“A March Travelling into the Future … a Beacon of Resistance”

On February 7, 2025 By rebelbreezeIn British imperialism, Censorship & Witch-hunting, Civil Rights, Current Event Report, Genocide, History commemoration, Human Rights, Internationalist Solidarity, Irish Left, Irish Republicanism, Massacres, Peace Process, Political Analysis, Popular Resistance, Resistance ArtLeave a comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time main text: 6 mins.)

Thousands of marchers with flags, banners and three marching bands retraced the route of the anti-internment march in 1972 that ended in the infamous Derry Bloody Sunday¹, a massacre of unarmed civilians by the British Parachute Regiment.

The nearest Sunday to the date of the original march, which this year fell on February 2^nd has been chosen annually for the commemorative march over the 53 years since the massacre. People travel from different parts of Ireland and indeed from beyond in order to attend.

*Section of the march coming down from the Creggan.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

The colour party (bearing the flags) traditionally precedes the marching band. (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Derry is not well served by public transport from other parts of Ireland and there is no train station there.

There is a bus service from Dublin from the Translink company of the occupied colony but one would need to catch it at seven in the morning and then hang around in Derry for 3.5 hours waiting for the march to start. For this reason, many travel to Derry by car.

Equally, many others who would attend were the public transport available, stay home but an estimated over 7,000 participated in this year’s march. The theme this year was Palestine, once again as was last year’s too.

The day of the massacre

The original march was a protest against the introduction in August 1971 of internment without trial in the occupied colony. Almost immediately afterward the Parachute Regiment had massacred 11 people protesting against it in Ballymurphy, Belfast.²

*Ballymurphy campaign banner in the Creggan awaiting start of march with Kate Nash centre*. (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

The 1972 march, along with many others, had been banned by the sectarian colonial administration. The Civil Rights campaigners knew that their legitimate demands³ were being obstructed by use of the Special Powers⁴ of the statelet and that they could win nothing if they were to acquiesce.

After the previous massacres it took considerable courage to march that day but perhaps they thought that with an advertised march, in daylight, with many film cameras covering, the Paras were unlikely to open fire. In any case, they decided to risk it.

At 4.10pm the first shots were fired by the Paras⁵ without warning and by around 20 minutes later they had killed 13 men and youths and wounded another 13, one of whom would die weeks later. According to the Saville Inquiry in 2010, they had fired over 100 rounds.

Not one of their targets was armed.

To justify the slaughter, the British Army claimed that they were fired upon and returned fire, killing IRA fighters. The British Government, in particular through Home Affairs Minister Reginald Maudling, repeated the lies as did the British media.

Bernadette (then) Devlin⁶ MP, a survivor, was prevented from speaking in the Westminster Parliament and she walked up to Maudling and slapped his face. In Dublin a general strike took place with schools closing and a huge crowd burned the British Embassy down.

In London, a giant march reached Trafalgar Square as its end was still leaving Hyde Park. In Whitehall the police prevented them from laying the symbolic coffins outside No.10 and in the scuffles the ‘coffins’ were eventually thrown at the police or knocked to the ground.

And a number of construction sites in Britain went on strike also.

The judicial response varied wildly. Coroner Hubert O’Neill, an ex-British Army major, presiding on the inquests in 1973, called it “Sheer unadulterated murder” whereas Lord Chief Justice Widgery in the ‘inquiry’ he led ignored all the local evidence and accepted the British Army’s lies.⁷

“The last Bloody Sunday march”

Provisional Sinn Féin organised and managed the annual march for many years but in January 2011 Martin McGuinness announced that year’s march would be the last, because of the UK’s Prime Minister David Cameron’s public apology to the relatives of the 14 killed in Derry.

The apology followed quickly on the verdict of the Saville Inquiry⁸ which totally refuted the statements at the time by representatives of the Army and of the Political and Judicial establishments: the victims had been unarmed and the Army had not been “returning fire”.

*One side of one of the marching band drums* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

*Section of the march about half-way along its length*. (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Despite the UK State’s acknowledgement that they had no excuse for the massacre, not one of those who planned, organised or carried out the atrocity had been charged, never mind convicted, nor had those who conspired to cover up the facts. To this day, only a low-level soldier has faced charges.

Nor had there been government admissions of wrongdoing in the other massacres by the Paras intended to crush the resistance to the repressive internment measure, at Ballymurphy and Springhill.

A number of relatives and survivors of the original march declined to have the annual march cancelled, among them Kate Nash and Bernadette McAlliskey. Kate Nash’s brother William was shot dead on Bloody Sunday and her father, William, was wounded trying to save his son.

Bernadette McAlliskey was a survivor of the massacre and also survived nearly a decade later an assassination attempt in her home, being struck by nine bullets of a Loyalist murder gang. Despite opposition by and denunciation from SF, volunteers have kept the march going every year.

