Bloody Sunday: The Day When Everything Changed - a Derry Journal podcast
Bloody Sunday: The Day When Everything Changed by the Derry Journal.
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00:00 I'm Brendan McDade, editor of the Dairy Journal, and this is Bloody Sunday, 50 years on, the
00:13 day everything changed.
00:16 In this podcast we will mark the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday by looking back at events
00:20 that day and the aftermath through the eyes of the relatives of those who died and contemporary
00:25 reports from the Dairy Journal archive at the time.
00:29 Some lives lost and others forever changed, these voices continue to campaign for justice
00:34 today.
00:53 The Dairy Journal editorial, Tuesday, February 1st, 1972.
00:59 A ghastly atrocity.
01:00 However hard one tries to keep a grip on his feelings and on his words in face of what
01:05 has happened in Dairy, the facts cry out of themselves in condemnation before the world
01:10 of such a mass murder, for it was nothing less.
01:15 Sunday was the blackest day for the name of the British Army since Arnhem Ritzaar.
01:19 It is only a short time ago that an English organ revealed that officers of other British
01:22 regiments in Belfast applied to have the power trip squads withdrawn from sensitive areas
01:27 there, so infuriating had their conduct been.
01:31 Their next employment in similar fashion was at McGilligan, to bludgeon and jackboot the
01:36 anti-interment protest there.
01:46 For the people of Dairy and indeed for many people across Ireland, the words Bloody Sunday
01:50 evoke emotions, thoughts and feelings that are difficult to explain.
01:54 Something stirs in us, even those of us born in the years since, and even today.
01:59 The horrific events visited on our city 50 years ago this weekend changed not only the
02:05 course of history on this island and beyond, but they shaped who we are today.
02:09 13 unarmed boys and men were shot dead by the British Army Power Trip Regiment during
02:14 a civil rights march on Dairy on January 30th 1972 and a 14th person died of his injuries
02:21 later on.
02:23 Many more men and women, also innocent civilians, were wounded.
02:27 It would however take decades and two inquiries for a British Prime Minister to finally issue
02:31 a state apology for what David Cameron terms in 2010 the "unjustified and unjustifiable
02:37 killings" upon the conclusion of the Saville inquiry.
02:41 Jackie Dottie was one of several teenagers who were shot dead that day in Dairy.
02:45 Speaking to journal reporter Laura Glenn, his sister Kaye recalls the boy she knew.
02:50 It was just a reality, when you're one of a family of 14 you kind of blend in don't
02:59 you?
03:00 I enjoyed going to these boxes, I enjoyed the training.
03:01 It was actually timely idea of joining the Merchant Navy to get away from all the grief
03:09 because he used to get stabbed in her ass when he was even going to the boxing club
03:14 and stuff like that you know.
03:15 But when he first applied for the Merchant Navy, I think he was three months over the
03:20 recruitment age or something.
03:21 Then the recruitment agency got sent a letter they say that they would be in town on the
03:27 4th of February.
03:28 So, come so close, you know what I mean?
03:29 They did.
03:30 Again that's another unanswered question, would he have joined the Merchant Navy, would
03:31 he not?
03:32 Would he, you know what I mean?
03:33 And that come because my daddy had done and served some time in the Merchant Navy and
03:40 one of the brothers had served for a while in the Merchant Navy.
03:45 So maybe this is where that's coming from.
03:48 Jim Ray was a young man who had travelled to England for work previously and his life
03:52 was also full of promise, as his brother Liam told the Dairy Journal's Kevin Mullen.
03:56 Lovely character, not just saying that because my brother, very, very easy going.
04:00 I'd be firm if I got angry, and he wouldn't if I hadn't seen him in many situations.
04:05 But I remember one time somebody gave me a thumping at the dance hall one night and Jim
04:11 didn't get the ball but he stopped it.
04:13 The boys knew he meant business.
04:15 Another time up the walls, me and a few friends were playing football.
04:18 We were four years younger.
04:19 Jim would have been 17 at the time, we were 13.
