The Saville Report
Statement issued 18 June by CPGB-ML
With the release, on 15 June
2010, of the report by the Saville Inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday in
Derry on 30 January 1972, the British state has finally been forced to admit
what the Irish people, and people throughout the world, have known for the last
38 years, namely that all the dead and injured were completely innocent and
that the killings by the British Army’s parachute regiment that day were “unjustified
and unjustifiable”.
Speaking in Derry as the report was released, Sinn
Fein President, Gerry Adams MP, said:
“Today is a day for the families of
those killed and those injured on Bloody Sunday.
“They have campaigned for 38 years for
the truth and for justice. They have campaigned for the British government to
end their policy of cover-up and concealment.
“The facts of what happened on Bloody
Sunday are clear – the British Paras came to Derry and murdered 14 civil-rights
marchers and injured 13 others. They were unarmed, they posed no threat and
they were completely innocent.
“Today, Saville has put the lies of
Widgery [a whitewash enquiry into the events ordered by the British
government in their immediate aftermath] into the dustbin of history, and
with it the cover-up which was authorised at the highest levels within the
British establishment and lasted for almost four decades.”
The Communist Party of Great Britain
(Marxist-Leninist), which upholds the right of the Irish people to
self-determination and stands for an end to partition and the unification of
Ireland, joins with the families who lost their loved ones on that fateful day,
with the working-class people of Derry, and with their republican leadership,
in celebrating the momentous victory they have scored.
It is unprecedented for a British prime minister to
have to stand up in the House of Commons and engage in a humiliating act of
contrition for the bloody crimes of imperialism’s armed forces. We do not doubt
that the words stuck in Cameron’s throat, but they brought joy to our hearts
and to those of class-conscious British workers.
Writing in the Guardian, Comrade Gerry Adams
poignantly described the atmosphere as the report was released:
“Representatives of all the families spoke. One
by one they declared their relative, their brother, their father, their uncle,
‘innocent!’
“Their remarks were interrupted by loud
applause. People cried and cheered. Clenched fists stabbed the air. Not the clenched
fists of young radicals. These were elderly Derry grannies and granddads.
Elderly widows. Middle-aged siblings.” (‘Bloody Sunday is the defining
story of the British army in Ireland’, 16 June 2010)
The above title of Adams’ article was a direct response
to Prime Minister Cameron’s feeble attempt at face-saving, claiming that: “Bloody
Sunday is not the defining story of the service the British Army gave in northern Ireland.”
All this is part of an attempt by the British state
to cut its losses. Forced to admit blame, at the same time, it would have us
believe that this was but one unfortunate incident, the responsibility of one
regiment and of one conveniently dead commanding officer. In other words, the
British state is continuing to lie through its teeth.
As Tony Doherty, whose father was one of those
murdered on Bloody Sunday, told the 15 June crowd in Derry: “The Parachute
Regiment are the frontline assassins for Britain’s political and military elite.”
(Quoted in Adams, op cit)
Serving to underline the point, relatives of the
Ballymurphy 11 joined the Bloody Sunday relatives at the head of the march. The
Ballymurphy 11, ten men, including a local priest, and a mother of eight
children, were murdered in that area of West Belfast by the same parachute
regiment, in the 36 hours after the British state introduced internment without
trial in August 1971, six months before Bloody Sunday. Their struggle for
justice continues and we pledge it our full support.
Likewise, Sinn Fein Deputy Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin,
speaking in the Dáil (the Irish parliament), called on the Irish government to
“press the British government to comply with the unanimous all-party motion
adopted by the Dáil nearly two years ago, which called on the British
government to release to an international investigation all facts it possesses
on the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 17 May 1974”.
Thirty-three people were killed and nearly 300
wounded in these car bombs, which were much later conveniently claimed by the
Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) loyalist terror gang, but which are widely
believed to have occurred with at least the connivance of British intelligence.
Comrade Ó Caoláin went on to rightly state: “The
final act of justice will be when every remaining soldier of the British Army
is at last withdrawn from the six counties.”
Far from being the exception that Cameron implied,
Bloody Sunday is not merely the defining story of the British army in Ireland,
but also its defining story throughout the world, be it of the Amritsar
Massacre in 1919 (for which Shaheed Udham Singh finally took vengeance in
1940), or in countless places in the post-World War II period alone, from
Korea, Cyprus, Malaya (where British soldiers posed grinning for photos holding
the severed heads of captured suspected guerrillas), Kenya (where the British
army retains a reputation for mass, systemic rape to this day) and Aden (where
British soldiers awarded themselves ‘golliwog’ labels for killing innocent
civilians), through the Malvinas and the Balkans, to the contemporary wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan.
