THE joy and the relief etched on the faces of the Ballymurphy families yesterday were an inspirational reminder of what can be achieved when people come together as a support community to seek the rights of which they have been deprived.
That 10 people were brutally and ruthlessly cut down across three days in August 1971 was a crime of appalling magnitude – but the decades of vilification that successive generations of the families of the dead were subjected to by a combination of the British black ops machine and a compliant media were also a crime of unimaginable callousness.
The responsibility of the media in the North in spreading black information – referred to by relatives at yesterday’s desperately moving press conference – is a little explored journalistic travesty. Quite simply, the attacks on the reputations of the dead and the pain inflicted on their families would not have been possible had reporters here not acted as stenographers for Thiepval Barracks propaganda and our profession deserves to be reminded of that in the hope that it will never be allowed to happen again.
If anyone had hoped that the clearing of the Ballymurphy dead would be met with the same speed and humanity with which David Cameron reacted in 2010 to the finding of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry they were to be disappointed. But in fact anyone familiar with this Conservative administration – and the families are certainly counted among that number – will most likely have been prepared for Downing Street to display the same contempt for justice and decency that they have done during the Brexit process and the Covid pandemic.
The families say they will now take a step back, rest, regroup and consider what their next step is. That is the right thing to do – not just for their own peace of mind, but because we all must wait now to see what emerges from the Tory promise in the Queen’s speech this week to bring forward legislation to deal with legacy issues related to the Troubles.
The Tories last week briefed the British press that they would move to put in place an effective amnesty for British soldiers, even if that means an amnesty for republican and loyalist paramilitaries too. So in effect, the options open to the relatives are entirely dependent on the whim of a British government which is able to push through virtually whatever it pleases thanks its Commons majority.
That is nothing new. The Ballymurphy families have faced down British obstructionism, stalling and prevarication for decades. They have watched campaign colleagues die before they got the chance to hear the words of vindication that were spoken on Tuesday by Mrs Justice Keegan.
They don’t want to go head-to-head again with the British government and its bottomless supply of money resources and bad faith. But they will if they have to. The Parachute Regiment was out of control in 1971 and slaughtered the innocents. That must have its answer.