04:22 We always played football up at the Goat Curtain at times too, up there around the first area
04:27 where he played me on the walls, that was our playground, and three teddy boys I think
04:31 came along and took a ball and started to give it, and Jim just happened to be passing
04:35 by and again he stopped.
04:38 That's the sort of boy he was.
04:39 But when he went to England, it wasn't easy.
04:42 I think he worked for a fair bit as a groundsman in Hyde Park.
04:46 One of the jobs he'd done.
04:48 But I remember then when he came back, he worked in Littlewoods as a store man part
04:53 time because it was only for I think over a period of time when they needed staff around
04:56 the summer, so he was home for that decent period of time.
05:01 And I remember then, I must have been, I'm just thinking, I must have been about 17,
05:05 18 at the time, so Jim must have been just a month before bloody Sunday.
05:10 And I went out, which I think was the only time I ever remember being in a bar with our
05:15 Jim.
05:16 It was a Saturday night in the Castle Bar, and we were having a couple of pints, not
05:19 a lot.
05:20 I wasn't drinking in bars before I was late 17, 18.
05:23 And I was in this company that night and we were having a few jars and a couple of orange
05:26 friends and somebody came in selling the War Cry, Salvation Army paper.
05:31 And at that time, you know, War Cry wouldn't have been in mind, but he was thinking that's,
05:35 and I was going, he says, "Let me tell you something, now, you always, if you get an
05:39 opportunity, you always buy that paper and support the Salvation Army."
05:42 He says, "You see the first week guys in England?
05:45 That's where I slept."
05:46 Because you couldn't get a job, you couldn't get digs, it was cold and he says, "They looked
05:50 after people."
05:51 He says, "That's a great organization."
05:53 And even to this day, I would still give to the Salvation Army as much as I was going
05:58 to support truck here.
05:59 He had a few guard friends during his earlier days.
06:02 One was a guard from Castle Dawson.
06:05 But when he went to England, then he met up with a young guard called Miriam.
06:09 She was an Israeli guard who was working in London at the time, was an au pair.
06:15 And her fell in love.
06:16 She came home, I think it was the August before Bloody Sunday, to meet the family.
06:21 She came over, Miriam, and her sister Boya.
06:24 And that was quite, to be honest with you, at that time I was just 18.
06:27 It was quite exotic seeing this tan, lovely looking Israeli girl.
06:32 Is there that photograph of Jim with her?
06:35 There's one where he's very, as you said, he's very tall looking, like you know.
06:39 There's one of him at the front door of the house in Drumcliffe, her standing beside him.
06:43 And there's one taken up outside St. Colm's Cathedral in the centre of the town there.
06:50 So him and her were getting married.
06:53 They were getting married the next year.
06:55 So Miriam was over to meet our family.
06:58 Kate Nash's younger brother William, 19, was a music loving youth who similarly had
07:02 a whole future to look forward to, she told reporter Kevin Mullan.
07:07 A big tall fella, you know, compared to the rest of our, you know, wee eight boys in the family.
07:11 And William was actually the tallest, you know.
07:13 He was a nice eight, full of good humour, you know, always pulling tricks on you, you know.
07:18 And he loved music, the country and western music.
07:21 You see every time I would hear that song, sometimes you find yourself humming it.
07:25 Marty Robbins, El Paso, out in the west, Texas, town of it, you know that song.
07:31 I've also heard it.
07:32 He played it every night.
07:33 He did love the music.
07:34 And he had good friends, you know, he had good friends.
07:36 The friends that he went to school with were still his friends at 19, and I've no doubt,
07:40 you know, because I know they were still his friends.
07:42 When William was 19, I was 23 at the time.
07:45 My last memory to you of him is him and I standing at the crack in the door.
07:49 Our Alan had just come home from England because of my mother having the heart attack.
07:55 And he arrived, and he arrived, we scared for him.
07:57 Willie was a bit shy.
07:59 So he was staring through the crack in the door, you know.
08:02 Me and him, we were just having a bit of a crack, you know.
