At least thirteen civilians were slain and sixteen or more injured when British troops opened fire on those taking part in the Civil Rights Association demonstration in Derry yesterday. Another woman was also seriously injured after being knocked down by a speeding armoured car.
The march set off at about 2.30 pm from the Bishops Fields area behind the Creggan, and at least 20,000 people were estimated to have been on it by the time it reached William St and the barricades set up by the British Army to prevent access into Waterloo Place and Guildhall. Soon after it reached the barricades a section of the marchers started stoning the troops of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Green Jackets, who were manning the barricades Then at about 3.30 pm the troops opened up with CS gas and a dozen shots from a water cannon which drenched the marchers in purple, indelible dye. Shortly afterwards the troops also opened up with a continuous hail of rubber bullets.
There are wildly conflicting accounts of wha ollowed, although in the light of what cam afterwards, as Michael Canavan of the Derry Citizens Central Council said, " it doesn't really matter. be the most reliable report, from Simon Winchester in The Guardian, a single shot ored. This was the only shot heard by.
Bored".
Winchester before the Army later opened fire.
Then about ten minutes later, as the crowd was moving off to a meeting at Free Derry Corner, troops from the !st Battalion of the Paratroopers began to advance in a move obviously completely unconnected with the previous single shot. Winchester describes what happened next:
Four or live armoured cars appeared i Villiam Street and raced into the Rossvill Street square, and several thousand people began to run away...... Paratroopers piled out of their vehicles, many ran forward to make arrests, but others rushed to the street corners. It was these men, perhaps 20 in all, who opened fire with their rifles...
Army snipers could be seen firing continuously towards the central Bogside streets and at one stage a lone army sniper on a street corner fired two shots towards me as I peered around a corner.
Then people could be seen moving forward in Fahan Street, their hands above their heads. One man was carrying a white handkerchief. Gunfire was directed even at them and they EDITORIAL BOARD: Tariq Ali, Dave Bailey, Robin Blackbum, J. R. Clynes, Peter Gowan, Teresa Hayter, Alan Jones, Pat Jordan, Branka Magas, Martin Meteyard, Neil Middleton, Bob Purdie, Daniel Rose. DESIGN: Dave Edmunds DISTRIBUTION: Phil Sanders Published by Relgocrest for The Red Mole, 182 Pentonville Road, London N.I. 01-837 6954, 01-278 2616.
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grapher quoted in The Times.
tar as i could see, they did not fire ove people's heads at all.
one of the dying.
According to what appears to car registration was faulty shooting started.
morning, there are 3000 tonight.' area. He added that, civilians murdered by troops in Derry.
Bloody Sunday 1920, the massacre of Derry, far from signifying a victory for British imperialism, will on the contrary prove in the long term to have been a fled or fell to the ground.... the sound which predominated was the heavy, hard banging of the British SLRs, and this continued for about his report is corroborated by a press photo * I was appalle They opened up into a crowd of people. As The Financial Times also admits " that there was a great deal of shooting by the Army at the crowd, while As well as all the shooting, over 70 people wer arrested, including a priest who was dragged away while administering the last rites to on Apart from the main facts of the massacre, several other interesting points emerge from the different newsreports. Winchester claims that he was later shot at by " a civilian, armed with a 22 rifle...firing from a Protestant part What part did the UVF play in th massacre? And the Morning Star alone reports that Tony Smythe of the National Council for Civil Liberties, along with its own reporter Chris Myant, was deliberately prevented by security forces from witnessing the rally. In the /0 miles trom Bellast to Derry they were stopped five times, and finally taken to Derry's main police station on the grounds that the We were only let out when the shooting had finished." There were obviously people in the security forces who knew what was going to happen before the After the shooting was over, there were swift reactions from many of those involved. One man told the Financial Times reporter that, morrhere Were are 3000 tonight." The locals commanding officer of the Provisional IRA had ordered all weapons out of the total route " we will avenge every death in Derry today", and a later statement by the Provisionals promised an all-out campaign to kill British soldiers in return for the Bernadette Devlin, Derry Labour Party, and General Strike in reland, Norte and Sour.
Whatever the immediate reaction, however, there can be no doubt of one thing. Like watershed in the growing struggle of the Irish people for national self-determination.
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