Widgery Report Final Section

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Report of the Tribunal appointed to inquire into the events on Sunday, 30th January 1972.

From: Were the Soldiers Justified in Firing?

95. In the events which took place on 30 January the soldiers were entitled to regard themselves as acting individually and thus entitled to fire under the terms of Rule 13 without waiting for orders. Although it is true that Support Company operated as a Company with all its officers present, in the prevailing noise and confusion it was not practicable for officers or NCOs always to control the fire of individual soldiers. The soldiers’ training certainly required them to act individually in such circumstances and no breach of discipline was thereby involved. I have already stated that in my view the initial firing by civilians in the courtyard of Rossville Flats was not heavy; but the immediate response of the soldiers produced a brisk and noisy engagement which must have had its effect on troops and civilians in Rossville Street. Civilian, as well as Army, evidence made it clear that there was a substantial number of civilians in the area who were armed with firearms. I would not be surprised if in the relevant half hour as many rounds were fired at the troops as were fired by them. The soldiers escaped injury by reason of their superior field-craft and training.

96. When the shooting began every soldier was looking for a gunman and he was his own judge of whether he had identified one or not. I have the explanation on oath of every soldier who fired for every round for which he was required to account. Were they truthfully recounting the facts as they saw them? If so, did those facts justify the action taken?

97. Those accustomed to listening to witnesses could not fail to be impressed by the demeanour of the soldiers of 1 Para. They gave their evidence with confidence and without hesitation or prevarication and withstood a rigorous cross-examination without contradicting themselves or each other. With one or two exceptions I accept that they were telling the truth as they remembered it. But did they take sufficient care before firing and was their conduct justified, even if the circumstances were as they described them?

98. There were infringements of the rules of the Yellow Card. Lieutenant N fired three rounds over the heads of a threatening crowd and dispersed it. Corporal P did likewise. Soldier T, on the authority of Sergenat O, fired at a person whom he believed to be throwing acid bombs and Soldier V said he fired on a petrol bomber. Although these actions were not authorised by the Yellow Card they do not seem to point to a breakdown in discipline or to require censure. Indeed in three of the four cases it could be held that the person firing was, as the senior officer or NCO on the spot, the person entitled to give orders for such firing.

99. Grounds put forward for identifying gunmen at windows were sometimes flimsy. Thus Soldier F fired three rounds at a window in Rossville Flats after having been told by another soldier that there was a gunman there. He did not seem to have verified the information except by his observation of "a movement" at the window. Whether or not it was fired by Soldier H a round went through the window of a house in Glenfada Park into an empty room. The only people in the house were an old couple who happily were sitting in another room. In all 17 rounds were fired at the windows of flats and houses, not counting Soldier H’s 19 rounds.

100. The identification of supposed nail bombers was equally nebulous - perhaps necessarily so. A nail bomb looks very much like half a brick and often the only means of distinguishing between a stone-thrower and a nail-bomber is that a light enough stone may be thrown with a flexed elbow whereas a nail bomb is usually thrown with a straight arm as in a bowling action.

101. Even assuming a legitimate target, the number of rounds fired was sometimes excessive. Soldier S’s firing of 12 rounds into the alleyway between Blocks 1 and 2 of the Rossville Flats seems to me to have been unjustifiably dangerous for people round about.

102. Nevertheless in the majority of cases the soldier gave an explanation which, if true, justified his action. A typical phrase is "I saw a civilian aiming what I thought was a firearm and I fired an aimed shot at him". In the main I accept these accounts as a faithful reflection of the soldier’s recollection of the incident; but there is no simple way of deciding whether his judgment was at fault or whether his decision was conscientiously made. Some of the soldiers showed a high degree of responsibility. Examples of this are the experienced Sergeant K, already referred to, and the 18 year old Soldier R. At the other end of the scale are some of the soldiers who fired in Glenfada Park in the circumstances described in paragraphs 83 to 85 above. Between these extremes a judgment must be based on the general impression of the soldiers’ attitudes as a whole. There is no question of the soldiers firing in panic to protect their own skins. They were far too steady for that. But where soldiers are required to engage gunmen who are in close proximity to innocent civilians they are set an impossible task. Either they must go all out for the gunmen, in which case the innocent suffer; or they must put the safety of the innocent first, in which case many gunmen will escape and the risk to themselves will be increased. The only unit whose attitude to this problem I have examined is 1 Para. Other units may or may not be the same. In 1 Para the soldiers are trained to go for the gunmen and make their decisions quickly. In these circumstances it is not remarkable that mistakes were made and some innocent civilians hit.

103. In reaching these conclusions I have not been unmindful of the numerous allegations of misconduct by individual soldiers which were made in the course of the evidence. I considered that allegations of brutality by the soldiers in the course of making arrests were outside my terms of reference. There is no doubt that people who resisted or tried to avoid arrest were apt to be roughly handled; but whether excessive force was used is something which I have not investigated.

104. There have also been numerous allegations of soldiers firing carelessly from the hip or shooting deliberately at individuals who were clearly unarmed. These were all isolated allegations in which the soldier was not identified and which I could not investigate further. If, and insofar as, such incidents occurred the soldier in question must have accounted for the rounds fired by giving some different and lying story of how they were expended. Though such a possibility cannot be excluded, in general the accounts given by the soldiers of the circumstances in which they fired and the reasons why they did so were, in my opinion, truthful.