08:05 [MUSIC PLAYING]
08:08 The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association was formed in 1967
08:20 amid widespread concern over gerrymandering and discrimination
08:24 in terms of housing, jobs, and in other areas of life, which disadvantaged
08:28 and disenfranchised many people living in Catholic nationalist areas like Derry.
08:34 The civil rights movement, inspired by others in the US and Europe,
08:37 included prominent figures of both Catholic and Protestant descent,
08:41 united in their conviction and calls for equality.
08:44 Internment had been introduced in the Northern Ireland in the summer of 1971,
08:49 sparking anger and protests across the region and beyond.
08:53 This gave the authorities the power to imprison and interrogate without trial,
08:57 a tool they had deployed frequently in Derry.
09:01 Early in 1972, Brian Faulkner, then Prime Minister of Northern Ireland,
09:06 banned all parades and marches.
09:08 But the measures galvanized the very people they were meant to suppress.
09:12 Days later, and at the interment march along the shores of McGilligan Strand,
09:16 around 20 miles north of Derry City, saw several thousand people march
09:21 peacefully, only to be hemmed in by Barb Boyer, by the British Army,
09:24 who fired rubber bullets and CS gas into the crowd.
09:27 A week later, another peaceful demonstration against interment
09:30 moved off from the central drive area of Derry's Craigen Estate,
09:33 with thousands joining along the way.
09:35 The march was prevented from going to the city centre by an army barricade,
09:38 and most headed into Rossville Street towards Freederry Corner.
09:42 Then the shooting started.
09:45 Mickey McKinney and several of his siblings were on the march that day,
09:48 including his brother Willie, who worked for this newspaper at the time.
09:52 Willie was one of those who would never come home.
09:56 Speaking to the Derry Journal's Sean McLachlan, Mickey recalls...
10:00 We all got lost, you know, on William Street.
10:03 We all got separated, probably because of what you do in a crowd anyway.
10:07 And I remember passing the flats, blocking one of the flats and thinking,
10:11 "Good, I'll go back down to William Street again and see if I can find my mates."
10:16 I decided against it, and I went on and I crossed over at the O'Bagley Fathom Park,
10:22 where word had filtered through the crowd about somebody being shot on William Street.
10:26 And this was at four o'clock, the gas was starting to be fired on men.
10:31 And the people who were shot then, I didn't find out until later,
10:34 was John Johnson and Damien Dunaghy.
10:37 And then I crossed over to the wee ballards just in front of where the monument is today,
10:43 and I met my wife, Mary.
10:45 We weren't married then, and she was a long-haired friend, Madeleine Brinker.
10:49 And Mary said to me, she said, "Come on, we'll go there."
10:52 And Joanna's men's in the Wales.
10:56 Just to get away from the gas, the effects of gas.
11:00 And we'll go to our alley then, you know, once things settle down.
11:05 But as we were heading towards the Wales,
11:07 and being very close to Freedia Corner,
11:10 almost past Joseph's Place,
11:14 I remember looking around and seeing the APCs in the fair garden,
11:21 the Bedford Light coming on.
11:24 I remember thinking to myself, "Now, this is different.
11:27 We've never done this before."
11:30 We get into Wales, I have no memories of hearing shots,
11:33 but I knew there was a whole lot of panic.
11:35 Yeah.
11:38 We get into Ben Tawada's house,
11:41 and the house was filled.
11:44 You know, you're talking seconds here.
11:46 Yeah.
11:47 I remember somebody saying,
11:48 "I've seen people running up by Freedia Corner into Wales,
11:54 and then roaring and screaming."
11:56 This was only in seconds.
11:58 Yeah.
11:59 And we get into me and Joanna's house,
12:01 and there's one saying, "There's five and six dead down the barricade."
12:06 I remember people saying that.
12:08 Yeah.
12:09 And I remember our George coming in.
12:13 And George says, "I've seen Wally. Wally's alright."
12:16 But George seen Wally before what had happened.
12:19 Right, right.
12:20 He says, "We're wondering about Joe."
12:24 George ended up stuck behind,
12:26 you know the filthy bits of the monument is now?
12:28 Yeah.
12:29 There was a few of them,
12:31 I think there was only one there where the monument is,
12:33 but the other thing, there was three or four of them.
