02.02.1995

Private Clegg - State terrorist assassin

BEFORE THE Colonel Blimp media bandwagon gets into full flight, assisted by the upper-class Tory man and woman in the street, and the whole pattern of events leading to murder by Private Clegg gets totally distorted, we ought to remember a couple of things.

Contrary to the way the press is portraying things, the stolen Astra did not “crash through” a road block. Soldiers were not hit by the joy riders. The RUC confirmed under oath in the court that the soldiers had hit each other with their rifle butts and then lay in the road feigning injury by the car.

When Clegg fired the fatal killing shot, the car was stationary. The occupants were totally disabled and riddled with bullets. It was a cold blooded execution. The story now told by another soldier that he fired after Clegg is neither here nor there. The fatal bullet - fired not in the heat of the moment, but at defenceless victims - came from Clegg’s gun, which was fired by him.

The Paras knew, after their briefing just hours before by the RUC, that this was an area in which they would “be likely to encounter joy riders, because it was endemic in the district”. Afterwards these guys, who had said they thought republicans were driving the car, painted their mess room with a graphic picture of a shot up car, blood stained bodies hanging from it, and the boast, “The Astra, driven by joy riders, stopped by A-company”. Hardly a case of mistaken identity, is it?

Asked if he felt any remorse, Clegg’s reply was: “No, I was doing what I had been told to do.” Well, that much is true. He had been sent to a foreign country to impose the rule of the British state and keep the rebellious Irish in their place, by killing them if necessary.

We should consider Private Clegg a prisoner of war. A political prisoner of the conflict, like the IRA, the Inla and the loyalist militias. Clegg can be released when there is a general amnesty of all political prisoners and all the prisoners of war are allowed out. There is no ground for freeing him beforehand if we play by British law. British ‘justice’ of course is whatever suits the ruling class to chose what the law is. So expect Clegg to come back to a hero’s welcome and a torrent of anti-Irish crowing by the gutter press and far right before very much longer. A nice little patriotic story to take the punters’ minds off the mess the Tories put most of us in.

Dave Douglass