We should entertain no illusions that the Saville
Report somehow represents the British state turning over a new leaf. Just this
month, former Labour defence minister Adam Ingram was forced to admit that he
misled parliament (generally considered a far more heinous offence than
butchering oppressed people!) over the hooding and ‘inhumane treatment’ of
Iraqi detainees.
This emerged from the inquiry into the death of
Iraqi hotel receptionist, Baha Mousa, tortured and beaten to death by the
British army in Basra in September 2003. Documents disclosed by the inquiry set
up into his death show that Ingram was copied on a memo revealing that Baha
Mousa was hooded for a total of nearly 24 hours during 36 hours in British
military custody before he died. Nine months later, Ingram claimed that hooding
was only used while detainees were being transported for security reasons.
A report in the Morning Star noted: “The
former minister also told the inquiry that he was not aware of three-decade-old
prohibitions on the hooding of prisoners until 2004.
“The ban on hooding, the use of stress positions
and other degrading treatment was issued in 1972 by then prime minister Edward
Heath after abuses of detainees in Northern Ireland.
“But all these measures were routinely used by
British forces in Basra and elsewhere in Iraq, even after specific instructions
not to do so.
“Mr Ingram, a former Northern Ireland security
minister, said that he was not aware of the ‘Heath ruling’ until it was referred
to in a May 2004 document.” (‘Ex-minister Ingram misled us on Iraq abuse’, 2 June 2010)
How correct Karl Marx was when he observed that, “English
reaction has its roots in Ireland”.
Our party proudly calls for victory to the Iraqi
and Afghan resistance, precisely so that the countless Baha Mousas do not, like
the brave people of Derry, have to wait 38 years for justice and vindication.
What the British state has reluctantly conceded
after nearly four decades was always as clear as daylight. As the Communist
Party of China wrote at the time:
“Why don’t you show any respect … for the just
wishes of the Northern Irish people to have their democratic rights, since you
always talk about respecting ‘the wishes of the people’? You have made a
hullabaloo about a ‘civilised solution’, but why have you acted so barbarously
in slaughtering the Northern Irish demonstrators and why are you continually
sending troops and police to carry out armed suppression on a larger scale? …
The bloody suppression of the Northern Irish people by the British government
once again reveals its so-called ‘civilisation’.” (‘Firmly support the
Northern Irish people’s just struggle’, People’s Daily, 8 February 1972)
British imperialism’s belated acknowledgement of
the dreadful crime it committed in Derry on 30 January 1972 may be attributed
to two factors above all:
[1] To
the courage, dignity, strength and resilience of the bereaved families; and
[2] To
the tenacious struggle waged by the republican movement and the nationalist community,
principally the armed struggle waged by the IRA, that finally opened the door
to a political process that is slowly but surely going in the direction of a
united Ireland.
British imperialism, like all reactionary forces,
despises the weak and fears the strong. Its preferred modus operandi
when oppressed people rise up is to drown them in blood, ride out the ensuing
political storm, if there is one, and continue raking in the loot.
The risen Irish people denied them that option. As
an ITN journalist observed, the IRA made the British army pay a high price for
Bloody Sunday in the ensuing years, with more than 600 dead and many more
wounded.
The victory of the Bloody Sunday relatives comes at
a difficult time for British imperialism, with, as we have noted above,
imperialist wars being fought in Iraq and, especially at the present time, Afghanistan, as well as with the savage economic crisis raising the spectre of possible
unrest at home.
With the mawkish ‘welcome’ afforded the steady
stream of coffins as they pass through the town of Wootton Bassett, military
parades in such working class towns as Barking, and the attempts to criminalise
militant protests by sections of the Muslim community to such displays, we need
to hammer home the point that participation in an imperialist war does not make
you a hero. It makes you a criminal.
The real heroes are those like the Bloody Sunday
families, the Afghan resistance, Military Families Against the War, and
soldiers like Joe Glenton, who would rather serve time than fight in an unjust
war.
In saluting and paying
tribute to the Bloody Sunday families, the people of Derry, the republican
movement, and the risen Irish people on their significant victory, the CPGB-ML
commits itself to playing its part in the ongoing struggle to realise a free,
sovereign and united Ireland and to see the day when British troops are no
longer able to rampage in Ireland, Iraq, Afghanistan or any other country.
In the words of Bobby
Sands: “Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.”