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| The ceremony begins |
by
New Worker correspondent
New Communist Party leader Andy Brooks joined comrades, war veterans, diplomats and anti-fascists to remember the victims of the Holocaust at a ceremony in the grounds of the Imperial War Museum in south London last week.
The annual Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration, organised by the Soviet War Memorial Trust and Southwark Council, could not be held last year because of the Covid lockdown but the recent easing of the restrictions meant that although the traditional commemoration in the halls of the Museum was still suspended the outdoor ceremony could once again go ahead.
The solemn event organised by the Soviet War Memorial Trust and Southwark Council was held on Thursday 27th January, the day back in 1945 when the Red Army liberated Auschwitz, the largest death camp in the Third Reich.
The Nazis killed six million Jews during the Second World War. There were hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens amongst them. About three million Soviet prisoners of war perished in extermination camps.
The Act of Remembrance began with a procession led by veterans’ associations to the Holocaust Memorial Tree and the Soviet War Memorial, followed by the laying of wreaths and floral tributes by the company that included veteran organisations, representatives of the embassies of the Russian Federation and Belarus, as well as local Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors, the NCP and members of the Russian community in London. It ended, as always, with a minute’s silence and the Last Post.
By Theo RussellAround 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!”
