On the 20th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in 1992, with the Northern conflict
raging, Eamonn McCann launched a book on the massacre. Every TD was invited
to the event in Buswell's hotel; only Tony Gregory showed up.
"Disgracefully, Bloody Sunday campaigners were somehow associated with the
IRA, " says McCann.
"Then, post-ceasefire, it became respectable to jump on the bandwagon. The
families can hardly cross the street in Dublin now without some TD offering
their hand."
Of all the campaigns he has ever been involved in, Bloody Sunday is probably
closest to McCann's heart. After the slaughter, he remembers thinking, "We
can get them for this." Fourteen unarmed civilians were killed; the same
number wounded. When McCann interviews their families, he's talking to
neighbours and friends.
"The idea for the book came from the media referring to 'the Bloody Sunday
families' as though they were a single organisation. There are 28 families,
some very large. There isn't one view shared between families, or even
within families. I wanted to let them all speak for themselves."
Some families have faith in the Saville Inquiry, which is expected to
publish its report early next year, others see it as all PR. Some want the soldiers tried and imprisoned; others
don't. Some say Bloody Sunday convinced them violence pays; it reinforced
pacifism for others.
McCann remembers the first shots: "I hit the ground and crawled along,
taking shelter in the gutter with two women. I put my hand over one, to
protect her head from the bullets, as though that would work.
"I remember lying there and this woman, who was in her 40s, calling me 'Mr
McCann'. I was only 26, and was amazed that, even amidst this madness, such
formality prevailed." Later, he saw an armed IRA man running down the street
"and half the people raging at the Brits and telling him to go and shoot the
f*****s and the other half telling him not to".
McCann's commitment to Bloody Sunday has been awesome. He missed only 10 of
Saville's 434 days. When the tribunal moved to London, he went at his own
expense. "No paper would pay me to be there, no paper would even contribute
a penny to my expenses. Indeed, not a single newspaper allocated a staff
journalist to cover the entire tribunal."
The families' complaints about media coverage are justified, he says. "It
was 'here's Martin McGuinness, here's Ian Paisley. Crash, bang, wallop!'.
But we're not interested in the testimony of the soldier who killed your
brother.
"I remember one soldier, O27, breaking rank and saying he saw his colleagues
commit murder. He'd kept a diary, which was later stolen by transvestites on
the Paris underground. Of course, the papers led on the mugging but not one
even mentioned that this soldier had also said 'I saw murder done'."
McCann is angry at unionist hostility to the campaign. "Hundreds of
documents, including cabinet committee minutes, showed the British had as
much contempt for unionists as for nationalists. Bloody Sunday was to give
the Bogside a bloody nose for challenging the British ruling class. It
wasn't done to help unionists. It was a very British atrocity."
He won't accept genuine regret exists in the upper military echelons.
Saville heard that General Michael Jackson, now Britain's top officer, and
second-incommand of the First Paras in 1972, had described Bloody Sunday
four days later as "a first-rate operation".
McCann says: "Jackson's steady ascent through British army ranks after
Bloody Sunday mirrors Colin Powell's rise in the US military after My Lai.
If they met, they could have a good chuckle about how it was their lucky
break – getting a massacre to cover up."
