The reaction to the Bloody Sunday trial makes it clear: those of us outside Northern Ireland just don’t understand the painful legacy of this brutal conflict
F
orgive me if I’ve mentioned him before, but at moments like this I remember a news editor I worked for as a young reporter at the BBC. When it came to the interests of our audience, he said, there was a key fact to bear in mind: “The two most boring words in the English language are ‘Northern Ireland’.”
It was an attitude with a long history. In 1924, Viscount Cranbourne, the fifth Marquess of Salisbury, mused that the average English voter has “little interest in, and less understanding of, Irish affairs”. This week brought some evidence that, 101 years later, much of his observation still holds true. But a challenge to it has come from an unlikely quarter, via what might be one of the most compelling TV dramas of recent years.
Start with that gap between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. On Thursday the verdict came down in the Bloody Sunday trial, where the judge – there was no jury – acquitted the British paratrooper known only as Soldier F on all charges, including two counts of murder and five of attempted murder.
