Reports coming in this evening tell us that when the British army was found guilty of shooting dead at least nine and maybe ten innocent people in Ballymurphy in 1971, “Families of those killed who have campaigned for decades to clear the names of their relatives wept, hugged and applauded.” I can only marvel at their Christian restraint.
The British army and the British establishment have been lying about the Ballymurphy massacre for even longer than they lied about Bloody Sunday, which involved the same Parachute regiment. Lawyers for the soldiers claimed that the troops opened fire only when they perceived they were under threat. That’s pretty much what they claimed for decades about Bloody Sunday as well. As recently as the past few months, various military worthies were insisting that the relatives’ claims were “vexatious”. That fine organ The Daily Mail reports that General Sir Geoffrey Howlett, who was a lieutenant colonel in the Parachute regiment back then, told the inquest he acknowledged that “most of those killed” were innocent.
Note that “most”. You almost have to admire the shameless insistence on hanging on to a 50-year-old lie.
Among the victims was Joan Connolly, a mother of eight children, the youngest two years old. During a radio discussion of the death of Jean McConville, one of the participants wondered aloud why the fate of Joan Connolly wasn’t raised with the same regularity. “Who’s Joan Connolly?” Mike Nesbitt, later to become leader of the UUP, asked.
What state has the British establishment reduced us to, that they can order daylight killings of innocent civilians, deny culpability for decades, and then have those bereaved applaud when the truth is finally squeezed out of their lying mouths?
I’m all for truth. Now what the fuck about justice?
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