Who's sorry now?

FOR this year's National Sorry Day, alongside the services, the lectures, the concerts - and the inevitable barbecues - a memorial will be unveiled to commemorate the stolen generations, the thousands of children forcibly taken from their parents, at the appropriately named Reconciliation Place in Canberra.

National Sorry Day - May 26 - has become a fixture in the Australian calendar, ever since its inception in 1998. The inaugural event came a year after a report into the removal of Aboriginal children from their families, and saw Sorry Books, where people could record their own messages, presented to the representatives of the indigenous people. Almost 25,000 apologies have since been logged online, at Apology Australia.

While not everyone has taken such a rigorous approach to apologising as Australia, sorry is very much in fashion: from presidents to popes, everyone wants to get in on the act. Whether it's a genuine show of contrition, or to try and butter up an ally, it can be a powerful diplomatic tool.

The latest apology came from Tony Blair, who yesterday said sorry to the 11 people who suffered one of the worst miscarriages in British justice, when they were jailed in 1974 for the Guildford and Woolwich pub bombings. The convictions of the Guildford Four were overturned in 1989, and the Maguire Seven, jailed for making and planting the IRA bomb at Woolwich, in 1991.

In a statement recorded for television, the Prime Minister said: "I am very sorry that they were subject to such an ordeal and injustice", and said the families deserved to be "completely and publicly exonerated".

The apology came after a long campaign in Ireland, and has been welcomed by the families, although cynics may wonder if there is another motive in the timing, attempting to put pressure on the IRA to return to the negotiating table now the peace process has stalled.

It is not the first time Mr Blair has apologised. Shortly after his 1997 election victory, he apologised for the Irish potato famine, when more than one million people died and half a million more were evicted, as well as the one and a half million who left their homes for a new life in Britain, America and Australia, when blight devastated the potato crop in the 1840s, and the British government of the day stood by while Ireland starved.

The advantage to the Prime Minister is that these apologies give the impression he is a compassionate guy who feels sympathy for the plight of those who have been wronged, and he does so at no cost to himself. Of course, he may be genuinely sorry, but since none of these events were his responsibility, no blame can be attached to him.

Mr Blair has proved markedly less willing to apologise for mistakes he may have made. Most notably, he has resolutely refused to say sorry for leading the country into war in Iraq on the basis of false intelligence information, information he assured us was accurate even though he ought to have known it was constructed on flimsy foundations. Last year, he told the Labour Party conference it would be "insincere and dishonest" to apologise for taking a tough line on global terrorism.

Patrick West, author of Conspicuous Compassion, a book published last year which charts the rise in the late 20th century of self-indulgent public grief, says sorry has become devalued by being overused, and is more to do with being seen to care than actually caring.

For him, an apology over Iraq would show we are more interested in making ourselves feel better than in trying to improve the lot of the people of Iraq, and the campaign to make Mr Blair apologise is misplaced. In any case, if Mr Blair were to apologise for the war, he would probably swiftly find himself out of office.

The Prime Minister has admitted to mistakes other than those of his predecessors. In 2000, he told the Labour conference that the Government had got it wrong over the Millennium Dome and a rise in pensions, although he added the caveat that it was a government's responsibility to make choices.

He is not the only one who has attracted criticism for failing to apologise for a war. On a state visit to South Africa in 1999, the Queen was heckled when a speech on the Boer War did not include an apology, instead talking of "distressing" and "sadness". An expression of mild regret was removed from the final draft, to the fury of campaigners bitter at the British use of concentration camps in the war.

But sometimes saying sorry is not necessary. On a visit to India in 1997, the Queen did not verbally apologise for the massacre of 379 peaceful demonstrators by British troops in Amritsar in 1919, one of the worst atrocities of the Raj, but she did walk down the same alleyway used by the soldiers, and laid a wreath and observed a minute's silence, actions which were seen as making atonement.

Slavery has proved one of the most contentious issues as far as apologies are concerned. At a UN conference in 1999, European delegates agreed to say sorry for the slave trade, although they were careful not to imply any legal liability, which could leave them open to claims for compensation.

Former President Bill Clinton was continually pressed to apologise for slavery during his two terms of office. He stopped short of issuing a formal apology, although he did almost get there, saying: "To say that it's wrong and we are sorry about it is not a bad thing." His successor, George Bush, has also declined to apologise for the slave trade.

But former President Clinton's most high-profile apology, or lack of it, was over his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. He had initially denied having "sexual relations with that woman", but when the truth emerged he first said he must "take responsibility" for his actions, and then admitted to a mistake he was "sorry about", although it was never clear whether he was sorry about the affair or his denials.

As well as governments and politicians, church leaders have had occasion to apologise. In 2001, Pope John Paul II issued an apology for injustices committed by the Catholic Church in the Pacific region, and has also apologised for the persecution of the Jews and to the Greek Orthodox Church, although not for the Vatican's conduct during the Holocaust. The Spanish Catholic Church has also apologised for its support of the fascist Franco regime.

But if governments and authorities can apologise, so can individuals. One of the more bizarre spin-offs of the re-election of President Bush last year was the Sorry Everybody phenomenon.

What started as a few people posting pictures on the Internet of themselves with a written apology for re-electing the President, soon snowballed as hundreds and then thousands of people followed suit. A selection of the entries has been published in a book, and the site spawned a response in an Apologies Accepted website, as well as a We're Not Sorry counterpoint.

If some apologies are largely for public consumption, those backed with genuine contrition can have a positive effect. The organisers of Australia's National Sorry Day claim sincere apologies help restore dignity to people who were treated inhumanely in the past.

But even in Australia, sorry can sometimes prove to be just too much. The government may have apologised for tearing Aboriginal families apart, but Prime Minister John Howard has refused to apologise for dispossessing Aborigines of their land. He has, however, apologised for the "hurt" which has been caused by not apologising.