MANY people don’t care what happened on Bloody Sunday 1972. Hardly surprising – they weren’t born, they don’t live in Derry or the Bogside, it’s been over fifty years and other things have flooded in to occupy their minds.

But the fathers, the sons, the uncles, the aunts, the cousins, the friends – they haven’t forgotten. Which made  it so much more piercing last week when Soldier F was acquitted on all counts of murder. It took fifty-three years to get a British soldier in the dock for what happened that day, and when he was brought to court he was found not guilty. 

In the immediate aftermath of Bloody Sunday, John Hume was reported as saying to an Irish Times journalist: “Many people down there feel now it’s a united Ireland or nothing. Alienation is pretty total”

Well, John got it wrong about reunification. Fifty-three years later there’s still no united Ireland. But he got it right about alienation. Listen to the words of the relatives after the verdict was handed down. They feel nothing but disgust. The famous Free Derry mural has been changed to read 'There is no British justice'. 

Sometimes you wonder if you’re not having a nightmare. Surely it’s not possible that, having murdered eight innocent people in Ballymurphy in Belfast, the Parachute Regiment went into the Bogside and deliberately shot dead thirteen people, a fourteenth dying later. All in broad daylight. How was that made  possible? 

By using lies. The Home Secretary at the time,  Reginald Maudling, announced the British army "came under fire... from a block of flats and other quarters" and therefore "returned the fire... with aimed shots." 

This lie got full-throated support from the Widgery Inquiry.  It found that there was “a strong suspicion” that some of the dead or wounded had been handling bombs or guns.  The Savile Inquiry decades later found all the victims were unarmed and innocent, and when David Cameron in 2010 apologised – “ What happened on Bloody Sunday was both unjustified and unjustifiable. It was wrong” - the people in Derry’s Guildhall Square cheered. 

Fifteen years later, with Soldier F absolved of all crimes, there’s less cheering. His discharge to freedom makes it blatantly, embarrassingly clear: the British government, of whatever hue, will tell any lie necessary to protect what the British army has done in Ireland.

Which is a grim note, but a truthful one, and one that should never, ever be forgotten. British soldiers and politicians will lie and lie again if they fear their troops may be exposed as murderers.

But there is consolation. On Saturday, with the backing of left-leaning small parties and the massive weight of Sinn Féin behind her, Catherine Connolly romped home in the poll for President of Ireland. Fine man though he was, her predecessor, Michael D Higgins, steered well clear of the reunification debate. But Catherine Connolly has already  stated her belief In a reunited Ireland. The smaller leftist parties and Sinn Féin have successfully worked together to defeat the Fine Gael candidate and  the fell-at-the-first-fence Fianna Fáil candidate.

Some people think Sinn Féin have been overhasty in having named 2030 as the date for a border poll. Not so. The signs and  omens are all around us, and they are increasing. The financial case for reunification seems more and more attractive as the South thrives and the North, tied to Britain, looks to a future that’s an economic shambles. The SDLP are now far from being  a 'post-nationalist’ party. All that's needed is a rabid English nationalist party, led by another chancer, to take power in Britain. 

Nigel Farage looks impatient to deliver just that.