GORDON Gentle grew up in the Pollok in the 1990s and early 2000s. One day, during a spell of unemployment, he signed up for the British Army, telling his friend George McNeillage that it would allow him to see a bit of the world. Six months later, he was dead, killed by a roadside bomb four thousand miles from home.

In the local council scheme there was an outpouring of grief and anger. The minister who conducted his funeral, the Rev John Mann, said he had only three words for George Bush and Tony Blair, which he hoped would be inscribed on their hearts: “Shame on you.”

The Chilcot Report has certainly shamed Tony Blair. It has also vindicated the courageous and painful 12-year campaign for justice waged by Gordon’s mother, Rose Gentle. Blair has now got his “comeuppance,” she said.

The Chilcot Report has affirmed and validated Rose Gentle and other families who have suffered here and in Iraq.

I heard an academic, Phillip Cunliffe, on the radio after the report was published. He argued the Chilcot Inquiry was a waste of money and that politicians should be held accountable by the democratic process and by the media, rather than unelected elites as personified by Sir John Chilcot, a privy counsellor and a former Whitehall mandarin. There was a time when I would probably have agreed with his. But the democratic process and the media completely and utterly failed to halt Blair. It wasn’t enough that “we all knew” that war was wrong.

The official position of the British establishment — including all three prime ministers and most cabinet ministers in the twelve years since Gordon Gentle’s death – is that it was all worthwhile. And lest we forget, the Scottish Parliament to its shame backed the invasion of Iraq, with only one Labour MSP – John McAllion – and no Tory MSPs voting against war.

The opinions of the millions of us who opposed the war counted for nothing. A state like the UK, steeped in privilege, where the powerful reign supreme and the weak are dispensable, where the media barons can make or break prime ministers cannot be trusted to the democratic process alone.

Had the ultimate verdict on Iraq been left to the politicians and the media, the truth would have been disputed for time immemorial, and Blair’s legacy would still be a matter for debate.

After Chilcot his reputation lies in tatters, with only his loyal lapdog, Alastair Campbell, rushing publicly to his defence. Now, even John Prescott, Deputy Prime Minister at the time of the invasion, says that war was “illegal” and the decision “catastrophic”. Any day now, expect Angela Eagle, who voted for the invasion in 2003 and has never condemned it since, to perform a political somersault.

Chilcot has provided a verdict. Tony Blair has been judged by the only people he would remotely care about – his establishment peers.

Sure, it’s cost millions and devoured a vast amount of time and effort. But sometimes that’s what’s needed to get to the heart of the facts. It took a ten-year inquiry that cost £200 million before a British Prime Minister finally got round to apologising for the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre.

Until the publication of the Independent Panel Report into Hillsborough, there was no prospect of the inquest into the deaths of the 96 victims being reopened. Until that momentous verdict of unlawful killing, which placed responsibility at the feet of South Yorkshire Police, Liverpool fans continued to suffer diabolical vilification.

Writing 15 years after the disaster, Boris Johnson wrote of “the part played in the disaster by drunken fans at the back of the crowd who mindlessly tried to fight their way into the ground. The police became a convenient scapegoat, and The Sun newspaper a whipping-boy”.

Only when an inquest jury reported did Johnson and The Sun newspaper finally get round to grovelling apologies. Democracy, and democratic accountability, isn’t just about elections. It’s about holding the powerful to account. Politicians are always looking ahead to the next election. It can be tempting to delay or even bury inconvenient truths.

Yes, judges are unelected. But to hold the actions of the powerful to account, we need people who have security of tenure, who are beholden to no one, who will be genuinely independent and who will show neither fear nor favour. Independent inquiries are a necessary part of any democracy, now and in any future independent Scotland.

But that’s not the only qualities they need. The right personnel need to be put in place. It’s not just about eminent qualifications or years of experience in the civil service or the law.

For the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry, for example, attitudes are more important than qualifications. You need people that fundamentally get that child abuse is more prevalent than any of us are comfortable to acknowledge.

We need it to be conducted by people who fundamentally understand the damage that abuse wreaks on people’s lives.

We need people who empathise with survivors and understand the abuse of power and breach of trust at the core of abuse. We don’t need people who, even though unwittingly, reinforce the message that victims may not be believed.

Without inquiries, Gordon Gentle and the hundreds of thousands killed because of the Iraq war, the 96 killed at Hillsborough, the 14 unarmed civilians gunned down on the streets of Derry by British soldiers in 1972 would never have been vindicated.

Inquiries have the power to transform lives and liberate people from years of struggling against injustice. But they can also go wrong. Let’s hope Scotland gets it right with the Child Abuse Inquiry.


More woe for Blair as Prescott agrees Iraq War was 'illegal'

Letters II: Blair’s lies cost many honest people their jobs and reputations