Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time: 7 mins.)
Led by four Republican marching bands and containing a number of organisations, around 6,000 people supported the annual march in Derry on Sunday commemorating the 1972 massacre by the British Parachute Regiment in the city.
This year a special focus on solidarity with Palestine had been called for by the organisers of the Bloody Sunday massacre commemoration and Palestinian flags mixed with ones of Irish Republican organisations decorated the march route.
The march begins at the Creggan Heights, overlooking Derry, a steep walk up from the Bogside, the city’s centre near the river and winds its way down (with a great view of the Foyle river and surrounding area) but then up Westland Street again and along Marlborough Terrace.
For a number of years this commemoration has taken place in heavy rain and high winds, or snow, or sleet but it was dry this year – until the march started! However after a short period of strong gusts driving rain it stopped for the rest of the march.
Down Creggan Road to the Bogside once more and past the Bloody Sunday and H-Block memorials to the rally at Free Derry Corner where Kate Nash, one of the main organisers of the march for years and a sister of one of those murdered in the massacre, welcomed the marchers.
RALLY AND SPEAKERS
Nash condemned the punitive EU/ UK/ USA cutting of funds to the UNRWA organisation carrying out relief and educational work in Gaza following an Israeli State intelligence allegation1 and also called for no Irish politicians to attend the annual US Presidential St. Patrick’s Day event.2
Kate Nash’s brother Willie was murdered by the Parachute Regiment during the massacre and her father was wounded by fire while trying to reach his fallen son. Kate called for a minute’s silence for the dead and wounded that day but also for those in Gaza, in particular the children.
Kate Nash also mentioned the Noah Donohoe case as being close to everyone’s heart.
The names of the dead and wounded by the Parachute Regiment were read out by Damian Donaghy,3 son of Damian Donaghy one of the survivors on that day. Paddy Nash performed the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome” which was popular among marchers of the time.
Kate Nash introduced Huda Ammori, a Manchester-based Palestinian activist and one of the Elbit Eight,4 who said she felt at home in Derry because of the people’s solidarity with Palestine.5 The State in Britain failed to convict all but one of any charges arising out of direct action against the arms company.
Ammori drew parallels between the Irish and Palestinian struggles against colonialism and stated that her grandfather had been assassinated for rising up against the British colonisation of Palestine in 1936, when it was a British “Mandate”.
AIA Short Video with Music Bloody Sunday Derry 2024 AIA Video.MP4 (viewable on FaceBook)
“The British signed away the land of Palestine in 1917,” Amori told the rally, “they colonised our lands and then they armed and trained the Zionist militia to commit a Nakba, to displace over 750,000 Palestinians in 1948, over half the indigenous population.”
Huda Ammori said weapons were used on Palestinians in Gaza and then marketed as ‘battle-tested’. She also praised those who had taken direct action in Derry against arms firms (e.g Raytheon).
Geraldine Doherty, niece of Gerard Donaghy, youngest of the Bloody Sunday victims, also spoke from the platform, saying it was ‘sad’ but ‘heartwarming’ to see so many people attending the march.
“More than half a century since British troops committed this massacre on these streets, innocent children like my murdered uncle Gerard and hundreds of others as well are still being denied justice”, she said and denounced the British State attempting to prevent the trial of legacy cases being tried.
Doherty spoke of the remaining “trauma for Derry and for Ireland” from which many families have never recovered, with long-term post-traumatic damage such as depression, addiction and divided families.
“But while the people of Derry were battered and imprisoned, we were never broken,” she said to cheers from the rally participants. “Derry has rediscovered its … voice and we are using that voice to oppose the murder of children and women and men, and we stand with the people of Palestine.”
ON THE MARCH
Over the years since I returned to Ireland, I have marched in that commemoration many times, either as an individual or as a member of a solidarity committee and this year was glad to be welcomed as part of the Socialist Republican contingent, with Anti-Imperialist Action.
The bloc carried two banners: the one at the front was a new one in which the AIA called for anti-imperialist revolution and socialism, while at the rear the banner celebrated the Palestinian resistance. In between the banners marchers carried flags and placards.
In the bloc men and women marched with a flags of the AIA, the Starry Plough, Palestine and Cumann na mBan. From the contingent on many occasions could be heard slogans of solidarity with Palestine and some equally applicable to that nation’s resistance or to Ireland’s.
“In the face of occupation – Resistance is an obligation!” and “No justice – No peace!” were in the latter category while “From the River to the Sea – Palestine will be free!”, “Free, free – Palestine!” and “Saoirse don – Phalaistín!” were specifically supporting the Palestinian struggle.
