 question.
11 MS McDERMOTT: There had been major political developments,
12 had there not, Sir Arthur, since October 1968?
13 A. Yes, I am afraid I share the Chairman's difficulty in
14 understanding this question. In January of 1972 --
15 MR TOOHEY: It might be better not to try and answer it
16 until it has been explained.
17 MS McDERMOTT: I put the question to you on this basis,
18 Sir Arthur: there had been major political developments
19 in the community since October 1968 and there had been
20 no political response to those.
21 LORD SAVILLE: Can you give me at least, Ms McDermott, some
22 idea of what major political developments you have in
23 mind?
24 MS McDERMOTT: The civil rights marches for one thing; the
25 campaign of civil disobedience which followed
1 internment; the beginnings of IRA operations.
2 LORD SAVILLE: I see what you mean, at least I think I do:
3 that there was growing action of one kind or another in
4 relation to political changes of one section or other of
5 the community were desirous of achieving. I am trying
6 to put it very neutrally.
7 MS McDERMOTT: That is so, sir. The point I am putting to
8 Sir Arthur is there was no political response to
9 those --
10 LORD SAVILLE: Do you mean governmental response, because
11 you are using "political" in two senses.
12 MS McDERMOTT: Yes, that is much more useful.
13 LORD SAVILLE: Do you understand the question, Sir Arthur?
14 A. Yes, I think, I would just like to ask one
15 supplementary: are you referring to the Stormont
16 Government or the Westminster Government, or both?
17 MS McDERMOTT: Both.
18 A. No, there had not been -- certainly there had not been
19 any -- well, there had been measures, like for example
20 in 1969, the disbandment of the B Specials and then
21 there was the creation of the UDR and so on. I think it
22 would be unfair to say that there had been no responses
23 to those changes in the political situation, but it
24 would be correct to say that up until that time there
25 had been no major initiative. But this is exactly what
1 British ministers and officials were thinking about in
2 late 1971 and early 1972.
3 Q. Yes, I appreciate that.
4 A. Up to that time the security situation had made it very
5 difficult to think about such points but, as emerged in
6 exchanges with the last questioner, the security
7 situation appeared to have considerably improved by the
8 end of 1971.
9 Q. But until the end of 1971 -- indeed until, certainly
10 in January 1972 -- Northern Ireland had been considered
11 a law and order problem and a security problem
12 primarily; is that not so?
13 A. Primarily, yes.
14 Q. And it fell to the Army to bear the burden of keeping
15 law and order?
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. Do you accept that there were heavy expectations on the
18 Army to try to maintain the appearance of law and order?
19 A. Oh, yes, there were always -- the tension always
20 operating between the desirability, as seen by
21 everybody, that law and order should be restored and the
22 Army play its part in that, the tension between that and
23 the very proper limitations upon the sorts of actions
24 that could be taken.
25 Q. In January 1972 they were not getting much political
1 assistance to help them in their task; were they?
2 A. It would be fair to say that Lord Carver was one of
3 those who were pressing most strongly for getting a move
4 on towards a political initiative.
5 Q. But that was not of course forthcoming at that time?
6 A. Oh, yes, in the sense that -- on the basis that a window
7 of opportunity was likely to open in February or March,
8 there was a lot of discussion going on. Because I think
9 the kind of political initiative that was being
10 discussed was not just something you could write down on
11 a piece of paper overnight, there was a great deal of
12 work involved.
13 Q. Up until that time he was having to operate in the
14 absence of any political initiative?
15 A. Yes.
16 Q. Thank you.
17 Questioned by MR MANSFIELD
18 MR MANSFIELD: I represent some of the families. I want to
19 ask a series of specific questions, some of them arising
20 out of documents you have already seen, but they are not
21 questions you have been asked; do you follow?
22 A. I do.
23 Q. I am going to take them chronologically so you can see
24 them in date, and I apologise because it is a long time
25 ago.
1 The first one I would like you to see again for
2 a moment is what has been called the Ford memo, G48.499,
3 please, in particular G48, page 300, paragraph 6; it is
4 the paragraph to which your attention was drawn earlier
5 today, which I think you have had an opportunity to read
6 before.
7 A. I have it in front of me, sir.
8 Q. I have two questions arising out of this: the position
9 so far seems to be that you say you have never seen that
10 memo. That is not the question I ask you.
11 Were you aware, during 1971 or the latter part of
12 1971 and the beginning of 1972, that senior Army
13 officers in Northern Ireland were discussing the
14 possibility of shooting selected ringleaders?
15 A. No, I was not, and, indeed, the sentence "I am coming to
16 the conclusion ..." almost could suggest that
17 General Ford had only at that time, around 7th January,
18 been coming to that conclusion himself.
19 Q. May I ask you to do the same that we have been asked to
20 do; my questions are very specific, I am not asking you
21 to interpret it, I only want to know from you whether
22 you knew -- if you can remember -- about any discussions
23 that were taking place about the possibility of shooting
24 selected ringleaders, and your answer is: no?
25 A. Yes.
1 Q. Secondly, were you aware that senior military commanders
2 in the north of Ireland were concerned about what has
3 been called a gap in their armoury or weaponry?
4 A. To which particular gap are you referring, sir?
5 Q. The gap between using a weapon which shoots to kill and
6 kills perhaps one, maybe two people, maybe three because
7 of its force; do you follow?
8 A. I get your question, and the answer is: no.
9 Q. You did not?
10 A. No.
11 Q. In this same paragraph if you look at the bottom it
12 indicates:
13 "We must consider issuing rifles adapted to fire
14 high velocity .22 to enable ringleaders to be engaged
15 with this less lethal ammunition. 30 of these weapons
16 have been sent to 8 Brigade this weekend."
17 That is the weekend of 7th, 8th, 9th January 1972.
18 Were you aware, first of all, of these weapons being in
19 the north of Ireland in the first place?
20 A. No.
21 Q. Bearing that paragraph in mind, I would like you to see
22 GEN 140, please. This is a summary, written recently,
23 of a number of documents that have been acquired by the
24 Inquiry in relation to this paragraph; do you follow?
25 A. Yes.
1 Q. And .22 ammunition. I apologise if you have not seen it
2 before, it is a letter, in which it is clear that these
3 devices, it is the third paragraph down:
4 "60 of the conversion sets were released for issue
5 to units in April 1971."
6 I pause there: did you know that had happened?
7 A. I have no recollection of it.
8 Q. It may be I cannot take it much further if you have no
9 recollection of any of this, because there is one
10 further point. It appears from reports that were made
11 a little later in 1971 that half of them had been
12 returned; do you follow?
13 A. I see that, yes.
14 Q. Which leaves 30. You do not know anything about any of
15 this?
16 A. I do not remember knowing anything about it.
17 Q. I cannot take it further with you, then. I want to pass
18 from that document, that is the Ford memo, as it has
19 been called, to another document you have seen. It is
20 in date order, but it is a different question. Could we
21 have on the screen, please, G52.315. These are the
22 minutes of a JSC meeting and you were asked about who
23 you knew and so on. Could we have G52.316, please. You
24 will see there is a paragraph, paragraph 2, in which the
25 GOC indicated that:
1 "... following a meeting with businessmen ..." do
2 you see that?
3 A. I do, yes.
4 Q. It is referring back to the visit that is in the Ford
5 memo and so forth:
6 "... in Londonderry certain measures were in mind
7 with a view to putting down the troublesome hooligan
8 element there. It was a very difficult problem to solve
9 within the law ..."
10 Were you aware -- this is the question -- of what
11 the "certain measures" were; I appreciate by this date
12 you have shifted from one job to another, but were you
13 aware of what "certain measures" the ministers had in
14 mind from the hooligans?
15 A. No, I was not and I am still, 30 years later, reading
16 this document, I am not at all sure what the "certain
17 measures" were.
18 Q. I appreciate you may not, but I want to suggest to you
19 somebody on your side of the water, if I may put it that
20 way, must have know, do you follow? If you did not, I
21 appreciate you may not have.
22 Can I just follow this through to another document
23 you have seen today, G82.512, please. G82.512 is the
24 Dalzell-Payne document that you saw earlier on.
25 I appreciate, again, it is not your document and the
1 question does not arise out of it being your document.
2 However, if we go to the end of this document there
3 are some paragraphs headed "Conclusions," they are on
4 G82.518, paragraphs 12 and 13. The paper writer,
5 Dalzell-Payne, the concern is how the Army is going to
6 deal with a ban on marches, putting it simply.
7 Paragraph 13:
8 "It is not possible to enforce the ban rigidly ..."
9 If we turn over to G82.519, at the top the writer is
10 suggesting:
11 "We must take stronger military measures ..."
12 Do you see that at the very top?
13 A. Yes.
14 Q. " ... which will inevitably lead to further accusations
15 of 'brutality and ill-treatment of non-violent
16 demonstrators'. These measures should be reinforced by
17 a quicker legal process in dealing with those who defy
18 the ban."
