The British and Irish governments are engaged in negotiations designed to find an alternative way to deal with the “legacy issues” in Northern Ireland. This refers to the numerous grave allegations, still outstanding, of unlawful killing by various parties to the Troubles, with those concerning the British Army being the most controversial. Something like the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission may be on the horizon.

But events which have all the elements of a major scandal and cover-up must not be brushed under the carpet. Within a year or two of the Troubles starting again in the late 1960s – they had broken out periodically over the previous half-century – there were a number of serious incidents where units of the British Army were responsible for what can only be called atrocities. Two in particular deserve special attention: the Ballymurphy Massacre, in the summer of 1971, and Bloody Sunday, the following January. Ten were unlawfully killed in the first, and 14 in the second. Official inquiries, long after the event, have now established that all 24 victims were innocent of any wrongdoing and represented no threat.