JUNE 17 2010.
Your headline “Bloody Sunday: The wait for justice ends” (June 15) is misleading.
Yes, the murdered men and youths, the wounded, their families and supporters have been vindicated by a British inquiry and a British government has accepted what the rest of the world has long known. But the murderers, their political bosses, their supporters and their lying propagandists have not been brought to justice, openly and in public. In the heartless world which they represent they may never be brought to justice.
Those with faith in a God of Justice must, in the meantime, console themselves with the belief that Lord Widgery, and those of his ilk who are beyond doing further evil, are roasting in Hell, and hope that the keys to it are in St. Patrick’s pocket.
Donal Kennedy
London 17/6/2010.
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DECEMBER 7th 2010
HONOURED MURDERER
Lord Saville was persuaded that Lt. Col. Derek Wilford of the Parachute Regiment disobey orders in Derry in 1972, causing the deaths of 13 unarmed civilians and wounding many more, and that no more senior person, military or civilian, shared the Colonel’s culpability. In the recent Commons debate on Lord Saville’s report, both front benches concurred with Saville’s finding.
Apparently, in the nearly 39 years since Bloody Sunday Colonel Wilford never suffered so much as a mild rebuke.
The earth hadn’t settled on the graves of his victims when his Queen appointed him to the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, deemed an Order of Chivalry.
Donal Kennedy
London 7/12/2010
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19 DECEMBER 2010
A CENOTAPH HISTORY
Writing in The Times (Dec 14) one John A Sibbald says that it hardly seems credible that a second-year Cambridge student is unaware of the significance of the Cenotaph in Whitehall.
I understand that at the time of its unveiling by King George V on November 11 1920 some unemployed veterans remarked (though not in his presence) “we asked for bread and you gave us a stone”. I understand that a cenotaph is an empty grave..
I think the significance of the cenotaph cannot be fully appreciated apart from its context.
On November 11 1920 an unknown warrior from the Great War was buried in Westminster Abbey in King George V’s presence.
On November 11 1920 the Government of Ireland Bill had its final reading in the House of Commons. It got King George V’s assent on 23 December and Ireland was partitioned by statute.
But the statute did not have the assent of the Irish people nor that of any MP for an Irish constituency.
Three quarters of rhe Irish MPs elected in 1918 never attended Westminster and the remaining quarter did not vote for the bill.
The ceremonies in Whitehall and the Abbey were exercises of cynical manipulation by politicians who had lured a generation of young men to their deaths with promises of peace, freedom and national self-determination.
The body buried at the Abbey may have been turning in its grave, and it is not too fanciful to suggest that the Cenotaph, far from being an empty grave, was used to bury the promises of politicians and the hopes of a betrayed generation.
Donal Kennedy
London 19/12/2010.
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