12:37 He ended up hiding down behind them when the shooting was going on.
12:41 Then he made his way out,
12:43 made his way out onto Ben Tawada's house.
12:45 He says, "I seen Wally."
12:47 And he thought, "Right, Wally was right. I wonder where Joe was."
12:51 Joe was in the courtyard of the flats at the end of Jimena Street.
12:54 We didn't find out until later on.
12:56 Right.
12:57 And George left.
12:58 I remember looking out the hallway,
13:01 the door frame sort of frame.
13:03 I seen a car pulling up outside.
13:06 I think it was a Cortina.
13:09 And I seen Harry Campbell getting put onto that car.
13:13 Right.
13:14 I'll stand correctly, I think that man don't think he was in that car as well.
13:19 I'm not sure, but I seen the car pulling up.
13:21 I seen Paddy Campbell being helped.
13:23 And we, we two men.
13:26 And Paddy Campbell was hurt in the stomach.
13:28 Paddy Campbell shot in the back of the head.
13:31 I seen Paddy getting helped out of that car.
13:33 I don't know who it was then at the time.
13:34 Yeah.
13:35 And then, Grady and myself left the...
13:40 She lived in the Heights.
13:41 We went up there, went up there to have our tea.
13:43 And we went to, it was six o'clock in the morning, I seen him.
13:47 I followed him and I spoke about the events that day.
13:50 I still didn't know about Wally.
13:51 Yeah.
13:52 And I didn't know until sometime after.
13:55 When the shooting started,
14:01 Leo Young went looking for his 17-year-old brother, John.
14:05 As the shock of what was happening began to sink in among the crowds on the bogside,
14:09 he tended to another teenager who had been shot,
14:12 Gerald Dunnehy, along with other local people.
14:15 Together with another local man,
14:17 they tried to get the wounded boy to hospital
14:19 but were stopped by the army and arrested.
14:22 The car and the young man driven away.
14:25 He would only find out later that both teenagers,
14:28 the one he knew and loved, his brother,
14:30 and the young stranger he tried to help, had both died.
14:34 The fire engine crew came and they took my clothes,
14:39 stuck me down to my underwear and I was standing,
14:43 done stripped, my knees and everything.
14:47 I'd come back in and got my clothes back and they pulled the rope.
14:52 An army bullet in there.
14:53 We were held in there for a good while and done all that.
14:56 Then they moved us in down to Stam Barracks.
15:00 Right.
15:01 But they let Rupert Rogan go.
15:03 They kept me.
15:04 And I couldn't...
15:07 I was disoriented at this time.
15:10 Oh, yeah.
15:11 You know, half seven in the night,
15:13 they moved us in down to Yvanna Kelly.
15:16 And I was down there for all night.
15:19 And maybe half the next day,
15:23 they asked me questions.
15:24 And they were asking me,
15:27 I said, "I don't know this young man.
15:31 "I've never seen this young man in my life before."
15:34 When they asked me questions about him,
15:37 "Who was he?"
15:38 I said, "I don't know.
15:39 "I don't even know his name."
15:41 Oh.
15:42 You know, and this went on anyway.
15:45 Up and down and questions and different guys.
15:47 And finally they sent me down there.
15:49 They let me go.
15:51 Was that on a Monday?
15:52 It was on a Monday.
15:53 It was going on in and they lit Monday.
15:56 They brought me up the end of Stam Barracks.
16:00 They had me in the barracks.
16:01 The boy come out and he says,
16:03 "Is young here yet?"
16:04 And the boy says, "There he is, there."
16:06 He says, "Right, aye."
16:08 "Fuck off."
16:09 And, "How many brothers have you got?"
16:12 I said, "I've two."
16:13 He said, "You're the only one now."
16:15 That was the first you heard of him?
16:16 That was the first.
16:17 It didn't dawn on me then.
16:20 And then walking around,
16:21 we were sitting up,
16:22 between me and the Westway.
16:25 There was an atmosphere.
16:28 It was unreal like.
16:29 That was late in the Monday?