19 There is a passage about IRA propaganda. Then there
20 are recommendations:
21 "We must accept that the current force level cannot
22 be appreciably increased merely to impose a ban on
23 marches. If we accept that the ban must continue, we
24 are left with two possible courses of action, besides
25 speeding up legal proceedings."
1 One is an extension of the ban to include all public
2 meetings, secondly additional measures for the physical
3 control:
4 "15. The only additional measure left for physical
5 control is the use of firearms i.e. 'disperse or we
6 fire'. Inevitably it would not be the gunmen who would
7 be killed but 'innocent members of the crowd'. This
8 would be a harsh and final step, tantamount to saying
9 'all else has failed' and for this reason must be
10 rejected except in extremis. It cannot, however, be
11 ruled out. We must await the outcome of the events
12 planned for weekend 29/30 January, see what effect our
13 firmer measures have, and then if necessary advise the
14 Home Office ..."
15 I have taken you through that in a little detail so
16 you see the context. The question I have: did you know
17 what the firmer measures were that the military or the
18 Ministry of Defence in this case, had in mind?
19 A. Picking up your last point, sir, this, as I read it, is
20 a position paper by Colonel Dalzell-Payne for a basis of
21 discussion on Monday, 31st January or thereafter, if we
22 had not succeeded in controlling the march on the Sunday
23 --
24 Q. Forgive me for interrupting, I do appreciate, you have
25 given that answer before?
1 A. I know, but the point I am making is I do not think it
2 would be fair to say that this was a Ministry of Defence
3 view.
4 Q. I will come back to Dalzell-Payne in a moment. The
5 question is: were you aware of what the firmer measures
6 were?
7 A. No.
8 Q. Right.
9 A. I did not see this paper, I was not involved in any
10 discussion of it. Had I been asked what I thought this
11 meant, I guess I would have said --
12 Q. I am not asking you what you thought, you have never
13 seen it. I am only interested in factual questions if
14 you can answer them do you follow?
15 A. Yes, indeed.
16 Q. Dalzell-Payne, as an individual, you describe in both
17 your statements, may I quote it so you can be reminded,
18 that the way you describe him, he was head of MO4; you
19 worked closely with him, very closely "and most of the
20 running on the military side was made by him"; is that
21 right?
22 A. Yes, in the sense of where the running was made at
23 working level. I am not suggesting that he was taking
24 over the job of CGS.
25 Q. No, but he was playing a very crucial role; was he not?
1 A. Yes.
2 Q. So if he has an understanding of firmer measures that
3 are going to happen over the weekend, he would have
4 discussed these firmer measures with a number of other
5 senior individuals; would he not?
6 A. Probably.
7 Q. Most probably; would he not? He would not be talking
8 about firmer measures in isolation; would he?
9 A. No.
10 Q. Who else would he have been discussing them with?
11 A. I was not in the Ministry of Defence at this time.
12 Q. But given your previous experience up to 7th January --
13 when you shifted, I appreciate -- I am asking, it is on
14 the basis of that experience, who would you have
15 expected that he would have been discussing this with?
16 A. He might very likely have discussed it with me.
17 Q. With you?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. So after you left he would be discussing it with your
20 successor?
21 A. Probably.
22 Q. And in order to know that there were firmer measures,
23 obviously since the military were going to have to carry
24 them out, senior military personnel -- including Lord
25 Carver -- would have to know; would they not?
1 A. Yes, indeed. But I think it goes back to -- as far as
2 Lord Carver is concerned, it goes back to what he said
3 to the GEN 47 meeting.
4 Q. I am coming to that so you can deal with it, because --
5 since you have raised it I will come straight to it, but
6 first of all before we get to the actual meeting, there
7 is one question arising out of those minutes, could we
8 have, please -- sir, I hope we have the right reference
9 for this, it was scanned in yesterday, this is the Burke
10 Trend briefing document, which, as I understand it, you
11 may have contributed to, for 27th January, written on
12 the 26th. The reference is, I hope, G75CA462.51.
13 A. I have that.
14 Q. Unfortunately we do not. If we could have the page,
15 which I suspect is 5.2, where paragraphs 12 and 13
16 appear?
17 A. They are on page 4.
18 Q. Page 4. Paragraph 12 deals with the Magilligan point
19 that you have already dealt with, I am not going to ask
20 you about that again. Paragraph 13, which you can see
21 there, is that a paragraph you may have drafted?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. "Overshadowing this question, however, is the graver
24 issue of the attitude to be adopted by the Security
25 Forces if the renewed ban on marches is openly defied.
1 Are we able -- and prepared -- to deal with that
2 situation?"
3 That is the first question. Secondly:
4 "Perhaps the question should be explored urgently
5 with Mr Faulkner during his visit to London."
6 The questions I have for you, are these: since you
7 posed the question as to the attitude to be adopted by
8 the Security Forces, where and when was that discussed?
9 A. What I am talking about here is in effect matters that
10 would have to be discussed in the longer term, not
11 related specifically to the march in Derry on the 30th,
12 which indeed is not mentioned at all in this brief and
13 linked with the possibility that the ban on marches will
14 be openly defied to the extent that the Security Forces
15 did not succeed in stopping it on the 30th.
16 Q. I want you to think a little more about this one.
17 Plainly it was known and in fact the meeting on the 27th
18 of the GEN 47 committee is primarily and -- I will not
19 say solely -- primarily concerned with the marches that
20 are coming up that weekend; are they not? I do not know
21 whether you wish to see that again?
22 A. Yes, in the light of the report by the Chief of the
23 General Staff, yes.
24 Q. I want to suggest to you, therefore, the question you
25 posed must have been posed because it was well
1 publicised by the time you wrote the briefing on the
2 26th that there was going to be a major challenge to the
3 ban on marches; you must have known that when you wrote
4 it on the 26th, must you not?
5 A. Until I saw this brief a few days ago I would have said:
6 yes, by this time, the Wednesday or the Thursday I would
7 have known about it. The fact that there is no mention
8 of the Derry march on the Sunday in this brief makes me
9 very uncertain, to say the least, whether I did know
10 about it before the Chief of the General Staff rendered
11 his report to GEN 47, because I cannot believe that if
12 I had been aware of the planned march for the Sunday,
13 I cannot believe that I would not have mentioned it in
14 this brief.
15 Q. Sometimes it may not be necessary to actually specify
16 it, if the issue, which is a general one, is: how are we
17 going to deal with defiance of the ban? That covers not
18 only the weekend that is imminent, but the events
19 thereafter?
20 A. I see the sentence in a longer term context.
21 Q. I see that. By the time of the Cabinet meeting
22 itself -- that is the GEN 47 meeting itself -- it
23 plainly was an important issue to be resolved: how are
24 the Security Forces, or what attitude are the Security
25 Forces going to adopt to an open ban; that is a key
1 question, is it not?
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. Because one might be to stop the march altogether; two
4 might be to arrest people on the spot for marching,
5 et cetera; a number of questions arise, do they not?
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. Where was this issue resolved, because it is certainly
8 not resolved in the GEN 47 meeting the next day; were
9 there any other meetings between your draft of the
10 briefing for the 27th, done on the 26th, were there any
11 meetings between that and the 27th?
12 A. I do not recall any and I do not know of any.
13 Q. What I suggest to you must have been happening here is
14 that there were informal discussions and exchanging of
15 information between the key people, the key people
16 being: Lord Carver, the Prime Minister himself, other
17 senior military commanders in the north of Ireland via
18 Lord Carver; these are just a few of the personalities
19 that must have been involved in order to answer your, if
20 I may put it, pertinent questions?
21 A. I think that there is a distinction here between the
22 immediate short-term and the longer term. As far as the
23 immediate short-term is concerned, Lord Carver described
24 it to GEN 47, how it was proposed to deal with the march
25 on the Sunday as that march was then foreseen and, in
1 general terms, his proposals were agreed by ministers,
2 you get the second half of the Prime Minister's
3 summing-up.
4 There is also raised here by Lord Trend, probably on
5 my drafting, the graver issue, or particularly the
6 graver issue, if for some reason we were not successful
7 on Sunday, of the general policy over the future time if
8 there continued to be defiance of the ban on marches.
9 Q. The question still remains: were there discussions going
10 on -- if I can put it bluntly -- in the corridors of
11 power about how to deal with an open defiance of a large
12 march, which might be up to 12,000 or even more, and it
13 might be televised, even more importantly, was that
14 being discussed outside the formality of GEN 47
15 meetings?
16 A. Not that I know of.
17 Q. Of course if they took place without you it may be you
18 would not know they had even happened; is that right?
19 A. I cannot refute that.
20 Q. You cannot refute that. The reason I am suggesting that
21 this is the British way decisions were taking place at
22 that time, can we come to the GEN 47 record which you
23 have seen already which we have at G78.485, please. In
24 particular page 487. It is a sentence you may have read
25 before, but you have not been asked about yet, the very
1 last sentence:
2 "Maximum publicity should also be secured for
3 arrests."
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. What arrests?
6 A. Arrests of people who were behaving in a hooligannish
7 sort of way, throwing stones, throwing metal rods and
8 whatnot on the fringes of the march.