Each year different themes have also been incorporated into the Bloody Sunday March for Justice, including ones in Ireland, such as the framed Craigavon Two prisoners but also ones from beyond, e.g. the resistance of the Broadwater Farm housing estate in London to Metropolitan Police attack.

*Section of the march in Creggan waiting to start, showing the Palestinian national flag and the Irish Tricolour in close proximity.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

*Big drums of one of the marching bands getting a workout in the Creggan while waiting for the march to start*. *‘Saoirse go deo’ = Freedom for ever*. (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

Since 2011 Sinn Féin have boycotted the march but also sought to mobilise public opinion against it, claiming that relatives of the victims didn’t want the march to continue. The truth is that some hadn’t wanted it even when SF were running it, some didn’t afterwards but some did.

Such an atrocity has of course huge personal impact on relatives of victims but its impact is also much wider on a society and beyond, historically and politically. That historical memory ‘belongs’ to the people of Derry but also to the people of the world (as do others such as Sharpeville SA).

Those in power in society are aware of that and the media outside of Derry gives little or no coverage to the annual march while promoting other events there of lesser numbers and significance.

The ‘Derry Peoples Museum’ ignores the march in its Bloody Sunday commemorative program.

This year’s march

Sunday just past was one of sunshine and little wind, as it was on the day of the Derry massacre. But regular marchers remember other Bloody Sunday commemoration days of pouring non-stop rain, of squalls, of snow and sleet, of wet clothes, socks and freezing fingers and toes.

The march starts in the afternoon at the Creggan (An Chreagáin) and winds down to just below the Derry Walls, then up a long slope again before eventually ending down at Free Derry Corner⁹, the destination of the original march, where speakers address the crowd from a sheltered stage.

*Marchers underway, led by people carrying 14 crosses to represent the unarmed civilians murdered by the Paras on that day 53 years before.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

*The band members are itching to go up in the Creggan.* (Photo: *D.Breatnach*)

The sides of residential blocks in this area are also painted in giant murals to represent scenes from the civil rights and armed resistance period while nearby stands a monument to the martyrs of Bloody Sunday 1972 but also another to the 10 H-Blocks’ martyrs of the Hungers Strikes of 1981.

In this area, one needs to be blind not to be at least peripherally aware of the icons of proud struggle and of loss, of sacrifice.

Eamon McCann and Farah Koutteineh addressed the rally at the end of the march. McCann, a journalist and member of the People Before Profit political party is a survivor of the massacre. He is an early supporter of the Bloody Sunday March for Justice at which he has spoken on occasion.

Farah Koutteineh is a Palestinian journalist who was herself the news when in December 2023 she and a few other Palestinians were ejected from a Sinn Féin-organised meeting in Belfast being addressed by the Palestinian Ambassador as a representative of the Palestinian Authority.

Koutteineh had been denouncing the Palestine Authority’s collusion with Israel when she and the other Palestinians were hustled out to applause from many of the attendance. Not surprisingly from the Derry platform on Sunday she too drew applause in criticising SF’s position on Palestine.¹⁰

Speaking to this reporter after the march, Kate Nash said: “There is no chance the march will be ended. It will go forward into the future, a beacon of resistance against the injustices and crimes of states around the world.

“There are millions of us … people come from around the world to commemorate this massacre with us.”

end.

Series of images from the march (Photoa by D.Breatnach)

Footnotes:

1There have been a number of Bloody Sundays in the history of Ireland under colonialism and therefore the location and year are often incorporated into the name for clarity as to which is being discussed.

2There was substantial State interference with inquests during the period of the 30-years’ war in the Six Counties (and in some cases in the Irish state also), in order to avoid inquest juries finding the state armed forces culpable of homicide unjustified in law. The original inquest in 1972 on the Ballymurphy massacre recorded an ‘open verdict’ but a 2021 reopened inquest found the British Army killings “unjustifiable”. Even after the Derry massacre, in July of that year, the Paras again killed five unarmed people and injured two in the Springhill area of Belfast and again an ‘open verdict’ was recorded into the fatalities which included three teenagers and a priest.

3The demands were all of rights that were in existence in the rest of the UK, including an ending to discrimination in allocation of housing and employment and general enfranchisement.

4The Special Powers (Northern Ireland) Act 1922 gave legal powers to the authorities similar to martial law. Allegedly temporary, as is often the case the Act kept getting renewed until made permanent and its repeal was one of the demands of the Civil Rights campaign. The Act was finally repealed in 1973.

5There was a unit of other British Army soldiers stationed on the Derry Walls with special rifles and there has been speculation that some of the shots might have been fired by them but this has never been confirmed to date.

6Now McAlliskey then Devlin, she had been a candidate for the People’s Democracy party of the time, the youngest MP elected.

7And that was the ‘official record’ until the Saville verdict 38 years later. A clever contemporary lampooning of Widgery and playing on a soap powder advert, with excellent alliteration, had it that “Nothing washes whiter than Widgery White!”

