Listen up, people—buckle your seatbelts, because I’m about to serve the unvarnished, politically incorrect truth straight from the courtroom drama that just shook the ghost of 1972 back into Britain’s breakfast news. In a decision that screams more tea-time politicking than justice, a Northern Ireland court has rolled out the red carpet and waved off a former British soldier—dubbed “Soldier F”—with a shiny “not guilty” verdict in a murder trial tied to one of the darkest days in UK military history: Bloody Sunday.
Yes, you heard right. Fifty-two years after soldiers turned civil rights protests in Derry into a brutal paragraph in the Troubles’ blood-soaked playbook, the gavel has come down and cleared the last man standing. No confetti dropped from the ceiling, but the implications are loud enough to drown out a royal proclamation.
Now, before you chug any nationalism-laced pints in celebration, let’s recall what Bloody Sunday really was: thirteen unarmed civilians killed by British paratroopers in Derry on January 30, 1972. Another victim would die later. No guns pointed back. No threat to life. Just panic, politics, and devastating firepower.
Yet here we are, in 2024, and history’s reckoning still can’t get past bureaucracy’s velvet ropes. The soldier—once the face of accountability in khaki—has become a symbol of legal limbo and selective justice. Two charges of murder, too steep, they say. Evidence too murky, they claim. And with that, the court softly whispered “Go home,” while families of the dead stand in disbelief, staring into the void where justice should’ve been echoing.
Cue the outrage. Families who’ve waited generations to see some semblance of responsibility didn’t just get slapped—they got buried under a rug woven from legal red tape and powdered wigs. Northern Ireland’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill called the ruling “an affront to truth,” and she’s not exaggerating—if anything, that’s just the politically polite version of what many are thinking: that institutional memory often has a nasty habit of amnesia when it’s the state wearing the trigger finger.
Let’s cut through the fog, folks. This isn’t just one court case. This is a litmus test for how much accountability a powerful military can dodge when state interests are on the line. Imagine if this were any other nation. Imagine if 13 unarmed protesters were gunned down in Moscow or Tehran. The headlines would be blazing with “massacre,” “state-sanctioned killing,” “atrocity.” But when the Queen’s lads do it? Well, apparently that just becomes “complex history.”
Oh, and don’t let the “lack of evidence” narrative fool you. This isn’t a dearth of facts—it’s death by decades. Time didn’t heal wounds; it simply corroded the courtroom. Witnesses aged, evidence blurred, files got lost or “classified,” and now the prosecution limps into court like a fighter forty years past his prime.
Let me be crystal clear: this isn’t about targeting veterans. It’s about insisting that a badge and a Beret do not buy immunity. You can thank Britain’s political pulse—ever cautious not to ruffle the sanctified uniform—for that little loophole. Because when it comes to accountability, it seems for some folks, the only medals being handed out are for evasion.
And where does that leave us? Northern Ireland—still balancing on a political tightrope over the lava of unresolved legacies. Victims’ families with nothing but press statements and broken faith. Politicians cautiously skating around the flames. And a general public watching a justice system that occasionally looks less like a scale and more like a roulette wheel.
Justice deferred isn’t always justice denied, they say. But fifty-two years is more than a wait—it’s an indictment of an entire system’s selective memory.
So, to the powerful who continue to hide behind the fortress of state narrative, here’s your friendly warning from Mr. 47: The game’s still on. And history doesn’t forget. It sharpens its teeth.
– Mr. 47
