Bloody Sunday: Truth & Justice at Last!


June 2010 was an historical month for Ireland & Britain. Truth and Justice finally won out over decades of state propaganda and blatant lies as a British government finally admitted that the 14 people killed in Derry by the British Army on Bloody Sunday 1972 were unarmed innocent civilians taking part in a Civil Rights march.

The Saville Report stated that the soldiers called before it had lied; that none of those killed were carrying weapons, that no warnings were given, that no soldiers were under threat at the time and that the soldiers were the first to open fire.

These findings totally contradict the statements of the British army and officialdom from the time of the killings onwards. Particularly scurrilous were the findings of the Widgery report published in April 1972 which was recognised at the time by independent minds as nothing more than a whitewash. For in spite of evidence to the contrary, Lord Widgery concluded that the soldiers were fired on first and blamed the marchers for participating in an illegal march (which was part of ongoing peaceful protests calling for an end to discrimination against Catholics in Unionist Protestant statelet of Northern Ireland).


Northern Ireland during the 'Troubles' (1969-1990s) was used by the British Army and the British secret services as a real laboratory for testing out methods, tactics and weapons that could be used someday to combat expected social unrest in Britain (and were to a degree used in mid-1980s in areas of British inner cities such as Brixton & Toxeth). Internment and non-jury courts were introduced. A series of miscarriages of justice took place where innocent Irish people were jailed for crimes that they did not commit. The most notable were the Guildford Ford and the Birmingham Six jailed in the 1970s and finally exonerated and released in 1991. (I played a humble and small part in this campaign, being chairperson in the laste 1980s of the West of Ireland 'Release the Birmingham 6 & Guildford 4' committee)

British forces, their agents and their loyalist allies also undertook a series of covert operations both in Northern Ireland and the Irish republic that included bank raids, shootings, secret assassinations, bombing, many of which were deliberately blamed on the IRA in an effort to discredit Irish civil rights activists and republicans. Some day the truth of the British establishment's secret and dirty war in Northern Ireland will be made known and published.


But in the meantime- Fair play to Prime Minister David Cameron for being the first British leader to apologise unequivocally over military crimes against civilians. Truly historical
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