Derek Wilford

Who is Derek Wilford?

Colonel Derek Wilford, OBE, was the British Army officer commanding the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment in Derry, Northern Ireland on Bloody Sunday in 1972 in which at the time he was serving as a Lieutenant Colonel.

Col Wilford was exonerated by the Widgery tribunal. On 3 October 1972 he was appointed OBE. However, the Saville Inquiry, many years later, determined that Wilford had expressly disobeyed an order from a superior officer, Brigadier Pat MacLellan, who prohibited Wilford from sending troops into the Bogside. The Saville inquiry found that MacLellan was not to blame for the shootings. Lord Saville said Colonel Wilford was wrong to send soldiers into an unfamiliar area where there was risk of attack from republican paramilitaries, in circumstances where the soldiers' response would risk civilians being killed or injured.

Saville suggested Wilford “wanted to demonstrate the way to deal with rioters in Londonderry was not for soldiers to shelter behind barricades like Aunt Sallies while being stoned, as he perceived the local troops had been doing, but instead to go aggressively after rioters, as he and his soldiers had been doing in Belfast”.