BPP COMMENT: £200 MILLION FOR AN ENQUIRY INTO BRITISH SOLDIERS DEFENDING THEMSELVES AGAINST RIOTERS, SOME OF WHOM WERE KNOWN TO BE ARMED? WHAT A GROSS WASTE OF TAXPAYERS' MONEY. JUST THINK OF THE HOSPITALS THAT MONEY COULD PAY FOR.

WE ARE ONLY SORRY THAT MORE FENIAN RIOTERS WEREN'T KILLED ON THAT DAY AND MORE ON OTHER DAYS ACROSS BRITISH ULSTER DURING THE WAR TO DEFEAT THE MURDERING IRA. NOW THE PEOPLE WHO FOUGHT THAT WAR HAVE BEEN BETRAYED AND ULSTER HANDED TO THE IRA ON A PLATE. THEY SAY THAT THE WINNERS OF A WAR ALWAYS WRITE THE HISTORY OF THAT WAR SO THE FACT THAT THIS 'INQUIRY' FAVOURS THE IRA SHOWS THAT ADAMS, MCGUINNESS, ET AL ARE THE ONLY WINNERS.

TRAITOROUS POLITICIANS LIKE BLAIR, BROWN AND CAMERON SHOULD HANG THEIR HEADS IN SHAME AT THEIR SELL-OUT TO THE FENIAN MURDER-GANGS AND THE BETRAYAL OF THE LOYAL FOLK OF ULSTER - HOPEFULLY ONE DAY THE BRITISH PEOPLE WILL WAKE UP AND HANG THESE COLLABORATORS BY THE NECK UNTIL THEY ARE DEAD!

TWO BRITISH SOLDIERS WERE KILLED IN AFGHANISTAN THIS WEEK. IN THIRTY EIGHT YEARS TIME THE SO-CALLED "BRITISH" GOVERNMENT WILL PROBABLY WASTE A FEW HUNDRED MILLION POUNDS INVESTIGATING THE DEATHS OF ISLAMIC TERRORISTS IN THAT COUNTRY - "MURDERED BY BRITISH TROOPS".

• Paratroopers back commander blamed for Bloody Sunday massacre
• Saville Report: McGuinness had gun on day - and may have fired it
• Cameron admits he was 'shocked' by findings of 12-year inquiry
  

David Cameron has said he finds it ‘painful’ to sit around the same table as former IRA commander Martin McGuinness.

The Prime Minister's comments come the day after the Saville Inquiry said McGuinness - now Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister - spent Bloody Sunday armed with a submachine gun, and may have fired it.

But Lord Saville, who has spent £200million and more than 12 years to produce his report, cleared McGuinness and the IRA of any blame for the Army's conduct on the day that 14 people were killed on the streets of Derry.

Mr Cameron said: ‘I do sometimes find it painful when I have to sit around a table with Martin McGuinness and I think about what that man did, but we all have to get around that.’

'Painful': David Cameron (top) said he found it difficult to deal with Martin McGuinness (below), a former IRA commander, because of his violent past

Mr Cameron, who apologised today over the inquiry findings, revealed he had ordered civil servants out of his office so he could read the 5,000-page report in private.

He said: ‘I was shocked. It was so clear to me, no one is prouder of their country or the armed forces.

'But I read this report and thought "there is no alternative but to stand up and say this was wrong, it shouldn’t have happened".

'I thought the best thing to do was to tell it very straight.’

Mr Cameron – who was appearing on BBC Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine show - was asked by a caller, soldier John Tait, why IRA terrorists were not being prosecuted.

'The Good Friday agreement was very painful because it meant that some people who had done very bad things did get let out of prison, but the government at the time and I supported them in that, thought it was the right thing to do... and in response the IRA did agree to end the 'war' as they put it,’ Mr Cameron added. 

The long-awaited verdict of the Bloody Sunday inquiry savaged the conduct of Parachute Regiment soldiers in an out-of-control shooting spree on January 30, 1972.

However, six paratroopers who served in Londonderry on Bloody Sunday today attacked the findings.

The servicemen claim Lord Saville only criticised their commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Derek Wilford, whose decision to send troops into Bogside prompted the shooting, because there was a need to single out someone of rank to blame.

None of the six opened fire on the day.

