John Widgery, Baron Widgery
Brigadier John Passmore Widgery, Baron Widgery,
OBE,
TD,
QC (
July 24,
1911 -
July 26,
1981) was a
British Judge who served as
Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales from
1971 to
1980. He is principally noted for presiding over the
Widgery Tribunal on the events of
Bloody Sunday.
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 in the
Territorial Army. This led to the regular army and Widgery participated in the
Normandy landings. By the end of the war he had an
OBE, the
Croix de Guerre, the
Order of Leopold, and had reached the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in the regular army and Brigadier in the territorials.
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.
Widgery became a Judge of the Queen's Bench Division of the
High Court of England and Wales 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.
Shortly after taking over, Widgery was handed the very politically sensitive job of conducting an inquiry into the events of
January 30,
1972 in
Londonderry where troops from the
Parachute Regiment had killed 14 unarmed civil rights demonstrators. 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 rushed out a report which took the army's side; his fiercest criticism was that the firing "bordered on the reckless". The Widgery tribunal was immediately denounced by nationalists in
Ireland as an establishment whitewash.
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".
His later years in office were marred by persistent ill health and mental decline. In
Private Eye no. 436 (
September 1,
1978) 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, and it soon became apparent that he was suffering from
dementia, and he died two days following his 70th birthday in
1981.