8Although the Saville Inquiry delivered its verdict in June 2010, it had been set up in 1998, taking an inordinately long time (and a bonanza in legal fees for judge, barristers, lawyers and clerks) to reach a verdict already obvious to all the nationalist people of the Six Counties, most of the Irish people and probably millions around the world. The date of its setting up so near to that of the Good Friday Agreement suggests that its creation (and eventual verdict) was part of the ‘sweeteners’ of the Pacification Process and the Good Friday Agreement.

9A reconstruction of the iconic gable end of a small local authority house in the Bogside area of Derry which had been painted in 1967, during the Civil Rights resistance period, with giant letters proclaiming: YOU ARE NOW ENTERING FREE DERRY. The house was demolished during redevelopment of the area but the gable end was reconstructed as a monument to the resistance of the people of the city.

10Sinn Féin support the corrupt and collaborationist Palestine Authority and its backing political party Fatah and also celebrated St. Patrick’s Day with (then) President Joe Biden while the US was supplying the Zionist genocide with weapons, money and political backing.

3The demands were all of rights that were in existence in the rest of the UK, including an ending to discrimination in allocation of housing and employment and general enfranchisement.

6Now McAlliskey then Devlin, she had been a candidate for the People’s Democracy party of the time, the youngest MP elected.

Useful links:

Monument for National Army soldiers killed in Civil War unveiled in Dublin

On July 30, 2023July 30, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn British imperialism, Capitalism, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, Guerrilla Action, History, Irish Civil War, irish history, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Political AnalysisLeave a comment

News & Views No. 6 (Reading time: 4 mins.)

Original Breaking News article: DAVID YOUNG, PA (with commentary in italics by Diarmuid Breatnach)

The rededication of a memorial to the National Army soldiers killed in the Civil War enables their memory to be rehabilitated, a ceremony in Dublin has heard.

Defence Forces Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Sean Clancy paid tribute to the some 810 soldiers killed serving on the Free State side in the 1922-2023 conflict as he addressed the event at Glasnevin Cemetery on Sunday.

Descendants of some of those who died, representative of all four provinces, were invited guests at the ceremony, among them relatives of Michael Collins, the commander in chief of the National Army who under direction by Churchill, gave the orders that began the Irish Civil War and who was killed in 1922.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Tánaiste Micheál Martin, the leaders of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, the two main parties forged from the divisions of the Civil War, also attended the rededication of the National Army Monument.

Sinn Féin TD Matt Carthy also attended the military commemoration, as did Dublin Lord Mayor Daithí de Róiste.

This neatly brought together political parties of the neo-colonial and neo-liberal Irish State with opposing histories: Varadkar to represent the pro-British and fascist neo-colonial origins of Fine Gael; Mícheál Martin and De Róiste representing Fianna Fáil, the allegedly Republican but in reality Irish Gombeen split from the previous iteration of Sinn Féin; Carthy for the current neo-colonial, neo-liberal and colonial servant Sinn Féin.

*Taoiseach Varadkar (Fine Gael) and Tánaiste Martin (Fianna Fáil) unveiling monument to soldiers of the ‘Free State’ killed in the Civil War 1922-1923.* (Photo cred: *Brian Lawless/ PA*)

*Matt Carthy TD, who represented his party Sinn Féin at the unveiling and dedication of the monument to soldiers of the Free State killed in the Civil War 1922-1923.* (Photo sourced: *Internet*)

Prior to the ceremony, there was no monument in the country specifically dedicated to the soldiers of the National Army who fought against the anti-Treaty side in the Civil War.

Weeks after the war ended, on August 3rd, 1923, the Oireachtas passed legislation that led to the creation of the modern-day Defence Forces, Óglaigh na hÉireann. That is, the defence forces of the neo-colonial ruling class who created the Irish state.

The rededication event for the forgotten fallen of the National Army, which had already robbed the Irish language version name of the IRA, adopted the name Óglaigh na hÉireann during the Civil War, took place on the Sunday prior to the centenary of that date.

“It is appropriate then, in the spirit of real inclusiveness, of ethical remembering, and with a full desire to deal with some of the more uncomfortable aspects of our shared history, that we remember some of 810 uniformed members of Óglaigh na hÉireann who gave their lives in the service of the State during the tragic and critical period at the foundation of our democracy,” Lt Gen Clancy told the ceremony.

It is necessary, in order to bury any idea of achieving the Republic declared at the start of the 1916 Rising, that we honour some of the 810 men we recruited to bury that Republic in 1922, kitted out in uniforms, armed and transported by our ancient enemy. We wish to pass over quickly over not only the kidnappings, torture, murders, killing of disarmed prisoners and even sexual assaults by this fine body of men – the precursors to the current army of the Irish State – but also their terrorising of major part of the country with raids on homes and internment of men and women. Although this fine body of men were fighting to establish a neo-colony not even covering the whole of Ireland, we make no apology for calling them what they clearly were not, Óglaigh na hÉireann, i.e “Warriors of Ireland”.