9 Q. How do you know that; how do you know that was what it
10 was? If you think back -- not everything you have read
11 since?
12 A. No, no.
13 Q. How did you know at that meeting that that is what it
14 was?
15 A. To the extent that I had no knowledge whatever and no
16 reason to believe that anything was planned other than
17 the sort of operation outlined by Lord Carver.
18 Q. He has not outlined -- if you look at the note you have
19 made of his outline on the previous page, 486 -- he does
20 not mention an arrest operation at all?
21 A. No. The point about arrests would have come up during
22 the discussion.
23 Q. Would it, you see? If we understand it correctly, you
24 note down any significant discussion; is that right?
25 A. Yes.
1 Q. I am suggesting to you that may be what you do in the
2 meetings, but there must have been significant
3 discussion about the nature of the arrest operation
4 before we ever get to this meeting; do you follow?
5 A. I understand what you are saying.
6 Q. That is why the Prime Minister is able to mention
7 arrests because he has already been told what it is all
8 about?
9 A. That could be one interpretation. Equally what might
10 have happened -- I have no direct recollection of this
11 meeting -- what might have happened at it and which
12 I would have minuted in this sense, that in the brief
13 discussion somebody might have said "hey, suppose there
14 is a bit of hooligan activity on the fringes and we have
15 to arrest some folk," I can well understand, I think the
16 Prime Minister would have been keen on this, he would
17 have said, yes, if we arrest some people, make jolly
18 sure it is shown on television.
19 Q. That is a sort of aside almost in the discussion, "hey,
20 what about a few hooligans".
21 However, if Lord Carver had come to the meeting and
22 said, "Prime Minister, this is going to be an unusual
23 march in terms of its numbers; it is going to present us
24 with an unusual opportunity to arrest a very large
25 number of hooligans and we are mounting, for the fist
1 time in Derry, a major scoop-up operation in order to
2 get rid of the hooligan element"; was anything like that
3 said?
4 A. I am sure it was not, because if it had I would have
5 recorded it.
6 Q. Therefore, for the Prime Minister to have been aware of
7 that, it must have been said before this meeting?
8 A. With great respect, sir, I think you may be making
9 a jump there. When the Prime Minister says, "maximum
10 publicity should also be secured for arrests," I do not
11 believe that that necessarily implies a large-scale
12 scoop-up operation.
13 Q. The questions you have posed -- I do not ask for the
14 document again, but you have it in front of you -- in
15 that paragraph 13 was that in fact the questions you
16 have posed should be urgently explored with Mr Faulkner,
17 in other words, the attitude of the Security Forces to
18 an open defiance, yes?
19 A. That was what I had in mind, yes.
20 Q. We do have a note of the meeting?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. You may have already seen it, I do not know?
23 A. Yes, I have it in front of me.
24 Q. G81.507. There are a number of pages, but could we go
25 to the part that relates to the forthcoming events,
1 which is G81.510. This is a note effectively of, it
2 would appear, what Mr Faulkner is saying; do you see, on
3 that page?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. I am not going to read it all out, because you have read
6 it before. He talks about -- I am summarising it -- the
7 civil disobedience parades, as he calls it; that it
8 would be difficult. Over the page, 511, he wants the
9 people on the march to be called civil disobedients
10 rather than civil rioters. The IRA campaign going
11 through a "dirty phase", and so on.
12 He then deals with internment, but at least so far
13 as the overt discussions recorded are concerned, there
14 is nothing about how the Army was going to deal with
15 open defiance; do you follow?
16 A. I do.
17 Q. Once again I suggest, given that your question was
18 a pertinent one, I want to suggest to you, as was
19 common, there would have been discussions on other
20 occasions, again in corridors, not necessarily noted
21 down, about how the Army were going to deal with an open
22 defiance?
23 A. That is possible, I have no recollection of any.
24 Q. One final question on the GEN 47 meeting of the 27th,
25 I think it follows from everything you have said, no-one
1 at the meeting had any reservations about an arrest
2 operation of any kind taking place during a large march;
3 is that right? Nobody questioned the wisdom of it?
4 A. Nobody questioned the wisdom, and the probable necessity
5 of having to make a number of arrests arising out of the
6 situation of this march and what was likely to happen.
7 Q. Could we have V27, please. It is a paragraph on the
8 left-hand side column: this is a Hansard record of
9 statements made in the House on 1st February 1972 by
10 Lord Balniel. They come -- it is the penultimate
11 paragraph on the left-hand side:
12 "The honourable Member for Leeds," can you see that?
13 A. Yes.
14 Q. He was asked about responsibility for the decision to
15 arrest:
16 "The arrest operation was discussed by the Joint
17 Security Council. Further decisions had been taken by
18 ministers here."
19 What further decisions, is the question I have for
20 you, had been taken for ministers here in relation to
21 the arrest operation?
22 A. There is a preliminary point first: there is a textual
23 crux, as you might say, about this paragraph of
24 Lord Balniel's evidence. A different printed version of
25 Hansard -- and I believe the later printed version, I am
1 afraid I cannot remember off-hand which it is, whether
2 it is the one in the British Library or what, but an
3 alternative version which I believe to be a later one,
4 is the arrest operation was discussed by the Joint
5 Security Council after decisions had been taken by
6 ministers here.
7 On the second part of your question, I am afraid
8 that I have only -- I suppose I must have seen this at
9 the time -- I have only recently had recalled to my
10 memory these observations by Lord Balniel and I am
11 afraid I do not understand what is being referred to.
12 Q. You cannot help about what he is saying here?
13 A. No, I am afraid I cannot.
14 Q. I want to ask you about another committee and another
15 issue.
16 LORD SAVILLE: If that is the case, Mr Mansfield, we will
17 take a short break at this time.
18 (2.00 pm)
19 (A short break)
20 (2.10 pm)
21 MR MANSFIELD: I want to turn to a different committee which
22 you have been asked about when you made your second
23 statement. It is called GEN 79 and we do not have all
24 the minutes, but the first one is INQ1.438. It is dated
25 Wednesday, 16th February 1972. I appreciate because of
1 the distance of time and it is plain you are not
2 necessarily present at all these meetings, but the
3 question I have, since it is this committee, as its
4 title suggests, is dealing with political reforms in
5 Northern Ireland and is consumed, certainly to begin
6 with, direct rule and later on Motorman, the operation,
7 when was the committee set up, can you help?
8 A. No, I am afraid I cannot. I should not be asking you,
9 I should be looking it up; did I in my statement quote
10 any earlier meetings than this?
11 Q. No, you do not.
12 A. No. I cannot remember when it was set up. If, as
13 I suspect is the case, this committee started as one to
14 consider the possibility of and then the reality of the
15 actual planning for direct rule, I might not have known
16 very much about it at first because it would have been
17 much more a Home Office affair than Defence affair,
18 though I see Lord Carrington was a member and therefore
19 I must assume that if it started before the 3rd or so
20 of January 1972 that I would have known about it, but
21 I do not remember any of its meetings or being actively
22 involved.
23 This particular meeting, it is interesting that I am
24 not there. Since it was primarily about political
25 matters and direct rule, I think it was probably natural
1 that Neil Cairncross, who was an ex-Home Office man,
2 should be the principal minute-taker rather than me.
3 I may well have found myself present at other GEN 79
4 meetings a bit later on.
5 Q. Yes, you were. If you need to refer to your statement
6 it is in fact paragraph 22 on KH9.72, if you want to see
7 what you said about it already. I do not ask for it on
8 screen.
9 A. I think from what you have said, I remember it
10 sufficiently.
11 Q. The real point I have in mind here is: can you help as
12 to whether this committee first met just before
13 Bloody Sunday or just after Bloody Sunday; that is
14 really the question, I do not know whether you can help
15 on that?
16 A. No, I am sorry, I cannot help on that.
17 LORD SAVILLE: I do notice, Mr Mansfield, the top left-hand
18 side, it talks about the "3rd meeting"?
19 MR MANSFIELD: One could have had, and I cannot presuppose
20 this, you could have had an earlier two meetings inside
21 two weeks. On the other hand, it may be unlikely,
22 therefore the first meeting may have been just before
23 Bloody Sunday, do you follow; I do not know the answer,
24 which is why I am asking you?
25 A. I do not know, I am sorry.
1 Q. You do not know?
2 A. No.
3 Q. One other matter, allied to this topic: were you aware
4 before you changed jobs, as it were, that an
5 operation -- not necessarily labelled Motorman -- was
6 being considered by the military in terms of logistics,
7 quantifying what would be needed and so on throughout
8 the latter stages of the autumn 1971, into the beginning
9 1972; were you aware of that?
10 A. I do not recall anything in the nature of specific or
11 detailed planning. I think it is probable -- indeed
12 I think there are one or two passages in minutes that
13 bear it out -- that people sometimes said "at some time
14 we shall have to do something like this," but I have no
15 recollection of anyone getting down to the sort of
16 detailed planning that you would be doing if you thought
17 you were going to be doing it in the next month or two.