Lt Col Wilford, who commanded First Parachute Regiment (1 Para) in 1972, on the day 14 people were killed on the streets of Derry, has always maintained his soldiers were fired on first and were merely doing their duty.

However, his actions were criticised in the Saville Report, which found he should not have launched the incursion and in doing so was disobeying orders given by his superior, Brigadier Pat McClellan.

The long-awaited verdict of the Bloody Sunday inquiry savaged the conduct of Parachute Regiment soldiers in an out-of-control shooting spree on January 30.

'1 Para was a force with a reputation for using excessive physical violence,' the report said.

The paratroopers have been called 'shock troops' by Lord Ramsbotham, then military assistant to General Michael Carver, chief of the defence staff, suggesting they were not the best soldiers to carry out civilian policing operations.

The damning findings came as two soldiers - Private Jonathan Monk and Lance Corporal Andrew Breeze, who had both served in Northern Ireland - were named as the latest British soldiers to die in Afghanistan.

Speaking after the Saville Inquiry's verdict on the 'indefensible' conduct of Paratroopers, Mr Cameron reminded the country of the 'courage and professionalism' of Britain's soldiers. 

Private Monk, who had wanted to be a soldier from the age of five and joined the Army at 16, and Lance Corporal Breeze, who signed up at 17, joined the roll call of Britain's Afghan dead which now stands at 298.

Mr Cameron reminded the Commons that it was the sacrifice of soldiers such as Private Monk and Lance Corporal Breeze that remained the Army's real legacy.

'I never want to believe anything bad about our country,' he said.

'I never want to call into question the behaviour of our soldiers and our Army, which I believe to be the finest in the world. And I have seen for myself the very difficult and dangerous circumstances in which we ask our soldiers to serve.'

But it was 'absolutely clear', he said, that what happened on Bloody Sunday 'was both unjustified and unjustifiable'.

He reminded the Commons that 1,117 members of the security forces had lost their lives 'setting the conditions that made peaceful politics possible' in Northern Ireland.

'Our Armed Forces displayed enormous courage and professionalism in upholding democracy and the rule of law in Northern Ireland,' he said. 'Without their work, the peace process would not have happened.'

Mr Cameron made a sweeping apology in the Commons for the killing of the Bloody Sunday marchers.

'On behalf of the Government, indeed on behalf of our country, I am deeply sorry,' he said.

In its key judgments, Lord Saville's report said:

• Soldiers of the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment lost discipline and self-control, firing in the 'indefensible belief' that the crowd were IRA supporters who deserved to be shot;
  
• The battalion commander, Colonel Derek Wilford, disobeyed his orders and gave wrong commands to his soldiers - some of whom then lied about their conduct for 38 years;
  
• British soldiers fired the first shots on Bloody Sunday - then went on to shoot victims in the back, as they lay on the ground and as they tended the dying;
  
• There was no British Government conspiracy to kill demonstrators in Northern Ireland, and no other senior officer was at fault;
  
• IRA men were in place to snipe at the army and did fire shots early in the violence The fierce condemnation of soldiers seemed unlikely last night to end in prosecutions.

Lord Saville made no recommendations for the men to be pursued in law, and Mr Cameron said it was not for politicians to decide. His aides stressed the difficulties of any moves in criminal law.

And the Prime Minister's apology appeared successfully aimed at appeasing any desire in Derry for vengeance.

As a crowd of thousands welcomed the report in the city, Martin McGuinness smiled with Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams. Mr McGuinness said he would leave the question of prosecutions to victims' families but said Mr Cameron's statement was 'very generous'

He added: 'It surprised a lot of people here in the city. What a momentous day when you have a British Law Lord and a British Prime Minister who is a Conservative effectively pointing the finger of responsibility at a regiment of the British Army and not at the citizens of this city --truly memorable.'

Tony Blair launched the inquiry in January 1998 as part of his negotiation with Sinn Fein in advance of the Good Friday peace deal.

Yesterday Mr Cameron said the report should help communities 'come together to acknowledge our shared history, even where it divides us. That is not to say that we must ever forget or dismiss that past. But we must also move on.'    

McGuinness WAS armed with machine gun on Bloody Sunday

Martin McGuinness was armed with a submachine gun on Bloody Sunday and may have fired it - damning evidence that lays bare the Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister's role as a terrorist godfather during the troubles.

