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sunday, bloody sunday
On Sunday January 30, 1972 British paratroops shot dead 13 unarmed demonstrators on the streets of the Bogside in Derry. 13 more were injured, one of whom died later. Seven of those who died were teenagers. Five had been shot in the back.
The Derry Coroner, Major Hubert O' Neill, not inclined to nationalist sympathies, reported: "It 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 been taking part in an illegal parade that was banned, but I don't think that justifies the firing of live rounds indiscriminately. I say it 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 had been fired upon, or that some of the victims had been using nail bombs. Every year since 1972 the Bloody Sunday demonstrations in Derry and in Britain has sought to draw attention to what happened, focusing not just on the shooting of peaceful demonstrators protesting against internment without trial and for civil rights, but on its political significance.
In 1998 a 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 inquiry 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 require no further inquiries. It was another massacre by British troops in a long line of atrocities in British colonies from Aden to India.
The main objective of the British government is to prevent the Inquiry showing the degree of political direction for the massacre, which came 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 shot 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 no place in the modern world. The truth is that before Bloody Sunday most nationalists genuinely believed that they could achieve Civil Rights within the Six County State.
After the shootings two things were clear: no reform was possible - the sectarian Six-County State had to be dismantled; behind the hated Unionist paramilitaries of the RUC, which had repeatedly attacked (and been driven out of) nationalist areas, stood the might of the British state, which was determined to use whatever force was required to keep the Six County State in place.
The supreme irony of the "peace process" is that the Derry IRA man, who, the British farcically claim, fired an alleged shot that triggered Bloody Sunday, is now the Minster for Education at Stormont.
The question to Martin McGuinness and all others who support the "peace process" is: what has changed since 1972? The answer: nothing.
The sectarianism, which gave rise to the Civil Rights marches, is simply institutionalised by the Stormont Agreement. The name of the RUC is changed, but not much else.
Nationalists and Unionists pursue separate development in separate territories governed by their own leaders.
On the one side, the Unionists yearn for the certainties of Britain and the Empire; on the other, Nationalists are dominated by a Sinn Fein totally in hock to the fake republicanism of Dublin and Irish America. Corruption, graft and sectarianism - in Connolly's words, another "carnival of reaction" - will be the inevitable outcome.
Those British supporters of the 'peace process' who believe it will create the possibility of working class unity are deluding themselves.
The Saville Inquiry is but another step in the pacification of Ireland. 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 from the British but from other nationalists.
The article above was written by David Coehn. It first appeared in the December 2000 issue of Socialist Outlook, the newspaper of the British supporters of the Fourth International.