18 Q. I have asked other senior commanders whether in fact
19 that sort of planning had happened, and planning like
20 that had happened. My question is: whether you knew
21 they were planning, at the latter stages of 1971 into
22 the beginning of 1972, an operation; it may not have had
23 the name Motorman at that stage; did you know the
24 detail?
25 A. I have no recollection that I did. It is possible that
1 as AUS(GS), I knew more about it than I can remember.
2 Q. Finally this, and I apologise because they are not, if
3 I can put it this way, your documents, but I do want to
4 ask you in relation to a couple of letters that have
5 been sent -- bear with me one moment. We are now
6 dealing with a period that comes after Bloody Sunday
7 itself. These letters appear on 4th February and
8 8th February. I want to ask you whether you were aware
9 of the detail of any of them.
10 The first one is CO1.208. It is a letter written by
11 General Carver to General Tuzo about a forthcoming march
12 in Newry the following weekend. First of all, have you
13 ever seen this letter before?
14 A. I do not remember having done so.
15 Q. It is really the content rather than whether you have
16 seen it, because what he felt compelled to say to the
17 General, following a telephone conversation, was to
18 indicate that:
19 "The rules of the Yellow Card will be strictly
20 adhered to. In particular it will be made clear to all
21 ranks that fire is not to be opened for the purpose of
22 preventing a barrier being broken or preventing a march
23 from continuing. In the last resort, if, in spite of
24 the use of methods short of opening fire, a barrier
25 cannot be prevented from being overrun, the troops will
1 withdraw."
2 Do you recall any discussion which led to that being
3 issued?
4 A. No.
5 Q. There is one further letter, please, CO1.211. This is
6 again a letter signed by Mr Dunnett, who you obviously
7 did know at one time, and probably still did at this
8 time, on 8th February. I wanted to ask you whether you
9 were aware that he had had a discussion with
10 General Ford of the kind that is set out there, or not?
11 A. So far as I know I first saw this letter a week or two
12 ago. I have no recollection that Sir James had had
13 a prolonged talk with General Ford, but in my job in
14 Cabinet Office, I would not necessarily have known about
15 it.
16 Q. That is why I am taking it cautiously, I am not saying
17 you necessarily did. I have to ask just in case you
18 did. If you do not know anything about it, then I do
19 not take it further.
20 I have just been shown a document dated a day ago
21 and I hope it is helpful, because it comes from the
22 Inquiry. It would appear that the first GEN 79 meeting
23 was in fact on 9th February and the second one was on
24 the 15th.
25 It comes in a letter dated 2nd December and
1 I apologise for having missed that reference. May I be
2 permitted to ask a further question now I have that
3 information?
4 LORD SAVILLE: Of course.
5 MR MANSFIELD: On the assumption this information is right,
6 that GEN 79 started meeting on 9th February, in other
7 words it is about a week after Bloody Sunday, can you
8 help -- perhaps you cannot, because you were not
9 involved in the first meeting -- whether the meeting was
10 set up because of what had happened on Bloody Sunday?
11 A. I am afraid I cannot help you with that at all, I do not
12 remember.
13 Questioned by LORD GIFFORD
14 LORD GIFFORD: My name is Anthony Gifford and I represent
15 the family of James Wray.
16 May I start by referring to some assistance that you
17 have helpfully attempted to give the Inquiry in the
18 matter of documents. You give some in your statement at
19 page KH9.99?
20 A. That is at the end of my statement, is it not?
21 Q. That is right. It is the one, I have been particularly
22 interested in the unearthing of contemporary documents
23 so I am going to ask for your help.
24 In relation to the first category, we have now been
25 told by Mr White, then of the Foreign Office, that
1 whereas there was a meeting on 5th January of the
2 official committee on Northern Ireland, he does not
3 recollect -- and thinks there were none -- thereafter
4 in January. You, however, have indicated that there may
5 have been meetings of the official committee shortly
6 before the full GEN 47 meetings. Can you help us to
7 elucidate a little bit whether there are such meetings
8 and, if so, we can ask for such records?
9 A. It is certainly true that ministers and Sir Phillip
10 Allen had decided that it would be a good idea in
11 general to have an NIO meeting before a GEN 47 meeting.
12 Whether there was always an NIO meeting before a GEN 47
13 meeting or whether for one reason and another it was
14 dispensed with on a particular occasion, I cannot
15 recall.
16 Q. The general rule was to have an official meeting before
17 the ministers got started, as it were?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. In order, no doubt, to flag up any points of difficulty
20 that may arise on the agenda?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. And in relation to the meetings in January, you think
23 that unless there was an exception to the rule, there
24 must have been such meetings?
25 A. I would have started by expecting that there would be,
1 but if there are no minutes about such meetings, I could
2 only conclude that they had not taken place.
3 Q. I will not take that further in view of the doubt that
4 Mr White put on this point.
5 In relation to the second category on the page:
6 "We gather that briefings have been requested in
7 relation to the Home Office."
8 In relation to the Ministry of Defence there is only
9 one document which is in any sense a briefing document
10 in advance of GEN 47; that is G74.457?
11 A. What is the date of that, sir?
12 Q. 26th January. This is not your document?
13 A. It is not my document. Again, I have seen it in the
14 last few days.
15 Q. Most of the time I am going to be asking you about your
16 documents, rest assured. Given your experience maybe
17 you can help us on this. This is Mr Stephens's
18 document, he will tell us more, no doubt, on Monday.
19 It is clearly a briefing to the APS, that is the
20 assistant --
21 A. Assistant private secretary.
22 Q. And it looks forward, in paragraph 2, to the GEN 47
23 meeting. Would the private secretary or someone else at
24 a high level have, as it were, distilled this briefing
25 and put it in a different form, in his own form, for the
1 minister or would this have gone, as it were, straight
2 to the minister?
3 A. If I remember rightly, it is only a page or two, so
4 I think it would have gone straight to the minister.
5 What I do not know, but the form of it leads me to
6 suspect, is that this was a late postscript, as you
7 might say, to whatever brief had gone up through
8 Sir James Dunnett to the Secretary of State.
9 The reason why I say that is the first sentence,
10 which, when I saw this document a week ago, I was struck
11 by that first sentence, because it does not begin "as
12 you know ..." it seems to be giving the Secretary of
13 State a piece of news and, linked with the fact that on
14 the same day Lord Trend was putting to the Prime
15 Minister a brief which made no reference to the NICRA
16 march planned for the 30th, I find myself wondering --
17 I cannot say more -- whether this was the first that
18 Mr Stephens had heard of this march and he therefore
19 passed it on rapidly to the Secretary of State and the
20 Prime Minister perhaps first heard of it from
21 Lord Carver the next day.
22 Q. Thank you for that help, it may assist in confirming
23 what you say, that the plan for the arrest operation
24 which is mentioned in this brief was only actually
25 finalised on the 26th.
1 Going back to KH9.99, item 3, you have been referred
2 in general terms to the notes of the PUS, that is --
3 A. That is Sir James Dunnett.
4 Q. Sir James Dunnett's morning meeting and of which we have
5 about 15 for November 1971 and six for December, the
6 last one being KS3.152 -- the last one given to us,
7 KS3.152.
8 There was nothing in that document that suggests
9 that these meetings have in any way been wound up. So
10 far as you can recall, they did continue during the
11 first week of January when you were still AUS(GS)?
12 A. I do not have a recollection on that and, like yourself,
13 the documents that have been shown to me in the last
14 weeks have only included those which you mentioned and
15 that was why, in this statement, I put the parenthesis,
16 "if Dunnett's meeting was still running in January
17 1972", I could not remember whether it was.
18 Q. There was no reason you know of why that practice should
19 have been discontinued in the New Year?
20 A. No, Sir James might have thought that perhaps the
21 meetings were no longer serving a useful purpose; I do
22 not know, I cannot say. I just, I do not know whether
23 they were still running or not.
24 Q. Sir, might I interpose, that since Mr Stephens is giving
25 evidence on Monday, I wonder if the Tribunal staff might
1 put in an urgent request as to whether the notes, if
2 they did continue into January, could be disclosed to us
3 in time, before Mr Stephens.
4 MR CLARKE: I do not know why my learned friend suggests
5 Mr Harding, but we will ask the Ministry of Defence
6 whether, when we ask them to send us such minutes as
7 they had, whether they stopped at 1971.
8 LORD GIFFORD: Going back to KH9.101.
9 A. Is that the diagram.
10 Q. That is your letter, your solicitor's letter.
11 A. I know, yes.
12 Q. In relation to (a) we now have some Burke Trend
13 briefings and I am going to mention some later.
14 In relation to (b) you would be the note-taker at
15 the GEN 47 meetings from 10th January onwards?
16 A. Correct.
17 Q. And what was the practice; these were archived for
18 future historical reference at the Public Record Office?
19 A. I do not know whether, and if so where, they were
20 archived. What I do know was that the procedure was
21 that while the meeting was going on, you were writing
22 like the clappers and writing down as full an account as
23 you could of what was said and then you processed that,
24 as it were, into the form of Cabinet or committee --
25 Cabinet Committee meetings which you have seen.
1 When you had filled up one of these books or when
2 you left the Cabinet Office, you handed the book in.
