I've always avoided these threads, but I'm feeling brave tonight.
Big Mick, you say "Much of this has to do with what the Irish are expected to do, as opposed to the British and their loyalist allies. The Irish are expected to just let the deaths of 14 peaceful marchers go "in order to let the healing begin, after all it occurred so long ago".
Firstly as a Brit I resent the implication that we are all allied with the loyalist cause. Many of us strongly support a United Ireland, and if there were a referendum in Britain tomorrow I suspect the majority would vote for complete separation from Northern Ireland.
Secondly, what about all the convicted murderers on both sides who have now been released? Hasn't that begun the healing?
As far as investigating the truth of Bloody Sunday goes, if the politicians responsible could be traced I would happily see them strung up by their testacles, but that won't happen. A bunch of squaddies, trained and briefed for a totally different theatre will be the scapegoats, nothing will be gained.
When I was a student one of my best friends, who I'm still in close touch with, was a lad from Derry called Declan McDaid. When he found out that my Dad was a career officer in the British Army who had done 3 tours in N.Ireland in the 70's, including 2 in Derry, he told me he could remember as a small boy taking the British soldiers mugs of tea when they first came to Derry, so grateful were the Catholics for their presence.
I told him we had a copy of a Derry newspaper at home with my dad on the front page for dispersing a crowd by spraying them with purple dye. "Christ" He said, "My Dad came home one day from a march covered in purple, it must have been your Dad that sprayed him." We collapsed into each others arms laughing, then went out and got falling down drunk together. He's been to my home several times, met my Dad, we've all had a good laugh. I don't know what the moral is, perhaps if more people collapsed laughing into each others arms at the stupidity of their parents, the world would be a better place.
Bloody Sunday shames me, as do many injustices perpetrated by Britain, and the former empire, but I just can't see any good coming of further investigation.
When Trevor MacDonald, the distinguished British TV journalist, was asked to compare the situations in S.Africa and N.Ireland (he had covered both regions extensively) before the release of Mandela in S.Africa, his observation was that there was no noticeable bitterness in S.Africa, and he was confident the issues could be settled without extensive bloodshed. In N.Ireland he felt the bitterness and vitriol between the 2 sides ran so deep there could be no solution without yet more widespread violence. Perhaps we can all strive to prove him wrong.