John Passmore Widgery, Baron Widgery, OBE, TD, QC, PC (24 July 1911 - 26 July 1981) was an English judge who served as Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales from 1971 to 1980. He is principally noted for presiding over the now discredited and superseded Widgery Tribunal on the events of Bloody Sunday. ^[1]

Widgery came from a North Devon family who had been living in South Molton for many generations. An ancestor had been a gaoler and his mother served as a magistrate. He attended Queen's College, Taunton, where he became head prefect.

He was admitted a solicitor in 1933 after serving as an articled clerk, but instead of going into practice, he joined Gibson and Welldon, a well-known firm of law tutors. He was an effective lecturer in the years leading up to World War II while he was also commissioned into the Royal Engineers (Territorial Army) in 1938, having joined as a sapper. As a searchlight officer, in 1940 he transferred to the Royal Artillery. Widgery participated in the Normandy landings. By the end of the war he had an OBE, the Croix de Guerre, the Order of Leopold (Belgium), and had reached the rank of brigadier.

Demobilization saw Widgery changing to another branch of the legal profession as he was called to the bar by Lincoln's Inn in 1946. He gathered a reputation for being a fast talker, and eventually came to specialise in disputes over rating and town planning, where his methodical approach and self-control were useful attributes. In 1958 he was made a Queen's Counsel, the first such award given to a post-war barrister.^[2]

Widgery became a High Court judge in 1961. As a judge he did not draw attention to himself and his judgments tended not to include any comments which were pithy, memorable and quotable. However, his calmness produced judgments which were generally regarded as fair and humane within the legal system. Widgery headed several inquiries during his term.

He received promotion to the Court of Appeal in 1968, but had barely got used to his new position when Lord Parker of Waddington (who had been Lord Chief Justice since 1958) announced his retirement. There was no obvious successor and Widgery was the most junior of the possible appointees. The Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham, chose Widgery largely on the basis of his administrative abilities. On 20 April 1971 he received a life peerage as Baron Widgery, of South Molton in the County of Devon.

Shortly after taking over, Widgery was handed the very politically sensitive job of conducting an inquiry into the events of 30 January 1972 in Derry where troops from the Parachute Regiment had killed 13 civil rights marchers, commonly referred to as Bloody Sunday. Widgery was faced with testimony from the soldiers that they had been shot at, while the marchers insisted that no-one from the march was armed. Widgery brought out a report^[3] which took the army's side; his fiercest criticism was that the firing "bordered on the reckless". The Widgery Tribunal was denounced by many, including Labour politician Tony Blair, as a whitewash.^[4][5][6]

On 15 June 2010, after the publication of the Saville Report, Prime Minister David Cameron formally apologised on behalf of the British Government to the bereaved families for what he called the "unjustified and unjustifiable" events of Bloody Sunday.^[7] His apology effectively overturned Widgery's findings that there was justification for the shots fired at the 27 civillians killed on 30 January 1972.^[8]

Widgery also found himself ruling on the Crossman diaries case when the government attempted to suppress the publication on the grounds of confidentiality. He made it clear during the case that he felt Crossman had "broken the rules," but ultimately refused to grant an injunction preventing publication. In criminal cases, Widgery became concerned by an increasing number of cases resting on weak identification evidence. He declared in 1974 that misidentification was "the most serious chink in our armour when we say British justice is the best in the world." In March 1976 Widgery dismissed the first appeal by the Birmingham Six in respect of the Birmingham pub bombings.^[9]

His later years in office were marred by persistent ill health and mental decline. In Private Eye^[10] it was observed that "he sits hunched and scowling, squinting into his books from a range of three inches, his wig awry. He keeps up a muttered commentary of bad-tempered and irrelevant questions – 'What d'you say?', 'Speak up', 'Don't shout', 'Whipper-snapper', etc.". He resisted attempts to get him to resign until the last moment, in 1980. For at least 18 months previously he had not been in control of either his administrative work or his legal Pronouncements, he would even fall asleep in court,^[11] and it soon became apparent that he was suffering from dementia. He died two days after his 70th birthday, in 1981.

• Saville Inquiry, full text, and all submissions

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