3 What happened to it from then on, I do not know.
4 Q. That would be one book for each Cabinet Committee, one
5 book -- one or more if necessary -- separately dedicated
6 to each committee?
7 A. That I cannot remember, or it might have been there was
8 a book in which I recorded these notes for all the
9 committees for which I took minutes. I am afraid I do
10 not remember.
11 Q. Whatever it was, the notes would have reflected
12 different participation from different members of the
13 committee?
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. Were they tape-recorded?
16 A. No.
17 Q. Coming to your particular role in events in the month
18 before Bloody Sunday, can I look first at the position
19 as you presented it yourself, at KH9.35. This is the
20 attachments to your document dated 31st December?
21 A. Oh, yes.
22 Q. Perhaps I should take you to KH9.32, which introduces
23 the document?
24 A. Yes, I have them with a G number, but I know what you
25 mean and I have it in front of me.
1 Q. In a letter dated 31st December you attached the brief
2 in final form to be forwarded to the Secretary of State,
3 Lord Carrington?
4 A. Yes. Yes, I mean, what this was was -- this submission
5 to Dunnett covering a draft brief for him to put to the
6 Secretary of State and that again covering a draft
7 minute for the Secretary of State to send to the Prime
8 Minister.
9 Q. There was a great deal about the political initiative?
10 A. That is right, that is what this was about.
11 Q. I am not going into the details of all the different
12 forms that such an initiative might take, but rather to
13 see what you said about the timing and the window of
14 opportunity which you saw as being possible. First of
15 all on KH9.35, paragraph 2?
16 A. I am with you, yes.
17 Q. You put the context of the Army's operations against the
18 IRA and express satisfaction:
19 " ... with the amount of pressure which the Army was
20 then [this is end of December] exerting on the
21 terrorists."
22 I am just precising the first five lines. Towards
23 the end of that paragraph you say:
24 "I am not suggesting that the moment for trying
25 fresh lines of approach has arrived now, but I believe
1 that -- at the present rate of attrition on the IRA --
2 it may be reached quite soon: and that when it is we
3 shall need to be absolutely ready to take prompt
4 advantage of it if we are to retain the initiative. If
5 the Army create an opportunity for us, then we must be
6 sure of taking it: if we do not take it, my fear is that
7 the Army will be placed in an increasingly impossible
8 position."
9 You are linking advances on the military side
10 against gunmen and law-breakers with the possibility of
11 the window of opportunity increasing?
12 A. Yes.
13 LORD SAVILLE: This sounds to me, Lord Gifford, I may be
14 wrong, as really beginning to go over ground Mr Treacy
15 has already canvassed.
16 LORD GIFFORD: I am anxious not to and I have cut down a lot
17 of what I was going to ask. We did not actually look at
18 the document in which he actually put it. Can we go to
19 page KH9.38.
20 You start off by an assessment we have seen in many
21 places, can I just confirm this: that while the
22 situation was improving in Belfast, it was certainly not
23 improving, it was deteriorating in Derry at this time?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. Further down paragraph 3, you discuss Derry. You say:
1 "The condition of Londonderry is less crucial than
2 that of Belfast to the general level of confidence
3 within the province. It can, however, be argued that no
4 political initiative has any prospect of success with
5 the Protestants so long as the Bogside and the Creggan
6 remain virtually no-go areas. But a political
7 initiative offers at least a prospect of a new situation
8 in which it will be possible to get to grips with the
9 problem of Londonderry, which the Protestants might be
10 persuaded to regard as a special case ... a major
11 military operation on the other hand, even if it imposed
12 the rule of law might totally frustrate any political
13 initiative."
14 What appears to be your thinking at this time and
15 the advice you were giving is that the response of the
16 Security Forces in Derry had to be carefully modulated?
17 A. (Witness nodding)
18 Q. If it was too soft you would alienate the Protestants
19 whose support was important and if it was too hard you
20 would alienate the Catholics whose support was
21 important; have I put it fairly?
22 A. Yes, you have. I think when I said:
23 "A political initiative offers at least a prospect
24 of a new situation in which it would be possible to get
25 to grips with the problem of Derry."
1 I had a mind that if there was a political
2 initiative which went some distance towards meeting the
3 views of the Catholic minority on the political
4 situation generally, that might enable us to get to
5 grips with the no-go areas in the sense that the
6 Catholics might be more prepared to let the Security
7 Forces into those areas.
8 Q. I see that is part of the thinking, because the other
9 side of the thinking is that without doing something to
10 deal with Derry you might not get the political
11 initiative at all; it might be argued that no political
12 initiative has any prospect of success; you are
13 balancing two arguments?
14 A. I am indeed and if you are moving to the proposition
15 that a major reason for an alleged major offensive
16 operation --
17 Q. Do not anticipate, sir, please, because we get into
18 debates which we do not want to get into, I want to get
19 your thinking at the time, you of course being a senior
20 advisor but not the decision-maker?
21 A. Correct.
22 Q. On 10th January 1972 you took up your duties in the
23 Cabinet Office. You were, within the Cabinet Office,
24 the expert on Northern Ireland?
25 A. As it happened I was not the expert on political
1 questions relating to Northern Ireland, it so happened
2 that the Deputy Secretary Home Affairs in the Cabinet
3 Office was Neil Cairncross, who had previously, in his
4 last appointment, been the under-secretary responsible
5 for Northern Ireland in the Home Office. Therefore he
6 was the -- at that time he was the expert on the
7 political aspects and I was okay, if you like to put it
8 this way, the expert on the security aspects.
9 Subsequently when, in due course --
10 Q. Do not worry about subsequently. I am trying just to
11 keep as brief as I can within the bounds of relevance.
12 Did you replace somebody else or was it a new
13 appointment?
14 A. No, no, I replaced a man called Peter Hudson.
15 Q. There is a paragraph we find at G49B.306.5, which is
16 a briefing by Sir Burke Trend, dated 10th January 1971.
17 LORD SAVILLE: Can we have that reference again.
18 LORD GIFFORD: G49B.306.5. This would have been your first
19 day in office. Did you yourself take part in the
20 drafting of this?
21 A. I would guess that I probably played some part. So far
22 as I can reconstruct the situation, Derek Stephens took
23 up post as AUS(GS) on the 3rd. At the early part of the
24 week I was handing over to Derek Stephens and it would
25 appear that in the latter part of the week I was taking
1 over from Peter Hudson. So it is possible that both
2 Hudson and I were responsible for that.
3 Q. Turn, please, to 306.7. At the bottom of the page you
4 said:
5 "The committee will wish to hear the usual reports
6 from the CGS in relation to Belfast, Londonderry and the
7 border. A decision is needed on the renewal of the ban
8 on processions which is due to expire next month."
9 Over the page, please:
10 "This should surely be renewed -- and enforced? The
11 relatively gentle handling of the anti-internment march
12 on Christmas Day was perhaps to be excused by the nature
13 of the occasion. But, if we are putting our money on
14 Mr Faulkner's survival, we cannot afford to expose him
15 indefinitely to the accusation that he is using kid
16 gloves to deal with provocation and intimidation. As
17 you yourself [that would be the Prime Minister]
18 observed, the ringleaders of such marches ought to be
19 prosecuted with the minimum of delay."
20 You were there, were you not, drawing attention to
21 the problem of what would happen if you were too soft
22 with illegal marches?
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. And intimidation?
25 A. Yes, against the background that people knew very well
1 what were the problems associated with being too tough.
2 Q. Yes. It really follows the reasoning that you were
3 putting forward in your last brief in your previous
4 post?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. Modulating the response. The next briefing is at
7 INQ1.831. Sir Arthur, you will have been given this
8 today, since we were only given it today. It was the
9 briefing for -- again signed by Sir Burke Trend -- dated
10 19th January 1972?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. Again you would have had a substantial hand in the
13 preparation?
14 A. Yes. Actually, looking at the construction of this,
15 I would say that the first three pages would probably
16 have been essentially Cairncross and that I might have
17 started coming in on the last page and a bit.
18 Q. The page that interested me was paragraph 4, where you
19 talk about "Protestant reaction," towards the end of the
20 part on the screen. You are talking about:
21 "Whether we have reached the end of the road as
22 regards solutions which do not carry a serious risk of
23 direct rule ... we can extract some comfort from the
24 latest JIC assessment which in assessing probable
25 reactions to the introduction of direct rule says that
1 the Protestant reaction would probably be calmest if
2 direct rule were introduced at a time when IRA violence
3 had ceased.
4 "If we let that moment pass, it may not recur -- if
5 only because attitudes will tend to harden once again as
6 the Protestants believe that they have 'won' and the
7 Catholics retreat into sullen opposition."
8 Are you saying there that the time for initiative is
9 after there has been effective military action but
10 quickly after that, before attitudes then harden one way
11 or the other?
12 A. I am saying that the time for a political initiative is
13 likely to be when the continuous action by the military,
14 what I think earlier I called "attrition," when that has
15 reduced the IRA's capability for violence to a point
16 where the situation is not too unacceptable because it
17 has not reached a point where the Protestants say:
18 Good-oh, we have won, no need to give concessions, or
19 the Catholics retreat into sullen opposition.
