‘Unjustified and unjustifiable’: vindication for the victims of Bloody Sunday

On 15 June 2010, David Cameron responded to the findings of the Report of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry (Saville et al., 2010) – 12 years in the making and running to 5,000 pages – into the deaths of 14 civil rights marchers in the city of Derry in Northern Ireland on 30 January 1972 at the hands of British paratroopers. The Inquiry concluded what every right-thinking person has known since the event: that the dead were all innocent. Cameron announced that the Inquiry had pointed the finger of blame at the Parachute Regiment and their commanding officer. He acknowledged that the deaths were ‘unjustified and unjustifiable’ and said that no democratic state had anything to gain from failing to tell the truth.