*The monument in Glasnevin to soldiers of the Free State killed during the Civil War* – apart from the Free State Army having appropriated the name in Irish of the IRA, the legend claims they “died for their country”, a clearly inaccurate statement since at best they were fighting for the government and state of the 26 Counties, which excludes the UK colony of the Six Counties (‘Northern Ireland’ *sic*). (Photo cred: PA)

“For far too long there has been no memorial of any kind, nor any complete listing of the National Army war dead.” Understandably.

“Indeed, this year represents perhaps the last real opportunity to rectify that.”

As we prepare to commit this armed force to NATO at some point in the future and to PESCO in the nearer future, it is important to take a further step in legitimising this armed force of the neo-colonial state.

The remains of some 180 of the 810 soldiers who died serving in the National Army are buried at the plot in Glasnevin Cemetery. Uncomfortably close to graves of many of their victims.

“Sources at the archives show that the average soldier buried here was in his early 20s, was unmarried and from a working-class background,” said Lt Gen Clancy. In other words, the typical recruitment profile of lower-rank soldiers in capitalist and imperialist armies.

“Many had previously served in the IRA during the War of Independence, some even in the 1916 rising, many others had served in the British Army, underlying yet again how complex is the weave of Irish history.”

Actually, “many” is a questionable though vague estimate of the numbers who had “served in the IRA during the War of Independence”, though some had, including some of the most vicious, such as Major-General Paddy Daly, torturer and murderer.

The chief of staff highlighted the “poignant example” of two young Belfast-born Dublin-raised brothers – Frederick (18) and Gerald McKenna (16) – who were buried in Glasnevin after being killed together in action in Cork in August 1922 only a month after joining the National Army.

Aye, two men born in Belfast, a city which the Free State was fighting to ensure remained a direct colony of the United Kingdom.

“Whatever the often very legitimate reasons our forebears may have had for forgetting in the intervening 100 years, I think it’s appropriate now that I as the 32nd Chief of Staff of Oglaigh na h Eireann should finally take this opportunity to rehabilitate their memory,” said Lt Gen Clancy.

Especially as I try to establish a legitimate background to the armed force of an illegitimate State preparing to enter foreign imperialist wars and suppression of legitimate uprisings.

After all, we have great experience in all that, as the history behind this monument shows.

End.

Source: https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/memory-of-fallen-national-army-soldiers-rehabilitated-as-monument-unveiled-1508928.html

LEARNING FROM AND CORRECTING OUR MISTAKES

On July 25, 2023July 25, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn British imperialism, Capitalism, Guerrilla Action, History, Ireland, irish history, Irish Republicanism, National Liberation, Political Analysis1 Comment

Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time: 6 mins.)

In all areas of endeavour and no less in revolutionary work it is essential to review our actions (and those of others) periodically in order that we may draw lessons to improve the success of future activity.

Irish history provides an abundance of material to revise.

The most recent period worthy of intensive review in my opinion is the three-decade war, mostly in the Six Counties but also having repercussions within the territory of the Irish State, in Britain and even further abroad.

An article in the July issue of An Phoblacht Abú¹, monthly hard-copy newspaper of the Anti-Imperialist Action organisation, discusses the psychological and organisational problems arising from the way that three-decade struggle came to an end and its effects on the resistance movement.

That period in Ireland commenced with a struggle for democratic civil rights, not one of the demands of which were for more than was already well established in the rest of the ‘UK’. But it soon changed into a guerrilla war with huge numbers of political prisoners and jail struggles.

The movement experienced a number of splits and changes of leadership but for most of of the time it was led by the Provisional organisation’s leadership although changes took place inside its own leadership too.

*Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, President Provisional Sinn Féin 1970-1983*, *speaking at GPO rally 197*6. He led an unwinnable war. (Photo cred: *Pat Langan/ Irish Times*)

*Some of the Provisional IRA leadership following the 1970s split: Martin McGuinness, Dáithí Ó Conaill, Sean Mac Stiofáin, IRA press conference 1972, Derry.* (Photo cred: *Larry* *Doherty*)

The period ended with that leadership not only abandoning armed struggle but being coopted with its structures into joint management of the colonial occupation and preparing for joint management of the neo-colonial Irish state, a number of smaller splits in the movement a much disillusion.

The An Phoblacht Abú article concentrates on building or rebuilding trust in leadership through measures such as clear communication, discussion, organisational restructuring, collective solidarity, open discussion, transparent communication and education.

The article does not say this but in my opinion one of the basic educational needs is to acknowledge that in the circumstances, what happened was inevitable (and to consider how different circumstances might be constructed in future).