20 Q. I think it is clear the attrition was thought to be
21 happening in Belfast, but there were still problems in
22 Derry?
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. Can we introduce into the chronology an event which may
25 or may not have significance. On 23rd January 1972 do
1 you recall the Prime Minister met with Mr Lynch in
2 Brussels?
3 A. I do not recall it directly, but I have no doubt it was
4 so.
5 Q. I will come back to it for a moment. If it becomes
6 important there clearly would have been briefs submitted
7 to the Prime Minister before any such meeting?
8 A. I would imagine so.
9 Q. And a note taken of it?
10 A. Yes.
11 Q. It was in Brussels, but someone would have been there
12 taking a note?
13 A. Yes, whether it would have been one of the private
14 secretaries or an ambassador, I do not know.
15 Q. Coming now to 26th January. Can we look again please at
16 G75CA.462.5.4. I will reduce my questions on
17 paragraph 13 because some have been asked and answered.
18 I want to ask you this: the gravity of the issue
19 that is raised in paragraph 13 is a reflection of the
20 same issue that we have discussed, is it not: that you
21 have to get it right; if you react too hard there will
22 be bad consequences, if you react too soft there will be
23 bad consequences?
24 A. That is right.
25 Q. The issue of being prepared to deal with the situation
1 is really envisaging: are we prepared to use military
2 force?
3 A. I think it is: how are we going to deal with a situation
4 in which marches are being successfully defined and how
5 far should or can that include military force, I think
6 I would express it that way.
7 Q. In terms of exploring that issue urgently, the urgency
8 derived from the fact that there was to be a major civil
9 rights march in defiance of the ban on 30th January?
10 A. I am not sure that it does mean that because, as we have
11 noticed before, Lord Trend, and if you like I, do not
12 appear to have been aware when writing this brief of the
13 Derry march on the Sunday.
14 I think I would say that that language means: well,
15 we had better get on with this because it is something
16 we have to tackle. In fact, the record of the meeting
17 with Faulkner indicates that there was little, if any,
18 discussion of it.
19 Q. I will come to that. Can you yourself help us at all as
20 to, first of all, when that meeting was arranged with
21 the two Prime Ministers?
22 A. No, I cannot, no.
23 Q. Or why it was arranged?
24 A. It appears, both from the Trend brief and from the
25 minutes, to have been arranged primarily to discuss the
1 political situation and the prospects for a political
2 initiative.
3 Q. Would you also accept, as certainly some witnesses have
4 considered, that Faulkner also wished to discuss the
5 forthcoming march in Derry and how to deal with it?
6 A. It is possible, but, again, I can only say that in this
7 brief, written on the previous day, we in the Cabinet
8 Office do not appear to have been told, if it was the
9 case, that Faulkner had given notice in those terms.
10 Q. Why did you advise that this issue, whether we are
11 prepared to deal with defiance of the ban, was something
12 to be explored with Mr Faulkner rather than determined
13 and debated in the GEN 47?
14 A. This was a brief for the Prime Minister for GEN 47. If
15 the Prime Minister had taken this sentence up more
16 strongly than he did, or perhaps more strongly than he
17 was able to in the time available for GEN 47, then it
18 would have been discussed in GEN 47 as preparatory to
19 the Faulkner meeting.
20 Q. You have been asked a lot of questions about the meeting
21 on the 27th and I am not going to repeat them, there are
22 just two or three matters to ask you. One emerges from
23 INQ1.414. What this is, Sir Arthur, is part of the rest
24 of the minute, including the part which dealt with the
25 political situation, of the discussion of GEN 47,
1 a minute that you would have prepared.
2 There is a reference under the Prime Minister's
3 summing-up I want to read:
4 "The Prime Minister, summing up a brief discussion,
5 said that the nature of the initiative at which the
6 Prime Minister of the Irish Republic, Mr Lynch, had
7 hinted during their conversation in Brussels on
8 23rd January was still obscure."
9 Pausing there, it is quite obvious, is it not, that
10 part of the agenda for the meeting was the Irish Prime
11 Minister was the political initiative and the
12 possibility of all sides, including Ireland, being on
13 stream?
14 A. Yes.
15 Q. "Mr Lynch appeared convinced that a political initiative
16 was necessary and that it should be timed to take
17 advantage of a moment at which the IRA campaign of
18 violence had received a severe setback while the
19 Protestants were still sufficiently apprehensive of
20 violence to be prepared to contemplate a change."
21 That seems to be quoted, as it were, from Mr Lynch,
22 but without disagreement. Does that fit in also with
23 your thinking at the time, that the moment of
24 opportunity would come after there had been a severe
25 setback to the IRA?
1 A. This probably reflects what the Prime Minister said in
2 quoting Lynch, but I return to the point I made: that
3 what the British Government in London had in mind was an
4 improvement of the situation by steady attrition. If
5 some event occurred which led of its own accord to
6 a substantial number of arrests, well, you might call
7 that a severe setback, but so far as I recall this
8 certainly did not imply, by the use of the words "severe
9 setback," a major, aggressive operation.
10 Q. I will now put the question directly to you: was not the
11 intention of the Cabinet Committee in approaching
12 Lord Carver's plan as reported to them, to inflict upon
13 the IRA, through their supposed allies, the hooligans,
14 a severe setback?
15 A. No, I do not think it was. The object of the operation,
16 on the basis that Lord Carver had outlined it, was to
17 contain the march. It was recognised that there was
18 always a risk of a certain amount of hooliganism round
19 the fringes and this would lead to arrests and so on.
20 So far as I recollect, nobody foresaw that events
21 were going to take the course which they in fact did.
22 Q. I hear what you say. There are three propositions which
23 I want to put to you about this meeting as to what would
24 have been either understood or voiced by all concerned:
25 first, the defiance by Catholics of the ban on marches
1 was offensive to Protestants and was particularly
2 offensive in the context of the City of Derry?
3 A. Yes, it was particularly offensive in the context of the
4 ban on Orange marches, yes.
5 Q. I put the second proposition: merely to contain the
6 march would be seen by the Protestant opinion as a sign
7 of weakness on the part of the Security Forces?
8 A. I would put that a little bit differently: I would say
9 that it was foreseen that a failure to stop the march at
10 source within the Bogside and the Creggan might be
11 perceived by the Protestant community as a sign of
12 weakness and that was why, as indicated in several
13 places, it was decided that part of the PR line should
14 be to make very clear that it was for the military to
15 decide what was the most sensible place to stop the
16 march and as in the case of this particular march, it
17 was when they were coming out of the Bogside and Creggan
18 into downtown Derry.
19 Q. I would say merely to stop it in that fashion would not
20 be enough to satisfy the Protestants and a further
21 operation, arrest operation, against the hooligans was
22 therefore required?
23 A. I do not recall any discussion on those lines in GEN 47.
24 Q. Far from defeating the prospects of a political
25 initiative, I am suggesting that a limited but robust
1 operation in response to any violence at the march in
2 Derry, would be seen as conducing to a political
3 initiative; a limited but robust action?
4 A. No, I think -- I am sure that in several places
5 Lord Carver has recorded the view that -- Lord Carver is
6 recorded as having expressed the view that anything that
7 could be construed as an aggressive operation would be
8 the last possible thing that was consistent with or
9 conducive to an arrest operation.
10 You did not say "aggressive," you said "limited but
11 robust"; "limited" would be the important word. The
12 Whitehall Government would regard it as essential that
13 it should be limited exactly where the limit was drawn
14 and to what extent there should be a bit of robustness
15 up to that limit, would obviously be something for
16 consideration.
17 Q. I follow what you are saying. Let me put to you this,
18 since you have quoted Lord Carver: are you aware that
19 Lord Carver is on record as having said that when he
20 heard about the killings on the march in Derry, his
21 first reaction was to heave a sigh of relief that so few
22 had been killed?
23 A. I am aware that he said that and when I read that he had
24 said that, I was very surprised.
25 Q. Did you also read his book where he talked about the
1 rather lurid picture that had been painted beforehand as
2 to what might happen on that march?
3 A. I have read his book a long time ago; I do not remember
4 that particular passage.
5 Q. Again, a rather lurid picture would again surprise you?
6 A. Well, a rather lurid picture may have been painted by
7 some folk, but the point that I am coming back to --
8 Q. By who?
9 A. Possibly by individual military officers, I do not know.
10 Q. Are you telling this Inquiry --
11 LORD SAVILLE: Sir Arthur, you started your answer:
12 "Well, a rather lurid picture may have been
13 painted," but the point I am coming back to and then
14 Lord Gifford interrupted you; what were you about to say
15 there?
16 A. I was going to say what I said subsequently: that some
17 people may have painted a rather more lurid picture than
18 I am sure Lord Carver would have had in mind.
19 LORD SAVILLE: How much longer do you expect to be?
20 LORD GIFFORD: I expect to be about 15 minutes, sir.
21 LORD SAVILLE: In that case we will take a break.
22 (3.00 pm)
23 (A short break)
24 (3.10 pm)
25 LORD GIFFORD: Sir Arthur, the last question I wanted to ask
1 you about the meeting on 27th January, the GEN 47, as to
2 whether you can help us at all as to whether Lord Carver
3 gave any indication at all that he feared a loss of life
4 arising from the operation which was planned to deal
5 with the march?
