Bloody Sunday Remembered in London

 By Theo Russell

Around 100 campaigners gathered in London’s Parliament Square on 27th January at a commemoration of the 50 years that have passed since 13 civil rights activists were shot by the Parachute Regiment on 30th January 1972 in Derry.
    Speakers at the ceremony, organised by the Terence MacSwiney Commemoration Committee, paid tribute to the innocent victims of the terror unleashed by the Paras on that Bloody Sunday in the occupied north of Ireland.
    Gerry Duddy, brother of John Duddy who died on that infamous day, spoke for the Bloody Sunday Justice Campaign, which is still fighting for the prosecution of the "uniformed criminals who murdered our people on the streets".
    Last year the Public Prosecution Service dropped charges against two of the Bloody Sunday soldiers after a right-wing press campaign, and Boris Johnson has told parliament he wants to end all legacy investigations, trials and even inquests.
    Duddy said the British government announced the amnesty “because they are running scared. They are scared that their soldiers, spooks and civil servants will be exposed and that their role as a combatant and a catalyst in the war in Ireland will be shown to the world. They deny us justice because they are scared to face justice".
    But he said the families wanted to send "a very clear warning to the British government" that if they pursued an amnesty: "The Bloody Sunday families will be ready to meet them head on, and we will not go away or be silenced. We will expose them for what they are – an embarrassment to any western democracy founded on the rule of law".
    Labour MPs Diane Abbott and Richard Burgon, and John Finucane, the Sinn Féin MP for North Belfast, also addressed the gathering. Finucane also spoke about his own family’s continued campaign for truth and justice to expose British state collusion in the murder of his father, human rights lawyer Pat Finucane, in 1989.
    Shelly Asquith, speaking for the Stop the War Coalition, pledged continued support for the Bloody Sunday families and an end to any more Bloody Sundays the world over.
    A message was also read out from John McDonnell, another Labour MP who is a long-standing friend of the Irish community in Britain, who could not take part in the ceremony as he was self-isolating due to a COVID‑19 infection,
    All the speakers forcefully condemned the Tory government’s amnesty proposal, pointing out that it is opposed not only by the Labour Party but by every party in Ireland.
    A contribution was also made by veteran Irish community activist Jim Curran, who was present outside Westminster 50 years ago in 1972 when London’s Irish community mobilised when the news of Bloody Sunday broke.
    After the event the organisers circulated a message thanking all those who joined them, saying: “It’s those who turn out who make the day a success. We ask everyone to keep the Bloody Sunday families in their thoughts over the weekend. We shall overcome!”