UNWINNABLE

It is essential in my view to acknowledge that the struggle, as it was waged, was bound to lose. Yes, unwinnable: an unassisted armed struggle against a world imperialist power fought primarily in one-fifth of our territory where the population is deeply divided – how could we think otherwise?

Clearly, the Provisional leadership did think otherwise. Assuming they were not insane or very stupid, on what could their belief have been based?

I can see only two rational possibilities:

1) They believed the British had no essential need to retain the 6-Co. Colony and would abandon it if put under enough pressure, or

2) that the Irish ruling class, through its government, would step in and join the struggle.

If they believed the first, their analysis was not historically-based. Since its invasion and occupation of Ireland in the mid-12th Century, the British ruling class has repeatedly gone to enormous efforts to suppress Irish self-determination.

When they had the opportunity to leave in 1921 they had cultivated a client bourgeoisie, then instigated a civil war and partitioned the land, leaving themselves a firm foothold in the country.

Their initial response to a call for simple civil rights in the late 1960s was violent suppression on the streets, abolition of habeas corpus and introduction of internment without trial – and army massacres.

If the previous lessons of history were not clear to the movement’s leadership, then those events up to 1972 should have made them crystal clear.

If the Republican leadership believed the Irish ruling class would step up, they failed to draw the lessons of history since at least 1921 and to understand the neo-colonial nature of the Gombeen class, amply illustrated in the preceding 50 years of the Irish State.

As embarked upon and fought, the war could not be won but a struggle was potentially winnable.

However, to have a chance of winning, the struggle would have to be over the whole 32 Counties. And to engage the maximum number of people, it would have to take up the social, cultural, economic and political deficits across the Irish state and across the colony.

The social rights of women and LBG² people were widely-acknowledged deficit areas, yet the Republican movement did not seriously address them. Of course, doing so would have put the Movement in direct opposition to the Catholic Church hierarchy and its followers.

Why should that be a problem? Hadn’t the Hierarchy been pro-British occupation since the late 1800s³ and anti-Republican since the 1790s? Wasn’t it one of the cornerstones of the neo-colonial Irish State, its social prop and social control mechanism?

Yes but the problem was that some of the leadership themselves were in that ideological ambit and were in any case afraid to disaffect many of their followers. A natural fear, of course. Yet only in that way could the struggle go forward across the Irish state’s territory.

It was left to campaigners mostly outside the Republican Movement, including social democrats and liberals, to fight for the rights to contraception, divorce, equality for women, LGB rights. And later, to take on the huge institutional abuses of the Catholic Church in Ireland.

Those issues affected directly well over half the population of the Irish state and the the leadership lacked the interest or the courage⁴ to take part in their struggles, never mind lead them, which it left to mostly non-revolutionary leaderships.

There were many other issues that affected people in the 32 Counties which a revolutionary leadership could take up and, I would argue, should have taken up.

The latter includes emigration, rights of the Irish diaspora (particularly in Britain), foreign penetration of the Irish economy, foreign land ownership, housing shortage, industrial struggles, academic freedom, Irish language rights, Church control of education and the health service …

Some of those issues were taken up for a while by the movement in parts of the 26 Cos. prior to the split in the Republican Movement but were progressively dropped as the armed struggle in the 6 Cos. took off.

When years later the Provisional leadership got interested in social democratic reformism, they found they could hardly make any headway in the unions against the Labour Party and the remains of the Workers’ Party – because of the Provos’ earlier overwhelming neglect of that area of struggle.

SUMMARY

The struggle in the Six Counties could not be won precisely because it was primarily confined to that area and also one in which a powerful enemy had seduced a huge section of the population.

When the leadership acknowledged the unwinnability of the struggle as being waged, instead of changing their methods and aims of struggle to take in the whole 32 Cos, they decided on capitulation and getting the most possible out of it for themselves.

*A change in the top leadership of Sinn Féin and the IRA: Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness photographed in 1987*. *They recognised they could not win and set about managing abandoning it while getting something out of the system for the leadership.* (Photo: PA)

The leadership of the Republican movement was unwilling to widen the struggle because they believed that it was unnecessary to do so and/ or they were unwilling to overcome their own ideological indoctrination and/or lacked the courage to confront prejudices among their following.

Some of the social struggles have now been won or hugely progressed but without the leadership of the Republican Movement, in fact by leaderships of mostly reformist trends.

Due to leaving the industrial struggle to social democrats, the trade union movement has degenerated hugely and is in a poor state to take on any substantial economic or rights struggle, to say nothing of a revolutionary one.

The surviving Republican movement seems unwilling to acknowledge those historical facts and its failure thus far in leadership. Admission of the facts is necessary in order to commence to repair the movement and to prepare for a struggle with a prospect of success.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1Page 9, entitled COMRADESHIP – GUARD AGAINST BETRAYAL; I intend to review the July issue of the newspaper separately some time soon.

