Den, before this gets out of hand I apologise to you unreservedly you had every right to come to the conclusion you did.

I meant to post this please accept my apologies.

Nigel Cooke was a Derry schoolboy with a Liverpool female penpal when he took part in the 1972 Bloody Sunday march. The 2 friends fell out over the Paras' actions that day. Now, 30 years later, they are a couple and watched Liverpool playwright Jimmy McGovern's "Sunday" on Channel 4 together. This is Nigel's story. The Bloody Sunday dramas have helped Nigel Cooke lay some personal ghosts Everyone who took part in the Bloody Sunday march, who experienced the trauma of that time, has a story to tell of how their lives were changed forever. Some are being heard at the Saville Inquiry, others may never be told. Here is mine. I was an A-level student at St Columb's College at the time. The world lay at my feet provided I got the right exam results. My interests were the usual ones – football, girls, music. And to a lesser extent, politics. You could not be a Catholic youth in Derry in the late 1960s and not be surrounded by politics. I had found a way of broadening my local horizons. I used to write every week to a girl in Liverpool. We were serious penpals, exchanging all our gossip, hopes and views on the world around us. We hoped to meet some day, perhaps if I went to Liverpool University. Maybe we had a future together. It was not to be … not for many years. After Bloody Sunday, I totally lost the plot with my Liverpool penpal, Madeleine. I called her and her army and her country everything under the sun ! My mother has reminded me – some 30 years after the event – that I took to my bedroom after the killings, retreated within myself, and she had to call the doctor. Shock was diagnosed - a state which, more or less, lasted 30 years, along with a seething anger. I stopped writing to Liverpool. My immediate anger was overwhelmingly intensified by the Widgery whitewash. This was the whole might of the State being brought to bear in justification of murder. They tried to dress it up, to muddy the water, to somehow blame the dead and injured for their own fates. If they could get away with a legal "draw" on the opposition's patch, that was as good as a win. And they did, of course. Their glee was such they couldn't help awarding themselves medals at the Palace ! They are still at it. The British Establishment has done all in its power to thwart the unpalatable truth about Bloody Sunday ever coming out. Oh yes, they now call it a "tragedy" and "regrettable". That's implying it was an unplanned accident, not their fault somehow. And they have never actually said "sorry". They indulge in sanctimonious "whataboutery" – what about all the IRA killings of soldiers etc ? As if that somehow makes things alright, "evens the score" as it were ! To be sure, we have the new Saville Inquiry, but I – like a number of others – will never accept that this is a truly impartial and independent investigation. How can it be when the Chairman is (once again) an English Lord ? How can it be when his rulings are overturned by English courts ? How can it be when supposedly-confidential material is leaked to the English press ? Good luck to the relatives of the dead and God speed to all who wish to testify before Lord Saville. But as far as I'm concerned, when the opposition appoints the Referee and makes the rules, it's a fix ! Now, you may consider all of the above to be the ranting of a disaffected cynic. However, after my A-levels I took a degree at Trinity College Dublin, winning a University Prize in my Finals and (only just) coming second in the entire university. Then I joined the Dublin civil service and spent 12 years (being promoted) in the middle ranks of the Department of Finance, at the heart of government, taking a Diploma in Public Administration along the way. So I'm a highly-educated and well-experienced disaffected cynic. My years in the Republic's civil service coincided with the multiple premierships of one Charles J. Haughey. If I was disgusted by the British, I was doubly-disgusted by Haughey, a native Irish bandit. Enough influential people knew all the fiddles Charlie was up to, but there were far more mice than men about in those days. Nevertheless, I leaked whatever I could to Eamonn McCann at the 'Sunday World', Gene Kerrigan at 'Magill' magazine and to other journalists. Why ? Two reasons mainly. Firstly, I correctly reflected (and this was borne out by history) that if there was fiddling going on in small things, then there must be worse skulduggery going on in big affairs. And secondly – more importantly – I had lost faith in the rule of law and respect for the State. Bloody Sunday and Widgery did that to me initially, Haughey compounded it. Moving on, some years ago I re-established contact with my Liverpool penpal. We visited each other's cities and then set up home together. We plan to see out our days together in Liverpool, which we both dearly love. It's a gutsy town, at peace with itself, sure of its identity, proud of its culture and history, confident of its future. In many ways it's like Derry, a port city full of music and craic, not suffering fools gladly and never afraid to put the boot into officialdom and pomposity. So it was with a mixture of pride and sadness that Madeleine and I sat down together to watch "Sunday" by Liverpool playwright Jimmy McGovern. Jimmy told it like it was. He told it in the Liverpool way and in the Derry way, from the people's viewpoint. That's how it was – a people's tragedy, a people's trauma. Bloody Sunday belonged, and still belongs, to the people. Not to politicians, not to paramilitaries and most certainly not to over-priced lawyers. But to the dignified, wronged people of a most loving, most giving town. And what came out was the unblemished people's truth. Tribunals in all their finery matter little beside that. As we sat and watched together and our eyes welled up with the memories and thoughts of lost possibilities, I felt something of the burden of the years lift. Perhaps, for us at least, this is the beginning of the end.

This link will take you to Mitchel Mclaughlin's (sp?) contribution to the Derry Journal http://www.derryjournal.com/bloodysunday/fullbsmain.asp?DJID=7195