16:30 Yeah, late in the Monday.
16:32 And then when I got as far as,
16:35 out of Shone Gardens,
16:36 I seen the crowd outside the house.
16:38 I says, "There's something wrong here."
16:40 Something a bit bad in there when I got in.
16:43 They told me, and she,
16:45 "Joe's body was already out in the house at all, too."
16:47 Unbelievable.
16:48 Aye.
16:49 And like that's a,
16:50 (speaks in foreign language)
16:52 I know, but,
16:53 big time man.
16:54 They had to get a doctor for me,
16:57 and they gave me a sedative, and,
17:00 I put my way into the,
17:02 the tissue nearly.
17:04 But I didn't get up then,
17:05 when I started asking,
17:07 if I read again how many people were shot.
17:09 And I said, "What?"
17:11 "What about the other lad?"
17:13 "I wonder did he survive?"
17:16 But nobody seemed to know.
17:19 Kate Nash described how her family received the devastating news.
17:26 Do you know, strangely, that morning,
17:28 and I know a lot of people say this,
17:30 but I felt very odd that morning.
17:32 Very strange that morning.
17:34 A lot of our family didn't go to that march, you know.
17:36 I think my father, only actually went, didn't he?
17:39 Somewhere around, you know,
17:41 he wasn't there from the start.
17:42 My father went off to Mass.
17:44 He would have walked to Mass on a Sunday,
17:46 around about five o'clock,
17:48 and I came to the door,
17:50 not my home door,
17:52 boyfriend's door,
17:54 and the door opened, and I could see the gate,
17:56 and I thought, "He would have known."
17:58 But she says, "A neighbour and a good friend."
18:00 She says, "Your brother, well, he's been shot dead."
18:03 She says, "And your father?"
18:04 "My father's wounded."
18:05 But she says, "He's OK."
18:08 That was it, my head went, you know.
18:10 But somehow I got home,
18:12 and my Uncle Jimmy met me up at Cregan.
18:15 I didn't even get into the house.
18:16 He met me at Cregan,
18:18 and he, with a white tape, trying to get home,
18:20 he took us over to the hospital.
18:22 I had him walk, because Maggie wouldn't get on the lift.
18:25 So I had him walk all them floors.
18:27 I think it was the seventh or eighth floor.
18:30 Oh God, I was punctured by the time I got up.
18:33 But you see, all the way up,
18:35 all the way up there, you could see now,
18:37 doctors and nurses, and my ladder, they were all crying.
18:40 So they were really, really upset by it all.
18:42 Mickey McKinney recollects...
18:46 But the next morning, before I wakened,
18:49 I think before I wakened, the whole house was crying,
18:53 downstairs.
18:55 You know, the thing, I just faintly said,
19:00 "I've never heard anyone cry this painfully, ever."
19:07 That's when I heard that man cry.
19:10 John Kelly's brother Michael was also killed on Bloody Sunday.
19:16 He told Dairy Journal reporter Darren O'Cannon
19:19 about the moment they broke the news to their mother
19:22 and the impact it had.
19:24 When we got to the house,
19:27 the house was jam-packed with people.
19:29 And I walked in, along with my father and the brother and others.
19:35 And my mother, you can still see my mother sitting
19:37 on the left-hand side of the fireplace,
19:39 in her seat, in her chair, her armchair.
19:42 And my mother was sitting in hope
19:45 because she was told Michael had been shot.
19:48 And he was OK.
19:49 But he was shot in the ankle. He was fine.
19:52 But when we moved in, walked in,
19:54 and told her, it was unbelievable,
19:57 I bet her, I'll cry his ear, she's never going to wear Michael's death.
20:00 Never going to wear Michael's death.
20:02 And eventually we got Michael, Michael was returned home,
20:05 like all the others, all the other victims.
20:07 And Michael was laid out in his bedroom,
20:11 in the back of the house.
20:13 And I still see him, there wasn't a mark on him.
20:17 There wasn't a mark on him.
20:19 You'd think he was sleeping.
20:21 That's the way he looked, you know.
