Of course, the obscenity of Bloody Sunday is that it did not end with the deaths of fourteen civilians and the shooting of as many more.

After the killings came the cover up.

“The Army returned the fire directed at them with aimed shots and inflicted a number of casualties on those who were attacking them with firearms and with bombs.”

So said Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling, during an emergency debate in the House of Commons the very next day.

The Labour MP, Merlyn Rees, who would go on to become his party’s Northern Ireland spokesman (and, by general consent, an ineffectual Secretary of State), described it as “yet another tragic day for Ireland.” A trite sentiment but he did, however, raise a critical issue that remains unresolved: “Was the decision to go into the Bogside a reaction to events, or was it the planned disposition of security forces? Who decided this? Was it the decision of the Joint Security Council? If so, was it with the full knowledge of the Right Honourable Gentleman and the Government?”

Deflecting his point, Maudling said that the army was “acting under normal instructions,” which included arresting “lawbreakers” with the “minimum necessary force.”

The Labour MP, Hugh Delargy, a rare champion of Irish issues in the Commons, pointed out that the Troubles had, by that point, lasted longer than the Black and Tan war, “of odious memory.” He added that the Parachute Regiment would be remembered “with the same odium.”

He asked about recent media reports, stating that senior military officers had wanted the regiment removed from Northern Ireland, given its record of brutality. “What notice was paid by the Government to the advice of those British military commanders?” he asked.

Maudling simply dead-batted the point, claiming the reports had been officially denied.

SDLP leader, Gerry Fitt, said that people in Northern Ireland would not accept the findings of any report “which is set up under the auspices of a Tory Government.” Instead, he demanded that the UN investigate. “The sooner steps are taken to suspend the Stormont Government and to withdraw all British troops from Northern Ireland the better it will be for the people of Northern Ireland,” he added.

The Labour MP Jock Stallard, a prominent Catholic parliamentarian, claimed the army was being used “to implement the repressive measures of Stormont against the minority population” and that the Catholic-Nationalist community would “never, ever be defeated by this kind of repression.”

He urged the government to suspend Stormont, end internment, remove British troops, and establish a commission to run Northern Ireland until a longer-term arrangement could be worked-out.

This drew a telling response from Maudling. 

The army had been in Derry “to assist the civil power in enforcing the law against a deliberate attempt to break the law.” He added: “That is our duty, and when people fire on troops, when people attack soldiers with bullets and bombs, they must expect retaliation.”

The Tory MP, John Biffin, complained about the reaction from Irish Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, who had described the soldiers’ behaviour as “savagely inhuman.”

“Is my Right Honourable Friend aware that this is a deplorable remark,” he intoned, especially as it came “from the prime minister of a state which purports to be friendly and to which we extend unique privileges in respect of nationality and trade?”

Maudling responded by calling Lynch’s remarks “inaccurate and unfortunate.”

Former Labour Prime Minister and then the Leader of the Opposition, Harold Wilson, weighed in. 

He wanted assurances that the inquiry into Bloody Sunday would be independent, and while recognising that his government was responsible for sending troops to Northern Ireland in 1969, he conceded “there will be no answer” solely based on a military solution.

Wilson added that the management of the army, locally controlled by Stormont, must now return to Whitehall. “We have now reached the point where this House can no longer carry the can for that security role unless we take the political decisions on security,” he said.

There needed to be a political solution, consisting of “all-party talks in this House leading to talks with the Stormont parliament and then with the parliament in Dublin,” Wilson added.

“Heaven alone knows, yesterday’s events should add weight to the importance of finding a political solution,” Maudling conceded.

Liberal leader, Jeremy Thorpe, said it was appalling that a “pitched battle” reminiscent of “wartime conditions took place in the United Kingdom yesterday’ and urged Maudling to consider the appointment of an ‘international stateman” to head the subsequent inquiry, thus ensuring that the process could win the trust of all sides.

He added that tensions in Northern Ireland were now “very near a condition of civil war,” and while the army had “an almost impossible job,” Thorpe questioned whether they had “adequate political advice” available to them “before they take security decisions.”

Maudling responded by saying that it would be a “sad day” for Britain if someone “within our own boundaries” could not be found to run the inquiry.

The nationalist MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, Frank McManus, raised a point of order with the Speaker. He asked why his colleague, Bernadette Devlin, the MP for Mid Ulster, had not been called to speak in the debate, given she had been at the scene in Derry and there had been “a murderous attempt on her life yesterday…”

The Speaker, Selwyn Lloyd, an ex-brigadier in the army and former Conservative cabinet minister, suggested – in a ludicrous misjudgement – that Devlin’s views were better addressed to the subsequent inquiry, rather than being heard in the crucible of British democracy itself.

This drew strong criticism from a series of Labour MPs, with Paul Rose, Eric Heffer and Stan Orme demanding that Devlin be allowed to participate in the debate. 

The exchange in the House of Commons is still remembered for what followed.

Denied the opportunity to speak truth to power, Bernadette Devlin rose from her seat, crossed over to the dispatch box and grabbed Maudling by the hair, slapped him, and called him a “murdering hypocrite.”

Reading the exchanges in Hansard fifty years on, what remains striking – appalling, actually – was the lack of moral outrage over what had taken place in Derry just 24 hours earlier. 

The full horror was immediately apparent, yet the tone in the chamber was detached and bureaucratic. Focused on process, rather than giving voice to the horror of British soldiers committing the biggest slaughter of civilians within the British state since the Peterloo Massacre of 1819.

And, so, the lie machine cranked into life, defaming the dead and injured as armed insurgents, who, in Maudling’s words, “must expect retaliation.”

His biographer, Lewis Baston, summed up the moment: “[Maudling] sat down without a word of regret (“deep anxiety” was as far as he went), or sympathy for the relatives of those who had been killed, having smeared all those who died as having been armed with guns or bombs. It was a deplorable statement, inadequate to the occasion as well as inaccurate.”

Bloody Sunday did not merit a single entry in Maudling’s own memoirs. 

Seven months later, he was forced to resign as Home Secretary, embroiled in the Poulson bribes-for-contracts scandal. He returned to the Conservative frontbench under Margaret Thatcher in 1975 but clashed with her over her hardline economic policy.

Throughout his career, Maudling had a reputation as something of a bon viveur, however his drinking descended into alcoholism, and he died of kidney and liver failure in February 1979 aged just 61.