The Derry Coroner, Major Hubert Ö' Neill, not inclined to nationalist sympathies, reported: strikes me that the army ran amok that day and they shot without thinking of what they were doing. There were shooting innocent people.
"These people may have parade that was banned, but been taking part in an illegal don't think that justifies the firing of live rounds indiscriminately. I say without reservation it was sheer unadulterated murder".
The official report produced by Lord Widgery, a High Court Judge, claimed, without any evidence, that the army alilly had been fired upon, or that some of the victims had been using nail bombs. Every veal since 1972 the Sunday demonstrations in Derry and in Britain has sought to draw attention to what happened, focusing not just on the shooting of peaceful demonA column from Socialist Democracy, Irish section of the Fourth international strators protesting against internment without trial and for civil rights, but on its political significance.
In 1998 new inquiry under Lord Saville was set up as part of the 'peace process'. The families of those who died are determined to overturn the lies of the Widgery Report and to exonerate their relatives. Till now the Saville inquiny has given plenty of opportunity to the British government to pour out a series of justifications for the action of the Paras, some of which are farcical.
To anyone watching the Israelis' use of live rounds against Palestinian stone throwers, what happened on Blood Sunday is so clear as to from Ted Heath's Tory government. The British army had been sent back on to the streets of the North in 1969, supposedly to keep the peace between two warring religions; in fact the British (Labour) government sent in the Army because the RUC (and the Unionists) were losing control. Peaceful demonstrations would be put down by armed force. In fact, the British Army had planned Bloody Sunday, down to adapting their standard issue rifles to take smaller bullets suitable for use against crowds. Seeing peaceful demonstrators chot off the streets, many joined the IRA. British propaganda and myopia on the Left portray the struggle in Ireland as a romantic throwback, an out of date nationalism which has truth is that before Bloody Sunday most nationalists genuinely believed that edly attacked (and been driven out of) nationalist Neill areas, stood the might of the 5 British state, which was g determined to use whatever force was required to keep the Six County State in place.
The supreme irony of the Decades of protests have demanded justice since Bloody Sunday "peace process" is that the Derry IRA man, who, the in separate territories govBritish farcically claim, fired erned by their own leaders. an alleged shot that triggered On the one cute the Bloody Sunday, is now the Unionists yearn for the cerMinster for Education at tainties of Britain and the Stormont. Empire; on the other, Nationalists are dominated The question to Martin McGuinness and all others by a Sinn Fein totally in Shock to the fake republicanwho support the "peace process" is: what has changed ism of Dublin and Irish since 1972? The answer: America. Corruption, graft nothing. and sectarianism in Connolly's words, another The sectarianism, which "carnival of reaction" - will gave rise to the Civil Rights be the inevitable outcome. marches, is simply institutionalised by the Stormont Those British supporters of Agreement. The name of the the "peace process' who believe it will create the posRUC is changed, but much else. HOL sibility of working class Nationalists and Unionists unity are deluding thempursue separate development selves.
The Saville Inquiry is but another step in the pacificaof In the unlikely event of it revealing British Government complicity in the massacre, some in the Republican Movement will see that as supporting their view that the sectarian state could not be broken, and the only alternative is to participate in running it.
The mass of nationalist people, like the Palestinians, will surely take a very different view.
The danger is that next time the gunfire at the demonstrations will COme not trom the British but Irom orner nanonalists.