6 A. I do not recall the meeting specifically, but I am
7 confident that had he done so, it would have been
8 recorded in the minutes.
9 Q. The minutes would be written up immediately afterwards;
10 how soon afterwards?
11 A. Yes, as soon as I got back to my own office from the
12 meeting I would dictate a draft to my secretary and then
13 I might titivate that a bit and then I would put it up
14 through Cairncross to Burke Trend.
15 Q. The position on the afternoon of the 27th would have
16 been that, contrary to the day before, you did now have
17 some details of the march and the planned response?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. You would have had, would you, some news from Belfast
20 about the meeting of the Joint Security Committee which
21 had taken place that morning?
22 A. Probably not. I assume that I must have seen the
23 minutes, I doubt if I would have known about the
24 proceedings at that meeting until I got the minutes,
25 whenever that might have been.
1 Q. You knew, certainly by then, that a meeting of the two
2 Prime Ministers was planned for the evening?
3 A. Oh, yes.
4 Q. Did you not draft a further brief for that Prime
5 Ministerial meeting?
6 A. I do not recall doing so and I have not had any record
7 of it brought to my notice. It is possible that the
8 Prime Minister may have called for briefs from the Home
9 Office and/or Ministry of Defence for that meeting, but
10 I am not aware of any brief from Cabinet Office.
11 Q. I say it because the position had moved on from your
12 last brief; had it not?
13 A. Yes, but of course the Prime Minister was -- had himself
14 again at GEN 47 and therefore was well aware of the
15 extent to which the position had moved forward from
16 Trend's brief of the previous day to where we were on
17 the 27th.
18 Q. I am not going to ask you about what happened at that
19 meeting because you were not there. Just from your
20 experience, however, would you help us as to who would
21 have been there. Let us look at G81.507, the top part.
22 That would accurately set out the ministerial attendants
23 on each side?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. Can you help us at all as to the attendance on the part
1 of officials on either side?
2 A. Well, it is clear that Lord Armstrong, as he now is, was
3 there, because he wrote the note for the record.
4 I think it probable, and indeed I think I may have seen
5 somewhere, that Mr Faulkner's private secretary, Robert
6 Ramsay was there.
7 Q. If he had been there he also would have kept a record?
8 A. No doubt.
9 Q. We have seen two other Heath/Faulkner meetings at which
10 someone took an extensive, almost verbatim record;
11 someone would have been writing a handwritten record?
12 A. The only person who would have been writing the record
13 would have been Armstrong, on the Westminster side.
14 Q. Again it would have been the practice for him to write
15 a handwritten record and then digest it in the form of
16 a note such as this?
17 A. Yes, I would assume that he took notes during the
18 meeting and that he then dictated this note for the
19 record. When I was private secretary to a minister,
20 that was my practice.
21 Q. And the original notes would be filed in the same way as
22 you have told us before?
23 A. I cannot say. I was talking about the notes that
24 secretaries took at Cabinet or Cabinet Committee
25 meetings. What was done with the notes taken by private
1 secretaries at No. 10, I do not know.
2 Q. The last area that I want to cover deals with the
3 immediate follow-up to Bloody Sunday. I want you to
4 look first at a Cabinet minute, which is to be found at
5 G114AC.743.2.6?
6 A. I am with you.
7 Q. Before this Cabinet meeting, which we see dealt quite
8 extensively with Northern Ireland, there would have been
9 briefs prepared for the various ministers?
10 A. I would assume so.
11 Q. You in particular would have drafted a brief for the
12 Prime Minister?
13 A. Yes, or parts of it. The briefs that were put to the
14 Prime Minister on Northern Ireland probably had an input
15 built for myself on the security side and from
16 Cairncross on the political side and they generally had
17 a significant individual contribution from Lord Trend.
18 Q. Who approved the final version?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. And signed it?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. Can I turn to page 9 of this document, the Prime
23 Minister's summing-up. At line 5, the Prime Minister
24 said, this:
25 "The immediate question was whether the tragic
1 events of the previous weekend in Londonderry had
2 provided an opportunity for a political initiative or
3 whether, on the contrary, they had made such an
4 initiative impracticable for the time being."
5 Do you recall that the view was being expressed,
6 even in the week after Bloody Sunday, that the events
7 might have provided the required opportunity for the
8 political initiative?
9 A. That view was no doubt put forward to the extent of
10 raising the question, but the remainder of this
11 paragraph of the Prime Minister's summing-up indicates
12 the reasons why he felt that that proposition was not
13 on.
14 Q. The question is not really answered. I will not debate
15 with you about a Cabinet minute, but I am suggesting --
16 and I will continue to suggest -- that that question
17 remained open, and we will come back to it in a moment?
18 A. When you say the question remained open, the Prime
19 Minister gave at least a partial answer when he said
20 even if this had been Mr Lynch's view a few weeks
21 earlier, it must probably be assumed that it would no
22 longer be so, and even if this analysis had been correct
23 at the time, it could hardly be regarded as valid in the
24 present circumstances. So the Prime Minister at least
25 seems to be inclining towards the view that the events
1 of the weekend had made an initiative impracticable.
2 Q. He inclines to the view that that is Mr Lynch's
3 position, which of course might be not surprising in
4 view of the Irish reaction to Bloody Sunday?
5 A. No, I think he is going further than that. He is
6 saying: all right, Lynch's view may be different now,
7 but then he says, even if Lynch was right at the time,
8 you could hardly regard his view as valid now.
9 Q. We could no doubt get a more accurate reflection of your
10 own thinking on the matter after the consultations that
11 you no doubt had been having all week, if we were able
12 to see the briefing which you had a hand in drafting?
13 A. No doubt, yes.
14 Q. On the next day you recall that the two Prime Ministers
15 met again?
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. Can we have a look at G114.724. One sees at the top
18 there is substantial attendance on the Government side?
19 A. Which did not include me.
20 Q. Which did not include you. You would have, again, been
21 helping in briefings for a meeting of this kind?
22 A. I might well have been. I cannot remember now to what
23 extent Lord Trend gave briefs to the Prime Minister for
24 this sort of inter-ministerial meeting in the same way
25 as he did in this position of serving the --
1 Q. I will not ask you to speculate. He did in 1971; that
2 is all we know so far. We will not speculate further on
3 that. Can we look, please, forward to 114.726. One
4 sees -- it is the first paragraph on the page I am
5 interested in. This is where Mr Faulkner is asked to
6 give his contribution as to the reaction to
7 Bloody Sunday. If we can enlarge the first half, what
8 he is saying is, first:
9 "The immediate reaction was a hardening of opinion.
10 On the other hand, the extent of alienation in the
11 Catholic community could be exaggerated."
12 He expands on that. Seven lines down:
13 "On the Unionist side there was undoubtedly a new
14 solidarity.
15 "In the longer term it might be the case that the
16 terrible events in Londonderry would be seen to have
17 cleared the air, once the initial hysteria had
18 subsided."
19 That is Mr Faulkner's view, which I do not ask you
20 to defend or comment on. The Prime Minister's view is
21 given on 114.727, the bottom of the page, where he says,
22 the last four lines:
23 "It would be necessary to form a judgment as to
24 whether the grave nature of the events in Londonderry
25 would assist a settlement, by pulling people up short,
1 or whether they would 'have to work their way through
2 the system'. Here, too, what would happen in Newry
3 could be crucial."
4 The Prime Minister is still expressing, albeit not
5 a concluded view, but a public view that Bloody Sunday
6 has actually helped; were you part of any advice to that
7 effect?
8 A. Not so far as I can recall and I do not think I would
9 have been. Of course Faulkner himself, at the end of
10 the passage you were reading a moment ago, said:
11 "For the moment at least any sort of political
12 initiative had been made much more difficult."
13 Even Faulkner seemed to think what had happened on
14 Bloody Sunday had not helped.
15 I do not think Sir Edward was doing more than still
16 leaving the issue open, but --
17 Q. What happens now after, Sir Arthur -- I need not go to
18 all the pages, they start from 735 and go on to 740 in
19 particular -- is that many, many minutes, possibly
20 hours, were then spent on exploring political solutions?
21 A. Mmm.
22 Q. There being no sense, on the British side, that that was
23 a fruitless task. The problem, of course, as I would
24 like you to tell me if you remember, the problem was
25 that Mr Faulkner did not respond --
1 A. (Witness nodding)
2 Q. -- with any positive -- that would be a fair reflection
3 of the position at that time, would it not?
4 A. Yes, and of course it was still the hope of the British
5 Government that we would be able to launch a successful
6 political initiative, but as far as I can recall -- and
7 I have to underline those words -- as far as I can
8 recall the feeling was that Bloody Sunday had made it
9 more difficult, rather than easier.