20:23 And we were sitting up,
20:26 myself and a few others were sitting up with Michael at night,
20:29 about three or four o'clock in the morning.
20:32 And my mother came diving into the bedroom
20:35 where Michael was laid out,
20:37 and ran to his coffin and lifted him up,
20:39 shouting, "Michael's son, Michael's son."
20:43 So we had a restrainer,
20:45 and put Michael back down again into the coffin.
20:48 After the funeral, then,
21:01 my mother was a very religious woman.
21:03 She always went to Mass every morning,
21:05 never left the chapel.
21:06 As they say here in Derry, never left the chapel.
21:08 But also then she started going to the seminary every day too as well.
21:12 And this one day, the story is,
21:15 probably people know this story,
21:17 that there was snow on the ground,
21:19 and she was walking towards the seminary.
21:22 And a woman approached her and says,
21:24 "Mrs. Kelly, where are you going with a blanket under your arm?"
21:27 And she says, "Michael, be cold."
21:30 And taking her up to the edge of the grave to keep him warm.
21:34 [music]
21:36 The Derry Journal editorial captured the sentiment across Derry and Ireland.
21:47 The paper's front page featuring a large photo of a row of coffins
21:51 laid out side by side at St. Mary's Church in Craigen,
21:54 with the headline,
21:55 "The sky's wept too as Derry laid its dead to rest."
21:59 [music]
22:01 The Derry Journal editorial, Friday, February 4, 1972.
22:15 In memoriam, "Derry was like a prolonged wake,"
22:19 was how a Belfast journalist described the local scene
22:21 in the days of deep mourning for the victims of last Sunday's massacre,
22:25 and how true the description was.
22:28 "A heavy pall of gloom hung over the city.
22:31 Its commercial, and for the most part its industrial life, stood still.
22:36 The great majority of Derry people were utterly shocked and outraged
22:39 by the horror that had happened.
22:41 At St. Mary's Church in the Craigen estate,
22:44 to which so many of the victims belonged,
22:47 the sight of those 13 coffins laid side by side
22:50 smote at the hearts of all who beheld that scene,
22:53 unparalleled in memory or experience in Derry.
22:57 The bereavement of the stricken families was shared by the whole Catholic community
23:01 and its depth of sorrow for those amongst its own
23:04 who had been so cruelly and so wantonly slain.
23:07 On the day of burial, the whole country was swept with such bitter weather
23:12 that it matched the mood of a people chilled to the marrow
23:15 by the thought of what had happened.
23:18 From end to end of the land,
23:20 the demonstration of mourning and ceremonies of remembrance
23:24 synchronised with the immense manifestation that was witnessed
23:27 at the solemn requiem in Derry
23:30 and the poignant scenes at the burial itself.
23:33 And from end to end of the land came mourners in their thousands
23:37 and in their contingents,
23:39 and representatives of church and from the Republic,
23:42 of state and municipalities as well,
23:46 to be with their fellow countrymen in this city in their grief.
23:50 It was indeed such a significant proof of national kinship
23:54 as was consoling for the sorrowing people in Derry to behold
23:57 and is to be gratefully remembered by them.
24:00 Like the scale of the response throughout the land
24:03 to the Irish government's call for a day of national mourning,
24:06 it bespoke, as our contemporary the Irish News has well said of it,
24:10 a unity of heart and spirit that has been unprecedented
24:13 since the four glorious years.
24:15 Such an impressive representation too was that of the Irish clergy,
24:20 including the religious orders and most significantly of all,
24:23 the honour paid by the presence and participation of the Cardinal Primate,
24:27 who officiated in person at the graveside,
24:30 following the concelebrated Mass by Derry's own Bishop and 12 of his priests,
24:35 with the Bishop of the Sister Diocese of Ruffo in the sanctuary.
24:39 And so the saddest day in the memory of anyone in Derry
24:42 became part of its history.
24:45 In the following years, the families of the Bloody Sunday Dead and the Wounded
25:02 decided to seek justice for their loved ones
25:04 and to have the official record corrected.
25:06 They took on the might of the British establishment
25:09 with the people of Derry as the wind at their back.
