WHAT BLOODY MEN WERE THESE? – by Donal Kennedy
Though retired and virtually under house arrest because of the pandemic I don’t watch much TV.
Most programmes are shite or trite and those that are not are interrupted by advertising. I can remember when there were only two channels, both in black and white when advertisements could be clever and funny, but those days are gone.
The night after watching Simon Sebag Montefiore’s documentary on Spain, by chance I stumbled on the American Public Broadcasting Service and a programme on the Night of the Long Knives.
On that night in 1934 Hitler wiped out his old Brown Shirted friends, together with some traditional right-wing conservatives opposed to the Nazis .
I found the programme very interesting but was taken aback at the end when General Sir Mike Jackson,who, as a Captain in the Parachute Regiment distinguished himself in Ballymurphy in August 1971 during Operation Demetrius, had the last word on the 1934 blood bath.
I wonder if Jackson was chosen to comment because of his expertise in slaughter or for his other talent,
The Gallant Gentleman has the gift of invention’ which he employed in his written summary of the Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry of January 30th 1972. This gift was uncovered by Lord Saville’s Inquiry which discounted his report and Prime Minister David Cameron, publicly declared that all those shot that day were unarmed and innocent of the offences imputed to them by Jackson’s report.
The Night Of The Long Knives was an horrific incident and the killers and their victims are long dead,
Besides,it was in another country.
But many of the perpetrators of the Ballymurphy and Bloody Sunday Massacres are still strutting their stuff, in MY COUNTRY,and seeing one of them pontificating on the American Public Broacasting Service was quite a shock.
I had assumed I was watching an American documentary
It was actually made by the BBC.
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