Setting the Truth Free by Julieann Campbell

Author:Julieann Campbell [Campbell, Julieann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Europe, Ireland, Political Science
ISBN: 9781907593949
Google: 5K58AwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Liberties Press
Published: 2013-02-25T16:08:29+00:00

South of the border, the mainstream media were beginning to move into alignment with the campaign’s perspective. A Sunday Tribune editorial on 25 March 1997 branded British troops on Bloody Sunday as ‘a gang of murdering thugs’.

In May, Labour leader Tony Blair succeeded John Major as British prime minister. Almost immediately, pressure was put on him to begin to resolve the Bloody Sunday issue. At the time, there was a noticeable thaw in British-Irish relations. A meaningful peace process loomed. In the following months, Sinn Féin would be brought into all-party talks at Stormont. The Good Friday Agreement would be signed a year later.

Embroiled in the peace negotiations, Martin McGuinness – later to become Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister – frequently travelled to see Blair at Chequers. He reveals that Bloody Sunday often slipped into the conversation.

‘Bloody Sunday came up in quite a number of conversations,’ McGuinness says. ‘Gerry Adams and I would travel over to London without the media knowing and then on down to Chequers and meet Tony Blair there. We had many soul-searching conversations about the conflict in Northern Ireland and spoke openly of Bloody Sunday.’

Days after Blair was appointed prime minister, Derry MP John Hume tabled a second Early Day Motion in the Commons urging the new prime minister to ‘recognise that, having a full examination of all the relevant evidence, including the army’s radio traffic, the fresh medical evidence and unexamined written statements of witnesses, is the best way to exorcise the bitter memories of twenty-five years’.

‘The aim’, he explained at the time, is to get this Government to take the step towards truth which its predecessor resisted. I believe the truth matters to Tony Blair. I also know that without the truth there can be no honest reconciliation or meaningful healing.’

Back in Derry, the campaign demanded that the Labour government’s approach to the issue had to be ‘radically different’ from the previous Tory administration’s.

Throughout this period, the families were kept abreast of progress by Hume and McGuinness: ‘The British were already floating the possibility of a formal apology,’ Tony Doherty remembers. ‘But by then we were getting regular access to the airwaves and we made it clear on numerous occasions through radio, TV and newspapers that an apology would not be acceptable and would make matters worse. An apology would be appropriate only after we got the truth.’

‘What we were talking about was having to undo an aspect of history which was morally, politically and judicially wrong and had caused great hurt to Irish people over decades. It was an aspect of history that remained an obstacle in terms of the peace process and everyone knew the positive effect that a successful resolution of Bloody Sunday would have on that process.’

As the summer of 1997 drew nearer, Eamonn McKee and Gerry Cribbin finalised the Irish government’s assessment of the new evidence. Don Mullan was given the opportunity to preview it before completion.

‘I was invited to the Department of Foreign Affairs to read through the penultimate draft of the document,’ Don recalls.

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