Bloody Sunday (1972) withdrawn from the Shankill. At the end of 1972, Lt Col Wilford, who was directly in charge of the soldiers involved in Bloody Sunday, was awarded the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. In 1992, John Major, writing to John Hume stated: "The Government made clear in 1974 that those who were killed on 'Bloody Sunday' should be regarded as innocent of any allegation that they were shot whilst handling firearms or explosives". In 2007, General (then Captain) Sir Mike Jackson, adjutant of 1 Para on Bloody Sunday, said: "I have no doubt that innocent people were
Bloody Sunday (1972) shot". This was in sharp contrast to his insistence, for more than 30 years, that those killed on the day had not been innocent. In 2008 a former aide to British prime minister Tony Blair, Jonathan Powell, described Widgery as a "complete and utter whitewash". In 1998, Lt Col Derek Wilford expressed his anger at Tony Blair's intention of setting up the Saville inquiry, stating that he was proud of his actions on Bloody Sunday. Two years later in 2000 during an interview with the BBC, Wilford said: "There might have been things wrong in the sense that some innocent