Bloody Sunday `Darth Vader' hits Kosovo
BY FERN LANE
In Star Wars, Darth Vader - the one with the weird scary voice who commands
a legion of nameless, faceless automaton stormtroopers - is the enforcer of
a cruel and decadent empire which is hell-bent on crushing the rebellion of
a small nation trying to escape its ageing imperialist clutches.
How appropriate then, that Lt Gen Sir Michael Jackson, formerly of the
Parachute Regiment and presently head of NATO's ACE Rapid Reaction Corps
and British Commander of the NATO forces in Kosovo, should labour under the
sobriquet `Darth Vader' and how unsurprising, too, that the man with an
unfeasible number of nicknames, `Macho Jackson' `Action Jackson' and the
`Prince of Darkness' should turn out to be a veteran of Bloody Sunday, when
he was Adjutant to the 1st Parachute Regiment.
Although he was never called to give evidence to the Widgery Tribunal,
according to Italian photo-journalist Fulvio Grimaldi's 1972 book, Blood on
the Streets, Jackson ``carried the responsibility to a great extent of what
was going on.'' In his account of Bloody Sunday, Grimaldi - whose
photographs together with sound recordings made by his colleague Susan
North, are vital evidence of the events of that day - described the
paratroopers as ``soulless mechanical tools, little stuffed men, incapable
of speaking, of looking into your face and seeing your eyes, incapable of
hearing and listening, incapable of understanding and knowing. Little
robots programmed on the use of a gun against a target.'' Whether or not Gen
Jackson appears before the Saville Inquiry remains to be seen but he is, he
says, determined to ``defend the integrity'' of the Parachute Regiment,
describing the last 30 years as an ``ethnic conflict''.
The tiny detail of Jackson's participation in Bloody Sunday seems to have
been overlooked by the English press in their ecstatic media coverage of
his career, particularly by those sections which have been falling over
themselves to establish more spurious connections between the deployment of
the Parchute Regiment in Kosovo and their activities in the Six Counties.
They have preferred to concentrate on a more non-specific reputation for
`toughness' and monastic lifestyle - well, monastic apart from being
married and being partial to prolonged whisky-drinking sessions that is.
On 5 June, the BBC opined that ``the Serbian military will perhaps find him
more palatable that other commanders as his role so far leaves him with no
Serbian blood on his hands'' a sadly misplaced sentiment in view of the
Paras' shooting dead of a Serbian hours after they were deployed in Kosovo.
And by 14 June, despite his alleged role of `peacekeeper' the BBC had
changed its tune, saying of him that, ``when we are about to engage the
enemy, we want an officer who looks the part''.
Jackson spent a total of six years in the North of Ireland on three tours
of duty, the second as company commander from 1978-1980 and the third from
1989-1992, when he was commander of the 39th Infantry Brigade.
He comes from a military family and joined the army at 19, before taking a
degree in Russian at Birmingham University in the late 1960s, a skill which
may have come in useful during his time in the security services in Berlin
during the height of the Cold War. He joined the Parachute Regiment in 1970
and other active service includes a role as commander of British forces in
Bosnia. According to some reports the Prince of Darkness' hero is the Duke
of Wellington and like Margaret Thatcher, he is reputed to sleep less than
four hours a night.
Jackson was also described as a ``throughly cerebral officer'' by a history
professor at Cambridge University, where he spent six months in 1989. That
said, his press conferences so far have been marked more by rudeness and
impatience than by the quality of his intellect.
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