25:12 It must have seemed like an impossible task to speak truth to a power
25:15 used to dictate in the narrative,
25:17 but it was too important not to try.
25:20 It was too important because of the stain and blemishes
25:22 that had been inflicted upon the character of their innocent sons,
25:25 brothers, fathers, friends, loved ones,
25:27 many of whom were written off by the establishment as gunmen and bombers.
25:31 It was too important because people left with life-changing injuries that day
25:35 were likewise targeted with similar propaganda.
25:38 Dignified and determined, after a campaign lasting decades,
25:41 they succeeded in doing so.
25:44 But for many of those whose lives were forever changed that day,
25:47 the campaign for justice did not end with the Savile Inquiry Report in 2010.
25:52 Reflecting on the campaign after 50 years, John Kelly said,
25:56 People said to us at the very beginning,
25:59 "You're off your head. You're a mad...
26:01 You'll get nowhere with this here."
26:03 Because that was the norm.
26:05 You know, that was the norm.
26:07 And we said, "No, we're going to have to go with this."
26:10 And we always maintained, and we said at the start,
26:13 "We'll get a lot of knockbacks, but we're going to continue on."
26:17 And we have done that for all these years.
26:20 And are you proud of it?
26:22 Very proud. Yeah.
26:24 Proud of what we achieved, and I'm proud of the people.
26:27 You know, the people who were involved in it.
26:30 You see, it wasn't just the families.
26:32 You know, there's people out there, supporters from all backgrounds.
26:37 And I'm very proud of the fact that we brought it to where we are today.
26:45 What we achieved through the sheer hard work and determination of the families
26:51 and the people who supported us.
26:54 And I can always say, at least I've done my best.
26:59 And I've done it for Michael.
27:01 I've done it for everybody who died and were injured that day.
27:04 And it was never about me.
27:06 It was always about my government.
27:08 But also about my mother and father.
27:11 What they had, the suffering they went through after Michael, losing Michael.
27:16 Kay Dottie is hoping the soldier who killed her brother will admit to what he did.
27:20 Harry Jackie was bred 50 years ago.
27:24 It would help us to live the rest.
27:27 Because as of now, we have never been able to let him rest.
27:31 And it is outstanding.
27:33 Will we ever be able to let him rest?
27:35 As you say, without individualising any one person.
27:39 I mean, the atrocity that day was horrendous.
27:42 The killings and the injury was unbelievable.
27:47 And to think that they're going to walk away from all that.
27:51 It's just a hard pill to swallow, you know.
27:54 My daddy always said as these boys get older, their conscience would start to get to them.
27:59 And they would feel the need to unburden themselves.
28:02 And I just hope and pray for a miracle that possibly their death might happen.
28:07 But 50 years down the line, I think if you've buried a son that you've committed,
28:14 it's going to be very hard to put your hands up and say,
28:17 "Look, okay, I did it. It was wrong. I shouldn't have done it."
28:23 The families have been outraged at recent British government plans
28:26 for a ban on Troubles-related prosecutions.
28:28 Leo Young said,
28:30 The way it's all transpired now, it's devastating to think that nobody's going to be...
28:36 All them words that Cameron says, "Unjustified and unjustifiable."
28:41 It's just words. They're all going to walk.
28:43 With this amnesty now, they're going to let everybody off.
28:47 And Liam Ray summed up his feelings.
28:50 Until we get justice, and it's not out of vengeance,
28:53 I want my kids and my grandkids to grow up in a society where they have faith.
28:58 If somebody does you wrong, whether you're a politician, brigadier,
29:02 PSNA inspector, whatever, that the processes of law are there to protect you.
29:09 [Music]
29:21 Bloody Sunday, 50 years on, the day everything changed,
29:25 is a podcast by the Dairy Journal.
29:27 Thanks to all those who contributed and shared their personal experiences.
29:31 For more stories and images, marking this anniversary, visit dairyjournal.com.
29:37 This podcast was presented and co-produced by the team at the Dairy Journal,
29:41 and edited and produced by Kelly Crichton.
29:44 [Music]
29:56 [Music]