Bloody Sunday: response from British soon?
By Martha McClelland
On Tuesday, Bloody Sunday relatives meet the Taoiseach. Sources
indicate that an initial response from the British Government to
the dossier on Bloody Sunday compiled by the previous Dublin
Government last year will be outlined. Over the past year, fresh
evidence and a growing world-wide lobby for a new independent
inquiry has put the British Government under increasing press.
With the collapse of the Tories, an international spotlight is
now focused on the Labour government's response.
ything less than an independent international inquiry will be
rejected by relatives. Alternatives, such as a three person
committee sitting to review current documents, are impotent and
unable to deal with the mountain of eyewitness and other evidence
which has been supressed. Some evidence suggests that Labour
wants to deal with this open wound, but are afraid to because
this requires them putting the Ministry of Defence and the
Parachute Regiment in the dock.
Don Mullan, author of Eyewitness Bloody Sunday, referring to
revelations throughout the year exposing glaring discrepancies in
the ``evidence'' used by the British government in their case, said
``Bloody Sunday is an issue which is not going to go away. The
findings of the Widgery Tribunal have been shown to be completely
at odds with the evidence presented. We have gathered support
from around the world and unless the Labour administration are
prepared to set aside the findings of the Widgery Tribunal and
launch a new independent inquiry they will come under even more
pressure.''
In addition to recent revelations of a British Army helicopter
film taken that day, but never presented in evidence, the Bloody
Sunday Justice Campaign are upping their campaign to prove that
shots were fired from the City Walls. The British Army version
rules out the possibility of shots being fired from the Walls,
but last year Thomas Dawe, an Englishman, came forward to reveal
that bullets landed on the grassy bank underneath which he was
sheltering. These could only have been fired from the Walls.
archaeologist and a geophysicist have now been called in to
search for bullets believed to be embedded in a grass verge under
the Walls. John Kelly, whose brother was shot dead that day,
spoke for the Justice Group and said ``If we can prove that shots
were fired from the Walls, then the British Government will have
a moral obligation to admit the errors in the Widgery Report and
open a new and independent inquiry.''
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