2I have omitted the T from LGB because it is only comparatively recently that the transexual issue has gained wide acknowledgement, whereas the Gay, Lesbian and even Bi-Sexual issue were widely known about at the time under discussion.

3The Irish (settler) Parliament passed an act giving middle-class and higher Catholics the right to vote in 1793.

4Though no-one could fault their physical courage

BRITISH STATE MURDER OF IRISH CIVILIANS COMMEMORATED IN DERRY

On February 12, 2023February 12, 2023 By rebelbreezeIn British imperialism, Civil Rights, Colonialismo, Current Affairs Comment, Current Event Report, History commemoration, Ireland, Massacres, peace processes, Political Prisoners1 Comment

Clive Sulish

(Reading time main text: 6mins.)

Thousands of people gathered on Sunday 29^thJanuary in Derry City’s Creggan area and marched through rain and gusts of strong wind in the annual Bloody Sunday March for Justice to Free Derry Corner.

The march commemorates the Derry Bloody Sunday Massacre of the last Sunday in January 1972, when the Parachute Regiment opened fire on unarmed Civil Rights marchers, killing 14 and injuring a great many, claiming the soldiers had only returned fire on paramilitaries.

By the Creggan shops, people still arriving, others waiting to march (*Photo: D.Breatnach*

Other side of the road. (*Photo: D.Breatnach*)

British Governments for decades stood by those claims, refuted by many hundreds of witnesses to the actual shootings and though the city’s coroner called it “sheer unadulterated murder”, the inquiry under Lord Chief Justice Widgery declared in favour of the Paras’ version.

The 1972 march organised by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association had been protesting the introduction of internment without trial in August 1971¹ and the Paras had already killed 11 unarmed protesting people that month in the Ballymurphy housing estate, Belfast.²

Among the scheduled speakers and organisers in Derry in 1972 had been leading activists of the time, Bernadette Devlin (now McAlliskey) of People’s Democracy³ and Eamon McCann of the Socialist Worker’s Party (now People Before Profit).

The Commemoration this year

Participating organisations this year included Anti-Imperialist Action Ireland, Communist Party Ireland, Éirigí, Irish Republican Socialist Party, Irish Republican Welfare Association, Lasair Dhearg, People Before Profit, Republican Network for Unity, Saoradh, 1916 Societies.

Also marching were an IWW/ Anarchist contingent and a number of campaign groups: Ireland Anti-Internment Campaign, Ballymurphy Justice, Justice for the Craigavon Two, Justice for Manus Deery, with a number of environmental groups were represented also.

Derry Trades Council and IWW seemed to have the only trade union banner present or flags present.

A broad domestic and internationalist solidarity sweep was evidenced by the poster for the event with the slogan: “An injury to one is an injury to all” and also by the banner of the Derry branch of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Poster for the 2023 march (*Sourced: Internet*)

Public support from Britain came with a banner of the Fight Racism/Fight Imperialism periodical and leaflets from Republican Socialist Platform⁴ were distributed among the marchers also.

Some years can reveal the misfortunes of particular organisations with a much smaller contingent than previously due to drop outs, defections and splits. Equally it has not been unknown for an organisation to draft in people to inflate its numbers specifically for the annual march.

The annual march takes the twisting route of the original one in 1972, covering much of the Derry nationalist housing areas.

Marchers rally at the Creggan heights and march down to the bottom of the hill, then along and up another steep hill, turning right at its top, along and then right down again and, at the bottom, turning right and along to the Free Derry Corner⁵ monument where speakers address the crowd.

Kate Nash chaired the rally there and Liam Wray, relative of murdered James Ray spoke as did also Ria, niece of John Paul Wooton who, with Brendan, are the Craigavon Two, framed for the killing of a colonial policeman.

The numbers this year were a huge drop from the previous year’s but 2022 was the 50^th anniversary of the massacre and the participants are estimated to have numbered well over 10,000, including maybe 10 marching Republican Flute Bands⁶ from Ireland and Scotland.

Nevertheless the mass media’s coverage of last year’s march varied from minimal to nil.⁷

Probably4,000 actually marched this year, but perhaps nearly another 1,000 gathered on the roadsides to watch the marchers, greet people they know and so on. Many children are brought by their parents to watch while their older siblings gather and sometimes accompany marchers too.

The day had begun sunny and crisp but by march time the weather had deteriorated to constant rain and gusts of wind and, as the march reached the Lecky Road, to a heavy downpour. It was bad but veteran marchers have experienced worse in previous years, including snow and sleet.

Waiting to begin the march (*Photo: D.Breatnach*)

Three Derry-based Republican Flute Bands formed part of the march: James Connolly RFB, Kevin Lynch RFB and Tommy Roberts Stevie Mellon RFB, along with the Banna Cuimhneachán Thomáis Uí Chléirigh (Thomas Clarke Memorial RF Band) from Dungannon.