10 Q. You have given that view and I suggested to you that in
11 fact Mr Heath was still of the view that it was worth
12 going for a political settlement and that Derry may have
13 helped. In the event it did not, because Mr Faulkner
14 did not respond.
15 This leads me to a question I will ask you finally,
16 you having been close to the events although not
17 a participant in the meeting on the 27th between the two
18 Prime Ministers: was there some kind, do you think, some
19 kind of trade, the British Prime Minister accepting and
20 agreeing to agree to approve a robust operation on
21 Sunday in Derry and the Northern Ireland Prime Minister
22 being expected to respond positively to the political
23 initiative?
24 A. I have no recollection of any such deal, nor have I seen
25 any evidence for it and had that been the case I do not
1 believe that Lord Armstrong would not have included it
2 in his note for the record.
3 Q. What is included in the record is a line which echoes
4 the next day, that the organisers of the civil rights
5 march should be seen as civil disobedients and not civil
6 righters?
7 A. That was Faulkner's phrase, yes.
8 Q. And the Prime Minister responded to that the next day by
9 encouraging a statement to be issued or requesting
10 people to keep off the streets and saying that the
11 marchers will bear a heavy responsibility following any
12 bloodshed or any violent scenes; do you remember that?
13 A. Yes, I do.
14 Q. Thank you very much, those are my questions.
15 Questioned by SIR LOUIS BLOM-COOPER
16 SIR LOUIS BLOM-COOPER: Sir Arthur, I am Louis Blom-Cooper
17 and I appear for the Northern Ireland Civil Rights
18 Association.
19 Only one matter I want to ask you about: do you
20 recall this morning, in answer to questions from
21 Mr Treacy, that you said the Civil Rights Association
22 had the same ultimate objectives as the IRA?
23 A. I did say that.
24 Q. Could I suggest to you that that is quite inaccurate and
25 that you really should revise that view?
1 A. Well, perhaps I should explain what I had in mind when
2 I said it.
3 All I had in mind there was the objective of
4 a united Ireland. Perhaps you will tell me that I was
5 wrong.
6 Q. You are wrong, and if that is not so, would you withdraw
7 the remarks that the same ultimate objectives were of
8 NICRA as of the IRA?
9 A. Certainly.
10 Q. I was going to show you, I do not think it is necessary
11 now, what a colleague of yours, Mr White, said on
12 Tuesday, but I do not think it is necessary. If you
13 want the reference, Day 269, column 11.19. Perhaps you
14 might like to have a look at that to confirm what you
15 are now saying?
16 LORD SAVILLE: Is it really necessary, Sir Louis, in view of
17 what Sir Arthur has said in reply to your questions?
18 SIR LOUIS BLOM-COOPER: Very well.
19 LORD GIFFORD: Mr Elias has asked me if I would clarify my
20 position to him in respect of allegations that were
21 made. Perhaps I should do so.
22 Very briefly may I have your indulgence.
23 Sir Arthur, you have answered my question as to whether
24 you were not aware from Lord Carver that this operation
25 posed dangers of loss of life. May I make clear that
1 I suggest that answer is not correct; not true?
2 A. Certainly Lord Carver and everybody else realised, as we
3 did with almost any operation, that in the -- in an
4 extreme set of circumstances there could be a danger of
5 loss of life, but -- when I say "we", I believe I am
6 including Lord Carver in this -- we did not start from
7 the presumption that there was a serious danger of loss
8 of life.
9 Q. I have used I think the word "acquiesced" in my letter
10 of allegations. I suggest you did -- you were present
11 and did acquiesce in the decision by ministers to
12 approve an operation which was highly likely to result
13 in loss of life of innocent civilians?
14 A. No, I would say that, if it is correct that anyone who
15 was present at a meeting acquiesces in its conclusions,
16 that what I acquiesced in was an operation, which like
17 virtually any other operation in the circumstances in
18 Northern Ireland, could conceivably lead to loss of life
19 of civilians.
20 Q. Thank you very much.
21 MR ELIAS: Coming as an afterthought and I spoke to
22 Lord Gifford when he sat down, having questioned the
23 witness, in the light of a letter delivered months ago
24 now to a man in his 77th year, that he "acquiesced" in
25 a plan which involved suppression of the Derry hooligans
1 by shooting them, in our submission nothing has been put
2 to this witness that in any sense justifies an
3 allegation of that kind, and I invited, in the light of
4 his cross-examination, Lord Gifford to consider whether
5 he was withdrawing it or not.
6 The Tribunal has heard what he said as an
7 afterthought. We will be inviting the Tribunal in due
8 course to consider whether what has been now put accords
9 in any sense with what was put by letter. I leave it
10 there for the moment.
11 LORD SAVILLE: I would certainly like to ask Lord Gifford
12 himself if he could clarify the position.
13 LORD GIFFORD: The position is as I have just put it to
14 Sir Arthur.
15 LORD SAVILLE: That does not sound like the position as
16 contained in the letter to which Mr Elias has referred;
17 does it?
18 LORD GIFFORD: No.
19 LORD SAVILLE: I think it only fair to a witness, if this is
20 being put forward as a suggestion, it is either put in
21 terms to the witness, and of course Counsel have a duty
22 not to do so unless there is material which can be said
23 reasonably to support that suggestion, or to put some
24 other suggestion.
25 At the moment, Lord Gifford, it seems to me you are
1 putting some other suggestion, in which event I think it
2 is only fair for us to enquire as to the status of the
3 suggestion that was originally put in the document to
4 which Mr Elias has referred.
5 LORD GIFFORD: I think my present view of the state of the
6 evidence is that I should not and do not put any of the
7 allegation any higher than that as I have put it.
8 LORD SAVILLE: I think that has clarified the matter,
9 Mr Elias. Do you have any other questions?
10 MR ELIAS: One matter, if I may.
11 Questioned by MR ELIAS
12 MR ELIAS: I take you to a document, it relates to matters
13 put to you principally by Mr Treacy and Lord Gifford in
14 relation to the balance between Protestants and
15 Catholics and the political initiative. I take you to
16 it principally because it is a document that, until
17 yesterday or the day before, had been heavily redacted
18 and has now been restored and contains passages which
19 may go to those matters that you were telling the
20 Tribunal about.
21 May I take you to KH9.48, please. Just to identify
22 that it is a meeting of Ministry of Defence
23 Northern Ireland Policy Group. It is
24 22nd December 1971. I think you were in attendance?
25 A. That is so.
1 Q. The developing situation in paragraph 2 is set out, the
2 second paragraph of that:
3 "CGS said that he thought we should aim at some
4 positive political initiative about February, when he
5 judged the security situation would be just right for
6 it."
7 He went on to outline that. Can I take you over the
8 page to 9.49 and to passages which, until yesterday,
9 were redacted. The second paragraph:
10 "The Secretary of State thought that the choice
11 rested between some initiative of the sort CGS
12 envisaged, aimed at moving towards the Roman Catholic
13 demands while not losing Protestant support, and" the
14 alternative:
15 "Continuing the present policy of waiting and hoping
16 that the inter partes talks might produce a solution."
17 In further discussions at the foot of that page,
18 (b):
19 "Whatever solution was arrived at it would be
20 necessary to consider the position of Londonderry
21 separately; the revival of community and commercial life
22 there would only be possible with the support of the
23 Dublin Government and of the Roman Catholic hierarchy.
24 There was no incentive for the IRA to give up its
25 position there since its control of the Bogside and
1 Creggan areas was based not on physical intimidation but
2 on its generally good administration so that it was the
3 Army which was seen as the cause of any trouble."
4 Over the page, finally:
5 "Indeed, any attempt by the Army to take over
6 control of the remainder of Londonderry would involve
7 a fight against the people and would set back hopes of
8 a political solution."
9 Do the contents of those minutes, in this regard,
10 encapsulate your views at this time?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. Were they the views of other ministers, to your
13 knowledge?
14 A. Do you mean other ministers outside the MoD?
15 Q. In the MoD?
16 A. So far as I know, this reflects the views of ministers
17 in the MoD.
18 Q. Thank you very much.
19 MS McGAHEY: I have no further questions.
20 LORD SAVILLE: Sir Arthur, the Chairman again. You have had
21 a long day, but we are very grateful to you for your
22 assistance.
23 A. Thank you, sir.
24 LORD SAVILLE: As I understand it, Ms McGahey, we are unable
25 to start until 11 o'clock tomorrow morning; is that
1 still the position?
2 MS McGAHEY: I am afraid it is, sir, yes.
3 (3.40 pm)
4 (Proceedings adjourned until 11.00 am
5 on Friday, 6th December 2002)
6
7
8 SIR ARTHUR HOCKADAY, sworn ................... 2
9 Questioned by MS McGAHEY ..................... 2
10 Questioned by MR TREACY ...................... 20
11 Questioned by MS McDERMOTT ................... 102
12 Questioned by MR MANSFIELD ................... 106
13 Questioned by LORD GIFFORD ................... 131
14 Questioned by SIR LOUIS BLOM-COOPER .......... 163
15 Questioned by MR ELIAS ....................... 167
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25