The Saville Report found that the Provisional IRA was highly active in the hours before and after the shootings, with McGuinness playing a central role.

Evidence heard by the inquiry reported that he helped oversee the moving of Provo arms caches in advance of the march that sparked the violence and then, after the 13 deaths, he authorised the firing of IRA guns at the city walls to convince the Nationalist community that a fightback was under way.

The report found that McGuinness, 'at that time the Adjutant of the Derry Brigade or Command of

the Provisional IRA had engaged in paramilitary activity during the day'.

'Before the soldiers of Support Company went into the Bogside he was probably armed with a Thompson sub-machine gun, and though it is possible that he fired this weapon, there is insufficient evidence to make any finding on this.'

The 12-year inquiry detailed how the behaviour of Republican terrorists contributed to the terrifying atmosphere of violence and menace in which the British soldiers were operating.

Lord Saville concluded that shortly after the first two civilians were shot, members of the Official IRA - the group from which the Provos split - 'fired a rifle at soldiers' near where the march was taking place.

The report rejects Republican claims that they opened fire 'as a reprisal' for the first deaths. It says: 'In our view these two Official IRA members had gone to a prearranged sniping position in order to fire at the soldiers.'

The Paras were then sent into the Bogside area, a hotbed of Republicanism, where people 'were throwing stones and similar missiles at the soldiers'.

One of those killed in the Abbey Park area of the Bogside was 17-year-old Gerald Donaghey. He was killed by a bullet that first shot and killed Gerard McKinney. The inquiry found the shot was not justified.

But the potential threat he represented was revealed after his body was recovered. 'Four nail bombs were found in his pockets,' the report says.

The Saville report categorically rejects claims that they were planted on him. 'We have concluded that the nail bombs were probably on Gerald Donaghey when he was shot.'

He 'was a member of the Provisional IRA's youth wing, the Fianna'.

Certainly, the fear of petrol and nail bombs being thrown at them was used by many soldiers to justify their actions.

The Paras also came under attack from Nationalists in the area of the Rossville Flats.

A soldier named Private T 'fired at a man who had been throwing down bottles containing acid or a similar corrosive substance. Two of the soldiers were hurt.

'Such conduct probably did pose a threat of causing serious injury,' Lord Saville concluded. Patrick Brolly was short in the Rossville Flats at that time. Lord Saville exonerated Private T.

Others let off the hook are defended by the report on the grounds that they 'fired in a state of fear or panic'. It also points out that the Bogside became a flashpoint in part because soldiers hearing gunfire came to 'believe either that republican paramilitaries had opened fire or thrown bombs orthat soldiers were responding to the imminent use of firearms or bombs by paramilitaries'.

The tense atmosphere at the time of the shootings was also heightened by the so called Derry sound, 'the echoing effect created by the City walls and adjacent buildings - which could multiply the sound of gunfire and explosions'.

But it is Martin McGuinness's involvement that remains most controversial.

The Saville Report exonerated the former IRA commander, turned politician, of provoking the shootings.

'We are sure that he did not engage in any activity that provided any of the soldiers with any justification for opening fire.'

But the report provides more than 50 pages of evidence about the activities of McGuinness and his PIRA men, moving arms and then arranging for a gun to be fired for morale purposes later in the day.

It details claims by one witness that 'Martin McGuinness was in Rossville Flats and fired a shot from a Thompson sub-machine gun on a "single shot".'

And it recounts evidence from one book that he was in a bookmakers 'planning to set off a bomb and fired a shot from a Thompson sub-machine gun at the door as he left.'

The report also quotes an RUC witness's statement that McGuiness was 'armed with a Thompson sub-machine gun before the Army started firing'.

Last night McGuinness denied that he carried a gun on the march which led to the killings. He said Lord Saville 'was careful to use words like probably'.

'He has recognised that the suspect unnamed sources that provided that information weren't sources to be relied upon.

'If that had been the case, the whole of the march would have seen me. How could you keep something like that quiet for 30 years? How could you hide a submachine gun?

'It didn't happen. I didn't have a gun. The tribunal were sure that I was not involved in any activity whatsoever that could have justified the soldiers shooting.'

But that did not satisfy his critics.

Lord Tebbit, who survived the Brighton bomb, last night mocked the image of McGuinness ' pursuing the path of peace with a submachine gun'.