Although in recent years members wear more weather-appropriate uniforms, they still do an amazing job marching and playing in bad and sometimes atrocious weather.

A Deal with the Devil

The Sinn Féin political party, once prominent among the march organisers and speakers at the rally, sought to end the annual march in 2011 and have not supported the event since.⁸ This was after the British Government publicly apologised for the massacre that same year.

Part of the process leading to that Governmental apology was the setting up of the Saville Tribunal in London in 1998, although it took unexpectedly long to deliver its verdict.⁹ The Good Friday Agreement was also concluded in 1998, giving the Tribunal the appearance of a concession.

Indeed, the whole has the marks of a deal with the Provisional IRA’s leadership, with the British side saying: “You give up the armed struggle and control your people. We’ll make it easier for you by releasing your prisoners on licence¹⁰ and admitting we were wrong in Derry in 1972.”

Whether ceasing the annual commemoration was part of the deal or whether that was Sinn Féin’s own leadership’s decision is difficult to guess. It may have suited SF to scale a colonial reminder event down or simply to scratch one big annual event from their organisational calendar.

On the other hand, it has lost Sinn Féin all control of an important historical commemorative event on the Irish Republican calendar and their abstention again at the 50^th anniversary march was a massive exposure of their collaborationist position.

The Bloody Sunday Trust also boycotts the march, in the sense that it does not promote it nor record its annual march or other events opposed by Sinn Féin. It does organise and promote its own events during every anniversary but that seems to be as a counter to the march organisers.

The BST of course receives funding and employs a Director and staff for its museum. Nobody pays Kate Nash or other members of the Bloody Sunday Commemoration committee; they rely on public donations and sale of items such as commemorative T-shirts to fund the march¹¹.

A number of relatives of the murdered and injured civilians continue to support the march and are counterered among its organisers, for example Kate Nash, sister of murdered William murdered on Bloody Sunday and daughter of Alex Nash seriously injured by the troops the same day.

The Derry Trades Council and two of the original organisers and speakers support the continuation of the commemorative march as do most Irish Republican and Socialist organisations.

In formation ready to march. Note the presence of female members in the prestigious and ceremonial colour (flags) party, more commonly seen in recent years. (*Photo: D.Breatnach*)

Derrylondon¹² and annual commemorations

Most Irish people call the city “Derry¹³” from the ancient monastic settlement located there, “Doire Cholmcille”¹⁴ but most Unionists and the British officially call it “Londonderry”. Many think the latter do that to annoy but there is a historical basis for it.

Large parcels of land in the city and surrounds were the payoff to the City of London for bankrolling Cromwell and the English Parliament’s campaign in Ireland to crush support for King Charles and the resistance of the Irish clans and Norman-Irish magnates.

Commemoration of the crimes of the oppressor forms an important part of the resistance of the oppressed around the world. Such events say “Our oppressors committed this atrocity here and we remember, will always remember and constantly deny them any legitimacy in occupation.”

If that is so, what gives any liberation organisation the right to call an end to such commemorations? Yet that is what the formerly liberation Sinn Féin did in 2011 after a British Prime Minister apologised in public for the massacre (but as some kind of serious ‘error’).

Some of the guilty – poster for the 2020 march. (*Image sourced: Internet*)

Not a single Minister or civil servant who organised the Derry or Ballymurphy massacres, nor judge who condoned them, nor officers who ordered them, nor soldiers who carried them out have been even tried, never mind convicted or jailed in the thirteen years elapsed since that ‘apology’.

Derry’s Bloody Sunday will continue to be commemorated at least until British colonialism has left Ireland and probably as long as imperialism continues to exist.

Remembering is part of resistance; commemoration makes it collective.

End.

A plethora of flags in what seems to be the Anarchist and IWW section. (*Photo: D.Breatnach*)

Head of the march reaches the bottom from Creggan and turns into the Bogside (*Photo: George Sweeney in* *Derry Journal*)

FOOTNOTES

1Abandoned on 5 December 1975. During this time a total of 1,981 people were interned for a period without trial, many of them physically assaulted, some grossly beaten and a small number tortured (the “hooded men” whose campaign for justice is yet another example of courage and determination against British State lies, prevarication and delays). 1,874 were from an Irish nationalist background, while 107 were from a unionist background.

2A similar British Army story, “returning fire” and again witnesses’ accounts ignored. The British State has yet to admit the gross inaccuracy of the official account.

3The party grew out of the Civil Rights movement of which it represented a more radical section. It ceased to exist after a few years.

4Previously unknown in Ireland, the RSP claims members in Derry and Belfast and the leaflet states it is part of the Radical Independence Campaign in Scotland.

