Republican News · Thursday 29 January 1998

[An Phoblacht]

Bloody Sunday in London

By Fern Lane

Two thousand people marched through London on 24 January to commemorate the victims of Bloody Sunday and to demand that the truth be told about the events of that day.

Although there was a heavy police presence, with a helicopter overhead, police in riot gear and surveillance teams on roof tops, the march passed off peacefully and ended with a rally at Caxton House.

It was led by Joe McKinney, whose brother William was killed on Bloody Sunday and Sinn Fein's Dodie McGuinness. Joe told supporters that consecutive British governments from Edward Heath's to Tony Blair's had refused to face up to the British state's responsibility for the atrocity.

He said, ``It is the duty of the state to seek out murderers and bring them to justice, but the Widgery Report found the innocent guilty and the guilty innocent.''

``Justice is not a privilege served only on the few,'' he said.

``In the last few years we had thought that the attitude was softening, John Major told us that the victims should be presumed innocent. But Colonel Wilford showed no remorse - he said that he had nothing to apologise for.''

Edel Kelly, wife of POW Patrick Kelly, currently imprisoned in Full Sutton jail, spoke on the plight of men held in English jails, including those without tariffs who have served 23 years but are unable to apply for transfer because they have been given no minimum sentence.

She outlined the abuses of prisoners which had taken place, including the denial of proper family or legal visits and explained the difficulties of trying to maintain family relationships when husbands and fathers are held hundreds of miles away and are denied any physical contact during rare visits which are videoed and take place in the presence of prison officers.

Alongside Joe and Edel on the platform was the Labour MP John McDonnell. ``This issue will not go away,'' he said.

He told the audience that in the lobbies of the House of Commons, both he and fellow MP Jeremy Corbyn ``have pinned people against the wall and said to them `Do you know what has happened in Ireland in your name?'''

He called for an independent inquiry into Bloody Sunday, saying, ``If this government can send a Foreign Office Minister to Algeria to find out what is happening there, then they can bloody well send one to Derry.''

Referring to the current talks process at Stormont, he said, ``A council of the Isles and an assembly is not what people have laid down their lives for over thirty years. We want peace, but the settlement must be just and the settlement must be for an agreed and united Ireland.''

Dodie McGuinness also addressed the rally. She commented that during his recent Channel 4 interview on Bloody Sunday Colonel Derek Wilford ``called it a `magnificent day.' Well, we'll see him eat his words.'' She went on, ``800 years of colonial occupation by the British establishment and it still doesn't think it has anything to apologise for.


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