This may get a bit ranty. Please bear with me.
The front page of todays Daily Mail is angry that Tony Blair apologised to the Guildford Four yesterday. They ask why he hasn’t apologised to the victims.
The answer is surely obvious. He has nothing to apologise to the victims for. The men he apologised to yesterday were imprisoned for many years for terrible crimes that they didn’t commit. If the death penalty had been in force they would almost certainly have been executed. The British establishment made a major mistake and as the current spokesperson for that establishment, it’s right that he makes that public apology.
Of course the victims and their families have been devastated by the tragedies of the pub bombings. But is any of that the governments fault? Is there any more that the government could have done for the victims? Why does the Mail think that the victims are owed an apology? They deserve sympathy. They deserve all the help we can give them. But an apology? I just can’t see it.
Incidently, I would have linked to the story on the Mail‘s web site, but I can’t find it. A search for references to the Guildford Four finds a story from yesterday saying that the apology might be forthcoming, but today’s front page story doesn’t appear to be anywhere on their web page. Is that a reasonable way to run a newspaper web site? Most of the news seems to be about two toffs marrying.