5The monument in the shape of a gable end of a two-storey house mimics its original inspiration on the blank gable end of a row of houses in 1968 when John Caker Casey or Liam Hillen painted upon it YOU ARE NOW ENTERING FREE DERRY. The Bogside enclave had been barricaded in 1968 to deny the sectarian and brutal colonial police entry and continued to exist as an area from which the police were barred and British troops, even after the official removal of the barricades, entered only in force and at their peril for years afterwards.

6Typically flute players, side and bass drums, led by a colour (flags) party, all in the band uniform.

7Instead the media concentrated on the presence of a small group of Irish Government Minister and politicians of main parties at an earlier event at the monument to the massacre and a cultural event in the Guildhall.

8No doubt some of SF’s supporters in Derry and many more of its voters ignore the party ban and attend nevertheless.

9An almost unbelievable 8 years after a delay of two years before hearings began and £400 million in costs (mostly in fees to law practitioners) even through years when no hearings were being conducted.

10Release on licence meant they could be returned to jail to complete their original sentence at the discretion of the Minister of State for Northern Ireland, without a hearing or entitlement to know the specific reason for that decision. At first only the Provisional’s prisoners signed up to it but were followed by those with allegiance to other Republican groups, along with Loyalist paramilitaries. As they were leaving the jails, a new crop was entering due to new or alleged acts of resistance, rising to 70 between jails in both states and never falling much below 50.

11See Useful Links and References at end.

12Popular Irish balladeer Christy Moore, on a British tour in the 1980s, greeted his London audience by calling the city “Derrylondon” to wild cheering. Shortly afterwards an Irish activist produced Christmas cards displaying London sights in snow, titled “Christmas greetings from Derrylondon”.

13Derry City FC is also the name of the local soccer club which enjoys cross-community support.

14“Colmcille’s (“Dove of the Church”, real name possibly Crimthann of the Cenel Connail) Oakwood”.

USEFUL LINKS & REFERENCES

Bloody Sunday Campaign for Justice: (10) Bloody Sunday March | Facebook

Bloody Sunday (1972) – Wikipedia

T-Shirts, free delivery, all proceeds to fund March: Bloody Sunday Derry Campaign (teemill.com)

Craigavon Two Campaign: https://www.facebook.com/mrsmcconville

Justice for Manus Deery: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?

Michelle, you are a disgrace

On April 9, 2021 By rebelbreezeIn Current Affairs Comment, Ireland, National Liberation, Political AnalysisLeave a comment

Dear Michelle O’Neill, Deputy Prime Minister of the British Colony in Ireland, I write to tell you that you are a disgrace. In many ways and for many reasons but on this occasion in particular for your message to the Chief of the Royal Parasites, Monarch of the Occupying Power and Commander in Chief of the Colonial & Imperial Armed Forces by which power her State currently occupies six counties of our land.

Michelle O’Neill, Deputy First Minister Six County Colony and Vice-President Sinn Féin party. (Photo sourced: Internet)

“I wish to extend my sincere condolences to Queen Elizabeth and her family on the death of her husband Prince Phillip.
“Over the past two decades there have been significant interventions by the British Royal family to assist in the building of relationships between Britain and Ireland.
“It is appropriate that this contribution to the advancement of peace and reconciliation is rightly recognised.
“To all those of a unionist tradition and of British identity – those who value and cherish the Royal family – I wish to acknowledge the sense of loss felt.”

Had you confined yourself to a note expressing sympathy for the sorrow of another human being, even that one, that might have been forgivable. But you went further and made it political. “The building of relationships between Britain and Ireland” indeed! We’ve been having a relationship with the rulers of Britain for more than eight and a half centuries — a relationship of conquest, oppression and repression on their side and resistance on ours.

“Contribution to peace and reconciliation” indeed! The best contribution they could make to that — and probably the only one of any significance — would be to pull their forces and administration out of our country.

As for “those of …. British identity”, outside of the unionist sector in our country, most them had no great love for this racist and arrogant parasite whose exposure in the British media on a number of occasions has caused him to be given strong advice within the imperial administration to keep his mouth shut unless he is speaking off a script.

What does it matter what I think about the message you have sent? Not much to anyone except myself, one would assume. But Michelle, most self-respecting socialists, republicans or democrats will be thinking along similar lines. There must be hundreds of close supporters of your own party who are squirming in shame right now, trying to ignore your words or fumbling for rationalisations.

Michelle O’Neill last year taking part in recruitment for the sectarian colonial armed police. (Photo sourced: Internet)

I am not a supporter of your party and I do not approve, of course, of your participation in the administration of the occupiers’ colony, so I shouldn’t care perhaps. It’s strange though because in some way I feel you have tainted and diminished me.

Are these words going to make any difference? Not at all — except to make me feel a little better. To endure injury without protest is perhaps a worse option.

I would cry “for shame!” if it were not clear for some time now that you are completely shameless.

Diarmuid Breatnach

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-56689411 BBC.COMNorthern Ireland pays tribute to Prince PhilipTributes are paid to the Duke of Edinburgh following his death at the age of 99.