Most Republican organisations and some Irish socialist organisations attend the annual event, along with campaign groups and on occasion solidarity groups from abroad or Irish ones in solidarity with struggles abroad. Sinn Féin no longer attends but some supporters would as individuals.
THE MARCH ROUTE AND HISTORY
The Bloody Sunday march covers the same route as the anti-internment march in January 1972 when the British Paratroopers murdered 14 unarmed marchers and injured so many others. Preceded by the Ballymurphy Massacre in August 1971, it was followed by another in Springhill in July ‘72.
The British military claimed that the Derry victims had been armed and fired first and an inquiry tribunal headed by Lord Justice Widgery exonerated the Army and blamed the victims although the Derry Coroner, an ex-British Army officer had called it “sheer unadulterated murder”.
In 1998, presumably as part of the Good Friday Agreement deal, the British State began a new inquiry which however did not deliver a published verdict until 2010,6 stopping short of accusing the Army of murder but exonerating all the victims except one about which it was equivocal.
At that point, Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness said that the march should not be continued; however not one British soldier had even been charged, to say nothing of the commanders and Government Ministers who had either given the orders or arranged the cover-up – or both.
A small group of veterans of the original march and relatives, Kate Nash prominent among them, however decided to keep the march going and have done so every year, often in the face of accusations and disparaging remarks from supporters of Sinn Féin and others.
In 2022, the Massacre’s 50th anniversary, 20,000 marched in it while the Bloody Sunday Trust, an institution and museum supported by the colonial state and Sinn Féin, organised a small “memorial walk” and indoors event in the Guild Hall – the only one reported by the mass media.7
Although veterans of the massacre and of the annual commemoration often meet one another only once a year at the commemoration, some having come from abroad, there are always new young people to be seen among them and hundreds come out to watch the march.
The march is an important commemoration of a massacre by British colonialism which still holds the colony of the Six Counties, a reminder no doubt inconvenient to unionists, neo-colonialists and those who have left the struggle, either through lack of will or for personal advancement.
In its championing and giving voice to other conflicts too, the commemoration march and other related events during the week are a strong expression of internationalist solidarity.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1The Israeli state intelligence agency reported that 12 out of 13,000 employees of UNRWA in Gaza had been implicated in the 7th October Palestinian raid following which at least some, possibly all, were sacked by UNRWA, apparently without any hearing or appeal process. The US, UK, Germany, Italy followed this up by suspending all funding to the relief organisation catering for 2 million people in dire circumstances.
2Traditionally, leading politicians of the main Irish political parties, both mainstream and Sinn Féin, have sent representatives to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with US Presidents, many of whom are of Irish descent. This year a campaign has arisen calling on them not to do so but spokespersons of Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin have insisted they will attend, which the SDLP has declared it will not.
3Not to be confused with the family of Gerard V. Donaghy (20 February 1954 – 30 January 1972), sometimes transcribed as Gerald Donaghey, a native of the Bogside, Derry who was murdered by members of the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment on Bloody Sunday.
4Eight activists of British-based Palestine Action, a direct action organisation, who as a result of their actions against the Israeli-based military technology company Elbit in Britain, were charged with a total of 12 charges which included criminal damage, burglary and encouraging criminal damage. The trial, which commenced on November 13th, related to a series of actions taken during the first 6 months of Palestine Action’s existence from July 2020 to January 2021. In December last year, one activist was convicted on one charge by 10-2 majority, two were completely cleared and jury failed to reach a majority verdict on the rest of the charges on six remaining activists.
5That would be true of the majority ‘nationalist’ population of the city but not so much of the unionist minority, where support for Israel is more dominant, due in part to susceptibility to British propaganda and also simply out of sectarian hostility to anything favoured by the ‘nationalist’ community.
6At a cost of nearly £200m (€227.7m), half of which went in legal fees, a lawyer’s bonanza, to arrive at a decision that just about everyone in Ireland knew and many abroad knew already and which established no safeguards against a similar massacre being carried out by British military in future.
7Browser searches throw up report after media report, including Al Jazeera’s, of “hundreds” attending the early event, without a mention of the many THOUSANDS who marched later in the day.
SOURCES
Elbit Eight trial and verdict: https://www.palestineaction.org/elbit-eight-verdicts/
The Saville Bloody Sunday Inquiry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_Inquiry
Cost of: https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-30477561.html
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